Sermons tagged with Journey

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. But to understand Joseph, we have to understand his roots. We have to know the promises made by his grandfather, Abraham, and tested by his father, Jacob. This week, we begin our journey through the life of Joseph by seeing where he came from and learning why he was the favored son. Only by looking at the origins of Joseph can we see the full depth of God's commitment to his children and begin to trust that no matter how unclear the future may seem to us, he has a plan. Well, good morning. It's good to see you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching, excuse me, online, if that's what you're doing. I feel compelled to say that was just a really great song. Yeah. I've not heard that song before, but I needed it. And just to be transparent, there are times if you come to grace long enough, you've probably figured out that I'm in the habit of kneeling and praying before I get up to preach. And there have been weeks that just between God and I that the prayer has been, God, just tether me to you. I feel myself wandering, and just draw me near to you. Use this sermon to preach to me as I preach to them. And he answers those prayers, man. He tethers you to him and he's good that way. So if that's your prayer, pray it hard and he'll be faithful. This week, we get into a series that I have been very, very much looking forward to since whenever it was that we planned to do it back in the summer. The story of Joseph in the Bible is, no surprise, one of my favorite stories. But I really mean it this time. I mean, you guys have a pastor that loves the Bible. You know, that's probably good, right? We can accept this. I love the story of Joseph. And as we said in the intro, it's this sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God. And I'm not sure outside of Jesus himself and God's plan of redemption in Israel and sending his son and in birthing the church outside of the grand story of history. I don't know that there's one single story, particularly in the Old Testament, that is a more stunning and perfect example of the sovereignty of God. So for seven weeks, we're going to go through this story of Joseph together. And because I believe that there are points along the way that are worth sinking into, there are elements of the life of Joseph and the lives that preceded him that are worth understanding and sinking into and making points out of and all the things, I believe that this whole story is marching towards a larger point that we're going to make on week seven. So I want you to understand about this series that it is, this is one big, long, seven-week sermon. I'm not approaching these sermons like I normally do, where I come in, I tell a story, or we find some text, or I pick a topic, I talk about what the Bible says about that, or what text means and then I give us an application and so what and then we go home and we do the thing. That's a normal standalone sermon. I'm not going to encumber myself with that this week, this series. This series, I'm simply going to tell you the story. We're going to pause at one point and do a whole sermon on one sentence and one verse because I think it's so profound that we should stop and think about it and consider it together. And then it's kind of parenthetical to the series. And then we'll pick up every week and we'll go along. And we're so committed to this that the little intro that you just saw that was voiced for us by Carly Buchanan, she did a great job. And for those who don't know, Carly's actually on staff with us part-time. She does all of our graphics and social media and is in charge of the Grace Vine and all that stuff and contributes mightily in meetings. So she's actually a really valuable member of the team to us and we are grateful to Carly and the hard work that she's doing. But every week, she's going to record like an update. So each bumper video is going to be like previously on to kind of catch us up with the narrative so we know where we're at. So I would tell you up front in this series, please commit yourself to all of them, whether it's in person or whether you're watching online or whether you find yourself needing to catch up, please find a way to stay consistent because week five won't make sense without week three or four. Likewise, we're working on generating a reading plan. I just realized this morning in my excitement, that's the excuse that we'll go with, in my excitement for this series, I failed to make sure that we produced a reading plan and I'm sorry, but we'll have one out tomorrow. It'll be online and I would love for everyone to be reading through this with us. The other reason you should read these stories too is like this morning, we're going to talk about the life of Jacob. That's a lot of chapters. I'm going to tell a lot of his story. I'm just telling you this right now. I'm going to get some details wrong. I don't want to. I've gone back and reread everything that I'm going to tell you today twice. I'm still going to mess it up. There's a lot of details. I'm sorry about that. But go read the Bible yourself so that you know what I'm messing up and what you should believe. We need to be doing that the whole time as we go through this series. But like we said in that video, to understand Joseph, to understand the sovereignty that we see in his life, to understand his status as the favored son, to understand his position in history and in the history of Israel and in the narrative of the scope of scripture, we have to understand his roots. We have to understand his father and his great-grandfather and who they were. So we're going to look today at the life of Jacob, the father of Joseph, and learn about him and some of the promises that God made to Jacob that are renewed promises that he made to Abraham that we will get to. But as we look at the life of Jacob, I feel like there is, whenever I read the story of the life of Jacob, there is this driving question to me as I read through who he is, which is simply, why does God continue to bless this guy? Jacob's the worst. You're going to see. He's the worst. He is a conniving, scheming jerk. He's a terrible human for most of his life. And yet God continues to bless him. At every turn, he gets exactly what he wants and what he needs. And I always read the story like, God, he's not doing any of the things. There's no fruit of the Spirit in his life. He's not repenting. He's not going to church. He's not even calling you God. Like, what's the deal? He keeps getting blessed. And so for me, the driving question as you go through the life of Jacob is, why does God choose to continue to bless this guy? Jacob's story begins in Genesis chapter 25, and we're going to go through into the 30s this morning. But his story begins in Genesis chapter 5. In Genesis chapter 5, his mom, Rebecca, is pregnant with twins, and they seem to be quarreling in her womb a lot. They're active, right? And she's praying about it. God, what gives? I got two babies in here, and they are really going to town. Like, what's going on? And God speaks to her, and he gives her a really significant sentence and prophecy and promise from God that you have two nations inside of you and the older will serve the younger. And that's a big deal. It might not seem like a big deal in the 21st century for a younger sibling to be more successful than an older sibling, but in the ancient world, that was a huge deal. In the ancient world, the eldest son, he was the heir to whatever tribe or fiefdom or clan they had developed. He was the heir. And we'll see in a minute when we start talking about birthright exactly what that entails. But to be the firstborn son was a big deal. And there was a birthright that went along with that. So for the younger to serve the older is kind of a radical thing. So for God to say that up front matters because that's not how it would typically go. So then we see the birth of Jacob. Jacob's born second. His brother Esau is born before him. And we're told that Jacob comes out of his mother's womb, from birth. Certainly in the English, it means something different, one would hope. But in the original Hebrew, it means he cheats or cheater. And boy, did this guy live up to his name. What we know about Jacob and Esau is that Esau was what we would traditionally refer to as a manly man. He was a hairy dude. He liked to be outdoors. He liked to hunt and fish. He liked to gut animals and cook meat and do the whole thing. He just stunk all the time. We'll see later. Later, his father, well, I'm not going to spoil the story for you, but he was a stinky dude. That was Esau. He was just rough and tumble. Jacob was more of a homebody. Jacob liked to cook. I identify with Jacob, all right? So I will defend him. But he liked to cook. He was his mom's favorite son. Esau was his dad's favorite son. And that was kind of the dynamic of the home. And one day, it's the Bible says when they had grown, the Hebrew Midrash, Hebrew tradition holds that they were about 15 years old, but that's word of mouth. So they were, at least in their adolescence, could be college age. They had grown up. And one day Esau comes in from a hunt. He bursts in, Jacob's at the stove cooking stew, and Esau is so famished and so hungry that he says, if you don't let me eat some of that stew, I'm going to die. Can I please have some stew? Which to me, in my head, always, just take it easy, Esau. Why don't you just relax? All right, you're not going to die. Like eat a granola bar or something. You don't need the stew. Go pick some berries. Like I think he's being dramatic, but who knows? I'm going to die if you don't give me some stew. And so Jacob sees a moment here that he can take advantage of, which Jacob is really good at seeing these moments. And he said, sure, I'll give you some stew for your birthright. And they kind of argue back and forth a little bit. And then finally Esau's like, fine, whatever. You can have my birthright. I don't care. Just give me some stew. So he sells his birthright for some stew. Now a birthright in the ancient world was the firstborn son has the birthright from the father to when the father is dead or incapacitated or absent for a long period of time due to a travel, the eldest son, because of his birthright, steps into the father's position of authority. And when the father eventually dies, gets a double portion of the inheritance. So it's kind of a big deal to have the birthright. And Esau's like, fine, whatever, take it. I just want the stew. And it's my contention that there's more going on here than Jacob's simple desire for more money when his father dies and Esau's simple rejection of the authority that his father has. I think that there's more going on here because later on in the Bible, in the New Testament, we're taught that because Esau despised his birthright, that God loved Jacob and hated Esau. That's strong language. And I almost chose to try to like soften up hate so that we could understand that a little bit better. But I thought, no, I'm not going to walk back with the Bible says about how God felt. He loved Jacob. I loved, and Esau, I hated, because Esau despised his birthright. So there's something more going on here than Esau simply deciding that he didn't want to be materialistic or authoritarian. And what I would contend with you is happening here. You guys are adults, you know your Bible, you decide whether or not you agree with this. But what I would contend with you is happening in this moment is Esau's kind of rejecting his inheritance. And when I say that, I mean his spiritual inheritance. Because when you were growing up, your parents told you about your grandparents. Your grandparents told you about your family. You knew what your family believed. Your family had values. These are things that are imparted on you. And in this culture, this word of mouth, oral tradition culture, you were told about your family. Jacob's grandfather was Abraham. And Abraham, all the way back in Genesis chapter 12, and I talk about these promises all the time. If you've heard me preach enough, you ought to be able to recite these promises to me. In Genesis chapter 12, Abraham was promised that. Abraham, we're certain, communicated those promises and that heritage to Isaac, his son. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. It stands to me to reason that Jacob and Esau, by the time they had arrived at this scene in their late adolescence or early adulthood, knew good and well the promises that God had made to their grandfather Abraham and knew that what that meant is because God made those promises to Abraham, those have to flow through our family line. So in Jacob's mind, whoever has the birthright, whoever is acknowledged as a firstborn son and gets the blessing of the father is going to carry these promises from God. And I want to be the one through whom all the descendants come. I want to be the one that has a claim on this land. I want to be the one whose one of my descendants will bless the whole earth. I want to be great. I want those things. I want to be the participant and the claimant in the promise. And so I'm going to find a way to get the birthright. And when Esau flippantly sold it for stew, to me, what he said is, fine. I don't really buy into the promises to grandpa anyways. You can have them. And in that moment, he was flippant. And Jacob saw something, not a God that he wanted to honor, but a future that he wanted to lay hold of. And so he got it with some stew. Later, at the end of Isaac's life, he's dying. He's on his deathbed. He's got days or weeks to live. His eyesight is failing him. And he calls Esau in and he says, the time has come for me to bless my sons. I'm going to die soon. This is a paraphrase. Go out, kill me my favorite game and make me my favorite meal so that I can enjoy it one last time and then bless you. And Esau dutifully, yes, father. And he takes off and he leaves. He goes out into the wilderness to kill what he needs to kill and cook what he needs to cook. Meanwhile, Rebecca hears this and knows what's going on. And she goes and gets her favorite son, Jacob. And she says, Jacob, listen, your dad just told Esau to do this. He's out in the woods. You go get one of the goats that we have in our pen. You go get a goat. You kill it. You make his stew. You strap that goat skin on yourself and you march into your dad's room and you get that blessing. Which Jacob always gets a bad rap for what he's about to do and he deserves it because it's horrible. But it was his mom's idea, man. She was scheming and conniving too. I mean, where do you think he got it? We're going to meet his uncle in a minute. It runs in the family. Which is why, this is just an aside, just general advice. Look out for mama's boys. Okay, you don't know what they're planning. You have no idea. You got to be careful about mama's boys. So Jacob does what he's told to do. He goes and he kills a goat and comes back. He makes a stew. He straps the skin on himself and he goes into, listen to this, listen to this. I really do want you to picture this. If you've ever had what I now, it's incredibly painful, but it's also an incredible privilege to sit at the bedside of someone who is slowly dying. If you've ever done that, that's who Jacob is going in to lie to. That's who Jacob is going in to deceive. Imagine the jerk you have to be. And because I'm preaching, that's as strong of language as I can use. Imagine the jerk that you would have to be to walk into this room and to lie in this way. Look at what he says. I'm in Genesis chapter 27, beginning in verse 18. So he went into his father and said, my father, he said, here I am. Who are you, my son? So already Isaac doesn't know who's who. Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Now sit up and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. It's me, Esau. I did what you told me to do. Now sit up and eat and give me the blessing. Sign the paper. Do it. He's very much got an agenda. And then listen to this. But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly? He answered, because the Lord, your God, granted me success. What a jerk. He says, Esau, this happened a lot more quickly than I thought it could. How did you have such success in going out and killing the game and making it and bringing it here? This is so much faster than I anticipated. And Jacob deceives him and plays on his heartstrings because the Lord your God delivered them into my hands. The Lord your God was good to me. You were right about this God guy all along. And as soon as I stepped foot into the wilderness, this thing just walked in front of me and I shot him true and I skinned him and cleaned him. What a deceptive little conniving weasel. He said to Jacob, He still doesn't know. He still thinks he's being duped. So Jacob went near Isaac, his father, who felt him and said, And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. Now time out. Jacob, to deceive his dad, strapped on goat skin and fur to his own hands and arms. And when Esau reached out, or when Isaac reached out in his blindness and felt goat skin, he said, yep, that's Esau. That's a hairy dude, man. Like I'm a hairy guy, all right? I got plenty. If you put Jen in a blindfold and have her touch a goat, she's not going to be like, that's my Nate. Like, he's hairy. There's no spiritual point there. It's just remarkably hairy. Anyways. And he said, are you really my son Esau? And he answered, I am. Still, Isaac doesn't believe him. Still, Isaac is being so careful and thinks he's being duped and he triples down on the lie. He says, are you sure? He says, I am, of course, I'm Esau. Then he said, bring it near me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you. So he brought it near him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, come near Esau. And he smelled him, which apparently Esau smells like a dead goat. And he said, yeah, you're Esau. And he kissed him. And he blessed him. And in the blessing that follows, he gives everything to Jacob and nothing to Esau. And Esau comes back from the hunt and he prepares and he goes to his dad. And his dad, Isaac, is brokenhearted and they both weep. And he says, I can't give you anything. I've already given it all to Jacob. And Esau is rightly incensed with anger and decides in his heart that once my father passes away and when the mourning period has passed, I'm going to murder my brother and claim this. See, Jacob did whatever he had to do to lay his hands on the future that he wanted for himself, even if it meant betraying his brother and his father. And so he did. Rebekah again finds out about this and tells Jacob. And so Jacob then flees to go to Uncle Laban's tribe, his camp, because they were all nomadic. So he flees to go be with Uncle Laban. On his way there, he lays down. And while he's sleeping, he has a dream. In Genesis chapter 28. And this dream is Jacob's famous ladder. And as he's sleeping, he sees a ladder, and it's going up to heaven, and angels are going up and down this ladder. And God is at the top of it, and he begins to speak with him. And we're not going to put this on the screen, but I want you to hear what he said to him. He says in verse 13, Now he's making an extra promise to him. The other promises are promises that he's reiterating from Abraham. He's re-upping and offering them to Jacob. The ones that he lied to get from his dad, the ones that he connived to get from his brother in the birthright and in the blessing, the future that he's been trying to lay a hold of, now God is promising it to him by re-upping on the promises that he made to Abraham. They're the exact same promises he's now making to Jacob. And then God doubles down on it and he says, behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. So Jacob has spent his life conniving and scheming and lying and cheating to lay hold of the future that he desired for himself, to be the one through whom the blessings of God flow. He finally gets to a place where he has what he wants. He's laid hold of the future that he's wanted for himself, but it's cost him his home. And so now he has to flee to his Uncle Laban's. He has to start over. And he has to start completely over and go start from ground zero to try to pursue this life that he's chosen for himself. And his brother, who's bigger and stronger than him and an incredible hunter and very good outdoors, is on his tail. He is scared and he is anxious. And in that fear and anxiety, God appears to him in a dream. He re-ups on the promises that he made to his grandfather, Abraham, which again, why does God choose to continue? Why is God promising him this? He's a jerk. He just lied to his dying father to get that blessing and then God affirms it. And then he says, and I promise you, I'll protect you. I'll bring you back here. Now, how would you respond to that from God? I would wake up and get on my knees and say, God, you are so good. Thank you. I really do genuinely think I would respond with profound gratitude. God, thank you for caring for me when I deserve it so little. That is not Jacob's response. Jacob's response we see in verse 28. He doubles down on the whole thing. Then Jacob made a vow when he woke up, is when he made the vow, saying, if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come again to my father this guy. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you, God. We'll see. I tell you what, if you keep those promises and you bring me back here, and, oh, by the way, if you feed me and you clothe me, because you didn't, I don't know if you did this on purpose, God, but you didn't mention that in your promises to me. So if you do everything you said, plus clothing and shelter and food, then you bring me back here. Then at that point, I will give you the gift of me calling you my God. Jacob still doesn't get it. But God is consistent in his promises. So he makes it to Laban's camp, house. And when he gets there, he immediately sees Rachel. And Rachel is stunning. He is immediately captivated by Rachel's beauty. Now, don't worry about it that that's his cousin, all right? It's just different. It's like Mississippi. It's just different in the Old Testament, okay? Don't worry about that. It's like distant or something. And so he goes to Laban and he says, I want to marry Rachel, but I can't afford to pay the dowry. What's it going to take for me to earn the right to marry your daughter? And Laban says, work for me for seven years and you can marry her. And the Bible says that those years went by in a flash because of his deep and abiding love for Rachel. He was really, truly infatuated by her, and it went by speedily because this is his goal. So he worked for seven years. The problem is, after he's worked for Laban for seven years, Laban acknowledges, man, God is with this Jacob guy, and my profits are doubling. I can't let him go yet. I need him to keep working for me. So on the night of the wedding, they have the big celebration. They do all the stuff. Jacob goes back to his tent. It's probably safe to say he was less than sober upon his arrival at his tent. They present his bride to him and they do what married people do on their wedding night. And he wakes up the next day to roll over and give a kiss to his new bride, Rachel. And he sees Leah, Rachel's older sister, who the Bible really hilariously describes as weak in the eyes, which is apparently the Genesis author's way of saying she was not much of a looker. Jacob, he didn't like her. He liked Rachel. But now he's with Leah. So he just got out Jacobed by his uncle is what happened. So it runs in the family. Laban, Rebecca, Jacob, it's all a whole thing. They should all be on Jerry Springer together. So he goes to Laban. He's like, what gives? This is not the deal. And Laban's like, well, too bad. You already did married stuff with Leah, so now she's yours. And he's like, okay, well, what do I have to do to get Rachel? He's like, seven more years. Okay, so he worked for seven more years. Into the seven years, Laban's true to his word. He marries Rachel. Everyone's happy. So then he goes to Laban, and he's like, I'm ready to go out on my own. I'm ready to go make a name for myself and go fulfill these promises. He's still got pictured this future that he's claimed for himself. And he says, can I go? What do I need to do to be able to go? And Laban says, work for me for seven more years. We'll divide up the herds in this way and then you can go. I don't have time to get into how he did it, but Jacob devised a scheme to basically take all the biggest and best sheep and goats and cattle and everything from Laban on his way out and leave Laban with all the weak sisters of the poor. He had nothing left when Jacob left him. He robbed him of everything, and they go out into the wilderness. Twenty-one years after he laid down and God reiterated those promises, now he's back out, and he feels like he can finally pursue the life for himself that he wants and finally lay hold of the future that he's been fighting so valiantly for. As he leaves, word reaches him that his brother Esau knows where he is and is coming. And Esau, in these last 21 years, has amassed for himself a good tribe and a lot of fighting men. And he's coming for old Jacob. Jacob is scared. Again. He divides up his camp. He splits them in two so that if Esau encounters one or the other, maybe he'll only lose half of his stuff. And he separates himself from his wife, from his wives and his children. His wives eventually have children. We're going to talk about them next week. And so they're on their way back home, back to Canaan, and Esau's coming. So he divides them up and he spends the night by himself. And as he's spending the night, we're told that a man came to wrestle with him, to quarrel with him. Essentially, a man attacked Jacob while he was sleeping. And scripture says that they wrestled all night long. And as morning approached, the man who was wrestling with him said, you gotta let me go, day is about to break, I have to leave. And Jacob wouldn't let him go. And so the man that he was wrestling with touched his hip, we believe dislocated his hip. And after he did that, he said, you got to let me go. And Jacob said, I'm not letting you go until you bless me. You bless me and then you can go. And then they have this conversation. You're going to see verse 28 on the screen. He says, and the man, he's wrestling called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name. But he said, Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. So Jacob, the night before he meets Esau, is wrestling all night with a guy. For some reason, Jacob is compelled, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And the guy says, what's your name? And he says, Jacob. And he says, your name is no longer Jacob, but Israel. Because you have striven with man and with God and you have prevailed. And yes, that Israel. Jacob is the man for whom the country is named. Jacob is the man whose 12 sons, one of whom is Joseph, become the 12 tribes of Israel. In that moment, his name is changed to Israel from Jacob. And Jacob names the place Peniel because he says, I have seen God face to face and have survived. Many scholars believe that who he was wrestling with was really angelic and potentially Jesus. And my way of interpreting the Old Testament scripture is whenever you see an opportunity that it looks like Jesus might have come on the scene, just decide that that's what happened because that's a way cooler way to interpret scripture. And he said he saw the face of God and he said he had now striven with God. So Jacob wrestled with Jesus until I think, until Jesus renamed him Israel. And in that moment, when Jesus says this, when the man that he wrestled with says this, I think it was this enormous light bulb moment for Jacob. His whole life, he had been striving against man to lay hold of the future that he wanted for himself. He schemed against Esau. He schemed against his father, Isaac. He schemed against Laban. At every turn, he even made a deal with God when God appeared to him in his goodness and restated the promises. He was scheming with God. And his whole life, he saw what he wanted, and to get it, he was fighting against man. And what he realizes after he spends the night wrestling with who I think was Jesus, he realizes, oh my goodness, I've been fighting against God this whole time. Not just last night, but my whole life. I will take you back to the promise that God made to Rebecca. There are two nations in your womb, and the older will serve the younger. From the very beginning, before Jacob existed, before he came out clutching his brother's heel, before he lied for the birthright, before he lied for the blessing, before he deceived Laban for riches, before he did any of that, God had already decided that he was going to be the one through whom the promise ran. He had already decided on the future that Jacob would have. God had already made up his mind about that. And his whole life, Jacob invests all of his energy and all of his anxiety and all of his efforts and all of his talents and all of his time in trying to lay hold of this future that he wanted that God was already bestowing on him. And in this moment, I think he finally realized, oh my goodness, I've been fighting against God this whole time. My fight was not against Esau. It was not against Isaac. It was not against Laban. I was struggling with God. And if I'll just step out of his way, he's going to do what he wants to do anyways. And then I can experience the joy of being with him and watch him bring about these things. And in that way, I think there's a little bit of Jacob in all of us. I think all of us, if we could take a step back and look at what's bringing us the most anxiety, look at what's causing us the most stress, look at where we invest most of our thought and most of our efforts in trying to lay hold of the future that we want for ourselves or our family. Is it possible that in that striving, we, like Jacob, are really striving against God? Is it possible that if we'll just let go and trust Him, that He'll bring about the things for us that he wants that are what's best. And that if we'll just trust God's future instead of the one that we are trying to lay hold of and control all the uncontrollables and we'll stay up at night thinking about and putting all of our effort and our times and our talents and our energies into, if we'll turn that into an effort to trust God and walk with him and stand in His love where there is no fear? Is it possible that what we'll find is for a big portion of our life we've simply been striving against God, not against the things that we think we're striving against? This is why it should be important to us the answer to our question. Why does God choose to bless this guy? Because God's commitment to his promise is not contingent upon Jacob's behavior. God's commitment to the promise that he made to Abraham of land, people, and blessing, and the promise that he doubled down on for Jacob of land, people, and blessing, and to bring you back to this place safely is not contingent on Jacob's behavior. When God in heaven is watching Jacob be a jerk to his dad and lie in the bedroom to his dying father who can't see him and triple down on the lie, God in that moment doesn't consider rescinding his promises and removing his blessing because of Jacob's bad behavior. There's this really prominent scholar named N.T. Wright. He writes a whole book on justification and in that book he defines God's righteousness as his commitment to his promises. If you were asked to define what does it mean that God is righteous, it means that when he says he'll do something, he does it. He's committed to his promises, and he made a promise to Abraham, and he's not going to cut off his promises because Abraham had a jerk of a grandson. He's going to be patient with that jerk of a grandson until he wakes up one day and sees that I'm your God too, and I've been watching out. I know that you think you've been taking care of yourself the whole time, but it hasn't had anything to do with you, Jacob. It's been me. And as soon as you want to put your faith in me, I'm here. I'm not going to connect these dots for you because I want you to do it. But his promises to you are not contingent on your behavior either. And that's a pretty darn good thing. The tough part is, as believers, we walk around sometimes like it does. And it doesn't. God has made you promises too. God promises you a future that you want to lay hold of too, eternally. And his interest and commitment to keeping those promises is not contingent on how you behave. Jacob goes on from this moment where I believe everything changes. And he meets his brother Esau. Esau is excited to see him, has mercy on him and is gracious with him. They have a sweet reunion. And Jacob, if you look at the text, man, he starts acting totally differently than he had any time in his life in those chapters that follow. And he goes back to the land that was promised to his grandfather, that was promised to him. And he begins to live his life. And this assurance that God is looking out for him and a trust of God's promises, finally seeing the future that he wanted to lay hold of for himself. And he and his sons, one of whom is Joseph, begin to live their life in the land of Canaan. And that's where we'll pick up the story next week. Let's pray. Father, God, you're so good, but you're so big. You love so much. You're so mysterious, and you're so wonderful, and you're so patient. God, for those of us who have been striving against you, would we realize it? And would we stop it? God, I pray for each of us as we are on our journeys of knowing you, of working out our salvation with fear and trembling, of understanding what it is to have faith and cling to you and walk with you and be drawn to you. No matter where we are or what we're going through or how far or near to you we feel, I pray that you would draw us in. I pray in this series more than anything else that we would simply be drawn into you each week. That through the story of these saints of old that we would see their humanity and we would see your love and we would know that that love is reflected on us and we would know that your sovereignty still rules over us and that we would simply be drawn into your grandeur and into your love and into your plan. Draw us near to you as we come together for these next seven weeks, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.

This morning we really want to acquaint you with the ministries that we partner with. We want everybody to know a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes kind of of grace because you've probably heard me say plenty of times that 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries operating outside the walls of grace. We actually have a missions committee full of people who have a heart for missions, a heart for seeing others come to know Jesus, and want to use the resources that we have to see that brought about. And their job is to find ministry partners for us to pair up with who are accomplishing the mission of God out in the world. And then they take the money that we give and we support these ministries in various ways. And it occurred to me, it's actually, we're doing this because Sarah Prince emailed me, or maybe a Facebook message. I forget how we communicate. Hey, we'll be in town. We'd love to share if we got the opportunity. And I thought, gosh, I think the church needs to know about all of the people that we partner with and what they do. And so we're going to highlight Jen Taylor. You're going to hear her story and what she does over at Refugee Hope. And then we're going to talk with the princes as well. But this is an opportunity. This is kind of a getting to know you. Let's learn who are we supporting, what are they doing, and how can we get involved, how can we pray. And so without further ado, this is Jen Taylor. She's with Refugee Hope Partners, which I think is, are you guys located outside of Raleigh as well? So we have families that have moved outside of Raleigh that we remain connected to, but our main location where we start all of our relationships with our refugee friends is actually five minutes down the street right behind the Falls of the Neuse Chick-fil-A. There's an apartment complex right there. Cool. So we're going to dive into that, but before we do, there's some folks here, even though you've been here for like your whole life, who might not know you. So tell us about your background at Grace. You grew up here. Your parents dragged you here all the time. So how was it growing up at Grace and all that stuff? Tell us about that, how long you've been involved here. Yeah, so I've been involved at Grace probably since the start of Grace. I grew up here in the youth group. I actually had Casey and Sarah as youth leaders back in the day. Like they're not getting enough attention. Exactly. But my parents were super involved. I even did, if any of y'all are back that far enough, the handbell choir. I was a part of that. Yo, we had one of those? We need to dial that back up. But yeah, so just grew up here. Had a family here. Y'all are family. And so I went away for a few years, but once I moved back to Raleigh about three years ago, it was just natural to plug right back into Grace Family and right back into the ministry here. So that's great. I'm now going to refer to you as the handbell chair. You're in charge of getting that rolling. So tell us just a broad view about Refugee Hope Partners and what they do, and then we'll kind of talk about what you do with them, and you can tell us about some of the families that you work with and things like that. So what is Refugee Hope Partners? Yes. So Refugee Hope Partners is a nonprofit right here in Raleigh. We work with over 700 different refugees from over 40, well, right under 40 different countries from around the world. Refugees come from these countries after being in refugee camps. They sign in with the UN and get placed by the U.S. government right here in North Raleigh. So they move into these apartment complex, specifically Cedar Point Apartments where we're located, and we help that transition. As refugees come in, they don't have the language that they need. They don't know the systems that are in place in America. They don't know how to read. So paperwork is a huge issue to get past. So we are there not just loving our refugee neighbors but really trying to help in everyday life build confidence, engage the community and really equip them so that they can become sustainable right here in the U.S. So we have tons of different programs that we do that through but some of them are medical, some are ESL, some are homework help. So we do tutoring for all of our kids. We have like 350 kids that we work with. So it gets to be a little bit crazy, but it's a whole lot of fun, and we do a lot of ministry. We have Bible study as well, and we share the gospel throughout. You said, I think, 40 countries are represented. What are the predominant ones? I'm sure that there's a majority there. So what are the top two or three? So we do have a very large group that comes from kind of Central Africa, the Congo, a lot of Swahili speakers. And then we also have a large group of Karenni refugees from Myanmar and Burma. That conflict is still going on. So they are 25 years deep in a refugee camp before they come here. And then we also have a lot of Middle Eastern countries represented. So a big group from Afghanistan has come recently. So we have a lot of Farsi speakers that come in as well. And as you love on them and help them and kind of help to pave a way to assimilate, I would suppose is the right word. How are you also able to point them towards Jesus? And with coming from so many different places, there's so many different faiths represented there. And I would imagine that encountering each faith has its own sets of issues and things that make it helpful and things that don't. So how do you, what do you guys do programmatically and relationally to point the refugees towards Jesus and to let them know that you're doing this because Jesus loves them and you do too. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that we do is we just love them. Jesus loved us first so that we can love them, and we love our refugee neighbors in so many ways. We are there during crises. Whenever those happen, we are right there, feet on the ground, loving them in the midst of it. And even in our programs, we don't shy away from the fact that we are a Christian organization and that we are here to love them no matter what they believe or where they come from or what their background is. That we have Bible studies that are geared towards all different groups of people. We have, even in our ESL programs, at least around Easter and Christmas, we tell the whole gospel story right there. And many of those people that are in our ESL programs come from Muslim world, Muslim background, and they're getting to hear the story of who Jesus is and how he loves us right there in our programs. That's wonderful. And what is your role now? How did you get hooked up with them? Did you start a volunteer? Was there an internship process? Or did you find them and go, that's a position that I think I might enjoy and so apply for it? And then what you started as, how has that morphed over the time that you've been with them? How long have you been with them? About three years. Okay, yeah. So when I started, I actually moved back to Raleigh and didn't know exactly what to do next. And I knew I wanted to work with refugees. So I went to talk to the executive director about volunteering. Where'd you go to school? I went to Chapel Hill. And got a degree in? Global Studies. She's using the degree, Pop. Okay, so I'm sorry. I just wanted to, so you saw that, you thought it could work, and carry on. Yeah, and I sat down for coffee, and within that coffee chat, the director said, well, we have a position for you. And so I got a job right after thinking I was going to volunteer. So it was definitely the Lord being like, you need to be here. I started out part-time doing more of the ESL program and then switched into program staff, which means that I do everything on staff. And then from there have moved into the volunteer coordinator. So I actually connect everybody that wants to volunteer. I'm the first person you see. I walk you through the whole process and all of our programs and what we do and get you connected in the programs that we have. What kind of volunteer opportunities are available? If you have 350 kids to tutor, I'd imagine you need some of those. Emil is great at high-level math, so bring him in for all your advanced students. But besides that, Zach, don't laugh so hard. That's mean, man. There's tutoring needs, I'm sure, maybe even some ESL needs, but what else? What other kind of volunteer spots are there? Yeah, so you can plug in anywhere. We have a medical ministry that helps drive families to doctor's appointments. So if you can drive a car, you can volunteer with us. We have a bridge mentorship program that literally pairs volunteers with a high school student and helps them move into those next steps of what do I do after graduation? What is my career? What could that look like? We have ESL for adults. We have a preschool, like a preschool for our three and four year olds. We have childcare during the ESL times. Anything that you would like to do, we have it and we would love to get you plugged in. And it really is any schedule as well. We run programs that are on a weekly basis, so you can plug in and really get to know people on a weekly basis. But then we also have programs that are come as you can. Show up once a month, show up once a year, that's okay. We'd love to have you be a part of our programs and really get to know the community and the refugees there. So as you think about, well, I guess I would ask you this too. I think this is relevant of every organization. What were your specific unique challenges during COVID? Because I can imagine in an apartment complex with refugees, folks who are not yet fully assimilated, that that had its own unique set of challenges. What was the biggest challenge during the heart of the pandemic? And now what are you guys thinking about as we move out of it? Definitely at the very beginning, the biggest challenge was just feeding our families and making sure that those that were unemployed were able to pay rent. That was a huge thing at the beginning of COVID and all that happened, and we were right there. Grace was with us actually donating on a weekly basis groceries for some of our families. And then as we transitioned into online school, that was a giant mess for us. I bet it was. Even just Wi-Fi and tablets, right? Even just Wi-Fi and tablets. So we were the main access for schools to help kids get computers, get internet, get connected to their teachers. We had different classrooms running all year long of if you can't get internet working or something's wrong, you come to us and we'll actually have school right there. So every morning we would be trying to sign in five different students at once to one teacher and say, no, they're here, they're attending, I promise. So just getting through that process was a big challenge. Thankfully, they're in person now and we don't have to worry about that anymore. I can't imagine what a challenge that was. I'm curious, in ministry, in my experience, you have stories or experiences that sometimes will anchor you in what you're doing. They encourage you. They kind of God-breathed into those moments, into those families, into those relationships. You see someone come to Christ. You see a family strengthened, or you see some prayers answered in a big way. And those stories kind of, they anchor you in the not so easy times. And I'm sure that you have a couple of those. So as you look back on your three years with Refugee Hope, tell us a story or two of someone that you saw come to Christ, of a family that you saw strengthened, of some prayers that you saw answered. What are your kind of anchor stories? Well, like I said, I started out in ESL. And while I was there, one of the ESL moms who comes from, she grew up in Pakistan and Afghanistan, kind of switching over those borders. That sounds like an easy background. Goodness gracious. So she and her family have moved here, and they got really connected to our ESL volunteers. And one volunteer in particular was able to share the gospel with her to the point that they do a Bible study on a weekly basis even still. And her family has moved not only from being able to speak English. She actually wants to become a nurse and wants to go back to college and get a degree. And then her family was able to, through the years of learning how to save, learning how to speak English, learning to get better jobs and fill out applications, they actually just bought a house six months ago in Nightdale and are now living on their own, sustainable, and still bring their kids back every week, at least twice a week, for violin class that we have running and to be a part of ESL and encourage the other families and moms to be a part of it. Gosh, does anyone else feel terrible about their life right now? Holy smokes, that's unbelievable. And here's what's really cool about what Jen just did. She told a story about something that someone else did. You don't think that she's had those conversations too? And she just took the spotlight that we put on her and she was like, well, this volunteer one time did this thing. That's really, really cool. As we finish up our time with you, what are we hoping for next at Refugee Hope? And what can we as individuals, not Grace as a church, but what can we as individuals do to be a part of whatever the next season of life is at Refugee Hope? Yeah, so right now we're getting, gearing up to go back to school. So one of the big things that Grace is already going to be a part of is our back-to-school drive and sale. We're actually going to equip our 350 students with all that they need for school. And so Grace can be a part of just helping supply some of the supplies, and that information will be soon to come of exactly what we are asking for. But then just prayer. Our ministry is growing continually, and we're looking at strategically how we can grow and love on our refugee neighbors, not only at Cedar Point, but all around Raleigh. So it's moving. The Lord is moving in this place, and it's really cool to see. That's awesome. I also just kind of feel compelled to say, I don't know to whom this might apply, but if you're in a position where you need workers that folks like this may be able to fill, I would imagine that you could reach out to Jen, and she could hook you up with some pretty good folks. So to whomever that might apply, I think that would be something good to keep in mind for Grace. Thank you so much for coming and sharing with us. She will be in the lobby immediately following the service, so you guys can bombard her there and we can find out more ways to get involved. And we're going to end the service with talking about a volunteer team. So if you're hearing about, like, well, Grace is involved in school supplies, and you're going to see a video here in a minute from Fox Roads, something that we did for them at Christmas, and you're like, I want to do that stuff when that's happening, you'll be able to. So we'll get to that in a minute. But before I let you go, I just want to pray for you as a church. Let's pray for her and everything that's going on at Refugee Hope. Father, gosh, we are just so encouraged by the work that you're doing just down the street from us. God, I can't imagine what it is to be a refugee. I can't imagine what it is to grow up on the border of Pakistan. I can't imagine some of the things that these people have walked through. And yet you've brought them here and they have people with them who love them. And God, we pray that they would continue to see your love in Jen and the folks that she works with and the folks who volunteer over there. Lord, if any of us are compelled to be a part of what you're doing there, I pray that you wouldn't let go of us, that your Holy Spirit would just tenaciously get after us as we get more involved in what you're doing over there and get front row seats to watch you work in the lives of these people. We pray that you would bless Jen. I know that it is fun to share success stories and it is fun to talk about what's next, but God, I also know that it is hard. And so I pray that you would be with her in those times and in those moments as well. We thank you for her, for her humble example and witness and ask that you would just encourage her and give her many, many more stories of folks who came to know you through what they're doing over there. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. who haven't been at Grace for as long and don't know who the princes are and why we get excited. So now they get to share with us and everybody can be excited together, which is great. So tell us, where'd you grow up? How'd you get to Grace? When did you realize you were in love with each other and you needed to move to Africa because this is just what God wanted you to do. So go. There's a lot of steps in one question. So I think like I was part of the, I would call it the St. Grace crowd. So Chris Sasser sort of lured me into youth ministry as a high school student. And then I felt a call to youth ministry very as like a teenager. And so he sort of nurtured that. And I interned a couple summers, and then basically we sort of always dreamed of conspiring so that once I would graduate, I would come on staff. You and Chris would... Chris and I would... Yeah, we conspired together, and that worked out. And so I used to sit between he and Karin and sort of mediate their marriage and relationship up in the old loft. In the aughts. In the early years of Grace, Chris Sasser was the student pastor here. And they were going and blowing. I mean, they were doing some really cool things. So he was doing high school, she was doing middle school, and I sat in between. And it was a dangerous place. But it was an amazing experience. But yeah, I mean, Sarah had interned as a college student as well. And then as she was at Seminary at Duke, we were also conspiring to figure out how to get her on staff. So as you're on staff, there's an attractive intern, and you're now conspiring. No, no, no, no. I brought the intern. Okay, all right. So basically we met at Fun in the Sun, the camp we used to take kids to. And she was from Lakeland, Florida, and they had a lot of pretty girls at her church. so I spent a lot of time talking to the girls at her church. You made your way over to the Lakeland crowd. Yeah. So then we moved back to Raleigh and I started working at Grace and she started seminary. I think what was a mutual attraction was we both just loved kids. We both loved ministry. I mean, we met where we were both interns, you know, loving on kids. And so that's always been a part of our life is that we just love loving on people together. We love having people in our home. And we lived, you know, five minutes from here and literally would always just have people in our home, a lot of kids, a lot of adults. And, I mean, we're just so grateful for this place. I became a pastor here. I was ordained here. We grew up a lot here. And I feel like, again, this name lives up to its name. I received so much grace in this place as we just kind of clumsily figured out what it looked like to be pastors and to love people and to be newly married. As some of these now adults can attest to on mission trips. We had some marital strife over, you know, pranks and Chris Latta. And so, yeah, we just... He was usually the center. Just strife specifically over Chris. Yeah. Usually he's in the center. Yeah, specifically. But we grew up here. It's not just your own marriage. You got other people's too now. For sure. 100%. Yeah. So we're grateful. I mean, just to sit here and to look out at so many old faces and so many new faces, it brings us so much joy. And we're just so grateful that you guys loved us while we were young. And now that we're old, that you love us from afar, it's such an incredible thing. We're the same age, I think, and we are old. What year did you guys get married? 2002. Wow. Okay. And then when did you go to Africa? So, yeah, basically I think the thing is that Grace nurtured this heart for mission because we were taking students on all these mission trips. And that was our excuse for not doing it ourselves is that we were taking Jen and we were taking Colleen. And so that's cool. We've done our part. And unfortunately, God was continuing to stir that. So she went to Uganda in 2007 with some girls who had been sort of involved with Grace. I somehow let my wife and three college girls go to northern Uganda by themselves. It's very irresponsible. I don't feel like you had a lot of choice. I don't choice. He did not. Also true. And so that was kind of a make or break moment. Either this is going to die down or this is going to get worse. And it got worse. And then she basically said, I'm going to stop working at church. And, you know, so she went to Jeff Hancock, the pastor at the time, and said, look, I'm going to stop and we need to go do something. And he had heard about this organization in Cape Town. So, hey, why don't you try them? And so the church was just unbelievably gracious to us to not only, you know, let her quit, but also just to, I mean, I took a three-month leave of absence, and they just supported that and said, cool, we'll hire someone to replace you to help the thing keep going, and go do it, go explore, and go sort of figure out what God is doing. And so it was just incredibly gracious. And so in that period of time, working with Living Hope and meeting a guy named Michael and him just sort of answering that prayer that we were having of, okay, if God, you want us to be here, what would we ever do? And so that's sort of where Ubuntu was birthed in us and then came back and told people. And I think people there advised us, you need to tell people there. You can't decide here. You must decide. You must really hear from God there. And so as we told people, everyone said, well, we hate the idea that you're going to leave, but this sounds like exactly what you should be doing. Knowing you, this is what you should do. So it was very affirming and, yeah, pushed us out the door. And what year was that? So we left in 2009, October of 2009. Okay. And my understanding is, correct me if I'm wrong, you went over there with Living Hope. And Living Hope is an organization that was founded by a pastor in Cape Town, South Africa, and initially was doing a majority of its work in the HIV community because it was, for a while, the highest case per capita in the world. And so that's where it started, and then other programs got built out of that, and now it's this whole big thing. And so you guys originally went over there partnering with them, and then at some point or another transitioned to Ubuntu. Yeah, like our 2008 time was all with them. And then in 2009, we kind of went back saying, I'm going to do, I'm going to start this Ubuntu thing eventually, and she's going to work with Living Hope and with the Methodist Church and, and, and. That's always and, and, and. Always and. Yeah, right. There's lots of ands. Yeah. I mean, I think there's been a, there's been a couple paths. I mean, Ubuntu is a path which Casey can obviously really share about what that is and even what that word means. But us as a family, we studied missionaries. I studied at Duke race and reconciliation and justice things. And we thought, let's try it out really doing this. And so we went to Cape Town the first time, lived in a cute apartment and did all the sightseeing. When we moved there, we actually moved into an impoverished community. So their apartheid has been lifted for about 20 years, but everyone is still kind of stuck in whatever community they were forcefully removed to. So in way deep in Cape Town, very south, there's a community called Ocean View, and it's mixed race people. It's colored. That's a PC term there. And so we had done work there. We'd made friends there, and we just thought, we want to try this. We actually want to live among people and try to be friends and try to be neighbors with the people that we serve. And people were like, you can't do this. People are crying. No, it's a death sentence. And we just were very stubborn. And we just wanted to give it a try. Also was serving at a Methodist church in the community. So we moved into the pastor's house. And that's really where our ministry manifesto, as I call it, was born because we showed up. I mean, someone literally, when we left, made a cake with South Africa on it. They were like, you're going to South Africa, save Africa. And we were like, okay, a little bit, we will. I mean, you just, you get this kind of hype. And so we show up in Ocean View and no one cared and no one talked to us and they were suspicious and they didn't need whatever we were selling. And so we sat alone in our house for a while and started to open the Bible and just say, okay, Jesus, this didn't happen to you. You know, when Jesus went from town to town, he had throngs of people following him, coming to his feet, touching the hem of his garment. So what are we doing wrong, Jesus? And I found myself in John 4 specifically, and it's really the woman at the well. And she doesn't want to know a religious guy, and yet at the end opens up her entire life and her soul, and then goes back to her town and converts everyone. And it's just because Jesus came to this place, and this is our ministry manifesto, look, listen, love. You know, we go to save and to conquer and to, you know, rescue all the orphans, but God really, in Jesus, showed us you just show up and you look. What's around? Who's there? What's not there? What are people feeling? You listen. You get people to open up, share their stories, share their lives, and then, if God allows, you love them. And so because God humbled us, slowly we started to make friends. Slowly people started opening up their lives to us. Slowly people started letting us in. And it's changed our lives, that humbling experience of not having the answer, of not knowing the way, of not being the saviors, and just people slowly allowing us in has changed our lives, and now these people, 11 years later, are our friends. They're our family. We do a lot of life together, and one story, I was actually thinking about while we were sitting. So Bernadette is a woman we met the first time in Living Hope. She worked for Living Hope. We did HIV support groups together. We'd go into communities. She had these groups of people, all HIV people. She was supporting them, loving them. I would just tag along. We come back. Her son, Robin, comes to the academy, becomes a part of the academy. And while he's still in high school, they're in the front yard, basically, and someone next to him is shot dead. Robin is there with a friend. The friend is shot dead by a gangster. Bernadette calls, crying, weeping, for months. Obviously a lot of grief. Robin as well. So we walk a lot of life together through this trauma, through a lot of stuff. Eventually Robin graduates from Ubuntu after he comes here to America. Now he's in Portland. He is at school. Where is he at school? Corbin University. But just recently before I came here, I was having my own crisis, struggling with how to love people, what to do, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I can't do this anymore. Who do I call? I call Bernadette. I show up at the Ubuntu house. She now works at the Ubuntu house. She's our cook. Bernadette, I need you. I show up. I'm crying. Help me. Guide me. What do I do? She sorts me out, and she says, I tell everyone, I have this white friend, and she's my white sister, and she lives in Ocean View. She said, but Sarah, you need to be colored now, and you need to toughen up. And she prayed for me. And that's our life. Our life is not about us saving anyone. It's about neighbors. It's about friends. It's about a lot of stories that are intertwined and us finding God sometimes more than we feel like we're even helping them. Sure, sure. I like to be colored and toughen up. That's great. Casey, can you tell us about all things Ubuntu? Just how did it start? How did it germinate? What has it become? What energizes you the most now that you're 10 years in? Yeah. So Ubuntu is really, it's born out of a desire to deal with fatherlessness. So 60% of kids in South Africa grow up without a father in the home, which is a very frightening statistic because it leads to then all of the other issues that come with it, gangsterism and drug abuse and alcoholism and massive unemployment, and it keeps going. And really, Michael, it's not really my idea. Michael Jenkins had the dream and the idea, and he saw a sucker who had all the background he needed to make it happen, and I took the bait, and so we did it. But really, we work with a small group of kids who, sort of elite footballers or soccer players. And we really try to walk from really almost nine, but they enter the academy around grade six. So kind of 11 years old through the end of high school. And it's really about now we run our own school. So we register with the Department of Education. And so you go through the normal South African kind of educational system. We train four or five, six times a week. We have amazing coaches. We have a residence for about 30 of the boys who live further in town to get there every day or who live locally in their home situation. It's just not going to help them be successful. So there's about 30 kids who live in the residence. And then, yeah, and then we just spend a lot of time on their character, leadership, and spiritual formation. How do we help them become the man that will, you know, be different than what the men are in our country currently? How do we help them raise a different heart for their own community, their own family, and the nation wider? And so, yeah, in February, it was kind of like our 10th anniversary of our first training sessions. We had big celebrations. And I think what's amazing now is watching, we have this sort of first generation of graduates, of guys who finished and the things that they're doing. So in August, we'll have 17 kids now studying in the United States. One of them is here. Yeah, you got one here with you, right? So Tarek is here. So if you want to bombard Tarek to get the real stories about Casey, you can. So, I mean, poor Tarek from the age of 12, even beyond up until last year, so until he was about 20, had like one coach. He got stuck with the same guy all the way through that process, and he loves me deeply still. Is that true, Tarek? Do you love him deeply? Okay, all right. So it's amazing to not watch those guys. There's about 10 playing professionally. We have our first Olympian. So if you watch the Tokyo Olympics, hopefully Luke Fleers will play and hopefully play well. So he actually brought Tariq to trials because we had seen Luke first. But, I mean, it's been amazing. But what's really amazing is to see the two guys who are training to be teachers and Josh, who's now a policeman, and the impact that they will have. But I'm also so excited because I know that we, after 10 years of bumping around and making lots of mistakes, are infinitely better at what we do now. We have a much, much stronger team. We have all these amazing teachers and house staff and coaches that are around it. Where in those first couple years, it was like me and Mike stumbling around, wondering when the adults were going to show up and help us run this thing. And tell you what to do. Yeah. And we're like, ah. I'm wondering that here, actually, in my role. We heard. Yep. So we have this amazing team. And what's been really great is now Sarah is actually a full-time Ubuntu staff person and on the leadership team. Can you believe it? That took a long time to lure in. We're going to get to Sarah in a second. I want to hear everything that you've done because it's been a lot of different things. The last year really showed us the need to really focus on formation. We were doing it, but it was sort of on the edges of everything we did. And I think, obviously, that is her heart and what makes sense. I know that that's going to drive the next 10 years to be even more amazing and that the graduates will be even more amazing young men than we have already produced. When you say formation, you're talking about spiritual formation, spiritual health? Spiritual leadership, character formation. And what are you guys doing now to key into that specifically? So we have some programs for all of that. So spiritually, it looks like a lot of different things. A lot of it's relational. It's work that our teachers and our coaches and our staff do, especially at our residence, through relationships, just inviting them to be in a relationship with God, modeling that. We have a Bible study that our very own Casey leads at the house once a week, which is incredible and really cool. And then we have other programs that we're really excited to launch. You know, it's been kind of just a few programs spiritually. We want to get even better about that. Leadership is also something that we're really starting to do. We don't want just to expect them to be leaders, but teach them what does it mean to be a leader and that every one of them is a leader. And then character formation is actually a program that we do once a week. They have an hour that they do it. And they're learning to really know who they are and live with integrity and live with excellence. These things have to be taught, especially because of all the trauma and bad habits that some of them have faced. They really have to actually be taught these things. And so it's really exciting to now look at who we want the Ubuntu 30-year-old man to be and then intentionally and strategically create a pathway to that place. It's really exciting. That is really, really cool. And now briefly, as we are out of time, I am interested in the chronicle of all the different positions and things that you've done in your now decade in South Africa. So run us through it. And then now, I believe you just finished a book, yes? And now you're on staff with Casey. So what have you done? A lot of different things. I'll say most, a lot of pastoral stuff, really. I learned in South Africa that even if no one thinks you're a pastor, even if no one gives you a title or, you know, a cool cloak or whatever a pastor is supposed to have. We're supposed to get cloaks? Yeah, I had one. I had one back in the day here, but it's just who you are. And so, you know, people in Oceanview call me Pastor Sarah, and I don't pastor a church anymore. And I'm so thankful. I'm so honored that they call me that. So we were at the Methodist Church for a while. We've been at different churches, but we're now at a local church. We actually want our kids to now just be involved in a youth group and have that kind of stuff. So I've done a lot of things, a lot of stuff in the community, in the high schools, in the different kind of organizations of Ocean View. My book is actually about our journey with special needs because, as many of you know, our son Keller, who's now was one was diagnosed with autism mild autism and so we walked this unexpected journey where literally we googled autism after we got the diagnosis from the doctor to getting totally integrated in ocean view with the schools we got a team of therapists and experts and this really extraordinary thing happened where people just came into our house daily and changed all of our lives, most all my son. So he lost his diagnosis when he was five. And it's a miracle, but it's a miracle of community. It's a miracle of people coming into all of our lives. And it's a miracle of God saying that Keller is fearfully and wonderfully made, autism or not autism, and watching that come out. And so I finished the first draft. We're hoping to launch it next summer. It needs a lot of work. But it's really also my story of an unlikely mother, very unlikely. I didn't even know if I wanted kids. And now here I am, the mother of a special needs son. And so it's been a journey. You've got your daughters here. Are you happy that you have her? So happy. We thought she was going to be a boy. We were certain God loved us and it was going to be a boy, and now we have this incredible daughter who loves Jesus, loves acting, singing, dancing, is a leader, is kind, is this incredible person. So I don't know how he did it, but I feel like it's made me more than it's made them. And so I really want to share that story of what God has done in my life and how I found a real God in the midst of real trial. And now I'm the mother of Ubuntu. I never would have wanted to be Tarek's mom. And Tarek and I had a deep and real, even last night. There's fireworks and bourbon flowing last night, and Tarek and I are in having this deep conversation because I'm the mom. And that's what I do. And I am so humbled to be the mother of Ubuntu. Again, never would have expected it, but it's my best job I've ever had. It's the one that brings me the most joy. Best boss I've ever had. He really is. That's great. That's great. I wonder if he feels the same about his employee. Okay, Princess, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your story. I have one more thing. Okay, let's pray. No, I'm just messing around. I just want to, I think, like, affirm and honor Grace, because, you know, like, hearing Jen share and Colleen on the video and, you know, Suzanne's work with Anastomari and stuff, it's a reflection of who Grace is. And so, you know, Suzanne and I came through the youth ministry and Beth and Bill Gentile tried to, like, ruin us at young, young ages, and they didn't. But all of that practice we then got serving people because of grace, it shaped our hearts. And now seeing kids you invested in, like Jen and Colleen, doing a really amazing work. I know that those seeds were planted by amazing parents, but we got to throw a lot of water on it for a period of time and really do something. And their reflection of that and their response to that is exactly the picture I want for Tarek and Vazumzi and Luke, that they would, through that, somehow, our feeble efforts, water something in them that when they finish, that they would change and transform South Africa. And it's a silly kind of vision we have, but I really believe it's possible. And I believe it's possible because I've seen it now in kids that I got to water the seed and that they were doing it. So today is such a perfect picture and it's such an encouraging picture for me that it really is possible that for seven feeble years of really only having one or two days a week with someone, I got to water something. And now I get, I mean, they're stuck with us all day, every day. So what does that mean I can, you know, our staff can do? And so it's such an amazing picture. But I want to honor what you've done over years and years as a church to do that. Thank you. And I would echo that and just say we really have a very strong group of folks on the missions committee who care deeply about this and are kind of the stewards of this culture that Grace has fostered through the years. And it's one of my favorite things about our church. You guys are having an event tonight here. We are. We're having an event at 7. And we're just going to share some more stories. Vazumzi Plamana, who was here actually two years ago sharing, he is now at NC State. And he actually couldn't be here because he's at his church today, and so he'll be here tonight. And so we're so excited to just share a little bit more about what God's doing. And we wanted to say thank you. Look, Listen, Love is the organization that Grace started to launch out missionaries. And so when you support Acts of Grace, sorry, Look, Listen, Love is manifesto. Acts of Grace, thank you. And that's the way that you support us so that we can keep doing what we're doing. Ubuntu is its own 501c3, but Acts of Grace just keeps us there and allows us as a family to keep doing what God has called us to do there. So we'll share more about that tonight, and we're so thankful. Wonderful. Thank you. And they'll stick around, too, to chat with after the service. Let me pray for y'all, and then we're going to suffer through Alan Morgan together, and then we'll eat some tacos. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for all that you're doing in South Africa, in Ocean View, and in the ways that you are using the princes and also drawing them more near to you. God, I pray that their walk with you, that their exuberance to follow you, that their joy that they find in you would be contagious as they move in and out of circles and relationships in what they're doing in South Africa. God, we pray for Sarah in her new role, that she would thrive there. It certainly seems as though all the experiences that you've given her over the years have prepared her for this in really incredible ways. And we lift up Casey as he continues to plug away at this thing that he's done now for a long time. I pray that you would give him new and fresh excitement and motivation and that he would wake up tomorrow as excited about Ubuntu as ever. And God, we thank you for bringing them here safely, for them being able to share their story. And we pray that you would write many, many more good stories through what they're doing down there and that you would just draw these young men and these folks in the community to your son Christ through what they're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Merry Christmas everybody! My name is Fort and I'm a junior partner at Grace. Now come and join me. This is going to be the best Christmas Eve service ever! I can't wait! I know because I've been here at Grace for my whole life. Thanks for watching. Merry Christmas, everybody. Bye. Well, Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope that you'll stand up and join us as we sing. guitar solo joyful and try Oh, come ye to Bethlehem Come and behold Him Born the King of angels Oh, come let us adore Him Oh, come let us adore Him Oh Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation. Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above. Glory to God all, oh Oh, come let us adore Him. Oh, come let us adore Him. Christ the Lord. Every nation will bow down before You. Every tongue will confess You are God. We worship and adore you. We worship and adore. this happy morning Oh oh Let's birth. Oh, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. In a lonely manger, the humble Christ was born. And God sent a salvation, the blessed Christmas is born. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on new content That Jesus Christ is born. Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. That Jesus Christ is born. is Hark the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn King. Peace on earth and mercy mild. God and sinners reconciled. Joyful all ye nations rise Join the triumph of the skies With angelic hosts proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem Hark the herald angels sing is Lord in time behold him come offspring of a virgin's womb veiled in flesh the Godhead see hail incarnate deity pleased as man with men to dwell Jesus our Emmanuel Jesus But him, born Prince of Peace, hail the song of righteousness. Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. While he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth, Bye. to the newborn king. Hark the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn king. The first Noel the angel did say Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay. In fields where they lay keeping their sheep. On a cold winter's night that was so deep. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel. They looked up and saw a star Shining in the east beyond them far Into the earth it gave great light and so it continued both day and night. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the king of israel is to our heavenly Lord that hath made heaven and earth of naught and with his blood mankind has brought Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the King of Israel Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the King of Israel In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place. While Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to their hometown to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea. To Bethlehem, the town of David. Because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary. He was pledged to be married to him. And was expecting a child. While they were there, the time out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths. Suddenly a great companion of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God, saying, Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God in the highest heavens and on His mother Mary laid down his sweet head. The wise men were led. Come see the baby and worship him. His name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel, Holy One, Son of God, Savior of the world Come and adore Him On bended knee He came to ransom Someone like me What could I offer? What could I bring? Come and adore him. King of kings, his name is wonderful. Counselor, mighty God. Prince of peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel. Holy One, Son of God, Savior of the world. And the greatness of His reign will never end. Let there be peace on earth and all good will to men. Come, us worship him. Wonderful counselor. Mighty God. Prince of peace. Everlasting father. Emmanuel. Holy one. Son of God, Savior of the world. His name is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel. You're the Holy One, Son of God, isn't a store-bought gift under the tree that we are waiting to open. We've been waiting. Waiting for something much more important. For hope to rise up. For love to embrace. For peace to invade. For joy to bubble up. In the midst of our waiting and longing, the prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament tells us, For unto us a child is born, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. When we see it like this, we should remember that in our turbulent world, the government is on his shoulders. For he is our love, our highest governing power. And so right now, we light the central Christ candle because we have found our hope. We have discovered our love. We have realized our joy. We have encountered our peace. Today we celebrate joy to the world. The Lord is come. Choose today to step out of the darkness and into his marvelous light. And as we light this final candle, we ask you, light of the world, to light a fire within us, to burn this a part of your Christmas Eve. You know, earlier, the kids did a great job of reading the traditional Christmas story, and that's a great story. That's the big story. That's the one that we all care about on Christmas. That's what Christmas is all about, is the gift of God's Son, Jesus, the greatest gift that was ever given. But one of the things I like about that story, as we retell it over the years, is that we are actually in the habit of placing people in that story who were never a part of that story to begin with. We see this in our nativity scenes all over the place. If you go through your house or your mom's house or the front lawns of churches, we see these nativity scenes. And in those scenes, we see, of course, baby Jesus. We see Mary and Martha or Mary and Joseph, his parents. And then we see angels and we see shepherds. There's usually a donkey involved, and inevitably there's three wise men, right? And those nativities in symbol tell the story of Christmas. And it's always been interesting to me that we place the wise men at the manger of Jesus as part of the Christmas story, when in all actuality, they had nothing to do with Christmas. Not only are they not a part of the Christmas story, but they never even saw Jesus on a Christmas, let alone the first Christmas. And this is something that's always been interesting to me. It's kind of one of those little Bible facts that I've always thought was kind of neat, but I wasn't sure that it was very significant. But this year, as I was thinking about the Christmas message and rereading the Christmas story, I was reminded of this fact that we always place the wise men at Christmas, even though they weren't even a part of Christmas. And I began to reflect on that, and it became evident to me that there is something in the Christmas experience of the wise men that speaks absolutely to us and is representative of us. And so I thought we would take this Christmas Eve service, this Christmas Eve message, and focus on what Christmas meant to those wise men. I would almost say those three wise men, but we don't even know that that's true. We just traditionally say that there was three wise men because there was three gifts, but there could have been any number of wise men who came from the East. So let's look at the story of these men who came to fall on their face and worship Jesus. The only place we see the wise men is in Matthew chapter 2. So let's look at the beginning of this chapter when we miss all the time. Something that just tradition just glosses over. It's right there in the passage. It says, now after Jesus was born, this was years after Jesus was born, they come to Herod and they're looking for him, which means they were journeying to see him for a while. And it also tells us that unlike our nativity scenes reflect, they weren't at Christmas. And it's interesting to me that they weren't a part of Christmas, but that they came in later to find Jesus because for them, Christmas invited them to Jesus. They weren't a part of the first Christmas, so they didn't get to participate in seeing the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. No, they weren't participants in the first Christmas. Rather, Christmas for them was an invitation to Jesus. From the east, from very far off, from Iraq, Iran, India, China, somewhere in that region, Christmas, when Jesus was born and the guiding star over Bethlehem appeared, Christmas was an invitation to the wise men to come and find Jesus. They weren't there, but they were invited by Christmas, and in that way they represent all of us. And that way they represent all of who we are. I see the wise men now as representative of the rest of the world coming to Christ after he was born. We couldn't be there for the birth. We couldn't be there to celebrate the first Christmas. But the same invitation that the wise men received is the one that we are offered, an invitation to come and find Jesus. And I think in this story, they represent all of us. All of us who couldn't be there at that very first Christmas. All of us for whom Christmas is an invitation to our Savior to come and to find Him. And so if that's true, if the wise men in the Bible represent us, and Christmas is an invitation to us that they received as well, then what can we learn from their pursuit of Christ? Well, one of the first things we see based on clues in Scripture is that they searched for Jesus for nearly two years. We see that once they got there that King Herod was an evil king and he was afraid that Jesus would be the king of the Jews and take his throne away from him. So he had all the firstborns, all the sons ages three and younger killed in Israel. Which means that their journey was at least two years long before they found Jesus. Do you understand that that means the wise men searched for Jesus for two full years at minimum before they really experienced him? Before they really were able to worship him? Before they really were able to find him? I wonder how arduous that journey was. I wonder how many times they wanted to quit. I wonder how many nights the storms that came blocked out the light that was guiding them. I wonder how many conversations they had about turning around and going home. I wonder how many people called them ridiculous for their pursuit. I wonder how long it took them to work up the courage to leave and to go. Two years is a long time to search for one thing. But I love that they had to do that. I love that they searched for Jesus for two years before they experienced him. Because that search and the arduous nature of it and the necessary persistence of it is so true to life. Some of us experience Jesus like the shepherds did that night in the meadows. In the Christmas story that the children read, we're reminded that the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night. And then the angels appeared in the sky and sang to them and ushered them over to the manger so they could see this baby Savior. And for some of us, our experience with Jesus is like that. We're minding our business, tending our flocks in the fields, and angels appear to us and they sing from on high and we're whisked into the presence of Jesus and we experience it right there in that moment. And some of us have stories like that where our experience of Jesus and our understanding of him and being swept away by him was just instantaneous. But for many of us, our stories with Jesus are a lot more like the wise men. We had to search, and we had to persist, and we had to overcome discouragement. And there were times when the storms of life might block out the light that is guiding us. There may have been times where we have wanted to quit. There may be times when we wanted to walk away. We may have had discussions with those around us about just going home and saying, this is too difficult. The truth of it is, we are told in Scripture to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We see in Scripture that there is this process where we grow closer to Jesus and that sometimes finding him is difficult. It's not that he's not there. It's not that he hides himself from us, but it's just more true to life that the search for Jesus is arduous, that it requires persistence. And it also makes me wonder about these men. How did they know to follow that light? How did they know that that star in the sky right there, that's the one, and we're going to follow that for two years. The only answer I can come up with is that to recognize the star, they had to listen to the voice of God that was in their lives. It's interesting to me that Herod and the men and women in his court could see the same star that the wise men saw. But when the wise men know that that was the star and the people in Herod's court didn't? I think the only difference is that the wise men were listening to the voice of God. I believe that Scripture teaches us that God has written himself on our souls. That our Creator God breathed in us spirit. He breathed into us the breath of life. And he gave us souls that yearn for him. He gave us souls that pine for him. He gave us souls that year. They listened to that yearning. And so they had the faith to follow the guiding light. And I'm comforted by the fact that that same yearning is written on our souls. Our souls were designed and intended to be united with Christ. Our souls yearn to be united with our Savior. And because of that, God always provides guiding lights. God always provides a flicker of hope. He always maintains a course of direction. He always beckons to us. He always invites. He never shuts the door. He never gets stamped out. His invitation never goes bad. He always shows us guiding light, sometimes in stars, sometimes in a flicker, sometimes in a pillar of fire, sometimes in a voice in our ear. But make no mistake about it, God? What did the wise men do when their journey was done and they're experiencing Jesus? Well, look at what offered Him themselves and they offered him their treasures. They immediately, haphazardly, without hesitation, offered themselves and their treasures to this baby Christ. And it wasn't, it's important to note, it wasn't out of the sense of ought. It wasn't out of obligation. It wasn't, well, I guess this is what we need to do now. It wasn't even out of a desire to placate this deity or to get God on their side or to endear Jesus to them. It wasn't for any of those things. It was this spontaneous and natural response to fall on their face and worship the creator of their soul and to rejoice that they had been united with their Savior and to offer everything that they were and everything that they had. That's the natural response when we encounter our Savior. I believe that so ardently that I would even say this. If we feel like we've experienced Jesus and our first inclination in that moment isn't to fall on our face and worship his majesty, isn't to be overwhelmed by his goodness and to celebrate his kindness, if our first response isn't to fall on our face and worship him and offer all that we have and all that we are, then we haven't yet fully experienced him. Maybe we have a notion of who he is. Maybe we have an idea or we've heard a teaching or we've seen a glimpse and our soul has lurched and responded. But if it's not this full, submissive worship, then we haven't yet experienced who Jesus is, and our search continues, and we have to keep looking for him. But I think it's interesting that we exist in this culture that ebbs and flows and is progressive and is conservative and cares about Christian values over here and over here, not so much, and sometimes it's hard to tell what those Christian values are, and we all experience this culture in different ways. But amidst all the changes in our culture over the years, Christmas stands as this guiding light every year. Every December, our culture stops and we focus on Christmas. It starts as soon as Halloween is done. Things get swept aside and we throw up the Christmas decorations and we start to decorate our house and we start to do all the things and we look forward to celebrating the holiday and Christmas music started in my house very early this year because I think 2020 needs a little extra Christmas. But if we'll sweep all the extra things away, what we see is that we live in this culture that has exalted Christmas, that God has strategically placed in the middle of our joint attention as this guiding light, as this beacon calling our souls home to Jesus. And what we have in Christmas is the same invitation that was offered to the wise men. We can't participate in the first Christmas. It's already happened, but in that light, in that star, in that very first Christmas was an invitation to come to their Savior. And the same invitation that was offered to the wise men is offered to you. It's offered to you right now, the opportunity to come and sit at the feet for whom your soul was created to desire. Now some of you have been looking forward to this all year. Some of you make it a habit to regularly sit and worship at the foot of your Savior. Some of you have been looking forward to Christmas because it allows you to celebrate the one that created you. It allows you to celebrate the one that saves you and who conquers death for you. It allows you to celebrate the one who loves you. You are already like the wise men. You have made your journey and you are experiencing Jesus and you are sitting at his feet and worshiping. And for you, I hope that this service is only a help in doing that. For others, we've tasted and we've seen. We've experienced Christ. Maybe even got glimpses of who He is. Maybe felt His warmth from time to time, but for one reason or another we've wandered off. And maybe we're a little bit further away from Him at the end of this year than we have been in previous years. Maybe we haven't paid attention to that light in a while, even as it beckons us back. My hope and prayer is that this Christmas you'll hear that invitation anew. And you'll turn and you'll take a step back towards your Savior. And you'll begin that search again. Or maybe we've never begun our search. Maybe we're like Herod in his court. And the light is there. The invitation has been extended. But we haven't been listening. So we don't hear it and we don't heed it. My prayer is that this Christmas would be the first time that you open your eyes to the beckoning of God. That you would listen to Him calling to your soul. That you would acknowledge that He is the one who created it. And that you would begin your journey towards Christ and experiencing Him. The great news is, if we seek him, we are promised that we will find him. We are told that if we ask, we will receive. That if we seek, we will find. That if we knock, the door will be opened to us. That's Jesus himself speaking to you. So my prayer this year for all of us listening is that we would heed the invitation of Christmas to come to our Savior. That this year we would take a step further in our journey. That we would take a step closer to Christ. And that all of you, whether it's right now in the service, whether it's this month, whether it's in months to come or years to come, but that all of you within the sound of my voice would have a moment where you fall at the feet of Jesus and you offer all that you are and all that you have and you worship him because you are experiencing your Savior. I hope that you know that Christmas is an invitation to do that. In just a few minutes, our great children's pastor, Erin Winston, is going to come with her family, and they're going to light the Christ candle to close out Advent. And when that flame lights on the wick, I hope that you will look at that and you will see that as God's guiding light. That you will see that as his invitation that he offered and extended to the wise men that he is extending to you in this moment to come and to be a part of Christmas and to come and to find your Savior and to know him and to fall down and worship him. I hope that you'll accept the invitation of Christmas this year. Let me pray for you. Father, thank you for always beckoning to us. Thank you for always inviting us, for always calling for us, for never giving up on us, even when we give up on you. May we, God, all who are listening, accept the invitation that you extend through the birth of your son in Christmas. May we be guided by your light. May we have the privilege of experiencing Christ. And may we be so overwhelmed by him when we find him that we fall on our feet and we worship. Father, I pray that through song and through reflection and through communion to come in this service that the rest of our time together would be a time where we sit at your feet and we worship with grateful hearts and spirits at the miracle of the invitation of Christmas. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the greatest gift that's ever been given. It's in that gift's name we pray. Amen. are brightly shining, it is the breaks a new and glorious dawn. Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices. O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night, O night Oh truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of praise in grateful chorus raise we Let all within us praise his holy name Christ is the Lord O praise his name forever Oh is proclaim fall on your knees oh hear the angel voices When Christ was born O Holy Night O Night Divine If you have been around Grace Raleigh on Christmas Eve in the past, you know that communion is a very special part of our evening. And we wanted this year to be no different. So we're going to give you the opportunity to participate in communion at home, giving us the opportunity as a body of believers to come together in fellowship and in communion. And so if you joined us and picked up a participation bag over the last week, you received in your participation package this cute little cup. This is what we will be using during communion. If, however, you were unable to pick up a participation package or you're joining us from somewhere, a different state maybe, and don't have access, then we ask that you take a journey into your kitchen and find some juice or some wine or some bread and then come back and join us. And while you're doing that, we will walk through a little tutorial on how to best utilize these cute little cups. So first of all on our cute cups there is a pointed side and if you bend it upward you will notice that there is a piece of aluminum foil and a piece of cellophane. The first thing that we want to do is take the piece of cellophane off. Underneath there, you will find your wafer or your bread, which we will use later. The next step is to then take your edge and to pull it back ever so slowly. And I caution you to do it slowly because if you just rip it off, you're liable to baptize the person sitting next to you or end up with a beautiful grape juice stain on your pretty carpet. So ever so slowly, pull back on the aluminum foil and you will reveal the juice that we will use in communion. And so now, I hope that those who have gone to the kitchen have returned. You have had the opportunity to open your elements. And now I'd like to prepare our hearts for this moment of communion by reading a piece of scripture from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23 through 26. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is the body of Christ broken for you. Take and eat. The blood of Christ shed for you. Take and drink. And now I'd like to take the opportunity to pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for moments like this when we have the opportunity to remember who you are and the sacrifices that you gave for us. Thank you also, Lord, that you give us the opportunity to come together as a body of believers. Even though we are separated and in our homes, we still feel that communion with you and with each other. And thank you, Lord, most of all, for loving us so much that you sent us your son on this very, very special night. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your son's most holy name that we pray. Amen. And now I would like to invite my family to join me on stage as we light the Advent candle. John 1, 1 through 5. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Tonight we light the final candle of Advent, the Christ candle. This candle represents the light of life. It is the same light that we began talking about on that first Sunday of Advent when we spoke of this light crashing into the darkness of the world with the arrival of Jesus. It is his arrival, it is this precious child and the promised king that invites us to seek him, to follow him, and to become people who walk in and share his light. So therefore, go into the world with great joy, love, hope, and peace, knowing that he is with you on and go ahead and light them. Now, normally the worship team would sing Silent Night, but this year, being so strange, I thought it was fitting to show what it was like singing Silent Night last year. So here's some footage of Grace singing Silent Night in 2019, and we hope that in 2021, we can all be together again. Merry Christmas. All is calm, all is bright Round yon virgin, mother and child Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts sing alleluia. All sing hallelujah. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's pure light radiant peace from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord Merry Christmas, everyone. Heavenly Father, this has been a difficult year, a year fraught with challenges, hardships, isolation, tension, anger, and uncertainty. We know, Father, that you have seen your church and your people through more trying times, but for us, this year was hard. It was unlike any we've known. Yet in your word, you tell us to behold, for you are doing a new thing. You tell us that you make paths through the wilderness and streams in the desert. So even though at first glance it seems this year is one defined by pain and uncertainty, even though it may feel like we've been left alone to wander, God, we know that you are doing new things. You've done new things in the families of grace, allowing us to welcome new blessings into our homes. You've enabled couples to experience the life-giving fullness of holding their child for the first time. You've made it possible for children to feel the sense of privilege and responsibility that comes with being an older brother or sister. We see new things as this dark year has been brightened by announcements of children yet to come and blessings yet to experience. Even in a season of profound isolation, you've orchestrated the lives of those you love for our pleasure and your glory as parents saw the personification of years of prayers in the marriages you formed this year. We saw baptisms to celebrate and new families to welcome and small groups that tenaciously persisted. We do not deny that this year was trying and even for some of us, marked by loss. But we also acknowledge in that loss the years of profound gratitude for the time shared with those we love so much. More than that, we know that Christmas carries with it a promise that we will see them again. As this unique year comes to a close, we are more certain than ever of your presence and your goodness, bringing us together in socially distant circles and parking lots and driveways and backyards and drive-by birthday parties. Father, you've brushed away the fog of pain and uncertainty with moments of laughter and joy. We remember you on our soccer fields and baseball fields and Zoom calls and family outings and see you in the blessing of soul-warming friendships. After all that, we say thank you to our good Father. Thank you for the blessings in the midst of our struggles. Thank you for always making new paths for your children. Thank you for 2020 and all the new things it held and the future hope it has preserved. Amen. you

11 years ago, I revealed to my wife that I had been having an affair for a year and a half. She calmly responded, I love you. We can make it through this. Today we're going to be talking about marriage. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh, and it's an honor to bring the third message in our series, I Want a Better Life, entitled I Want a Better Marriage. For those of you who are first-time guests with us today, or maybe you're not familiar with my story. Surprise! In addition to being the worship pastor here at Grace, my wife and I also started a non-profit called Side-by-Side Ministry about five years ago, where we share our testimony, our story, our journey from hurt to hope. And it's our mission to inspire and encourage hurting couples to value, nurture, and restore their marriages. Now, to give you a little background, when my wife and I got married, neither one of us was following our childhood religions. I was raised Jewish in Massachusetts, hence the name Goldberg. My wife was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin. Both of us came from broken homes. Lisa's parents divorced when she was two years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old. We did not have good role models for marriage in our lives. And so for me, I just thought that marriage was kind of the next stage in the relationship. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, well, okay. So it's no surprise that when our marriage started deteriorating after the first few years, I wasn't all that committed. During that time, there was a big void in our marriage. Lisa chose to fill that void by going back to church. She joined an in-depth Bible study. She surrounded herself with Christian women. She rededicated her life to Christ. I, on the other hand, decided to spend as much time away from my marriage and my wife as possible. I filled my life with my friends, my band, and ended up having an affair for a year and a half. During that time when our marriage was not going well at all, before the reveal of my affair, we took a trip to Mexico. Now, to be a little bit more forthright, my wife actually begged me to go to Mexico. I did not want to go. Our friends were getting married at a destination wedding there, and I didn't want to do it. But she begged me, and I said, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll go. So here's a picture from that trip. Now, side note, this was taken a long time ago, okay? I mean, look at that hair. I mean, you know, like, look at the smiles there. Like, this was taken with a digital camera, like a legit digital camera. Like, I'm not saying that we invented the selfie, but like, we were definitely early promoters of it. So, you know, a little credit. So, but this trip was tough. It was very stressful for us. You would never know that this couple in this picture was barely talking to each other, and that in less than six months' time, they would be separated. The truth is that when you look at this picture, it reminds me that not everything is as it seems. And I'd be willing to bet that behind the smiles and the small talk here this morning, there are hurting marriages. Divorce is very common in our society. We know the statistic, half of all marriages end in divorce. People don't have the, they don't put the importance on marriage anymore. It's very much an individualistic society about your own happiness, your own pleasure. But the truth is, is that the fastest growing demographic of divorce is empty nesters, which is shocking. These people have spent their whole marriages, 20, 30 years, focusing on things other than each other. Maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the career, maybe it's something else. And when they get to the point where the kids are out of the house, they say, who are you? They don't have that connection anymore. You know, when Lisa and I went to a marriage intensive, it was run by a Christian ministry called Retrovive, went to this marriage intensive shortly after the reveal of the affair. We were shocked that we were among the youngest people there. Most of the people were in their 50s and 60s. In fact, check this out. There was one couple there that actually, this guy, this guy brought the divorce papers with him to the marriage intensive. And I can only figure that he was like, well, this way I can say I've tried everything, okay? But at the end of the intensive, we rejoiced with them as they tore up the divorce papers. It was an amazing moment, God working through that marriage. But sadly, that's not the case for all marriages. One of the things that we learned during this intensive was that there are four stages of a relationship. This was eye-opening for me. It's been eye-opening for couples that we've talked to over the years, and I think it'll be eye-opening for you today. In a relationship, there are four stages. The first stage is called romance. This otherwise known as the attraction stage, or my personal favorite, the euphoric stage. Okay, you know this stage. This is the stage where you meet someone, you fall in love, everything is perfect. I mean, the birds are singing, the sun's out. You know, this person can't do anything wrong. You can't wait to see them. You have butterflies in your stomach every time you think of them. When Lisa and I met, I was living in Boston, she was living in New York at the time. We met in Orlando at a wedding that was kind of like an extended vacation. I mean, most of the people in our age bracket that went down to this wedding stayed there for three, four days. I will never forget, on the first day, I walked into the room, and there she was, Lisa, right over here. And I remember when I saw her, my stomach sank. I mean, I think I lost my breath. My eyes opened. I just said, wow. Her recount of the situation is a little bit different, but you'll have to ask her about that. We know this stage. We know this stage. This is when you fall in love. This is great. During that stage, there are special hormones, chemicals that are released in our bodies that only happens during that time of that relationship. It will never happen again. And it only lasts for about 18 months to two years. The next stage of marriage, disillusionment. Disillusionment. This got sad quick, didn't it? Disillusionment. This is when our eyes are opened. It's like, wait a second, who is this person? All the things that were cute aren't necessarily cute anymore, right? They start to get on your nerves a little bit. All those things your parents were telling you the whole time, you're just like, oh, okay, I get it. This is disillusionment. Sadly, lots of relationships end in this stage. They're missing that euphoric part of the relationship. It ends. My buddy Dane Joneshill, he's a brilliant songwriter. He wrote a song called We Lie Together about a couple in this stage. And listen to these lyrics. It used to be you thought my faults were funny. We'd laugh at how forgetful I could be. But the last time I forgot about your birthday, you lost the humor for that sort of thing. Sad. That's a couple in the disillusionment stage. If the couple stays together, they move on to misery. The misery stage, also known as the numbness stage. Now, this stage can last a very short time, or it can last years. This is the stage where the couple, where the marriage, is basically like a partnership. Kind of two ships in the night, roommates together. There's no real intimacy in the relationship anymore. In fact, a lot of people say that it's in this stage that they're not sure whether it's better to get a divorce or to stay married. But a lot of people choose on their own convictions to stay married, stick it out until the kids are out of school. Hence the rise in divorce among empty nesters. In this stage, it's very common for people to try to escape their marriage. They can escape their marriage in all kinds of ways. They can focus more on work, focus on the kids, their family, drugs, drinking, gambling. I mean, really, house projects. I had a neighbor once who would do house projects. I mean, like you've never seen. This guy was constantly working on his house. It was exhausting watching him avoid his wife. But listen, this is the stage. It's a fertile ground for affairs to happen. Because what happens when you're in that misery stage or numbness stage? You have no connection with your spouse or very little connection at all. And somebody else comes into the picture. You have that spark again. Remember the euphoric phase, those chemical reactions that only happen with somebody, with that relationship once, that happens. And then all of a sudden we're blinded. We think that, oh, this is the one. This is the one I should be married with. I feel happy again. Affairs can happen. That's what happened to me. And just so we're clear about affairs, an affair doesn't have to be physical. An affair occurs whenever a person other than your spouse is fulfilling a marital need or duty. So affairs can be emotional as well. In fact, I would argue that they're just as common, if not more common, and just as damaging as physical affairs. Sounds pretty bad so far, doesn't it? Well, the next stage, this is the goal to get to. This is the awakening stage. This is when our eyes are open to the reality of what a long-term relationship in marriage looks like. This is the stage when true intimacy and depth can occur. This is the stage when love changes from being just a feeling to being an action and a choice. But listen, no matter what stage your marriage is in, there's good news. It can be better. No matter what stage your marriage is in, it can be better. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. So if we're going to look at marriage with God at the center, I think it's a good idea that we open up the Bible and take a look at that. If you have a Bible, take it out. We're going to be starting in Genesis 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's probably one on your device, on your phone. You can pull that up. If you'd like to grab the Bible in front of you, there's one in the seat back pocket. Listen, if you don't have a paper Bible at home, take this Bible with you. It's our gift to you. We believe that every home should have a legitimate Bible. Okay. Genesis 2. So God has just created the world, everything in it, right? The heavens, the earth. He's created the oceans, the land, the animals. As our four-year-old Ford said in the Christmas video, the two little donkeys and that big bird. Okay? He's created everything. All right. But he hasn't created a woman yet. So in verse 18, he says, Now before we get caught up on the word helper, a more accurate translation would be companion. I just want to make it, put it out there that in God's eyes, man, woman, completely equal in God's eyes, of equal value. Now in a marriage, we have different strengths, different weaknesses, both of us in different roles. But as far as having value in God's eyes and in the marriage, equally valuable. So God makes a woman. He puts Adam to sleep, makes Eve, and I can picture it, right? Like if this were a movie that we're jumping down to verse 29. If this were a movie, I could see Adam opening his eyes. The song At Last by Etta James is rolling in the background. He his partner for the first time. He's excited. He's excited about this. Of course, this is before the fall. They were naked and unashamed, so that probably helped as well. It goes on to say, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. Now, when this was written, the term shall leave his father and mother, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Because at the time, families would have family businesses. And so a son who is of marrying age would be married, and they would go live and work on the family business, whether a farmer or something else. So really what this is saying here is that the man shall prioritize his spouse. Prioritize. So the first thing, if we want a God-centered marriage, prioritize your spouse. This is something that I struggled with early on, especially in our marriage, but continue to struggle with it. I would prioritize my parents over my wife. I wouldn't even know I was doing it. My wife knew, but I did not know that I was doing it. But it's important to prioritize your spouse over your parents. This can be incredibly hard for younger people. They've just grown up in the house with their parents. Their parents have been the ones guiding them, leading them, telling them right from wrong, supporting them. And then all of a sudden, they're on a team with someone their own age who barely knows as much as they do. And they're supposed to be the team, the unit together. It's hard. It's hard to prioritize your spouse. But it's a good thing to do if you want a God-centered marriage. I had a friend once who was telling me about how when she was newly married in her younger 20s, she sat down at the table with her new husband and her father, and her father said, let's say your new husband and I have a disagreement. Whose side are you going to be on? And she said, well, my husband's. He said, good. And he said, okay, let's say your husband and I have a disagreement and you know I'm right. Now whose side are you on? And she grabbed her husband's hand and said, my husband's. You guys are a team. You're a unit together. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse. Love your spouse. If we want to know what love looks like, we're its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse unconditionally. During the time when our marriage was in a really dark place, I was leading a secret life. Lisa had gone back to church. She loved me unconditionally. And it's funny sometimes when we talk to couples and we say, okay, you know, you guys got to try. You got to, you know, put in your best. You got to love them as if they're doing the right things. And somebody, one of the people will say, all right, I'll do everything I can for six months. That's a condition. You're putting a condition on your love. God loves us unconditionally. Now, I should mention, or I want to mention, that abuse has no business being in marriage at all. If you're in an abusive relationship, seek professional help and guidance and get to a safe place. There's no reason that abuse should be there. If you want to have a God-centered marriage, you need to serve your spouse. Serve your can be a tough thing to do. Aaron Keyes, who's the founder of the 10,000 Fathers Worship School that I attended, has a great quote. And he says, everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. And it's true. Everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. Servants are not treated well. Jesus is washing feet. Like, do you know how nasty feet were? Like, they're nasty now. Like, think about how nasty they were like back then. Like, disgusting. Dirt, grime, everything on their feet. So to wash someone's feet was really a humbling thing. And for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to do it, set a good example. While I was being terrible to my wife during that time, she would serve me by literally choosing to wake up early in the morning and make me an omelet before work, which is not the sort of thing that she would necessarily do earlier in our marriage. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. Forgive your spouse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. If you fully understand the amount of what you've been forgiven of, you need to turn around and do that to your spouse. And it's a constant thing, forgiveness. It's not a one-time thing. I felt forgiveness almost immediately or a part of it when my wife said, I love you, we can make it through this. I later went to church with her and three months later gave my life to Christ. We have a thing in our home that helps us is that we actually ask for each other's forgiveness. Not just say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But we say, will you forgive me? If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. And the last one on the list here, if you want a God-centered marriage, you need to grow with your spouse. Grow with your spouse. 1 Thessalonians 5.11. not tend to it, and expect great results. Nobody would build a house, never maintain it, and expect it to stay in new condition. Just like a garden or a house, we need to constantly work on our marriages and grow in our marriages. If you notice at all there today, I did not mention a passage in Ephesians, which is Ephesians 5, which is the longest passage of Scripture on marriage in the Bible. The reason I didn't mention it today is because my wife and I are starting a marriage small group here at Grace. We're starting on February 9th, and four o'clock in the afternoon, childcare provided, and it's free to attend, the more the merrier. That study that we're going to do is called Love and Respect. We've gone through it four times. We've taught it once, and it's been incredibly beneficial each time. And so I have a little promo for you or significant other, you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected. 83% of the men say they feel disrespected. 72% of the women say they feel unloved. Now, it's very important that I say this. We all need love and respect equally. But the felt need during conflict is as different as pink is from blue, night is from day, male is from female. If you were to ask us to pinpoint one moment where your relationship with one another did a 180, it's absolutely when we did the love and respect. If we knew ahead of time that there was something available like this, it would have made those first 12, 13 years of our marriage so much smoother I think. a workbook for you. The workbook provides additional information that will enable you to apply this simple message. We include discussion questions, stories to read and discuss. There's a couple called Missy and Stu. A devotional for each session and then there's the pertinent information that will be available to you for quick review and reference. Love and Respect really gives you a lot of insight into this is what men think and this is what women think and this is how they thrive. And that perspective had never been explained to us before, especially in such a comical and easy to understand way. It took a biblical approach to a lot of problems that we have. And when you can apply the Bible to marital problems, it always helps. You get a chance to learn how you think as a male and how your spouse thinks as a female and to understand that those differences in thinking are just that. It's not wrong or right, it's just different. It really helped us to decode who we're married to and that's something that I want to share with everybody. They're gonna give you you the tools. They're going to give you what you need. Now what you do with it is up to you. You can walk out the door and you can throw it all away if you want to, or you can take it and you can make it become a part of who you are and begin to have the marriage that you deserve and the marriage that God wants you to have. The last time we led this study, there were 80 people that showed up to it at our last church. There were some young, some old, some newly married, some that were in hurting situations, but most of the people that came to it were in this awakening stage. The thing is, is that those people knew that it's a strength to work on your marriage, not a weakness. It shows strength, not weakness. So as we close up today, we've been talking about marriage is better with God at the center. Marriage is better with God at the center. One last thought. Make no mistake. God doesn't exist to make your marriage good. Your marriage exists to express the goodness of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an honor it is to be here today to speak about marriage. God, I'm living proof of how miraculous your love is, how you can change us, how the old is gone and the new has come with Jesus at the center of our lives. God, I pray especially for all the marriages here today. Lord, come into them in a powerful way. And God, let us see our spouses as beautiful as you see us. We pray all of this in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.