Sermons tagged with Matthew

Sometimes in life, we simply need to pause. We need to stop and sit and rest and think and reflect. In these moments of rest, often what we need most is for God to refresh us. We need Him to speak to us and breathe fresh life into us. We need for God to move and restore and encourage. This is why we observe Lent. It is a moment for us amidst all the busyness of our years to pause and focus on Jesus. Lent reminds us of what Jesus has done for us, how much he loves us and how he relentlessly pursues us. So let us together right now, be still and set our collective focus on Jesus, This morning's reading is from Philipp earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. All right. Thank you, Alex. Do you guys, just before we get started, have you guys ever experienced spending the better part of two weeks, really just most of all of your time of the last two weeks, to prepare a sermon on fasting, and then the person who's supposed to be singing decides she's going to say something that is far more elegant and far more beautiful than anything that you have to say about fasting? I don't know if you guys have experienced that, but I am currently resting within that experience, right, as we speak. But no, for those who don't know me, my name is Kyle. I'd love to meet you if I don't know you, so please come up and say hello. I'm the student pastor here at Grace, and as always, I am just so thankful for the opportunity to be able to just share a little bit of my heart for the Lord with you guys this morning. Last week, we began in our Holy Pause series, a series that we are going through through the entirety of Lent. Last Sunday, Nate basically gave an introduction to, hey, here's the background of Lent. Here's what Lent is. Here is why it's important. And here is why, Nate, we as a church feel like it can be important and it can be beneficial for us as a church to walk through Lent together, to give up something, to fast of something, to spend some time in devotionals written by the grace body together. And he did a great job. He did an awesome job. And so for the next few weeks, leading all the way up into Easter, we are going to be looking at a different spiritual discipline. And we're going to be just talking about and focusing on how might that spiritual discipline allow us and our hearts to be more connected to the heart of Christ. And so this morning, I have the joy of being able to talk to you guys about fasting. And so naturally, I'd like to begin by telling you guys my history with coffee. So for a long time, I've been around a lot of people who really like, who really love coffee. They drink it all the time. I think it's disgusting. I did think it's disgusting. Let me go ahead and say that because honestly, I'm not a big acquired taste guy. I don't know. Some people are great about like, oh, I should probably do this. I should probably drink this. I should probably eat this. It's healthy, whatever. So I'm just going to do it. That's not really me. You know, if I don't like something, I'm not really trying to eat it. I'm not really trying to drink it. And so, you know, I tried coffee and I was like, cool, there's dirt in this water. That's awesome. You know, like, and it's great. And then you also, you deal with like, for any of you guys, for every, all of us don't like something. And all of us have been promised by someone who does like that something, hey, I promise you, when you try this one, it'll be better. And I don't think I've heard that any more than I've heard it with everybody and their coffee. It's like, hey, guess what? Every other coffee in the entire land is garbage except for this cup right here. So why don't you go ahead and give this a try? I was like, okay, cool. It's still dirt and water. Like, as you guys can see, I prefer my water without dirt. But what made coffee a little different is because I was like, man, it smells so good. You know, like with vegetables, it's like vegetables smell as gross as they taste. You know, they smell gross, they taste gross. There's no reason to consume vegetables, which is not true. I'm actually coming around on those, so you guys should be proud of me. Like, no need to applaud, but I mean, I'm eating some vegetables now at the ripe age of 28. But for coffee, it just smells so good, man. And like, when I would go to my grandparents' house and my granddad would make coffee or my brother would make coffee in the morning, I'm like, gosh, that smells so good. Like I know it tastes like garbage, but man, it just seems really nice to be able to make some coffee in the morning and then just sip along with it. And as we all know, it's fun drinking hot drinks with friends, you know? And not only that, but there's only a number of times that you can go to a cool coffee shop and everyone's ordering their fancy black coffees, and then you order your fancy brown hot chocolates that you don't feel a little bit embarrassed. And so at about 26, I decided I'm going to try to give coffee a shot. And honestly, those are goofy, funny reasons. But the real reason is because I realized that my health needed it. Because if I had a long car trip, if I woke up early in the morning and I need to get energized and get going for the day, or if there was a time where I needed to stay up late or whatever, I mean, from high school on, what I turned to was Mountain Dew. I mean, just absolutely pounding Mountain Dews so that I could stay awake for whatever I needed to do. Like, if you look at the marketing data for Mountain Dew, Kyle needing to stay awake always increased heavily the sales of Mountain Dew. There was like this innate sense of me, I need to keep them in business because I have to wake up right now. And honestly, as you guys know, Mountain Dew is straight up poison. Not only is it disgusting, but it is poison and it is terrible for you. And so at some point I looked in the mirror and I said, Kyle, it's time to get off the Mountain Dews, brother. And so I decided to turn to coffee as a healthier alternative. So I drank it a little bit, and as you acquire tastes, as you start eating or drinking something more, you start enjoying it a little bit better. You start liking it a little bit more. And so that was happening. I would go on a trip, a long trip, and I'd maybe get a couple cups of coffee. And I wasn't drinking it real fast. I didn't love it, but it was what it was. And so obviously my family was elated. They all love coffee and I always just roasted them about it. And now they are allowing me to roast coffee. Because for Christmas, because they were so excited, they got me a Keurig thing, coffee maker. And so I was like, well, you know what? If they're going to make me this, then why don't I just start drinking it? Like, you know, I was kind of just drinking it when I needed it because it's like helps me stay up, gives me some good caffeine, all of that stuff. But maybe if I start drinking it more often, then like these other people who really do actually really like coffee, enjoy the taste, all that stuff, maybe, just maybe, I'll feel the same way. So I started making it more on my own. Well, fast forward into quarantine. And in quarantine, I don't know, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a big rules guy. If you give me a rule, I'm just going to say, okay, I'm going to follow it. So like early quarantine was like, hey, you should not leave your front door. Like you should not go outside at all, if humanly possible. Like there was a time where it was, like, banned to walk on sidewalks. Like, it was insane, you know? And so, being a single guy who lives in an apartment alone, I was just not doing very many things. I mean, I was, like, you know, we would do our streams, and I would FaceTime the kids or whatever, but mostly I'm, like, watching TVs, and I'm playing TVs. I'm watching TV. I'm, like, watching TVs. I'm watching TV. I'm playing Xbox, all that stuff. But there is literally nothing to do except for those two to three times a day where I was like, you know what I could do? I could make some coffee right now. And so for all of you who know Keurigs, you know, you walk over and you got to turn it on because you got to heat up that water. So you got to turn it on first. And as you're heating it up, sometimes you have to add water. That was like a joyous occasion when I got to even add the water to it. So you'd add the water, you'd heat it up, and then it would just drizzle down. And all this whole process, getting it into the cup, takes like five minutes. And then you got to blow it. And that was another thing I got to do. Blowing the coffee because it's too hot, you know. And then for about five more minutes, it's still too hot to like just chug down. So you drink it, you know, you sip it or whatever, and that was 10 to 15 minutes where I felt like I was actually doing a thing, and it was joyous, but all that to say that as I started doing that, I started really liking coffee a lot. I enjoyed it a lot more. I started drinking a lot more. As stuff started opening up, as we came back into the office, I got a membership over at Panera to where I could get free. And so I'd stop by, I'd grab a free coffee, head over here, maybe get iced coffee for lunch, whatever it was. And it was like, great, this is awesome. I'm finally at the place where it's like, ah, it's not just something I have to do because I need it. It's like, I don't even need this anymore. Like, I don't really feel the caffeine doing much. It just tastes good. So I like doing it. Well, fast forward again to a few months ago when I was set to preach on a Sunday. And on Monday, I had an ear infection. And it didn't feel great. So I went to the doctor, got an antibiotic. Next morning, take the antibiotic, head over to Panera, get like a scone and a coffee and do that stuff. About an hour later, I started feeling super sick. I felt terrible. My stomach felt awful. I didn't know what was going on. I was like, is this COVID? You know, like first the ear infection, now I have COVID. This is awful. And I went home. And as I went home, I'm like, well, I do at least feel a little hungry. And so I start eating. And as I start eating, I start feeling better. So all you guys now are now, all you parents are now nodding. You're like, yeah, you just need to eat more when you take antibiotics, dummy. And that was it. Literally the only thing that made me sick was the antibiotic. But as any of you know, if you get sick around something that you eat or something that you drink, you're not really excited to eat or drink that thing the next day. And so on Wednesday, after I had just survived two ailments, on Wednesday, I do not at all want scones. I don't want any coffee. I had no taste for coffee anymore, which had become foreign to me to not have a taste for. And I go about half the day, and ailment number three comes as my head starts pounding. Like it hurts so bad. My eyes are just like, like it just, I don't want, I don't want my eyes to be open. It just, all of it. And I'm just like, am I dying? You know, like I just, because it's now three times where I have no idea what's going on. It's the third different type of sick I was or whatever until I finally realized, as all of you veteran coffee savants know, is my body had grown so accustomed to having that coffee that when it didn't have it and when that caffeine intake didn't come, my head was pounding because my body was trying to let me know, Kyle, we need this. And it was the first time where I'm like, oh, my coffee intake has not been healthy. Something that I thought was like good, and I thought was actually a healthy alternative, and therefore I was doing something smart and right, had turned into something that I was completely abusing. Something that literally was giving my body a negative, painful reaction if I went a day without it. And the crazy thing was, I had no idea. I just thought I liked coffee, so I was drinking it. But until that first day that I didn't have a coffee that morning, I had no idea the hold that it had over me and the hold that it had over my body. And if you'll permit me, I'm going to pause there. I'm not going to finish that point because I want to backtrack a little bit, and I want to talk a little bit more about Lent. Wednesday is when Lent started. If you guys have joined us in our devotionals, you know that. If you've joined us by deciding that you want to fast of something and replace that with focusing on and loving Jesus more and growing closer to Him, then you know that Lent started Wednesday. Here's my trivia question for you. Do you know what that Wednesday is called, the first Wednesday of Lent? Ash Wednesday, yes. Points to everyone who said that. Congrats. I saw all of you, so I've made a mental note of everyone who has points now. It's called Ash Wednesday. I'm not going to take the time to talk to you about all of the history of Ash Wednesday and to tell you all about the service of Ash Wednesday, but I would say if you've never been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, it's worth it. Check it out next year. Obviously, it is come and gone at this point, but check it out next year because it is really interesting and it's a cool service to be a part of. But Ash Wednesday partly derives its name from the words of God in Genesis when he says, from dust you came and to dust you shall return. If you've been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, you've heard that repeated over and over. And if you've ever seen someone who's been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, you've probably seen them with a cross drawn with ashes on their forehead. And when that cross is drawn on their forehead, they say, from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. The point of an Ash Wednesday service, and the point of Ash Wednesday is this. It's to remind us of our humanity and to remind us of our mortality. That just as one day we're here, one day we'll be gone. That one day our bodies will return once again to Ash just as they came. One day the things that we have, everything that we've built up in this life, the good things, the bad things, the neutral things, all of the things one day will pass away and they will return to dust. And as that reminder is set in, we kick off a 40-day fast. And that 40-day fast, as we talked about last week, and as Nate talked about, and as Carter read about, comes from the 40-day fast that we find in Matthew 4, from Jesus. Before Jesus sets off on his journey and on his time on earth where he is ministering and he's healing and he's loving and he's serving, he spends 40 days fasting in a desert. And after those days, Satan comes to him. And when he does, he tempts him. He tempts him three times. And the first one is he basically says, Jesus, I know you're hungry, and I know that you can turn that rock right there to bread. So why not go ahead and do so? You're super hungry. Just do it. The fast doesn't, it's not that important. It's not that meaningful. And Jesus's response, I think, is within the same vein as the response of Ash Wednesday, the response of God to the people of, dust you came and to dust you will return. And in Matthew 4, he says, man does not live on bread alone, but by every word spoken from the Father, from God. And I believe that those two reminders are coupled to remind us, one, not only that one day we will be gone, not only one day we will return to dust, but to remind us that while we're here, what ultimately is the most important and the most beneficial thing that we can intake is the word of God. And as we transition, obviously Jesus says this, but then Jesus, we know, goes on. He lives a life and he goes on and he takes the cross for us. And when he does so, what that means is now we, our souls, our hearts, get to rest upon the knowledge and the truth that Jesus did this for us, that we are freely able to experience a relationship with our Creator and our Father because He died and was raised to life for us. And so through Lent, we take time. We fast, we give something up. With the whole and sole purpose and mission of setting our hearts a little bit better on the Father, setting our hearts on the things above, taking to heart the reminder that Jesus gives when he talks to Satan by saying, hey, as much as our bodies need food, that much more our souls need the word of God. But as Paul writes, as a lot of us know and a lot of us see, and as Paul writes, this is something that's gone on forever. There are a lot of people alive. There are a lot of people around that have missed this truth, have missed this goodness of God, have missed this good news of Jesus as our Savior, because they're ignorant of the fact that it's offered to them. And they're so, as he taught, I'll just read it. As Alex read out of Philippians 3, the first half of what he read is talking about, and he refers to these people as enemies of the cross. It literally brings him to tears to talk about that these enemies of the cross are people whose stomachs are their gods and also whose minds and hearts are consumed by earthly things. There are people around that have not been able to experience the truth and the joy of the realization that we have this Jesus Christ who came to live and to die for us. And if they live their lives ignorant of this fact, if they live their lives not being able to recognize and understand and come to know this Savior for themselves, then they end up being an enemy of the cross. And while I don't read that and I don't want to talk about that scripture to say, hey, all of you guys who are Christians, if you ever allow yourself to care more about earthly things than about heavenly things, it means you're an enemy of the cross. That, I don't think, is the point, because if our hearts belong to God, then our hearts belong to God. But I do think that if we allow distractions to enter in, if the worldly becomes our ultimate, if it becomes everything that is in front of us, everything that surrounds us, what I do think happens is we hold God and we hold Christ at arm's length. As God and as Christ is trying to bring us into their embrace, trying to rain down the blessing and the joy of who they are in a relationship with them, we become so consumed by the things of this world. Our belly becomes our gods, our minds and our hearts are set to the earthly things, and we hold God's promises, and we hold the Word of God at arm's length. And so the goal of fasting is to shift that. To paraphrase Brad Gwynn's devotional from Wednesday of the Grace devotional, he talks about fasting as basically we have these things, these things that get in our way, these things that distract us from the goodness and the glory of God, we find and we take hold of those things and we replace them with the presence of Jesus, submitting to him and letting him sustain us. And I know that fasting seems and is maybe a bit of a big step to take, you know, like, hey, like, if there are distractions, if there are things that are around me that are distracting me, then I'm just gonna, you know, switch it up. I'm just gonna, like, you know, just let God take over that. But why I would argue that fasting might be the best and ultimate way that we are able to eliminate distractions and things getting in the way of us and God is because I don't really think that we understand the way that distractions take us away from God. I don't think we really understand the full scope and the full grasp that these things, these things of the world, these distractions that are all around us, the full grasp that they have on our lives. As an example, I would say most of us would probably say that at times we allow our phones to be a bit of a distraction. We pull them out. It's very easy to scroll, to continue to be on them, all that stuff. And when we do so, ultimately, we're saying, hey, Lord, I don't, like right now, I just want this to be my time. But I would contend that most of you aren't making that choice in your head. I would say that for the most part, you're not like, man, you know what, God? You're not worth my time right now because I got to check Instagram again. I don't think we're making those decisions. I don't think we're trying to be maniacal about like, God, you're not getting this amount of time. You're not getting this ride home because there's a podcast to listen to. I don't think any of us are making those decisions, but those decisions get made for us because they're so readily available and because we're so used to them. The author David Matthews says it this way. He says, That's about the best quote I'm going to read today, so I'm going to read it again. I had no idea it was a negative. I had no idea I was addicted to it. I had no idea that my body literally needed it or else it was going to go haywire and really turn on me while I'm trying to write a sermon. I had no idea of any of those things until I took a day and I didn't drink it. In the same way. Look at the distractions of our life. I bet a lot of you guys gave something up for Lent. I bet if you gave up your phone, you probably grabbed your phone a lot of times and was like, oh. Or if you gave up social media, you grabbed your phone and looked and couldn't find the Instagram app a lot of times. I actually last week decided to fast from food, to take a day with no food. Honestly, I don't know if I could tell you that I've done it before. I hate to admit, but it is what it is. And I don't know about you guys, but in my life, I never allow myself to experience hunger. I mean, if I'm at home, I'm eating. I've got snacks in between if I need. When I'm here, when I'm at church, I'll eat breakfast and then I get to church, I'm like, I could eat something. Julie's got Fig Newton stocked. I can have a Figgy Newton literally whenever I want a Figgy Newton. And so one, we love Julie for that. Shout out to Julie for being the realist MVP for always having Fig Newtons for me. But I say all that to say that literally, like, I just, I have built a life that never allows my body to need food, never allows my body to actually hunger for food, because I just scratch it before it gets there. And so when I fasted, you can imagine that my body was not thrilled. I was really hungry. My stomach hurt. My chest hurt. My body got like actual achy, actually achy. And I was astounded as I thought about because I was fasting after doing a lot of research. And so luckily I was kind of aware of what I should be looking for, and I was astounded at the thought that we're called to hunger for the Lord in that way. When we are called to hunger and to yearn for God, it is a literal hunger, a literal yearning for God. In the Beatitudes, it says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is a literal hunger, a literal life support thirst for God. I don't think I even knew what that felt like until I took time to fast from food. If we're honest, outside of food, I would say there's a thousand other things that we could fast from as well that would give us similar experiences. So I would say that food is far from the only thing that we turn to that distracts us from God's glory. As Pastor John Piper says about fasting, he says, fasting reveals not only food's mastery over us, but also televisions, computers, phones, or whatever else we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. Every single thing that conceals the weakness for our hunger for God. That's the point of Lent. To find that one big thing, to find those 10 small things, to get rid of them, to replace them, to realize the hold that they have on our body and to somehow shift our mindset and to shift the way that we live of like, instead of every time I grab my phone, it's every time I look here and say, God, I'm just going to pray for this person now. I gave up social media for Lent. I gave up social media and I kind of just gave up, I told my small group, like excess. There's, I would say, zero seconds in a day that I'm not like intaking. In the morning, I wake up, I play Wordle very well. And then post-Wordle, I scroll Instagram, I scroll Twitter, I do all that stuff. And then as I finally get up after I've laid in my bed for an hour looking at my phone, I go and I make breakfast. And when I make breakfast, like, I can't just be making breakfast until I have the TV on, because obviously. I make my breakfast and I eat it while I'm still watching TV, then I get in the car and I turn on a podcast. And then for the rest of the day, it's all of that. If I'm sitting, I'm working, every single time I take a quick second, like if my hands move away from my computer or something, then boom, boom, got it. Got to go to the bathroom, got to grab my phone. Like literally like, I know we've all done it before. I know we've all gone to the bathroom and then go, oh, and then run back. It's like, hey, I promise you it's not like a physical necessity to have your phone. Like you can still go to the bathroom without it, which I guess I promised you. I don't even remember the last time I tried. But every second of every day is consumption for me. And almost none of that consumption is being consumed by Christ. And if you're like me, there's a lot of those things. And then I have the audacity at the end of the day as I take stock of the day or those times where I get a little bit mindful of what's going on. And I have the audacity to say, well, I didn't spend much time with Jesus today, but I was pretty busy. I think we all have that. And not that we're always lying to ourselves. There are days where we are so busy. But fasting allows us to realize that there are a lot of natural reactions that we have. Natural times that we turn to so many other things that make the shield around us to where we hold God's promises and we hold God's truths and we hold the joys of Christ at arm's length because we're so invested into these small little things. And these trivial distractions have just become so a part of our day we don't even realize them. Until we take some time where we don't deal with them. Until we take time where we cut them off and we begin to turn our affections to God instead. John Piper continues and he says, fasting remedies by intensifying the earnestness of our prayer and saying with our whole bodies what prayer says with our heart, I long to be satisfied in God alone. So through fasting and through that prayer, that intense prayer that follows with our whole hearts and our whole bodies, we allow Jesus to rightly adjust our priorities. And as Katie Davis reminds us in Thursday's devotional from Matthew 6.33, we're reminded to seek first God's kingdom, seek first God's righteousness, and then we allow him to fill in all the details. And we allow him to faithfully provide for us, just as he always has. As the Lord becomes more and more part of our days, as our fasting continues through Lent, and the Lord becomes ever and ever present in our days. As our hearts experience his glory and his goodness more and more, our hearts begin to grow closer to and to resemble his. We're better able to worship. We're better, excuse me, we're better able to find rest in him. and our hearts are more tuned to see and to sing his grace. That's not it. Because as Gary Green reminds us in Friday's Lent devotional, that as Isaiah 58 talks about, which I'm just going to step away for a second. Gary Green's devotional was awesome. He talks about a set number of verses within Isaiah 58. If you didn't take the time to read all of Isaiah 58, I don't think that there's anything better written about fasting than Isaiah 58. So one, thank you, Gary, for letting me realize how awesome that is. Two, that's your homework assignment. Go home and read all of Isaiah 58. Let me come back over here. In Isaiah 58, as Gary reminds us, our hearts begin to reflect Christ not only inwardly, but outwardly. Our natural posture becomes one of love and of service for the people around us, and especially, especially those that are in need. The orphans, the widows, the sick, the homeless, the oppressed. The people who live, the people whose lives are in hunger of the luxuries, are in hunger of the needs, that we are taking a small amount of time to give up. The last time I got to preach, I was asked to simply answer the question, why should our lives be consumed by Christ? And the answer that we arrived at is because Christ's life is consumed with us. Not only in the past where he literally lived a life, lived a perfect life, took on the cross, and died so that we could have a relationship with him, and so that we don't have to settle for dust we shall return as our ending, but we now have a soul that is able to enter into a perfect eternity. Not only did Christ provide that for us in the past, but he is now living, sitting on the right hand of God as our high priest. And he's praying for us. And his whole goal, every second of every day, is to draw us closer and closer into the love of God and to bring us further and further into this perfect redemption that he offers us. And when we fast, we get to experience that just a little bit more. And I don't know if I know any other better reason than that. So will you bow with me as we pray. Lord, fasting is weird. It's a little bit foreign. It takes on many meanings. It takes on many definitions. But Lord, ultimately, fasting allows us to rid ourselves of distractions, to see and understand need a little bit better, and to allow us to witness you a little bit more. Lord, I just pray that anyone who has embarked on fasting through Lent, Lord, that you bring them strength and you allow them to see your goodness just as you have promised that you would. For those who are pondering, Lord, I pray that you would work in their hearts and maybe offer them too. And Lord, if anyone in here says, you know what, I want to take it to the next step. I want to try a food fast. Just to experience a little bit more of you. And Lord, I pray that you give them the strength to do that. Lord, we are so thankful for your goodness, always and forever. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

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.

Good morning. My name's Doug Bergeson. I'm a partner here at Grace, and I'm going to start off this morning by giving you all a very, very special treat. I'm going to sing a song from my childhood that some of you will be familiar with. Although I can't remember what I did yesterday, for some reason, this song that I learned in Sunday school when I was only four or five years old remains etched in my memory crystal clear. So here goes. You might want to say a quick prayer for me, but here goes. Oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Sing along if you know this next chorus. Oh, the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Splat! Now, if you can overlook the singing, you might be thinking, aw, that's a cute little Sunday school ditty. But of course, it's much more than that, as its lyrics are lifted directly from Scripture. And even more than that, they come straight from the mouth of Jesus. It's a reading from Matthew chapter 7. The streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and theining the way you relate to God, and we're reading this book together, to answer that most central of questions. What does it mean to build one's house on the rock? And while the book doesn't use that exact language, that's precisely what the author in this sermon series are doing as we explore the many ways in which we relate to God. How we try to build our house, our lives, on the rock. If you've heard either of the last two weeks' sermons or are reading along in the book, you know that the author sets the table for where he's trying to take us as readers by describing the primary postures that many of us adopt in our relationship with God. The four postures are life under God, life over God, life from God, and life for God. In his introduction, the author Sky Jathani describes a scene at a 1,500-year-old Roman tomb in Italy where tourists are ushered in to the dark, unable to see the reason they came in the first place. A vaulted ceiling covered in an exquisite mosaic that depicts Jesus as the good shepherd, surrounded by sheep in a starry paradise. However, if one is patient, a light will eventually come on, illuminating the mosaic for just a few seconds before returning to darkness. Each time that light comes on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows. And just like when the lights come on in the tomb, each of these four postures give us one perspective, one angle of what life with God is like, but it's not the full picture. Standing alone, each of these postures will give a distorted view. This matters a lot because the postures we adopt, that lens through which we view our relationship with God, is critical. And it is that view, that lens, which drives what we expect out of our relationship. And this is where the book is dead on. As what we expect has an enormous and defining impact on how each of us experiences life as a Christian. And it's especially tricky because not only do all four postures contain elements of truth, some more than others, but all four also find some basis and support in Scripture. So unless you don't mind being surprised, disappointed, and disillusioned with the Christian experience, we need to make sure that our expectations match up with what the full testimony of Scripture teaches us to expect, allowing it to properly inform, set boundaries and limits, and provide context for when each of these postures is appropriate in some measure and when they're not. When Jesus came to earth, his message was incredibly radical and countercultural, a message which challenged everyone and flipped the status quo completely on its head. But as the author of our book points out, in the ensuing 2,000 years, we've learned to cope with that message quite well by slowly but surely co-opting Jesus and his message, making him more like us, reflecting our priorities and desires, and less like him. I'm reminded of the chorus from the old Linkin Park song, Numb. All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you. That's not a very good impression of Linkin Park, but whatever. For many, it's morphed into a spiritual Rorschach test. In determining what our relationship with God should be like, we see whatever we want to see. And inevitably, we tend to assume that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives. And this assumption that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives is especially true of the third posture that we're looking at this morning, life from God. Now let me first say that for those of us who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, life, of course, does come from God. But what does that mean exactly? Our author defines the essence of the life from God posture as a relationship in which we are more interested in what God can do for us and how he might bless us than we're interested in actually knowing him. A relationship whose primary value is to help us solve our problems and navigate through life's challenges to achieve what we want. This posture is most often and most easily criticized when it's taken to an extreme, commonly referred to as the health and wealth or prosperity gospel. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and early 70s, I would sometimes listen on Sunday night to Reverend Ike's radio broadcast. His unrelenting and super upbeat message was that God wanted to bless each and every one of us right now in this life. His sayings included, God doesn't want you to have your pie in the sky by and by when you die. He wants you to have it now with the cherry on top. Or, he added this, you don't have to wait for the pearly gate. Reverend Ike also claimed good health is my divine right. And I remember him saying that God wanted me to have a Cadillac and that he had nine or so, enthusiastically adding, my garages runneth over. Although easy to do, it's not my intent to mock and refute such extremes because I don't think most of us fall into that camp. Furthermore, my complaint with the life from God posture isn't that it's wrong to want God's blessings. It's not. The Bible constantly encourages us to desire God's blessings. Rather, this morning, I'm going to take a different tact than our author in critiquing this posture. As I stated earlier, life is from God, but that's often misunderstood in the life from God posture in two primary ways. The first thing to realize is that God has already blessed us. An implicit premise of the life from God posture is that we have to do certain things and behave certain ways to somehow curry God's favor and procure his blessings in our lives. Whereas in fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that God's plan was to always bless us. Before the foundation of the universe was laid, God's intent was to bless us through his son, Jesus Christ. Before any of us lifted a finger or did anything good or bad, God was blessing us. As the Apostle Paul stated in Romans, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's like a gift from Amazon that's already been delivered. We don't have to convince someone to send it. We don't have to help order it. The gift has already been given. It's already been sent. It's already been delivered. In fact, it's already sitting on our front porch. All we have to do is open our front door and bring it inside. The life from God posture assumes blessing is transactional. But it was all God. No transaction. As the disciple John wrote, we love him because he first loved us. So the first major misunderstanding of the life from God posture is the notion that we need to get God on our side, working on our behalf. Truth is, he's always been on our side. Before time began, he was on our side. Our job isn't to get God to bless us, but to trust that he already has and will continue to do so. The second big misunderstanding of the life from God posture and what I'll spend the remainder of our time on this morning is the very concept of what constitutes a blessing from God. What does being blessed by God actually look like in our lives? And it's here that the life from God posture in a community of faith like ours operates much more subtly than extremes like Reverend Ike. Yet, it can still wreak havoc by creating expectations which aren't validated in Scripture. Life from God is seductive and appealing because it posits that Christianity is worthwhile because of the way it blesses me. Life just goes better as a believer. But again, what does that even mean? That's the $64,000 question. What does being blessed by God look like in the here and now? Particularly in more affluent societies, the tendency is to think that God wants the exact same things for us that we want for us. And my guess is that's how life from God posture subtly impacts us here at Grace. Although I doubt many of us genuinely believe that being blessed by God involves a bunch of Cadillacs or perfect health or a problem-free life, I would bet that for many of us, God's help and blessing correspond pretty closely to what we think is important. A good family, good health, happiness, comfort, professional success. I could go on and on. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to challenge our conventional understanding of blessing. And if what I have to say rubs you the wrong way, then I'm probably on to something. Although we can learn about God by observing the world he created, God's most intentional and fullest revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus was God's best self-revelation, representing in his person and ministry the true nature of God. And as the original book about Jesus Christ, the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments together, is referred to as God's special revelation. So God chose to reveal himself through the written word. And more specifically than that, he chose to do it through a story. A great, sweeping, complex, long, and remarkable story unfolding down through the ages. And as a story, the Bible is really the opposite of a textbook or a theological dictionary. You can't go to chapter 7 and read all that is said about faith. There is no concise, complete treatment of all that is meant by salvation. We might prefer Wikipedia, where we can learn all we need to know in a few short paragraphs, and that can be helpful at times, but that's not the Bible. A story has plot and characters and a variety of storylines that emerge and develop over time. A story can capture the full range of the human experience, providing a richness and depth that simply can't be matched by a more systematic description of principles and concepts. Nuance, mystery, contradiction, paradox, tension, all are part of great storytelling and all are indelible elements of real life. Although I'd been a Christian most of my life, it was only about 20 years ago that I began viewing the Bible first and foremost as one magnificent and seamless story of God and his love for his creation. And I haven't looked back. I'd go even further and say that I believe it is imperative for all of us to approach and understand the Bible in this light. But not because that's my preference or because I say so, but because that's how God chose to do it. And in the Bible, God reveals his purposes and plans slowly and deliberately over time. A progression takes place. Concepts are first introduced in ways that the original audiences and later day readers, such as ourselves, might be better able to get their arms around and understand. But over the course of the story, a certain development, an expansion of the concept takes place until it reaches its fulfillment and climax in the New Testament. As an example, I've often thought that if you were new to Christianity and were just airdropped in on a Sunday morning and heard the story of Jesus in isolation, how weird and bizarre must it seem that Jesus had to die for us. But as you start reading at the beginning in Genesis, one is introduced early on to the idea that God saves by substitution. Something else dies for us instead of us on our behalf. It begins modestly with the story of Abraham and Isaac and is developed and expanded further in God's dealings with his chosen people, the Israelites. But it reaches its fulfillment and stunning climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. Vaughn Roberts, in his book, God's Big Picture, illustrates the value of progressive revelation in this way. A century ago, a father promises his son that he will give him a horse on his 21st birthday. Cars are subsequently invented, and so when the birthday finally comes, the boy is given a car instead of a horse. The promise has still been fulfilled, but not literally. The father could not have promised his son a car because neither could have understood the concept. In a similar way, God made his promises to Israel in ways they could understand. He used categories they were familiar with, such as the nation, the temple, and material prosperity in the land. But the fulfillment breaks the boundaries of those categories. To expect a literal fulfillment is to miss the point. Here are just three quick examples. God uses evil for good, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to ultimately accomplish his purposes. In Genesis, Joseph's brothers can't stand him and sell him into slavery. But years later, Joseph has risen to a position of such power in Egypt that he is able to save his entire family from famine and keep alive the promises God had made to his ancestors. A fortuitous turn of events to be sure, but that's just a horse. When God's only son, Jesus, comes to earth in human form and is crucified by evil men, but through his unjust and wrongful death redeems the world for all eternity, that's an automobile. God's people wanted a king, and God gave them kings. But even the best, like David, failed and disappointed. That's a horse. But a king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, and who will reign with perfect justice and righteousness forever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now that's an automobile. When God redeems his people out of slavery in Egypt and then promises to dwell with them, first in the tabernacle in the desert and then behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. That's something spectacular, but it's still just a horse. But when God redeems us from slavery to sin and death, offering us life through his son Jesus Christ, and God's Holy Spirit takes up residence in the individual human heart, and we, like living stones, are built into a spiritual house where God now dwells, that's an automobile. I explain all this because it's so relevant for our purpose this morning in looking at the life from God posture. For another big concept that undergoes radical development and evolution over the course of the Bible is the idea of how God blesses us. In fact, it evolves so much that by the time Jesus comes and the fullness of God and his redemptive plan is revealed, it's hard to even recognize what God now considers to be a blessing as it's been turned completely upside down. No longer is blessing what might make us happy or healthy or comfortable or successful or respected or understood or liked or safe. Rather, a blessing is anything that moves our hearts and minds to a place more receptive to God's grace. Anything can be a blessing if it helps to convince us of our desperate need for a Savior. Virtually anything can be a blessing if it helps better prepare and position us for eternity. Now, there is no verse that explicitly says that in so many words. But as you move along the biblical narrative, as God's magnificent story of love and redemption continues to unfold, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the case. Certainly, there were times earlier in the story when God did bless his people and reward their obedience and trust in ways that they and we would clearly understand and to which we can all relate. The Israelite sandals didn't wear out in the desert. God gave them food and clothing and so many descendants that they would rival the stars in the sky. A promised land flowing with milk and honey. Military victory, prosperity, long life, and peace. And this makes perfect sense, as God had to convince a primitive people some 3,500 years ago, who had little else to go on, that this particular God was the one you wanted to hitch your wagon to. Blessing them in immediate, temporal, and tangible ways was essential in order to build trust. But as the story goes on, and as God always knew, the power of sin would prove to be too strong. God's material blessings did not draw Israel closer to him, did not make them more inclined to trust, and in fact often had the opposite effect. More needed to be done. And before too long, the entire biblical narrative starts changing from a temporal vantage point, if I obey and if I trust, I will enjoy peace and prosperity, victory and long life, to an eternal perspective and a future hope. As you read on, it's as if your eyes are forced to look up into the distance, start to realize that what happens in this life is not the goal. It's not the be all and end all. What happens is as important, but only as it impacts eternity. God's endgame lies in the future. Children, land, prosperity, and peace in the present, that's a horse. Eternity with God, that's a big old fancy automobile. And by the time we get to the New Testament, the entire tone and tenor of Scripture is remarkably unimpressed with the kind of things we typically consider blessings and focuses entirely on how this life is getting us ready and how we might help others get ready for eternity. Although we should be thankful for great relationships, loving family, friends, health, material comfort, peace and safety, it's in the absence of one or more of these things that we are most acutely aware of our brokenness, of our lack of control, of our need to build our house on the firm foundation of the one and only one who actually is in control. And because of that, God simply is far less concerned about our momentary comfort, happiness, and success than are we. We do our faith no favors when we think of blessing predominantly in terms of what our culture and our world say it is. If you think this is how God blesses you, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, we should be pleased and thankful to God when things go well. But to be honest, good things seem to happen as much to people who don't follow Christ as those who do. Success, comfort, wealth, health, happy marriages, well-adjusted kids, best as I can tell, don't fall disproportionately on believers. Anything that helps prepare us for eternity, anything that helps us move to a posture receptive to God's love and grace, any circumstance that conveys to us our desperate need for a Savior, in God's eyes, can serve as a blessing. On the flip side, anything we normally would consider a blessing turns out not really to be a blessing, not if it works against God's purposes. And of course, the rub is that a great many of the things we associate with being blessed do not prepare our hearts and minds for eternity. Even such universally desirable things as good health, a good job, a good marriage, a good family cease to be blessings if they undermine our sense of need for God, if they lead to arrogance and pride, to a sense of independence and self-sufficiency. If our success and good fortune draw us away from God and not towards Him, then these otherwise good things have become, to use a good Old Testament word, snares. I'm going to read just a few verses from Deuteronomy 8. these decrees that I'm giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. And that's exactly what did happen. Sound familiar? It does to me. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul conveyed the same message, reading from 1 Corinthians 4. that we feel a greater sense of our need for God when things are difficult than when they're easy. Struggles and sorrow, tragedy and injustice are uniquely effective at disabusing us of any thought that we are in control, uniquely effective at reminding us of our insufficiency, brokenness, and desperate need. Yet so many times we question and agonize and wring our hands as to why a so-called loving God would allow a fallen world with so much sadness and evil injustice and injustice. Is it any wonder? Is it really that big of a mystery? Why are we surprised? It's my conviction that a fallen world was always part of God's plan, in part, precisely so that we would struggle. Again, it's that pattern of God using evil for good, how he uses our fallen world to accomplish his purposes, drawing a lost humanity back to himself. The pivotal question for each of us this morning is, when crummy things happen in our lives that do not look or feel anything like blessings, how do we respond? Do they move us to a place of trust or a place of despair? We have a decisive role to play if there's to be any redemptive value in our crummy circumstances. If we do not take advantage of them as opportunities to trust, we run the risk of rendering them meaningless, leaving them just crummy. So when we talk about the posture, life from God, and when we expect to enjoy God's promised blessings, we better understand in what form these blessings might come and over what time horizon they might pay dividends and how best we might respond in faith and trust so that God can actually use those things for good in our lives and the lives of others. I'm going to close this morning with the tiny book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Just for curiosity's sake, during these last six months of the pandemic, how many of you have read the book? Let me see a show of hands. I'm just kidding. I already know the answer. Zero. Approximately zero of you have read Habakkuk. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect example. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been asked to preach, so I'm not casting any dispersions. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect exclamation point for my message this morning of how God blesses and how he operates and what building one's house on the rock really looks like. It's a far cry from the life from God posture as commonly understood by most of us. The book of Habakkuk consists entirely of a short dialogue between Habakkuk the prophet and God. It begins with the prophet complaining to God of how it seems that all the violence and justice and strife that's running rampant in his country of Judah goes unpunished. Why is God tolerating it? God responds by saying, No worries, Habakkuk. I'm raising up the Babylonians, those fiercest and most dreaded of peoples, guilty men whose strength is their own God to swoop in and devour Judah. Upon hearing that, the prophet is flabbergasted and even more of a tizzy, complaining even further to God. What? You've got to be kidding me. How can you allow such a wicked and godless nation to swallow up those more righteous than themselves? You're blowing my mind. Then the Lord answered the prophet a second time. Let me worry about the Babylonians. They will get theirs in due time. However, you, Habakkuk, need to be patient and wait for my appointed time. Though it may linger, it will certainly come. But as for you right now, the righteous will live by faith. It made no sense to him. Nothing he heard was assuring. Nothing seemed fair. But in that moment, Habakkuk leaned in and chose to trust. Listen to his closing words. I heard and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud, Verse 1. and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights. Although he was not happy with what he had heard and thought it violent, unjust, and unloving, Habakkuk moved towards God rather than away, convinced that his God was both able and willing to do the right thing regardless of whether he himself could understand, an abiding trust that God was not only in control, but was also the ultimate victor. And in that moment, Habakkuk was being blessed, all circumstances to the contrary, prepared for an eternity with the God who loves him. That is where the rubber truly meets the road. Even when you can't necessarily see God's goodness or understand his purposes in the middle of the mess, when everything is shrouded in mystery and confusion, do you choose to trust? Do you believe that no matter what seems to be happening at any given moment in this life, that God has already won the victory and always has our best interests at heart? Building one's house on the rock is resting in that knowledge. I began this morning by singing a song about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. It's important to note that it doesn't go, oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And before I pray, I'd like to invite Steve and Lisa back up here as we continue to worship. But please bow your heads. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. I pray that you'll convict each one of us and help each one of us understand just how desperately you love us and the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours. Help us to know that despite the fact that we live in a world where sorrow and unhappiness and disappointment are part and parcel to our daily experience. I pray that we'll be grounded in the fact that you love us and always have our best interest at heart. And we thank you for making it possible for us to have an eternity with you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to get to spend Sunday mornings with you, even if it is in this way. I hope that you're getting a chance to watch on Sunday morning or sometime throughout the week. Last week, we started in a new series called Still the Church, where we're walking through the book of Acts together. We thought it would be appropriate because it's a time of uncertainty for our church and for the church. In this time of isolation and doing this communal thing by ourselves, it's a difficult time to be the church. It's a difficult time to know how to express the church. And for grace, it's a difficult time to know how to express grace. And so I thought it would be good to go back to our roots, to go back to the foundational beliefs and philosophies and practices of the early church and see what we can learn from the birth of the church in Acts to apply to our church now. Because the same church that is born in the book of Acts is the church that we are now, which is why we are still the church. And that's why we've called this series Still the Church. This week, I want us to look in Acts chapter 2. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. There's a lot of significant things that happen in Acts chapter 2. Actually, we're going to spend two weeks in this chapter looking this week at the foundational repentance and confession of the church, and next week, some of the foundational practices and characteristics of the church. But to understand what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, I think we have to flash back to Luke chapter 23. You'll remember last week that we talked about Acts is really, Acts and Luke are two parts of the same work. They're both addressed to a guy named Theophilus to explain first in Luke's gospel, Jesus and his life. And then the book of Acts is written to tell the story of the early church and is known either as the Acts of the Apostles or the Acts of the Holy Spirit, depending on your translation, but both are appropriate. So to understand what's happening in Acts 2, we need to look at what Luke, the author, wrote in his gospel in Luke chapter 23. In Luke chapter 23, we arrive at this scene where Jesus is in the care of a man named Pontius Pilate. At the time of Christ, Israel was a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. And Pilate was the Roman governor that was put in authority over Israel. And the leaders in Israel wanted to kill Jesus. The problem was, under Roman rule, they didn't have the authority to execute the death penalty. So they had to convince the Romans to do it for them. They had to take their prisoner to the Roman governor, to Pilate in this case, and convince Pilate that this man, Jesus, was worthy of the death penalty. So Pilate's talking to Jesus and he finds no fault in him. He finds no fault in his story. Pilate's wife is even wise and told him, you need to have nothing to do with this man. So Pilate goes to the crowds. There's a crowd gathered outside his fortress, outside his headquarters where he is. And the crowd is a Jewish crowd and they're clamoring for the death of Christ. And there's such a big crowd in Jerusalem at the time because it was the high holidays. It was Passover weekend. So they were there from all the corners of Israel to celebrate Passover. And they had worked themselves into a frenzy pursuing the death of this man named Jesus of Nazareth. And Pilate goes to them. And because he finds no fault in Jesus, he goes to them and he says, hey, I find no fault in this man. It's your tradition to let a prisoner go for Passover. It was the habit that they were in. They let a prisoner go every Passover. And so Pilate says, why don't you invoke that tradition and let this man named Jesus go? He does not deserve to die. And the crowds refuse. And they say, no, give us Barabbas. Barabbas was a known criminal and rebel. And he was in the stockades and was going to be crucified as well. And they said, no, we want to give the free pass to Barabbas. Give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus. And Pilate says, I really don't think that's right. I really don't think that's fair. I wash my hands of this and we pick it up in Luke 23 as they go back and forth. Luke 23, 23 says this, So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder. That's Barabbas. For whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will. In another gospel account, Pilate says, It's this profound passage. So from there, Jesus is crucified. He's put in the tomb. The disciples sit there on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, just kind of wondering what to do and where to go from there. And then on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene sees the empty tomb and tells the disciples. And shortly after that, Jesus, a resurrected Jesus, appears to the disciples and gives them newfound faith. And he walks with them for 40 days until the day of Pentecost. If you were with us this last fall, we went through these Jewish holidays and you know that Pentecost follows 40 days after Passover. And so Jesus was following the calendar that his heavenly father, that God the father instilled into the Jewish people. It's really remarkable the parallels here. And then 40 days afterwards, he goes up into heaven. Jesus ascends into heaven. He gives the disciples the marching orders. Yours is the kingdom to build. Go into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize them in my name, he says. And the disciples are tasked with building the church. And Jesus also tells them, wait until you receive the helper. Wait until you receive the gift of the spirit, because that Spirit is what's going to empower you to build the church. He's actually referring to what he told them back in John. In the book of John, Jesus tells the disciples, it's better for you that I would leave, because when I go, the helper is going to come and he's going to empower you. And so now they're told in Acts, wait for the helper, just sit and wait. So the disciples go back to this upper room and they just kind of sit and stare at each other and wait. I wonder what those days were like. I wonder how they looked at each other and what they were expecting and what they thought the Holy Spirit would be like. And meanwhile, the crowds are still there. They're back for Pentecost. They're back for the holy holiday and they're there. And they know that they crucified this Jesus and now they know that he was resurrected and walking among them for 40 days and that his disciples, his followers are holed up in this room trying to figure out what to do. So the crowds began to clamor around this home to see what the disciples were going to say. And as they're in this room, Acts chapter 2 tells us that the Holy Spirit descended on them like flaming tongues of fire. I can't imagine what that moment must have been like. But the Holy Spirit descends on them like these flaming tongues of fire, and at the reception of the Holy Spirit, they walk out on the balcony and they preach to the crowds. And it's remarkable because they preached in their native tongue, but everyone there heard in their own language. It's the first time in Scripture we see the gift of tongues. That's where we get the idea of the gift of tongues for those of you that are interested in that. And you know, as an aside, Acts really formally introduces us to the Holy Spirit. And Acts brings up a lot of questions about the Holy Spirit. How does the Holy Spirit work? What is the Holy Spirit's job? How do we interact with the Spirit? What does it mean to receive the Spirit? What does it mean to be full of the Spirit? But you know, we also did a whole series on the Holy Spirit last spring. So if you weren't here for that, or you forget that and need a refresher, you can find that series. It's called Forgotten God. It's on our website. You can go back, and we did four weeks on the Holy Spirit, talking about how we interact with him and how he interacts with us and what it means to be full of the Spirit and be empowered by the Spirit. If you want to do even more learning on that, because we're going to focus on something else in this chapter, but if this is something that you want to pursue personally, I would encourage you to read The Forgotten God by Francis Chan. It's the book that we went through last spring. If you haven't heard of it or had a chance to read it, it's a really good introductory book to the Spirit, to His role and to what He does. If you want a little bit more than that, if you have specific questions about what does it mean to be full of the Spirit? What does it mean to be baptized in the Spirit? What does it mean to be empowered by the Spirit? There's a great short read that I have found to be the most helpful book on the Holy Spirit in my experience. It's called Baptism and Fullness by a guy named John Stott. I have one copy of it. The first person to ask me to borrow it is more than welcome to do that. Otherwise, you can find it just about anywhere. If that interests you, that's a super helpful book on the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples. They walk out on the porch and they preach the gospel. They tell the story of Jesus and who he was. And the crowds they're preaching to, it's important to note, is the same crowd that was clamoring for the death of Christ before Pilate. The crowds they're talking to in Acts chapter 2 is the same crowd, the same community with the same sensibilities that was at the gates of Pilate's fortress clamoring for the death of Christ. This crowd crucified Jesus. And now Peter and the disciples are preaching to them. And what they're preaching to them is, hey, that man that you killed, that resurrected, that we all saw go into heaven the other day, that was the Messiah. That was the promised Messiah that our God had sent. And you killed him. And to do this, to help them see this, it's important that we note that he quotes Old Testament prophets, Peter does. He quotes Joel. There's a huge passage, a huge portion of Acts chapter two that's a quote from the prophet Joel that he's quoting back to them so that they would see, hey, this guy that you killed, he actually fulfilled this prophecy that you know and cling to. This guy that you killed, he fulfilled the prophecy of David that you know and you cling to. And when he finishes, when he finishes, he finishes like this. And the response of the people is incredible. Look at what he says. As they wrap up their sermon, Peter says, It's the same crowd. I love their response. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And listen to Peter's response. This response is incredibly profound. It's a hinge point in history. And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So Peter and the apostles preached to this crowd that crucified Christ. And what they preached to them is, this guy that you killed was the Messiah that was sent from God. It's the Messiah that you've been waiting for generation after generation after generation. It's the one that your grandparents told you about and the one that you've told your children and your grandchildren about. And now he's arrived and you've killed him. And it says that they were cut to the heart. And they said, brothers, what do we do? You're right. We messed up. What do we do? What they're asking in that moment is how do we make this right? How do we make ourselves right before God? We've sinned before God. We've committed an egregious evil. What can we do to settle it up with God? What do we do? How do we get right with God? In our vernacular, in our context, what they're asking is what do we do to be saved? How do we become Christians? How do we get right with God. In our vernacular, in our context, what they're asking is, what do we do to be saved? How do we become Christians? How do we get right with God? It's the same question we ask when we go, what's the barrier of entry to be okay with God? In terms of the church or the kingdom that God is starting here, what they're saying is, what's required of us to be a part of the church? What does God require to join up, to be in his kingdom? What's the barrier of entry? It's all the same question, and they're asking the same thing that we ask. What do we need to do to be right with God? We messed up. And Peter's response is that they should repent and be baptized. And I think it's worth asking, if Peter wants them to repent, what was the repentance Peter was calling for? What was the repentance that Peter was calling for? To repent of what? I think it's a really important question to look at that when they say, what's the barrier to entry? How do we get right with God? And Peter says, repent. I want to know, repent of what? I think we're tempted to just assume that it means repentance of sins. Repent of your sins and be baptized and you will know Jesus and he will forgive you and you receive the Holy Spirit. But we have to consider who this crowd was. This was a Jewish religious crowd. This was a crowd and we know that they were a religious crowd because they were convicted by the words of the Old Testament. These were not a group of people that were just walking through life as if God didn't exist, not caring at all about his laws. They were, most of them, devout Jews. They were, by all accounts, this crowd was, by all accounts, outwardly righteous. This society, this Jewish society that was contemporary of Christ, there wasn't a lot of atheists and agnostics walking around. There wasn't a bunch of aspiritual people walking around. Everybody had faith. Everybody expressed a faith. Everybody claimed God as their father. Far and away, this crowd of people was an outwardly righteous crowd. Meaning, they had already repented of their sins. They weren't going through life like God's laws didn't matter. In fact, one of the reasons they wanted to kill Jesus is because they felt that he had violated one of God's laws and deserved that death. If you were to tell them that they needed to repent of their sins, they would respond in much the same way that you and I would likely respond if you're a believer this morning. If someone told us that we needed to repent of our sins, I think what we would say is, I mean, yeah, I feel like I have. I know I'm sinful. I know I mess up. I'm trying to do better and repentance is kind of progressive. I'm working on it and through the power of Christ, hopefully I'll continue to move away from those sins, but it's not like I'm walking through life not thinking I'm sinful. I think repentance of sins is too broad to apply to this crowd because many of them, if not all of them, felt like they had already done that. What's more is the impossibility of the command, if it applies to all sins, it's the impossibility to fulfill that command in light of what repentance means. Often, and a lot of you know this, but just so we're on the same page, often we equivocate repentance with confession when they're two different things. To confess something is to agree with someone else that what you did is wrong. In spiritual terms, it's to agree with God about your sin. But to repent, to repent has this implication of walking in the other direction, of being headed in one direction, doing one action, and then not only stopping and confessing that that's the wrong way to go, but then turning and moving in the opposite direction. It's like if you lose your temper with your spouse. And after losing your temper, you're sorry and you feel bad and you go, hey, listen, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. That was my bad. You didn't deserve for me to fly off the handle like that. That's confession. You've agreed with your spouse that you were wrong. But repentance would be not just to apologize for what you did, but then to walk in grace and generosity with your spouse moving forward. To repent of sexual sin isn't just to say, that was wrong, I'm not going to do that anymore. It's to actually turn and walk in purity. You understand? To repent of being a thief or being greedy is not to simply stop being greedy or stop taking what doesn't belong to you, but to walk in generosity to others. It's to stop going one way and move in the opposite direction. And that makes this command, if it means to repent of our sins, particularly impossible because no one can perfectly repent of their sins void of the empowerment of Christ in their life. No one is capable of repenting of our sins to the satisfaction of God because that would mean walking in perfection and we can't do that outside the power of Christ. I would argue that we can't do that this side of eternity. So I don't think that what Peter is saying in Acts chapter 2 is that we should repent of our sins as a blanket general statement. We should, and that's fine, but I think there's a more specific repentance happening here. I think he's speaking right to this crowd that was present at the release of Barabbas and the insistence of the death of Christ. He's speaking to the crowd that says the death of Jesus is on our heads and on our children's heads. He's speaking directly to the crowd that once they realized they had crucified the Christ, the son of the living God, they said that they were cut to the heart. What do we do? And Peter says, repent. And I believe that he is telling them to repent of who they thought Jesus was. Peter is calling them in Acts chapter two, the crowds in Jerusalem, repent and be baptized. Repent of who you thought Jesus was. Peter was calling them to repent of who they thought Jesus was. You used to think he was this. You used to think he was just a prophet. You used to think he was a crazy person. You used to think he was a false teacher. You used to think he was making false claims, but now you know who he is. So confess that you were wrong about that and move in a faith of Christ. And I think it's remarkable the parallels in Peter's life because Peter is asking them to make the same confession and repentance that Peter himself was called to by Jesus. What we'll see, what I want to show you is that this repentance that he was calling for in Acts 2 is the same confession and repentance that Peter himself was called to by Jesus. If you flip your Bible over to Matthew chapter 16, you see this incredible scene where Jesus has the disciples gathered in front of him. And he's asking the disciples, they're in northern Israel and as close to the border as you can get. They're out in the country and he's talking to just his disciples and he's saying to them, who do people say that I am? And they said, some say that you are John the Baptist reincarnated. Some say that you're Elisha. Some say that you're a good teacher. And he says, yes, but who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. Look, verse 15, he said to them, but who do you say I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Jesus says, yeah, but I understand what other people might think. Who do you say that I am? And Peter, the one who is to preach the sermon that begins the church years later, says to him, you're the Christ, the son of the living God. You are exactly who you have claimed to be. And Jesus says, yes. And the spirit has revealed this to you. You didn't figure that out yourself. And on this rock, on the rock of that confession, on the rock of that faith, on the rock of the belief that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is the name that he claims to be, Jesus says, on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Years later, Peter is preaching to a Jewish people that killed Jesus and he tells them who Jesus was and they say, what do we do? We messed up. What do we have to do? And Peter preaches to them the same repentance and confession that he made. And he says, you need to believe that Jesus was who he says he was. You need to confess that you killed the wrong guy and you need to walk in faith and fealty to him. The confession that he's asking the crowds to make is the same confession that he made years ago. And it's the confession on which Jesus says, and that is the one on which I will build my church. This passage is incredibly important because it sets Jesus up as the cornerstone of our faith, as the cornerstone of our church. And this is the confession and repentance from which all other things flow. The foundational belief of the church is that Jesus is exactly who he says he is. Don't you see that to be able to confess that Jesus is exactly who he says he is, that you have to be moved to a saving faith? That if Jesus claims that he is the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world, that to believe that claim, to believe that Jesus is who he says he is when he says he's the Lamb of God, you have to first admit that you're a sinner in need of a Savior. When Jesus says he is the high priest that advocates for us, you have to first admit that you're in need of a high priest to advocate to God because you forfeited that with your sin. When he says that he is the sacrifice that covers over our sin once and for all, do you understand that we have to believe that our sins need covering? When God says that he views us through and sees the righteousness of Christ covering our sins, we have to confess that we have sins that need covering. This confession and repentance and belief in who Jesus is and believing that he is who he says he is is the foundational and fundamental confession and repentance of the whole church. We cannot confess and believe that Jesus is who he says he is without walking in faith to all of his teachings. We cannot. Our behavior changes when we believe who Jesus is because we trust him when he says that he's the good shepherd. And so we walk in light of that trust, in light of that claim. We trust that when Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me, we acknowledge that he is exactly who he says he is. The barrier of entry into God's church is to believe what Jesus says about himself. It's to believe that he is who he says he is. The reason that Jewish crowd wasn't a part of the church before this moment is because they had wrong beliefs about who Jesus was. And the very second they believe that Jesus was who he says he was, they become the church. And we find out in Acts 2 that about 3,000 were added to their number that day. And this is the birth of the church. That foundational claim is the birth and genesis of the church. And it is still the same foundational claim that welcomes you into the church. If there is somebody who doesn't know Jesus, who does not yet know Christ as God as their father and Jesus as their savior, it's because they don't yet believe that Jesus is who he says he is. Think back to before you were a Christian. If you have that memory of yourself and of your belief system, wasn't the fundamental issue in your heart that you didn't believe that Jesus was who he said he was? Weren't you making the same error that the Jewish crowd was making and disregarding him as something that he claimed not to be? And that the very thing that brought you into faith and salvation was the gradual understanding and confession and repentance of walking in a faith and in trust that Jesus was who he claimed to be, that he was the Lord of lords and the King of kings, that he's Emmanuel, God with us, that he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and that he's the Lion of Judah who comes to conquer hell with his church. Before you were a believer, you didn't believe those things. And once you became convinced that those things were true, you were all in on faith. Isn't that the barrier of entry for a Muslim? A Muslim person thinks that Jesus is simply a prophet. And for them to become a person of a Christian faith, they would have to do away, they would have to repent of the idea that Jesus was simply a prophet and walk in the truth that he is the Messiah who died for them as well. Isn't this the barrier of entry for an agnostic person who before becoming a Christian would argue that Jesus, if he existed, didn't matter very much? Wouldn't it be, isn't the need to repent of that idea of Jesus and walk in a belief that Jesus was who he says he was? If an atheist is going to come to faith, the very first thing they have to do is repent of their idea that Jesus doesn't exist and that God is not real and walk in a belief that Jesus is who he says he is. And for us church people, if sometimes our walk with God feels a little janky, it feels like we're out of step and we're not in sync. We can't get the traction that we'd like. Isn't it possible that we need to repent of some of the ideas that we have about who Jesus is and trust that he is who he says he is? I think some of us, without saying it, we have this view of Jesus like he's some sort of cosmic hall monitor that's just waiting to get onto us and make our life not fun. Yet Jesus promises and tells us and claims that he is the good shepherd and that he came to give us life to the full. Some of us need to repent of who we think Jesus is, that he's just there to squash our joy and kill our fun and walk in the fullness of pleasure that Jesus offers at the right hand of God. We may with our mouths claim that Jesus is Lord, that he is the king of our hearts, that he reigns in us. But in many of our day-to-day lives, mine most of all, he's not the Lord we are. We don't walk in a belief that he is who he says he is. We don't walk like he's the Lord of our hearts. We don't walk like he's the king of the universe. We walk sometimes as if he's something we can put on a shelf and take down when it's convenient or when there is a need. And what we need to do is confess that we view Jesus as this trinket to put on a shelf and repent and stop doing that and walk in a belief that he is the Lord of the universe, that he is creator God and I am creation and I should live my life in a joyful servanthood to him. This confession that Peter calls for in Acts chapter two, this repentance that he calls for is for the crowds to repent of who they thought Jesus was and to believe that Jesus was exactly who he said he was. And in that repentance, the church is born. And in that same repentance, our faith is born. And that invitation that Peter made 2,000 years ago to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit is the same invitation he extends to us today. My hope and prayer is that this will drive us deeper into learning about our Savior. That we would be constantly asking the question, Jesus, who do you say you are? What does your word say that you are? Where are the areas of my life where I'm not living in harmony with this, where I don't believe what you say, where I'm not trusting the claims that you make? and I think we should pray that God would help us repent of those things, confess those things, acknowledge where we're thinking wrongly about Jesus and walk in a knowledge, an assurity, and a faith in him that he is who he says he is. This invitation to repentance that Peter gives in Acts chapter two is the same invitation that you and I have right now, every day. We're still the church. That's still the foundational repentance. Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for your son, Jesus. We thank you that he is the cornerstone of our faith, that everything begins and ends with him, that he is the alpha and the omega. Father, teach us to embrace all the many sides of our Savior, the one that is zealous for us, the one that watches out for us, the one that is the high priest for us, the one that is the good shepherd for us, the one that is the way for us, the one that is the bread and the living water for us. Let us be sustained on our Savior. Father, if any of us lacks faith, pray that you would provide it. If any of us is seeing Jesus inaccurately, help us see him more clearly. If we, like the crowds in Acts, need to repent of who we think Jesus is and walk in a truth of who he claims to be, give us the courage and the vision and the faith to do that. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.