Sermons tagged with Pain

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.

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in person. It's good to be with you online. Thank you for continuing to join us in that way. As Michelle just said, it is nice to have faces. They're hidden behind masks, which gives me the benefit of pretending like you're all just smiling at me the whole time. So that's how I'm picturing you. It's just nice and friendly and kind, so I appreciate that. Last week, we started our series called Vapor, which is a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. So I would actually say this, if you're catching up later this week, if you're listening to this on like a Tuesday, or you're watching online and you didn't catch last week, stop. I would encourage you to stop and go back and listen to last week. Do it on double speed, or if you really want a good laugh, listen to my voice on half speed, because that sounds funny. But listen to the last one and then catch up with this week. Because again, this is a series and it's not really made to stand independently of one another. We kind of need all of the parts to understand the four separate parts. And so last week was a downer. Last week was a bummer. I warned you ahead of time that you're not going to feel good at the end of that sermon. This one is not much different, all right? So just buckle up. This is Ecclesiastes, and I think it's good and ecclesiastical for us to sit in the difficult sometimes, for us to sit in hard reality sometimes. And what we said is that this is the bleakest book for the bleakest month. And I don't think I need much of a backup. This winter has been terrible, just gray and dark and rainy. It's the perfect time to go through Ecclesiastes. Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes, and he writes it towards the end of his life and just hits us with some stark realities. And I continue to contend that on the other side of these realities, if we can accept the reality that we talked about last week, which is the idea that most Americans, most people in our culture are wasting our lives. He calls it vanity of vanities of striving after the wind. It's vapor. That's why the series is called Vapor. It's that Hebrew word, a hevel, that means vapor or smoke. Here one minute, gone the next. Seems like you can reach out and grab success or grab happiness or grab something worth pursuing and that when you get to it, it's gone. It slips through your fingers and we don't have it anymore. So the difficult reality that we confronted last week was just that, that most of life is vapor. Most pursuits, when we get to the end of them, we will find them to be empty. That's a difficult reality, but it's an essential one. We're going to face another reality this week, and I continue to believe if we will face these bravely, that what we'll find on the other end of them is this immutable joy, this joy that can be untouched by circumstance. I believe that we'll find the satisfaction on the other side of these realities that really is abiding. I think that we'll become more grateful for God and more desirous of Jesus for him to come and for our relationship with him. And so we're going to wade through these things as a church. Now, I ended last week with that thought, that it's my belief that Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, would tell most Americans, a vast majority of people in our culture, that you're wasting your life. You're chasing vapor. And then I said, well, God gives us something that is worth chasing. What is that? And I said, we're going to talk about it next week. And then I prayed and we went home. Or, well, I went home. You guys just stayed where you were. So this week we want to start off by answering that question that we left off with. What is the thing worth pursuing? If it's not ambition, if it's not career, if it's not pleasures, if it's not monuments to ourselves, if it's not security, if it's not the book knowledge and general wisdom, what is it that's worth investing our life in? Well, I think that Solomon would answer that question like this. He concludes, based on my reading of Ecclesiastes, Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. Solomon concludes that pleasing God is the best pursuit. The best investment of your life, the best way to spend your days and get to the end of your years and not wonder, did I waste my life, is to spend those days pleasing God. The best way to reach joy, to grab onto something that's not vapor, that is substantive, is to spend your days pleasing God. That's what he says. And I believe that he intends that because he says it multiple times throughout the book. Look with me at what he writes in Ecclesiastes. We'll start in chapter 8 and then we'll be in chapter 12. He says, And then in chapter 8, And then he ends the book this way, Ecclesiastes 12, 13. He sums up all the teachings and he says this, Fear God, keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. If you were to go to Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, and say, what's worth it? What should I do? He would say, fear God and keep his commands. We can talk about everything. We can talk about all the different pursuits. We can talk about all the different realities. We can be confronted with all the difficult things in life. We can accept the problem of pain and the vexation of wisdom. We can do all of that. But at the end of the day, here's what matters. Pursue God, keep his commands. This is the whole duty of man. That's what we are to do. That's what he has tasked us with. And this is Solomon's, I think, tip of the cap. It's his acknowledgement of what's called in theological circles, proverbial wisdom. Solomon also wrote the book of Proverbs. And in the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of if-then statements. If you do these good things, God will bless you with these good things. If you make choices like this, you will reap blessings like this. If you do dumb things, you will reap a bad harvest. If you choose folly, if you choose foolishness, if you choose sin and indulgence, then you will reap a harvest that is equitable to those indulgences. One of the ones that I think of is there is a verse in Proverbs that I've always loved because I truly believe in that phrase, you show me your friends and I'll show you your future. We're the average of the five people that we spend our most time around, all of that stuff. There's a verse in Proverbs that says that the companion of the wise will become wise and the companion of fools will suffer harm. And that's generally true, isn't it? If you hang out with people who are wise, who make good choices, eventually you're going to start making good choices like them. If you hang out with knuckleheads who make bad choices and have bad priorities, eventually you're going to start making bad choices like them. And the result of their bad choices and the result of your bad choices is going to be the harm that you suffer. And so in general, that's true, isn't it? That if we hang around with good people who we want to be like, we look at them and they have things in our life that we want, we'll begin to adopt their values and we'll take on some of their characteristics. Similarly, if we spend our time with people that don't share our priorities and make bad decisions, we're going to continue to make those bad decisions. Some of you guys have lived this out in your life, right? I mean, for some of you, your story is you were hanging out with people who are not bad people. They just have different priorities than someone who's just become a believer. And you become a believer, and now you have different priorities in your life, and you come to the painful realization of, gosh, I need another set of friends. I don't want to just walk away from these people. I love these people, but I need other folks speaking into my life who share the priorities that I do. For many of you, that's why you found church. Not that your friends are bad people. They just no longer share your priorities. And so you want to hang out with other people who do share your priorities. And Proverbs tells us that if you'll be the companion of wise people, that you'll be wise. If you'll be the companion of foolish people who make bad choices, then you're going to suffer the consequences of those choices. Likewise, all throughout Proverbs, another one of those if-then transactions is. I don't have a specific verse. I should be a better pastor who looks one up, but I didn't, so just go with me. It says in plenty of places the idea that if you work hard, if you put your head down and work hard and be humble, then at the end of your life, you will reap a harvest of wealth and security. If you work hard, you do your job, consider the ant that works even when it doesn't have to. If you'll do that, then by the end of your life, you will have amassed and built up, and God will honor your good work and your toil. Likewise, if you are lazy, a little sleeping, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like an armed man, okay, says Proverbs. So if you're lazy and you just kind of want money to come to you, you just feel entitled and you deserve all this stuff, then you're never going to reap the benefit of wealth and security. And so here's what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes. That proverbial wisdom, if you please God, your life will go better for you. If you surround yourself with wise people, then you're more likely to prosper. If you do work hard and put your head down, then you're likely to build up. You're likely to be successful. Solomon acknowledges that. The end of the matter is this. Fear God, keep his commandments. Pursue him, do the right things. Honor that proverbial wisdom. But then he gives us this other reality. Then he gives us this caveat to that. Because what we know is that we need a caveat there. Because plenty of us know people who have hung around good friends, who are surrounded with wise folks, and have made terrible choices. Plenty of us know good people who are surrounded with other good people who have experienced what we would consider an unfair amount of pain, pain that seems like it would be waiting on folks who invest their lives around bad people. Likewise, we all know people who spend their time around knuckleheads and seem to be doing great. We also know people who have worked really hard, who have kept their head down, who have done their part. They get to the end of their life and they're still living hand to mouth because of a bad deal or because of a child that costs a lot of money or because of difficult diagnosis or whatever it is. And we know people who have been lazy and do seem prosperous. And that causes us to go, what gives? What do we do when proverbial wisdom doesn't ring true to us? We turn to Ecclesiastes, where I think Solomon writes this book later in his life. And what he says is, yeah, proverbial wisdom, those traditional accepted teachings of living a moral life and God honoring that and us being honored for it, that's true. But he wants us to know something. Even if you live that life. There's a whole section in my Bible where it says the vexation of wisdom, where he says, I even pursued wisdom. I did the right things. I honored God. I kept my nose clean. I walked the straight and narrow. I pursued purity. And even in that, you know what I found? A degree of vanity, a degree of vapor, a degree of chasing after the wind. And so the other reality that I want us to confront this morning in Ecclesiastes is this. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Obedience does not protect you from pain. Somewhere in our faith and in our churches, we've gotten this idea that the more I clean, I keep my nose, the more God will protect me from pain in my life. The more I walk the straight and narrow, the agreement is, God, I'm gonna follow your rules and you're gonna offer me protection. This is why when someone who is good and is wonderful and is loving and seems to be all the things that maybe we feel like we're not, when we watch them get sick or we watch them pass away or we watch bad things happen to them, we kind of feel this sense of unfairness, right? We kind of feel this sense of, why is that allowed to happen? Well, Solomon says it happens because our obedience does not protect us from pain. It doesn't opt us out of it. It doesn't opt us out of struggle. I think one of the most dangerous, pernicious lies in Christendom is that the more I honor God with my life, the more He'll protect me with His sovereignty. And it is not true. We do not get that idea anywhere in the Bible. As a matter of fact, this is what Solomon says. This is what he has to say. And this is why I believe that that's his point. He makes this point that obedience will not protect us from pain multiple times in the book. He says it over in chapter 5. I'm sorry, chapter 9, verse 11. He says, You think you're really smart and that's why you're successful. No. You think you're dumb and and that's why you can't seem to make a way. No. Time and chance happen to us all. No one dodges the raindrops of tragedy and pain in their life. He says it over and over again in the book, but the best way he says it, the most profound way he says it, in chapter three, the first eight verses of chapter three. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to look at that passage with me. And normally I don't read eight verses in a row in church service because I find it disengaging sometimes when pastors do that. But this is so beautiful and so poignant and so important that it felt unfair to you guys to pick out one as a synopsis. So we're going to read it all together. Not aloud, that would be weird. I don't do that kind of weird stuff, but we're going to read it together as I read. Ready? For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast stones away and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, like pandemics. A time to seek and a time to refrain from embracing like pandemics, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. It's such a beautiful, elegant truth that he details out for us there. And there is a place where I want us to land, but there is another takeaway from there. It's not the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't make this point as we go through this beautiful passage together. There's a time for everything, and we ought to let those seasons have their time. We shouldn't jump from one to another. What makes me think of this is this. This last fall, I had a bunch of buddies come in town, and we all kind of took a weekend and just hung out. It's just a guy's weekend. We were supposed to golf most of the time, and it rained, so we just sat around. But it was fun. My friends and I, that's what we like to do anyways. We're just old men. But I have one friend named Dan, and Dan, he is the opposite of me. He is enthusiastic. He is on fire all the time. He loves to yell and be loud and celebrate things and cheer and be happy. He never meets a stranger. Dan is a weirdo that talks to people in elevators and I'll never understand it. He'll just chat up whoever is around him, right? And I love Dan. I had lunch with Dan the other day, but on that particular trip, Dan at the time had a pregnant wife and three small children and had just moved across the country. And both he and his wife were looking for jobs, and they're looking for houses, and they're trying to figure out how to get their kids in school. So when he came to that weekend, his life had been a pressure cooker, and he needed to release, right? So Dan wanted to dance, and he wanted to yell, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to be be excited and I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to sit there and be quiet and have no one ask me any questions. And Dan's like, Nate, come on, let's go. And we're watching some dumb game and he wants me to be invested in it and I don't care. And there was a tension there. And I felt in my soul, as I frequently do, my grumpiness well up. And all I wanted to do was say, Dan, why don't you shut up for like maybe 30 minutes, dude? Can we just chill out? But I kept talking myself out of doing that. Because what I realized is, Dan's my buddy. And what he needs is to blow off some steam. It's his time to dance. It's his time to yell and be boisterous. It's his time to be loud and to laugh and to be joyful. That's his time. And if I rain on that parade, I am the worst of friends. If I don't recognize in myself that it's his soul's time for those things, and I don't allow him that time, I am the jerk of all jerks. So I just sucked it up, and now we joke around about it. Likewise, when someone around us is sad, when someone around us is mourning, when someone around us needs to cry, shame on us for robbing them of that time too. And shame on you for attempting to rob yourself of that time. You guys know that we just walked through something pretty difficult as a family, and that we lost Jen's dad. And there were days when she would just look at me and she would say, I'm sad. I'm just sad. And I would say, then be sad. Then today's the day to be sad. And that's all right. And there will be more days when we're sad. Our souls need those days. They're cathartic for us. They're required by us. And shame on us if we try to rob our friends and our loved ones of the sad days that they need too. Those ought to take their time and have their season. I think what we try to do is we try to skip the bad ones, right? We try to skip past, I don't like this time of mourning. I want to skip to my time of laughter. I don't like this time of stillness. I want to skip to the time of dancing. I don't like this time of sadness. I want to skip to my time of joy. And what Solomon is saying is, no, there's a time for both. You can't experience true joy if you don't let yourself walk through true grief. The dancing isn't as joyful if you haven't set in pensive silence. Right? So I didn't want to move past this passage without making the point to you guys, without imploring you, let the seasons have their time. When it's a time for dying, let it be a time for dying. When it's a time for birth, let it be that. If someone you love needs to be sad, let them be sad. Don't be the clumsy moron that tries to convince them that what they're going through is not that sad. Our souls need the good times and the hard times, and we shouldn't skip them. But what I really want you to see from this passage today is that if what he writes is true, there's a time for mourning, and there's a time for joy, and there's a time for gladness, and there's a time for sorrow true, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy and there's a time for gladness and there's a time for sorrow and there's a time for dancing and there's a time for stillness. If that's true, then all of those times are coming for all of us. Do you understand? It doesn't say for the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous there are more times to laugh. For the righteous there are more times to build things up. For the righteous there are more times of joy. For the righteous, there are more times to laugh. For the righteous, there are more times to build things up. For the righteous, there are more times for embracing. No, it just says that this is objectively true. Everybody walks through these seasons. The righteous and the unrighteous. The godly and the ungodly. The devout Christian and the militant atheist. All of us walk through these seasons. And it may feel weird to you that I'm hammering this point home that like, hey, guess what, guys? At some point or another, life is cruddy for everybody. But it is. It's also joyful for everybody. But no one dodges the raindrops of pain and tragedy in their life. Nobody. And if we will accept that, then what we can learn and see from this passage is pain is not punitive. Pain, hurt, struggle, hardship, that's not punitive. That's not God exacting revenge on you for a failure in your morality somewhere. That's not God punishing you. Pain is not punitive. It is the result of brokenness. We don't experience pain and hardship in our life because at some point in our past, we displeased God with the choices that we make, and now he's exacting his revenge on us. That's not how it works. Pain is not punitive. Pain is a result of brokenness. We've talked about this before, but God created heaven and earth, and he created it perfect, and then sin ruined that perfection. And ever since then, the world is broken. And in a broken world, divorces happen and abuse happens and people get cancer and we have to watch Parkinson's and all these other diseases eat away at people that we love. In a broken world, cruddy things happen. And what Solomon is acknowledging is not only do they happen, but they happen to everybody. And yes, in general, proverbial wisdom is true. In general, if you honor God in the way that you make your choices, then you will be honored as well. But just understand that that isn't a blanket insurance policy against pain because time and chance happen to us all. And we walk through all these seasons equally. And it's important to know when we get there that that pain is not punitive. That pain isn't something that we warrant with our behavior. This actually shows up in the New Testament. Someone is blind, and the disciples look at the blind man, and they say, what happened to him? What did his parents do that he's been blinded like this way? They thought pain was punitive. They thought his actions warranted, or his parents' actions warranted what he did. And Jesus says, now this world is just broken. He says what Solomon says. In this world where we wait for Jesus to come back, like Romans 8 talks about all of creation groans for the return of the Savior, for the return of the King, for Jesus to come and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And spoiler alert, this is where we're going to finish the series. But while we wait, we all walk through these seasons. And it's so important for us to understand that pain is not punitive. Here's why I think this. I don't know if I have permission to share her story. If I don't, I'm sorry. Kay Gamble also sits on our finance committee and approves my expenses on a monthly basis. So, you know, she has a way to nail me if she doesn't appreciate me sharing this story. But Kay is a wonderful lady who goes here and a few months ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor looked at the breast cancer and said, I think it's offerable. I think we can get it. I think it's going to be okay. She went in. She got it. And Kay, if you know her, she's quiet. Of course, she doesn't tell anybody about this. I only hear about this after the fact. They go in. They get it. Everything's good. Doctor says, we got it all. I think you're going to be in good shape. You don't have to do chemo or anything like that. We're going to give you a pill to kind of be on the safe side. You'll take that for five years, but you're good. You can go on with life as normal. So there's some pain and then a relief. Everything's good. Then she gets a call a couple of days later. The doctor said, hey, we took another look at that cancer, and it's the kind that likes to spread a lot. So we're going to have to be pretty aggressive with this, and we're going to need you to start doing chemo. Man, we're all old enough to know what chemo is. We know what that does. We know what that looks like. And we know the kinds of days that Kay is facing. And that stinks because Kay's good. And I want her to know that those cruddy days that she has to walk through are not God punishing her. That's not punitive. She doesn't have to search her soul and say, God, what have I done in the last 10, 20 years of my life to warrant this pain? What have I done to warrant this bad news? How did I disappoint you? How did I displease you? What would you like me to do now, God? Would you like me to give more, serve more, or love more? Which the answer is always yes to that. He would always like us to give and love and serve more. But not as a shield to pain. And how crushing would it be to go through life thinking that every time we experience some form of difficulty, some form of grief, that that was somehow God turning the screws on us so that we learned our lesson better. What I want Kay to understand in this season of cruddiness amidst the chemo is that it's just simply her turn. It's her turn. Her life stinks for a little bit. And guess what? All of our lives stink for a little bit sometimes. They have before, and here's the fun thing, they're going to again. It just will. It's Kay's turn. Recently, it was our turn. For some of you, it's still your turn. I know stories of people and loss and tragedy that we've experienced just in this church. And I just think that there is something tremendously comforting about looking at a season of grief with the understanding of, it's my turn right now. It's my time to mourn. But what I know is, eventually it'll be my time to sing. It's my time to tear things down. But eventually, if I put my head down, it'll be my time to build things up. And in this way, and I think that this is beautiful, Ecclesiastes empathizes with our experiences. It actually empathizes with us. It's a brave, bold thing to say. To admit, yeah, we should obey God. We should pursue the proverbial wisdom. But what a wonderful admission in the Bible that actually syncs up with our experience to say sometimes bad things happen to good people. I've told you before, I had a roommate in college who was a better person than me in every way possible. He graduated. He became a pastor. He was leading churches before I was, and I always admired him more than I cared to admit, and he dropped dead at 30 of a widow-maker heart attack playing ultimate frisbee with his friends. It will never make any sense to me how he left and I stayed, and how his wife Carla and his boys had to walk through that. I remember his five-year-old knocking on his coffin wondering when he was going to wake up. But what Ecclesiastes says is, it was Chris's time to die. It was Carla's turn to walk that hard road. Sometimes bad things happen. And even though the best possible investment of our life is to pursue God and godliness, we need to do it eyes wide open knowing that that does not protect us from tragedy. We're never told that it does. That time and chance happen to us all. What a difficult thing it would be to have to try to sync up my faith to somehow explain away Chris's death as deserved. What a difficult thing it would be to try to help Carla find a path back to faith, which she has found, if part of that explanation would be, well, you guys deserve this because of your behavior. Ecclesiastes looks around and goes, yeah, sometimes life doesn't make sense. Sometimes it seems unfair. And sometimes it's just our turn. And we understand that everybody takes a turn. But here's the thing. I have been kind of sitting in that reality for a while in my personal life. It's been our turn recently. Our turn's still not over. And I've been studying this book, which is stark, man. But somehow, despite all of that, in thinking about what awaits us in the next two weeks and allowing my life to sit in that. And we're going to come back next week. Next week's going to be happy, I promise. Next week's going to be great, all right? We're going to cry some happy tears next week. It's going to feel better than this. In the midst of everything that we have been walking through, because of the promises that are in Ecclesiastes and because of the encouraging things that he writes that we're going to talk about next week. I can honestly tell you that for me personally, I am sitting in the middle of a time of more profound joy than I think I've ever experienced in my life, of more gratitude for my God, more gratitude for my Savior, more of a desire for Him. And I want you guys to experience that joy too. And so next week we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you all about it. Let's pray. Father, life's hard sometimes. We are so thankful that you gave your servant Solomon the courage to admit that. Father, we all have to hurt sometimes. We are thankful that we have a Jesus who weeps with us in our pain. Lord, if it is someone's season to be sad right now, I pray that they would just be sad. And that that would run the course that it needs to run. God, if it is someone's time for joy right now, let them be joyful. Let them be exuberant. Let them feel your presence and your joy. For those of us who are walking through a hard time, Lord, I pray that we would be comforted by this stark knowledge that sometimes it's just our turn. And I know there are folks who feel like, gosh, it feels like it's been my turn a lot lately. Lord, I pray that you would give them lots of turns of joy too. Let all of this, our pain, our triumph, our struggle, and our joy, draw us near to you. Either in gratitude or in need, Father, draw us near to you. And Father, I pray that in that drawing that we would find what David describes as the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Help us see more and more our gratitude for you and our need for you. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

Advent. The coming. The waiting for light to shine in the darkness. We light candles each week to remind us of the coming of Christmas. As the candles burn down, our anticipation grows. We hear songs on the radio, think about sales we want to hit, see the smiles and the well wishes of peace on earth, the bright lights and decorations and everyone talking about joy, joy, joy. Really? People are more cranky and stressed, more frustrated and depressed than ever. Tragic news pops up in our headlines almost daily now and around the world we hear the same story. We live in a world starving for joy. In the New Testament, Luke tells us of angels coming to announce the birth of Jesus to some lowly and defeated, depressed, and joy-starved shepherds. That night, there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, Don't be afraid, he said. I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Lighting up night, the angel proclaimed, And we marvel as well that God would step into our mess, a broken world marred by our sin. And the knowledge that God is accomplishing something new, that he cannot be stopped or deterred, brings us great comfort and great joy. Yes, we still feel sorrow and pain, but God is ever redeeming, ever remaking, bringing joy from sadness, and we look forward to his return when he will make all things new, and we will live in the great unceasing joy that he has promised us. No matter what you go through, we can know this. Jesus is with us. Think about it. He is with you in your greatest victories and your most humiliating defeats. He invited us to come with him and he will give us rest. He has won the victory for us to relieve our frustration and stress. Our striving is over. Let us be overjoyed. Jesus is with us at all times, in all things. That is the beauty of meeting together around these candles. We light a new Advent candle each week to help us prepare for the coming of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. And this week we light the pink candle to remind us of the real, deep-seated joy that Jesus brings that we can hold onto no matter what is going on. This great joy is the startling realization that God has taken up residence in this world. Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Will you receive this king? to be here this morning talking to you about joy. I am also very sorry that I just made that wordplay joke. That was terrible. I can't promise you it's going to be the last one of the sermon, but I can promise you you're going to not enjoy any of them. But the truth is the same. I am so thrilled to be here this morning getting to talk about joy. As you just heard, we are in our third Sunday of Advent. We are lighting the candle of joy, the pink candle of joy, and for me, it is maybe my favorite one. I think maybe the reason for that is because I believe one of the major reasons why people love Christmas so much, why it truly is the most wonderful time of the year, or at least this is how I feel, is because I feel like Christmas is just synonymous with joy. That the purpose of Christmas, the purpose of all of the decorations and the lights and the giving gifts and the songs and just the super fun, joyful songs. All of this is just meant to bring about this joy of this Christmas season. And it's so cool because when you go all the way back to scripture and when you look at the very first Christmas, I think we see the same exact thing. When we jump into Luke 2, and we're going to actually read through some verses in Luke 2, when we look at the first Christmas, as we look at what happened when Jesus was born, I think we're just overwhelmed with the amount of joy that's coming out of it. As it starts, Jesus has been born and there are shepherds that are in the field. They're to Jesus, this angel comes. And so we pick a sign for you. wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, excuse me, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so what happens? The angels go away and the shepherds immediately, I mean, it doesn't say this, but I imagine they sprinted to go find this baby because they're like, that was the most insane thing I've ever seen. I've got to figure out what they're talking about. And so they go and they see that what the angels had said was true, that this baby had been born. And I think they knew, they knew what that meant. And so after they see the baby, they see that it's legit. They run back and they want to tell everybody they know. They tell their families that it says they basically just recited what the angels had said to them. And then what did they do then? They hussled on back. They returned. They had to go see Jesus again. And we pick up back in verse 20, it says, I mean, there's just joy oozing out of every part of that passage. You start, you got the angels who come and they bring, quote, good tidings, good news of great joy. And then after delivering the message they have, they immediately start singing. It was essentially the world's first Buddy the Elf Christmas gram. And then after they get done singing, all of these shepherds in their joy and excitement run over. They see Jesus and then they're so excited that they take their joy elsewhere and tell other people about it. And then they bring them back and they're so overjoyed at just looking at God that they just have to turn to praising God because they're so overcome with this joy that they've experienced. And how incredible is it that now, today, this season, this December 25th, this Christmas time, we're celebrating that exact same joy. And I would argue that even the, excuse me, even the folks that celebrate Christmas that are more doing it just as a holiday, maybe because they aren't believers yet, that I don't think that they would even argue with you that Christmas is synonymous with joy. Because every part of Christmas is meant to push that agenda. But what we have the blessing of knowing is that the reason, the real reason why Christmas is synonymous with joy is because Christ is synonymous with joy and because Christ was born and Christ came and we have the gospel, we have the Savior who we know came and we know why that is a big deal and why that is important. And so we celebrate with everything we have. We have this childlike wonder and this childlike joy to just sing these goofy songs and to put up these goofy decorations and to do all of these things so that we can celebrate with the people around us this great and wonderful and awesome Christmas joy like none other. But as we all know too well, regardless of how soon, regardless of what date, even if it's like November 1st that we decide, all right, I'm going ahead, I'm getting my Christmas tree, I'm putting up my Christmas decorations as soon as possible, I'm immediately switching to only Christmas music for the next three months, as we all know, as quickly as Christmas comes, it goes. As quickly as we are just once again encapsulated by the joy of Christmas, we get on the other side of it. We get into the new year and we pack up all of our Christmas stuff and we kind of turn from that Christmas joy back into our far less joyful, far more mundane, boring, regular lives. Counting down the days until it's the next Christmas season so that you can experience that Christmas joy all over again. This is going to be weird to say, but just roll with me. I feel like our relationship with Christmas in this way is similar to my relationship that I had for a long time with the sport of disc golf. Yes, I said disc golf. It is not the same as actually as was said to me this morning, golf golf or real golf or regular golf or as us in the disc golf community like to call it, ball golf, but it is similar. Instead of there being a hole in the ground and instead of hitting a ball with a club, yeah, the form was good, I know. That was just a show off to you guys. But instead of that, it is played with a frisbee, or with different frisbees, so you throw it, and the goal is to get it down into a basket in a certain number of shots. You know, you've got your birdies, you've got your pars, bogeys, all of that stuff, and you play a round of disc golf. Now, for those of you who know me, this sport was basically tailor-made for me. One, because it's outside, and it's in these beautiful parks in nature, and you just get to be a part of that, and that's really cool. Another thing is, like, it's a sport in the sense of you're throwing frisbees, and throwing Frisbee is literally my favorite thing to do and has been my entire life. But it's not so intense to where you still just get to hang out with the people that you're with. Talk, mess around, and it was perfect during COVID because you could stay far away from people but still be around people. And you add an element of competition. And as much as I love disc golf, it was something that I very seldomly did. Basically, it was my times playing disc golf were reserved to the times where I was able to go visit home or we would go on maybe a once or twice a year, we would go on a family vacation when it worked out for the family's schedules. And so anytime we'd go on one of these vacations, my brother and my dad and I would look up and we would try to find these different local disc golf courses so that we could play. And it was awesome. It's so much fun. Like I said, it's right down my alley to play this sport. And so it became one of those things where like one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips and about getting to see my family was being able to look up these different courses and get to go and play these courses the couple times a year I was able to do so. Well, imagine my elation as I put together in my head that, wait, Kyle, you can play disc golf more than just a couple times a year. Because, Kyle, there's literally a disc golf course that's a quarter mile from your house that you drive by all the time. Now, as you hear that, I know you're putting it together in your head and you're giving me way too much benefit of the doubt as you think, oh, I bet what he did is say, I like disc golf. I wonder if there's any courses in Raleigh and realize that this one was close. No. Literally, this is a course that is very easily seen that I drove by, I'd point at people playing disc golf, and I'd be like, can't wait to play that in six months. I know, I was very obtuse to this understanding that this is something that was within my grasp this whole time, but thus, there I was, realizing for the first time this truth, that I could go and I could play this sport of disc golf, this thing that I absolutely loved doing, I could go and I could play it whenever I wanted to. Well, let me tell you that that is exactly what happened. I started playing all the time. I, I'd get done with work, and I'd go and play like two rounds every day. I'd hit up people, see if they'd want to come, or I'd go out there by myself, and I absolutely loved it. Because guess what happens when you really love something, and something brings you a lot of joy, and then you get to do it all the time. It brings you a lot of joy. And clearly I'm saying that to say the point of my message this morning is keep all of your Christmas decorations up all year. No, obviously not. And I mean, like you do you if that's down your alley, like more power to you. But obviously the point of that is not to say, hey, if Christmas brings you joy, then just celebrate Christmas all year. But what I am here to say is that the joy that is brought through Christmas is not brought because of the season. It's brought because of the truth of Christ. And there is a big and vast difference between the first time that these people celebrated Christmas and us celebrating today. And what that difference is, is that they were celebrating the birth of a baby that gave them hope. We celebrate not only the coming of Jesus, but the life of Jesus. And we celebrate the death of Jesus as he took on the weight of our sin, of your sin, of my sin, and said, I am putting this to death because I want the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And in that death, and in his resurrection, coming back to life, signifying that if we would put our sin behind us, if we would simply say, I realize that I am not perfect, I realize I deserve nothing but death, but I also realize what Jesus has done for me and has given me the opportunity to have eternal relationship with God, with our creator, with this perfect creator. And that is the joy that we celebrate on Christmas. That is the gospel. And put so beautifully, I think, by a musical group, Beautiful Eulogy, in their title song, they say, as long as the gospel is true, why do we treat Christmas as our quick fix, as our quick time where we are able to experience this great joy. Why do we use Christmas as the one time that we just celebrate Jesus and we're willing to be more childlike in our hearts? Being a little bit more goofy, decorating a little bit weirder, all because inside of us we're just joyful that it's Christmas time. Because the joy of Christmas and the joy of the gospel is forever. In Lamentations, Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy. But nonetheless, here we go. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy,. Again, I say rejoice. I've got news for you. God invented joy. God sent his son to be born and created the joy that that brought to those people. He sent his son to die so that we could have joy eternally. He didn't create joy to say, man, when it comes to December, my people are going to be so excited. He sent joy so that literally every single day he could shower on us joy and he could shower new mercies on us every morning. God is giddy to bring you joy. He wants to celebrate with us. He invented singing. He invented dancing, both of which I'm eternally thankful to him for. Because they're great and I'm great at both of them. But not only that, but guess what happens? Guess what happened when I started playing disc golf a lot more? I got a lot better. As I played more, I started understanding more intricacies of the game. I grew this much greater love and appreciation for what was going on, from what I was seeing other people doing and trying to emulate that because I wanted to achieve those things, I started achieving goals that, like, I never even thought I could achieve, you know? I was getting my first birdies, shooting my first under par round, shooting my first 10 under par round. A few weeks ago, I think some of you guys saw on Facebook because I posted about it. I wasn't quite as joyful on my Facebook post because, you know, the putting was off. But I played in my first tournament, which is hilarious because I didn't even know that that's a thing that existed. Like when I used to just play a couple times a year, like I was like, oh, that's a thing people do. And hey, guess what? Yes, it's a thing that people do, including your boy Kyle. And I played in it, and it was so much fun, and it was so cool to just like unlock this whole new joy I didn't even know was a real thing. My putter was off, but hey, you know what that did? That just made me want to press in, because I didn't want to fall short on my putter again. The next round I play in a tournament, I want to do better. I want to see what it feels like to do even better than that. Hey, a few days after that, I went and played disc golf with my brother and with my sister-in-law, and that in itself brought me great joy. But hole 13, I got my first ace, my first hole in one. I mean, I like, you know, I put it, I got my stance. I ripped it up. Nice little Anheuser, little turnover shot up the hill, about 250 feet uphill. Smashed that thing. It's flying. It's going. Smashes into the chains. Lands in the basket. And I go nuts. I mean, like, you probably can imagine, like, you're watching me right now, and you're like, this guy's just talking, and he's going this crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. But I went insane. I was screaming, I was yelling, I was cheering. Like, literally, I wanted to make sure everyone on the course knew that I had just gotten an ace. I mean, like, I'm running around and yelling. Like, to the point that I turn around at one point, I see that my disc golf bag is here on my bench, and all my body can think to do is, I got to kick that. And so I just kick it, like, through the air. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled, and it was awesome, and I can't wait to get another one. But what was incredible to think about was the fact that that was a joy. Throwing a hole-in-one in disc golf is a joy I never even thought to be possible when I was just playing disc golf once or twice a year. Playing in a tournament, I didn't even know tournaments existed back when I was just doing it once or twice a year. Literally, as I kept playing, I've continued to unlock these greater and greater joys that I never even knew were possible or never even knew existed. And that's just a silly game. I love it. It's fun. Let's go play sometime. But it's just a silly game. Imagine how much more joy the Lord has in store for you if you will just say, I want to put that type of effort every day into seeking after him. I want my faith to be so important to me that instead of just waiting for December, I want every day to be a day that I'm seeking the same type of joy that I get to experience during Christmas time. Psalm 1611 says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, true, complete, 100% fullness of joy, may not be completely available until heaven, where joy, as John Piper put it, joy has no other competitors. I believe that this verse is making us, making it known that this does not start until heaven. I mean, excuse me, that this starts way before heaven. We get to experience this fullness of joy now. And guess what? Fullness of joy changes definitions because God continues to unlock joys we never even knew were existent. He has pleasures for us forever. He wants to shower on us a love that knows no bounds that we can't even comprehend. He wants to bring peace to us and hope to us that sustains us in every part and in every portion and in every circumstance of our life. And he wants to overwhelm us with joy to the point that as an overflow, we can't help but sing and we can't help but dance and we can't help but just be childlike and giddy because we're so overwhelmed with the blessings of God. And at the end of the day, I say all of this, but I don't say this to say that the gospel changes. The gospel remains the same. Every Christmas we're celebrating the same thing. And so I don't say this to say that if you spend more time with God and if you spend more time in scripture and more time growing in your personal faith, that that will change the facts of the gospel. Because the gospel is the root of our joy. The gospel is the reason why we're able to rejoice. But what I am saying is when we choose to pursue this type of joy, when we choose to pursue the joy of the gospel and the joy of salvation and the joy that is a relationship with God, when we choose that daily, and when we decide that we want to start taking that next step of obedience, whatever that looks like in our life, I can promise you that those joys that you experience through a growing faith will be far deeper and they'll be far sweeter and they will be far more profound and they will come so much more frequently than anything that you could ever imagine. So, what if next Christmas, what if instead of next Christmas being just the next time where we get to celebrate the joy of Jesus, what if instead it is a time where we get to take stock of what the Lord has done in our lives and in our hearts the last year, where we look back at the Christmas prior and then we see the ways that because we sprinted after and we pursued the joys of the Lord all year, and we said, oh my gosh, look at the unbelievable things that the Lord has done in my life this year. Literally, if I would have thought last Christmas that the Lord would have done this in my life, I would have said there's absolutely no way. So what if next year? What if next Christmas? What if this Christmas? What if from now until this Christmas when we look back from, what, a week, two weeks? We say, gosh, look at all the joys that the Lord has brought me and my heart and my family just in these two weeks. And I think that's the point of Christmas. Not simply to celebrate a birth of Jesus, but to celebrate his life in eternity. Everything that he did. Everything that that means for us. And because the gospel is true, and because the gospel is final, we do not have to wait for Christmas time to rejoice. But instead, we always have reason to rejoice. God's blessings, his joys, his mercies are new every morning and all he wants to do is shower them on you because all he wants to do is celebrate with you his creation and somebody who he has a relationship with that he loves more so than we can even grasp. And so let our joy of this Christmas be the beginning. Let it be the root by which our joy grows throughout this year. And I can't wait until next Christmas to hear what has grown out of that root of joy that started last Christmas. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for creating joy. Thank you for Christmas, God. Thank you for even the holiday of Christmas so that we can be reminded of your great joy, so we can be reminded of the gospel and of its truth. But God, let us not forget once Christmas time is over that the joy of the gospel is final and is forever. But instead, God, let this be the nudge in the right direction to say, I want this joy always. Every day, I'm going to pursue it. I'm going to pursue you. God, let us pursue you always. And let us, let you do what brings you so much joy, and that is simply raining down blessings, raining down mercies, and raining down joy upon your children. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be back in the saddle again, getting to talk to you. I'm so grateful to have people like Kyle who can step in for me last week. One of the values that I feel we have at Grace is the desire to hear multiple voices, multiple influences, multiple perspectives. So I was excited to have Kyle in here to do a phenomenal job talking about the joy of Paul and Silas last week. This week, before we jump into the sermon, I'm really excited to announce that we are going to resume in-person gatherings on August the 16th. 10 a.m. right here. You're invited to come participate in church live. We're thinking of it as having church in our home or yours. So by August the 16th, we're going to be prepared to do a live streaming simulcast of our service. So you can come and experience in this room in person, or you can experience it in your home where you have been experiencing it all summer long. I understand that a lot of us simply won't be ready to come back by August the 16th, and that's all right. We're going to have a full service, worship, announcements, sermon. Our very first service back, we're going to be focused largely on worship, corporate worship together, because I miss nothing more than worshiping with you guys and being in the lobby and talking with all of you. on August the 16th. If you're not quite there yet, you can stay at home and have the exact same experience. There's going to be details to follow about all the precautions that we're going to take on Sunday mornings. One of the things I know that we're going to do, I was just talking to the elders about this this last week, is we're going to ask that everybody in this place be wearing a mask. So if you're not comfortable with wearing a mask, if you're going to be mad about that, then go ahead and email me and let's start having that discourse right now. But that's going to be part of the deal when we come back. We're all going to wear masks. We're going to distance ourselves. We're not yet going to have child care. Everyone's going to be invited to participate in the service. The mechanics of child care just won't work out yet. But I'm super excited to get to see everybody again. I'm super excited at the idea of preaching to people. I'm super excited to worship with you, to see you, to catch up with you. If you feel comfortable with it, I hope that you'll consider joining us on August the 16th as we resume our in-person gatherings. And I hope if you're going to consume them from home that you'll look forward to that being a live stream with full worship and everything we do as a service. Hopefully it can begin to feel like grace again. Now this morning we are finishing up our series in the book of Acts called Still the Church. We've been looking at this book that chronicles the beginning of church. Jesus goes up to heaven, he leaves behind his disciples, and he tasks the disciples with the job of building his kingdom on earth, to build the church, right? And we've been pulling out from this book the practices, principles, and philosophies that we should apply to our church today, the things that we should still be doing. And so we looked at Jesus going up into heaven. He left the disciples behind. After a few days, they received the Holy Spirit, and they go out. We spent two weeks looking at the seven distinctives of the early church that should still be true of our church today. And then we moved through the book looking at these key events, these substantial events in the life of the early church that really formed and played a big part in who we are and what we should do. And after the conversion of a guy named Saul into Paul that God said was his chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles, the rest of the book of Acts really mostly chronicles his ministry, the most influential ministry of all time. And Acts ends in the 28th chapter. And at the very end of the 28th chapter, we kind of get the synopsis of Paul's ministry. We get our final words from him, and then Luke, the author of the book, kind of shares with us what happens at the end of Paul's life. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn it to Acts chapter 28. You can go to the very end of the chapter. We're going to be looking at verses 28 through 31. And in verses 26 and 27, Paul is speaking, and he's speaking to a Hebrew audience. You'll remember from this series and from sermons past that the Hebrew people were God's chosen people, and they believed erroneously that God and his kingdom and his salvation was only for them. The problem was they didn't really receive it or accept it the way that they should. The problem was that when God finally sent the promised Messiah for whom they had been waiting for millennia, that they rejected him. And because of that, God is now, through Paul, opening up the gospel to the rest of the world. The intent was always to reach the world. He gave the Israelites, his chosen people, the news first, but it was their job to spread it. They didn't do it. So now Paul says, I'm going to do it instead of you, and they get to hear it instead of you. And so in 26 and 27, he quotes back to them from a passage in Isaiah that they all know very well, that essentially says that God's people will be ever seeing and never perceiving and ever hearing and never understanding that they're going to listen but that they won't hear. They're going to be exposed to the gospel but they won't receive the gospel. And then in response to that, Paul says this in verse 28. He says, So he's talking to the Hebrew people and he says, you've had a chance to listen and you've chosen not to. You're ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing and never understanding. So now I'm going to take this gospel, I'm going to take this truth and I'm going going to preach it to the Gentiles, and they're going to believe it. I'm going to preach it to the whole world. And then Luke finishes up the chapter like this. Speaking of Paul, he lived there. By now Paul is in Rome. He's in house arrest in Rome. So it says, So the book of Acts chronicles the beginning of the early church. I think of it as a baby deer learning to walk, finding its footing, becoming an institution. It grows into 3,000. It spreads in Jerusalem. It spreads in the Diaspora. It spreads in Asia Minor all the way out to Rome. Paul has three or four missionary journeys depending on which scholar you ask if the shipwreck on Malta counts as one. And he plants churches the whole way. And then he finishes his life in Rome. Many scholars, most scholars believe that Paul died in Rome a few years after this was written. And for the last years of his life, he preached the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. He preached the gospel. And as we look at the book of Acts, we've been asking every week, based on the example in the book of Acts, what should we be doing? And if you're watching this, listen, let's be real for a second. It's in the middle of July and we've been doing online church for four months. If you're watching this, you care about church. If you're watching this, you care about the things of God. If you're watching this, you're asking the question, okay, that's great that Acts 28 ends that way, but how can that relate to me? How should that inspire me? What can I take out of that that should spur on action and passion within my own heart? What is happening in here that can stir my soul? If you're watching in the middle of July, in the fourth month of a pandemic, then what I know is you want to apply this to yourself. You care deeply about the things of God and about mimicking the early church. So what is it in this passage that we can pull out and apply to us? I think it's this simple truth, that like Paul, each of us must spend the rest of our lives preaching the gospel, just like Paul did. It says that he finished his life preaching the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, just like he had done in all of his previous years. In Paul, we see a life poured out. He even says that he is a drink offering and that he has been poured out for the sake of the gospel. We see a man who says, I have run my race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In Paul, we see a life that was poured out for the sake of the gospel. And if there's anything that we should take from Paul, it's the truth and the reality that if he spent his last years preaching the gospel, that we should spend our years preaching the gospel. If he invested his life in preaching the gospel, then we should invest our lives in preaching the gospel. And even as I say that, I think it stirs up two questions within us. First, what is the gospel? How do we succinctly and clearly define that? And second, how do I preach it? And I think that those are both legitimate questions. And I don't know how many of you are watching this right now, but I would be willing to bet if I could sit down with each of you and ask you, how would you define the gospel? If someone were to ask you, what is the gospel? What would you say that it was? I bet I would get a bunch of answers that were at the very least really close to right. But I also bet I would get a bunch of different meandering responses trying to really hone in on what the gospel is. And so I think it would be helpful for us to have a clear and concise understanding of the gospel so that when we talk about this idea of preaching the gospel, what do we mean? What are we preaching? How do we define that? And so this week I sat down and honestly I researched a bunch. I read over 50 different definitions of the gospel. Some short, some super long, and some had a ton of details, some didn't have very many details because I had an idea of how I wanted to describe it for the church, but I wanted to make sure I was right and on solid footing. And so I've come up with a definition of the gospel that I believe is true, I believe is accurate, I believe is fair and workable. It's stripped away of detail, but I think all of the details are embedded in it if you pay attention. And so for the sake of this morning, for the sake of our church, as we think about how do I preach the gospel, what is it, I want to define the gospel this way. We know that the gospel is good news. It comes from the word euangelion, which literally means the good news. So what is the good news? The good news of the gospel is that God invites you into a perfect eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured your citizenship. That's the gospel. That God, creator God in heaven, has also created a perfect eternal kingdom that he's invited you into and Jesus, through his death on the cross and covering over of your sins by that death, has secured your citizenship. The gospel says that there is an eternal kingdom in which God sits on the throne, and that in that kingdom, the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf with groanings that are too deep for words, that when you pray, the Holy Spirit hears those words and takes them to God the Father and says, here's what they really meant. Here's what she really needs. Here's what's really on her heart. And that in this perfect eternal kingdom, we're told again in Romans 8 that Jesus himself sits at the right hand of the Father interceding for you. That Jesus sits next to God the Father and he says, he's okay. He doesn't mean what he's doing. Have patience with him. Be gracious with him. I'm vouching for him. I died for her. The gospel is the reality of an eternal kingdom in which the Holy Spirit intercedes for you, and Jesus himself advocates for you, and Jesus can advocate for you because he has secured your citizenship with his own life. That's the gospel. And listen, because that's the gospel, that changes everything. You understand? Because we know, because as believers we are aware of the reality that there is a perfect, eternal kingdom, It changes everything in this world. Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process pain and loss? Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process hurt and tragedy? Paul says in Corinthians that though we endure struggles for a small time, James says that we should consider struggle a pure joy because we know that it's only temporary. We know that it won't last forever. Don't you understand that the gospel says that years like 2020 are not all we have? That the gospel says that there is a perfect kingdom beyond political division and racial strife and pandemics. That 2020 isn't all that there is. That there's more on the other side of this. That even if the world were to end in 2020, that there is another eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us on the other side. The reality of the gospel should change the way we process pain. It should help us see everything as temporary and not permanent. The pain that we're experiencing in our life, heartbreak and tragedy and abuse and disease, they don't get to put a period on the end of the sentence. God finishes that sentence later in eternity. Because the gospel is true, we can say things at funerals like I did a few weeks ago. We've lost a great partner of our church, a guy named Wes Clark. And I got to do his graveside service for his family a few weeks ago. And at that service in front of his wife who loves him and his six wonderful kids who loved him dearly, who didn't have a negative thing to say about their father and his grandkids who loved him dearly, I got to tell them, because the gospel is true, I got to tell them that this service isn't goodbye. It's goodbye for now. It's just goodbye for now. We're going to see him again. When I was growing up, there was this old gospel quartet, and I'll never forget one of the stanzas of one of their songs. It says, Because that's true. Because there's an eternal kingdom in which Jesus has secured our citizenship, death doesn't have a sting like it did. Sin doesn't have its shackles like it did. Everything changes. I love that quote from Pope John Paul II that says, we are the Easter people. We will not give way to despair for we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. We can have this uncommon joy in the face of tragedy. We will not despair. We will always sing praise because we know that there is an eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us and Jesus has secured our citizenship there. If you're watching and you don't know if you're a part of that kingdom, talk to some people around you. Email me because Jesus has died for you too. But the gospel doesn't just change the way we view pain or the way that we view struggle or the temporary nature with which we view this earth that the Bible tells us we are aliens in a foreign land here because we are members of another kingdom. We're citizens of another kingdom. It also imbues us with purpose. Because the gospel is true, each of us have something much larger than ourselves to live for. We have something much larger than our children to live for, much larger than our businesses or our families or our legacies to live for. We have the kingdom of God to live for, which is why it was so easy for Paul when he was struck with the reality of the gospel to spend his entire life preaching it. And because of the reality of the gospel, we should spend our entire lives preaching it. So if that's what the gospel is, if the gospel, if the good news of it is that God invites us into an eternal perfect kingdom, and Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom, and it's our job to preach it. We might ask ourselves, Nate, how do I realistically do that? How do you want me to preach the gospel? Because you might be looking at me on your screen thinking, it's easy for you to connect those dots, pal. Like you're a pastor. You just preached it. Go you. That's a pretty easy equation to figure out. But how do I do that? How do I preach the gospel if I'm not given a platform? And to that, I would simply say this. I'm going to give us four ways to preach the gospel, but I would also remind you that I get to preach the gospel to people who love Jesus in the middle of July and are watching online. That's who I get to preach the gospel to. I don't get to preach the gospel to your coworkers. I don't get to preach the gospel to your neighbors. I don't get to preach the gospel to some of your circles of friends. For some of you, I don't get to preach the gospel to your adult children. You're the one left to do that. So while it may be easy to connect the dots on how a pastor can preach the gospel, we should also acknowledge that my audience is different than yours and that your audience needs the gospel too. They need to know that an eternal perfect kingdom exists and that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. So if that's what we're supposed to do, how do we preach it? Because when we think of preaching the gospel, we often think of using words, of telling people about Jesus, of going out and proclaiming. But I would submit that there's a lot of ways to preach the gospel, to show this truth to people. And I'm going to give you four of them. There's more than four. You could probably sit after the sermon if you're really ambitious. You could think of more than these. And I would also tell you that because I'm going to give you four applications, four ways to preach the gospel, my challenge to you is just to pick one. Pick one that resonates with you. If I say one and it doesn't click with you, then just wait. I'll be to the next one in a few minutes. But pick one that resonates with you, that clicks, and try to preach the gospel to the people around you in that way. But here are four ways this morning that we can preach the gospel and be obedient to that calling like Paul was. The first way is that we can preach the gospel with eternally inspired kindness. Eternally inspired kindness. And I say eternally inspired kindness because it's kindness that we treat people with in light of the fact that the gospel is true. extreme lenses we can see them through. One is to see everyone through the best possible lens to give them the benefit of the doubt. My wife, Jen, does this. She's one of the kindest, gentlest people that I know. She's so nice to everyone, and she sees everyone through this lens of benefit of the doubt. She just thinks the best of every person. Whenever I'm criticizing anybody, she says, that person is just doing blank. That person is just having a hard day. That person is just stressed. That person might be rushing home and cut you off because they have three pregnant wives and they're all about to give birth at the same time. You don't know their reality. You should be nice to them. So she's always finding the benefit of the doubt. I, on the other hand, am on the opposite end of the spectrum with my kindness, and I tend to view people through the spectrum of objects that are in my way to get the things done that I want to get done today, right? And we fall on that spectrum somewhere. But eternally inspired kindness, I don't think sees people through that grid. Eternally inspired kindness sees people through a grid of, that is a person for whom Jesus died. And they might not know that there's an eternal kingdom beyond this world that could fill them with a hope that will not put them to shame. And I need to be kind to them in such a way, I need to treat them in such a way that my actions towards them can push them towards a knowledge of this eternal kingdom. We can absolutely preach the gospel with our kindness to one another. We can preach the gospel with our kindness when there's somebody at work who we know good and well talks about us behind our back. To our face, they're kind, they say nice things, but behind our back, they're saying things about us that are not kind. And we know what they really think of us. And our coworkers know that we know. And we can choose to treat them like they've offended us. We can choose to distance ourselves from them, or we can choose to treat them with eternally inspired kindness. Understanding that not only is this person someone who needs to know that there's an eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom, but the people who are watching me now and know that I'm a believer, they need to see that there's something different about my kindness and the way that I treat that person. The neighbor that you have that just loves to sink their teeth into a conversation and overshare and wears everybody out, they're an energy sucker from everyone who's around them. And most of your neighbors just try to spend their time avoiding that person and not getting caught up in that conversation because they have other things to do. Eternally inspired kindness just locks in and lets them share and lets them go and listens and empathizes and lets your neighbors around see that you're treating this person different than anyone else does. And we're doing that because we're offering kindness in light of eternity. I think eternally inspired kindness absolutely preaches the gospel. It shows people that there's no way this person could treat others the way they do unless there's something else going on in their life. And I wanna know what that thing is. How are they possibly so nice? Is that real? That's eternally inspired kindness. Another way we can preach the gospel is through eternally inspired joy. Kyle preached about this last week, this joy in the face of trial and hardship and tragedy. He talked about Paul and Silas being locked in the jail in Philippi and an earthquake coming through and loosening the chains. Everyone is scared. Everyone is terrified. Things are crumbling around them. And Paul and Silas are worshiping God in the midst of this. And because of that contagious, eternally inspired joy, he gets saved and his entire household gets saved. What better time? I loved the sermon last week. I love the point of it. And I thought it was incredibly apropos of the moment. What better time is there to display eternally inspired uncommon joy than 2020? Than a pandemic we're all tired of, than political divisiveness that is wearing us all out, than racial issues that are bubbling up and causing different emotions on totally different ends of the spectrum. What better time is there to display this uncommon, eternally inspired joy, this peace that passes all understanding, acknowledging that there is an eternity on the other side of this, that God is going to fix this one day, what better chance to display that joy than in our current context? When we have eternally inspired joy, we have a joy and a peace and a fulfillment that this world and the circumstances of this world can't touch. And in a year like this, that joy stands out like a city on a hill. And we preach the gospel and point to God with eternally inspired joy. We can preach the gospel with eternally inspired generosity. Not just with our finances, but with our time and our energy and our effort. We can be incredibly generous people. I think increasingly to be a believer is to have this awareness that everything I have is God's and I am to leverage it for the sake of eternity. I'm to use everything I can, every ounce of my resources to push people towards this kingdom that God has created and to make them aware that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. And when we think of generosity, often we think of finances, and that's true. We should. That's a wonderful application. I think that Christians should be the most financially generous people on the planet. I think we absolutely should be the most generous people on the planet, but it also means being generous with our time, being generous in the things that we pour ourselves into. I think it means being generous with our forgiveness, offering it when it's not deserved. The older that I get, the more I want generosity to define who I am. And listen, I'm woefully short of that. I'm not sure if anybody listening to this would think to themselves, you know what I think of Nate? I think of generosity. But I know that I want that to be true. To me, a generous spirit in all ways is one of the defining characteristics of someone who knows and loves God and is aware of his kingdom and has this eternal mindset in the way that they handle all the things that were given to them. We can absolutely preach the gospel through eternally inspired generosity. The last way that I would give you this morning is through eternally inspired boldness. It's to actually preach the gospel. It's to use the words and form the sentences and to have the conversation. It's to let it be known. Some of us aren't very public with our faith because we don't want to be offensive. We're afraid that faith will cause a disruption in our friend group, a disruption in our neighborhood, a disruption in our office space. We kind of avoid talking about religion the same way we avoid talking about politics because to bring up politics is to invite strife, it's to invite division, and we feel the same way about our faith. But I would simply say to you that I totally understand this aversion to discomfort. But if we really believe the gospel's true, if we really truly believe that there is an eternal, perfect kingdom that John describes in Revelation. Revelation 21, I talk about this passage a lot. And in this kingdom, there will be no more crying and no more weeping and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And God will be with his people and his people will be with their God. And it will be perfect. If that kingdom really exists, if we truly believe that there is a perfect eternity waiting for us on the other side of death and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that eternity and all we have to do is believe in what he did on the cross and we will enjoy that eternity forever. If we believe that is true, isn't it worth a little discomfort with our friends and neighbors to get them to go as well? Isn't it worth our boldness? Isn't it worth being a pariah if we can bring a few with us on the way? If the gospel's true, isn't it worthy of our boldness? If this book is true, there's a creator God in heaven who loves us, who loves us so much that he sent his only son to die for us, to cover over our sins so that we might spend eternity experiencing him forever in perfect joy. If that's true, isn't it worth our whole life? Isn't it worth preaching in every way possible? Isn't it worth bringing as many people as we can with us on our way to this perfect kingdom? That's why Paul spent his last years preaching the gospel. And that's why I think for us, as individuals who care about God and who do believe that this is true, we should spend every day of our life preaching the gospel too. I hope that we'll find ways to do that. And I hope that God will use you in incredible ways and you'll get to sit on the front lines of ministry because we have faithfully preached the good news that there is an eternal perfect kingdom and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom. Let's pray. Father, you are better to us than we deserve. God, we bring everything that we are and we lay it at your feet. We know that you see both the good parts and the not as good parts. We know that you see the purity of motives that exist in our hearts and we know that you see the messy stuff too. God, for those struggling with faith, build it up, strengthen it. Let us believe that this is true. God, for those who desperately wanna preach the gospel, show us places where we can do that. For those of us like me who struggle with kindness, God, give us eternal eyes. Let us see people as you do. For those of us like me who struggle with generosity, God, let us hold things with an open hand and let that word define us. For those that struggle with boldness, give them courage. For those who struggle to be joyful, help them find reasons to celebrate in the midst of hardship. Father, make us a church who preaches your gospel every day and let people come to know you because of how you use us here. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.