Sermons tagged with Parables

Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be together in this way on Sunday morning again. A few years ago, it dawned on me that Staples was a double entendre. The name for the store, Staples, had a deeper meaning. I never had pieced it together. I just assumed that maybe Staples started out selling actual like metal staples and then things were going well for them. So they expanded into like paper and pens and other office supplies and then desks. And now here we go. We got a whole big box store. But it dawned on me, oh my gosh, driving around, I don't know how I figured it out or why, like it's some great mystery, that it means that they sell staples, like things that offices need. And I thought, man, isn't that clever? It was this really obvious thing that had been sitting under my nose for years. The other one that I noticed was the arrow in FedEx, where the E goes into the X, it makes an arrow. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. If you've never seen it before, you should look at it. It's pretty amazing. The other example of this that I could think of was Sarah Lee, the baked goods company. Growing up, they had a jingle, nobody does it like Sarah Lee. And I, for years, thought that the jingle was, nobody does it like Sarah Lee. But I learned that the actual sentence, and some of y'all know this, some of y'all are already grinning at home and elbowing your spouses and your children because you're proud and you know, and some of you are faking it. But the actual logo, the actual jingle is, nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee, which is absurd. Nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee is better, but it's really nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee. You can Google it. That's true. And so one of these things I love in life is those obvious things, those little truths that if you're observant, you'll pick up on that have just been sitting there for years under our nose that maybe we've never noticed. I'm sure you guys and your family, maybe after the sermon, you can think of a couple other examples of that. But I think that there's an example of that in Scripture. This morning we arrive at one of the most famous parables, one of the most poignant and meaningful parables to me, the parable of the prodigal son. And I think most of us know this parable. Most of us could tell it. Most of us know the main point of this parable. But I think tucked into this parable is another lesson, another thing that once we see it, we'll think of this parable in a completely different way. It's something that I encountered a few years ago from a pastor and an author named Tim Keller, the way that he viewed the story, and it changed the way that I viewed it as well. And hopefully we can do that for you this morning. I think what we'll see coming out of the parable of the prodigal son is two profound questions that hopefully we'll all wrestle with this week, maybe with ourselves or our friends or our family or hopefully in our small groups. I hope that you guys are doing Zoom calls with your small group. I hope that we're participating and staying connected the best we can, and I hope that you'll enjoy talking about this parable this week. But the parable of the prodigal son comes at the end of Luke chapter 15. At the beginning of Luke chapter 15, the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of eating and carousing and hanging out with sinners, with people that he shouldn't be spending his time with as a presumed holy man. And so Jesus tells three parables all about the father's love and concern for the lost, all about him going after the person or the thing that doesn't know him or isn't with him. And the parable of the prodigal son is kind of the capstone on this. And so he tells the story of a man who had great wealth and he had two sons. And the younger son goes to the father and asks for his inheritance early. He goes to the father in this story and he says, hey, listen, I know that I'm supposed to wait for you to die. I don't want to do that. I just want my stuff now. And essentially what he's saying here, the subtext of this is, I would rather just have your stuff right now than I would want to spend more time with you. I don't want to live out my years here on this home here in our property or in our complex or whatever it was at the time. I would much, much rather just have your stuff and be able to go do what I want. So the father responds with remarkable grace because the question that the son has asked is really genuinely disrespectful. He says, I'd rather you just be dead. I'd rather you just die. I don't even want to have to live out the next several years. Just give me my stuff so that I can go enjoy my life right now. And if I were the father, I would respond to that request by essentially saying, first of all, no. Second, you're not getting anything. Forget it. If I'm going to give you anything, it's going to be a significantly reduced portion. Your slice of the pizza just got real thin. It's the last slice that nobody wants. That's yours. But the father responds with this remarkable goodness and grace. And he says, okay. He says, fine, if that's what you want. If you want all my stuff now, you can have it. So he divides everything in half and he sells off some property and he gives the inheritance to his son. And his son does what we would expect him to do. This is what he does. You can find it in chapter 15, verse 13. I hope that you have your Bible there at home. I hope that you guys as maybe families or individuals are going through the text with me as I kind of summarize the story. But in verse 13, we learn what the son did with the money. It says, So he goes to the father and he says, I don't really want you. I want your stuff. Can you just give it to me right now? And the father, in remarkable goodness and grace, everything that he worked hard for, everything that he had accumulated that he wanted to leave a legacy for his son, he takes all of that and he goes off to a far country and he squanders it on reckless living. And that's a really nice biblical way to say that he partied. That's what he did. Later we find out that he spent some of that money on prostitutes. No doubt he spent it on alcohol and whatever kind of drugs he could get his hands on at the time. He just went out and he did whatever he wanted. And he got people around him that wanted him for his stuff and for not himself the same way he revered the Father. And he ran out of money. He didn't invest it. He didn't like go to the city and get a job and try to set up a 401k for himself. He ran out and he spent it on whatever he won. He was led by his appetites. And eventually, he ran out of money. And right at the time that he runs out of money, Jesus says in the parable that a great famine came across the land. So it was a hard time. It was a lot like now. Unemployment was high. People are wondering about where they're going to get their next paycheck, and they didn't have a government stimulus check that was going to be coming in, and their businesses couldn't apply for a 250% of payroll loan. Like, that wasn't going on. So he had to get things figured out, and this young boy, this young man ends up living on a pig farm. He convinces a farmer to hire him to watch after pigs. And apparently he lived out in the field, in the barn, with the pigs. That's where he was allowed to sleep. And it says that he was so hungry and so destitute and had so little that he was looking at the pods that were being fed to the pigs with jealousy. And I don't mean to belabor this point too much, but what would have to happen in your life to be with a group of pigs and watch the slop come down the trough and think, gosh, if I could just get my hands on that? Seriously. What kind of place of destitution would you need to be at to not just want it, to not be willing to eat it, but to be jealous of the fact that they had it? That's where he was. And then in verse 17, we see this really human insight into this young man. And I really, I love this sentence and I love this verse a lot. I think it's a turning came to his senses, when he had time to think, when he finally realized what was going on. His life had been a blur. He took his father. He probably thought for months or years about how he just wanted his father's money. He didn't like his miserable life on his father's property. Just give me your money so I can leave and go enjoy myself and spread my wings and flex my freedom muscles. And so that's what he did. He took the money and he went and did that. And he was focused on having a good time and enjoying himself and doing whatever it was that he wanted. And then from that, he ran out of money, and now he's scrambling, trying to figure out a way. How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to put a roof over my head? What am I going to do next? And his days are just consumed with that. But eventually, life slows down enough, and he looks at his surroundings, and he's like, I'm jealous of what the pigs are eating. At least my father's servants have bread. My dad pays his employees better than this guy pays me. And in that thought process, he came to himself. He realized what he was doing and what his life was becoming. He woke up. And you know, this isn't the point of this sermon, but I do want to stop here and make this simple point that one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot for the past couple of years, and I was just talking with staff the other day, I want to see if I can think through a way to do an entire series on this topic, but one of the sneakiest tricks of the enemy, I think, is to simply distract us. I think we are the most distracted group of people that have ever lived in human history. I think the option to pull out a phone and have the whole world and a screen in our hand means that we never have the blessing of boredom. We rarely have the blessing of idle thought. We get in the car, we turn on a podcast, or we turn on music, and we have a conversation. We sit at a light, we pull it out. We sit at home, we turn on the TV, we get in the shower, we turn on music. I think we are so distracted and distractible that sometimes we don't have the chance to come to ourselves because we don't have any quiet. We don't make any space in our life for the Lord to speak into because we no longer have the blessing of boredom. And it got me to thinking that maybe one of the hidden blessings of isolation will be the chance to come to ourselves. Maybe one of the hidden blessings of this time of isolation and quarantine when we don't have much to do. I was just talking to Steve before we filmed this, and he said, man, it was so weird for me to get up and leave this morning. I said, yeah, really? He goes, yeah, I mean, I leave once a week. We're all in our houses. And so maybe one of the hidden blessings of this time is just the opportunity to slow down, to reflect, to really think through. Is what's happening with my life what I want to happen? Is what's happening with my life honoring to God? Is this my goal? Is this what I want? Or do I need to come to myself? Do I need to wake up? Do I need to finally listen to God and say, maybe the reason I'm unhappy is because I'm not organizing my life according to his principles. I wonder if some of us need to have this moment where we come to ourselves like the prodigal son did, and maybe that moment can be one of the hidden blessings of this time of isolation. But in this moment, the son also does a very human thing, and I really do love this part. He develops a speech, right? He says he's going to go back to his dad, and he's going to say to him, listen, I've squandered away my opportunity to be your son. I don't deserve to be your son anymore. Will you just hire me? I'll work hard for you. You don't have to make me a manager. I'll be bottom rung. I just need bread and a roof. I don't even have that. I just need that. And so he's got his concession speech planned, which is a very human thing. This is what we do, right? You tick off your spouse. You do something that you know your husband or your wife is going to be mad about. What do you do? You rehearse the speech in your head. You figure out what are we going to say. This is what we did when we were little kids. When we got in trouble, something happened at school and we were going to have to go home and explain to mom and dad what we did. What did you do? You rehearsed your speech, right? You got it right. I don't deserve this. I'm really sorry that I did this. If you'll please just forgive me. That's a very human exercise. And so that's what the son does. He rehearses his speech. He gets ready to go home and apologize. And he hits the road to go back home and to grovel. And Scripture says that the father saw him coming while he was a far way off, and that the father ran to meet him. And that's an important detail because men in that day and age did not run. There was no joggers. People didn't get on all the gear and then go running through their neighborhood. You did not see distinguished older men running for the same reason that you won't see me dancing, okay? It's undignified. I'm not good at it. I don't want you to see me do it. It's embarrassing. That's the general sense that men would have when they would run once they were older and they no longer needed to go to battle or things like that. It was undignified to be in a hurry in that way. But the father didn't care. He saw his son and he wanted to go greet him. And he gets out to his son and the son starts into his speech. He starts into his prepared speech. And I would expect, I would expect the father to listen to the speech. I would expect the father to sit there arms folded. Yeah, you better have a good explanation. Yeah, you're right that you don't deserve to be my son anymore. I don't know. I'm going to have to consider whether or not I'll hire you as a servant. I'm going to have to consider whether or not, let me talk to my guys and see if any of them wants to be your boss. I got to think about this. Let me talk to your brother and see if he wants to welcome you back into the fold. That's what we would expect from the father. That's what he had every right to do. But that's not what he did. In the text, we see that the father stops the son. He's not interested in listening to his concession speech. He's not interested in, I'm sorry. He doesn't even make the son utter it. As soon as he sees him, he runs to him. He throws his arms around him and embraces him. He brings him back to the house and he gives the servants the orders, kill the fattened calf, the one that we've been saving for the big party and a big feast, go do it. The nice expensive bottle of wine that we got in Italy 20 years ago, go uncork it. This is the thing that we've been waiting on. And then he comes out and he tells his servants, give him my robe and give him some shoes. And those are symbols of being restored back into the family, being received back into the family. No, you're not going to be my servant. I'm not going to make you work for one of my guys. You are my son, and here is your robe. And then he takes his ring, and he puts it on the finger of the son, and that's a symbol of the authority of the family. So what we see in that reception, and the father running and flinging his arms around him, and clothing him, and putting his ring on his finger, and throwing him a party, what we see is something remarkable from the father, that the father doesn't just receive the son, he restores him. He doesn't just wait with open arms and receive him and hug him and say, yeah, you're right. You messed up, but I love you. You're my son. You're always going to be my son. Now, there's going to be a probationary period. You can't get an inheritance anymore. I'm not going to spend any more money on you. All that's your brother's. You don't deserve that. He doesn't do any of that. He not only receives him, he restores him to the full rights and privileges owed to his son. And the father's mind deserved by his son. And one of the themes through this story that blows me away every time I settle in and look at it is the remarkable grace and goodness of the father. His son asks him for his inheritance early. He spits in his face and says, I want your stuff more than I want you. And the father should have responded, get away from me, you don't get any inheritance. But instead he says, okay, if that's what you want. He wastes his money and the father knew that this would happen. And he comes back humble, hat in hand, broken, apologetic. And the father brushes that aside. He excused the apology. He embraces his son. He receives him and he restores him back to his full rights and privileges of being his son. Grace that he did not deserve. And I'm blown away by the remarkable goodness and grace of the father in this story. And I think maybe one of the most important things we could take out of it for ourselves is that our heavenly father offers us the same remarkable grace and goodness. Your father in heaven who created you and loves you offers you the same grace and goodness that he offers the prodigal son. He offers you the same reception and the same restoration that he offers the son that left him. He treats you with that same amount of grace. Let it sink in this morning how gently the Father loves and corrects you. Let it sink in this morning the kindness that he shows you when he doesn't need to. The concessions that he makes for us when he doesn't have to. The goodness that he offers us when we reject him. The same father that loves his son in this story loves you and offers you that same grace. And you know, often when we think of the prodigal son, the son that left and invested his life in wild living, those of us who grew up in church, we think of the people who maybe came up and didn't come up in church or maybe ran away from church and did whatever they wanted to. And they lived recklessly. They partied. They lived in ways that maybe church people wouldn't live. And then they come back and the Father restores them. And we think that this is great. And we think that that's who the prodigal son is, is people who literally go away and live recklessly and then at some point or another come back to the Father or come to the Father for the first time. And sometimes that is the prodigal son, and those stories are amazing. But you know, I am convinced that the longer you're a Christian, the more you can relate to the prodigal son. The longer you're a believer, the more seasons you have in your life where you may not wander away to a foreign country and live outwardly recklessly. It may not be noticeable that you've run away from God. It may not be apparent to everyone else that you're wandering from the Father. But you know that maybe in your mind or your heart or your spirit, you're thousands of miles away. Sure, we're coming to church every week. We're logging in. We're online. We're chatting. We're doing all the stuff. We're doing the Zoom calls, and we go to the small group, and we do our part. But even amidst all that, in our hearts and in our minds and in our spirits, we can have wandered thousands of miles away. And maybe this morning, we need to come to ourselves and rush back to the Father that's waiting on us with open arms and know that he offers us the same goodness and restorative grace now that he offered then. And that's the main point of the story. That's the main takeaway that we should get. But there's one more thing that we need to be aware of because the story doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop at the restoration of the leaving son. What follows is this incredible conversation that the father has with the staying son. The staying son is out in the field. He's working. He's being responsible. He's not living recklessly. He's not squandering the father's money. He's out in the field doing the right thing, doing what he's supposed to do. And then he gets word that there's a party. And he finds out that the party is because his derelict younger brother has come back and dad's gone nuts. And he's thrown a huge party. And so the older brother is ticked and he goes and he pouts on the stairs. He sits on his front porch and he pouts. And I gotta be honest with you, a lot of people I know, including myself, empathize with the staying son. Empathize and identify if you had to pick which one you identified most with in the story, the prodigal son who went out and lived recklessly or the staying son who stayed put and made responsible choices and did what was expected of him. A lot of us at Grace are the staying son. Our whole life we've tried to do the right thing. We've not gone out and squandered. We've not gone out and lived recklessly. We've always tried to make wise choices. And so when we see the staying son upset, we identify with him. I know I have one good friend who has flat told me she doesn't like this parable because she feels like the staying son and he gets in trouble too and it doesn't make sense to her. Or at least he didn't used to. And so the dad comes to the son. He leaves the party and he comes, he sits down with his older son who stayed. He says, son, why are you upset? And the son's response is, dad, why are you doing that for your derelict son? Why are you doing that for the one who betrayed you and left you and squandered your wealth? Why didn't you do that for me? I've been here all these years. I've made the right decisions. I've been with you all these years, and you've never thrown a party like this for me and my friends. It's not fair, Dad. And again, I empathize with that. I think he brings up some good points. But the father's response is remarkable, And it reveals something that I think is really profound. Look at what the father says. I'm in verse 31. And he said to him, actually, I'm going to start in verse 30. This is what the son is saying, but when this son of yours came who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. Dad, you threw him a party. That's not fair. And the father's response is, and he said to him, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. That response is incredibly revelatory. He says, son, son, son, son, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. The point isn't the parties that I could throw you. The point isn't the inheritance that you're going to get one day. The point isn't trying to get my stuff. The point is me. You've always had me. You've always been with me. You've always been in my presence. And the prize here, son, isn't the parties that I could throw you or the things that I could give you. The prize is being with me. And what we realize in that response is that the sins of the leaving son and the sins of the staying son are the same. The sins of the sons are the same. They wanted the father's stuff more than they wanted the father. Don't you see? They had different ways of going about it. The leaving son, at least I'll give him the credit of being more honest about it. He said, dad, I'm not really interested in you. I just kind of want your stuff. If you'll go ahead and give it to me, I can go spread my freedom wings. But what's revealed in the pouting of the staying son that was responsible and made good choices is that he wanted the same thing. He just chose a different path to the father's stuff and to the father's blessings. That's what he says. Dad, I want the party too. I want the things too. I want all the things that he's experienced, but I've gone about it in a better way. And the father says, son, that's not the point. The point is that you have me. And so ringing through the centuries as Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, and we read it generation after generation, is the father's desire for us to want to be with him, for us to want the father, for us to want to be with God more than we want his blessings. This is what true love is anyways. I mean, when I'm at home with Lily, on a Saturday when Jen maybe will leave and go do things that she deserves to do because she's been in the house all week, she'll leave and she'll be gone. And so I'll take an extended dad responsibility day on Saturday and just kind of watch Lily all day, which is not babysitting because she's my kid. So I get that day to spend with Lily. And then in the evening, maybe Jen walks back in and I'll say, I'm so happy to see you. I'm so glad that you're here. She will rightly ask me, are you happy to see me or are you happy to have help? Right? What does she want to know? Am I happy because now she's going to relieve me of my duties because of the things that she can do for me? Or am I happy because I've just missed my wife? Because what does my wife want from me? She wants me to miss her presence. She wants me to value time with her. This is how our relationships work. In every relationship we have, we want people to want to be with us for us, not for what we offer them. And God is no different. The ringing lesson from the story of the prodigal son is not just that God receives us and restores us when we wander off, but that his heart's desire is that he would be our heart's desire. So in this story, I think we are left with two profound questions. The first comes from earlier in the story, the experience of the leaving son. And it's a question that I asked earlier in the sermon I want to stop and highlight now. Is it time for you to come to yourself? As we reflect on the sermon and what we've learned and what we should think and take into the week with us, one of the big questions I want us to be asking ourselves is, is it time for me to come to my senses? In this time of isolation and quarantine and slowing down where I have now the blessing of boredom, should I put down the devices and sit in a quiet room and think for a minute? And ask, do I need to come to myself? Are there things that I need to realize? What is God trying to say to me? I wonder if we could do that. I wonder if we would be brave enough to ask ourselves this question this week. The second question, and this is a tough one, is do we want God or his stuff? If you identify with the staying son, the one who's kind of done the right things and made the right choices, if you identify with the prodigal son and you're just kind of looking at everything and you go, listen, I just want the blessings, I don't want the life. We should ask ourselves, have I made these choices because I'm interested in God and his presence and in his goodness or am I interested in what he can do for me? That's a tough question to answer. Ever since encountering this years ago, I ask myself that question throughout the year. Every time I pray virtually, this question rattles around in the back of my mind. Am I pursuing God because I want his blessings or because I want him? Am I excited to get to heaven because of all the stuff that he's going to give me when I get there or because I'll be in the very presence of my Savior? I don't know. I hope that more and more each year I'm less interested in the blessings that God offers me and more interested in the presence that he offers me. I hope that more and more each year I'm drawn closer to God because the Father's response in the story is, you've always, everything I have is yours. These are all your blessings anyways. Of course there are things that come along with being with me. It's everything that I can possibly offer you, but I am the prize. Sometimes I wonder in my life, am I making God the prize or his things and his blessings the prize? So I'd like to invite you into that thought process as well. And this week with our friends, maybe even with our families as this wraps up, hopefully in our small groups this week we'll talk about these questions. Do I need to come to myself? Am I more interested in God or am I more interested in what God can do for me? I hope that you'll wrestle with those questions and I hope that this parable of the prodigal son will serve to bring us all closer to God as is always our prayer at Grace. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this story. Thank you for all the truths that are nestled within it. God, I pray that you would help us to see it with fresh eyes. I pray that you would help us to suss out in our lives where we are pursuing the things that you do for us and not you. God, if we are prodigal this morning, if we are wandering away, maybe not physically, but if our minds or our hearts or our spirits have wandered away from you, would you help us come to ourselves? Would you give us the gift of quiet and of peace and of thought and help us come to ourselves and make that crucial, pivotal decision to come back to you? For those that need it this week, God, help us come to ourselves. Father, for others who need to assess this, help us, give us a heart for you. Let us pursue you, not the things that you do for us, but just your presence, God. Give us a pure heart and desire for you. It's in your son's name we ask for these things. Amen.

Hey, Grace. Shocked? I bet you are. I'm sure you were expecting Nate, but instead it's me, Easter Kyle. Why am I here? I'm here to tell you that I am downright bummed. Why are you bummed, you ask? I'm bummed because I'm not going to be able to see my entire church family on Easter next week. Now, sure, I'm upset because I'd love to be able to shake hands and give hugs and just see everyone, but I'm mostly upset because I wanted to see those Easter threads. Personally, I just got this suit for our Easter service. Now, I bought it, and I was like, well, if we're not going to meet together, we've got to make a video because people need to see this. Now, not only do I have my Easter clothes, but I know that you do too. I know you guys prep months in advance for what you're going to wear. And so we don't want that to go to waste. And so what we have decided to do is next week, we would love for you as you wake up, to wake up a little bit earlier for our 10 o'clock service, get dressed in your Sunday and your Easter best. I want to see dads wearing pastels. I want to see daughters wearing their dresses. I want to see everyone looking fresh to death. Now, once you've done that, I want to be able to see it. So we need you to throw it on Instagram, throw it on Facebook, and tag Grace Raleigh. I can't wait to see everyone looking their Sunday best. Good morning, Grace. Thanks, Kyle, for that announcement. I do hope that next week you'll get up, put on your Easter best, and share that with all of us so that we can see it. I think that'll be a fun way to make the best of spending Easter together. I'm so glad to have this time with you on Sunday mornings. If you're watching this on delay, again, I understand schedules get crazy, but my hope is that we're all watching this together on Sundays at 10 o'clock so that we can experience being together. Hopefully you are in the lobby on the YouTube website talking with people, saying hello, and engaging with some of the folks from the church. If you're watching for the first time or for the first couple of times, thanks for being here. We're so glad that you are. We are in the middle of a series called Storyteller, looking at Jesus and the stories that he told called parables. You'll remember that a parable is a short fictional story that's used to make a moral point, and Jesus was the master storyteller. He was the master storyteller and used these to make these incredible points. And this week, we arrive at what I believe is the most famous of all the parables, the parable of the Good Samaritan. And you know, a few years ago, I was reading a book, and I did some research this week to try to figure out what the book was and to get the quote exactly right. But after about 10 minutes of some really intense Googling, I just decided to give up because I remember the main idea that I took away from this book. And one of the things that the author said was, you know, in life, to go from competency to mastery, you have to learn to find joy in the nuances of a particular subject or a particular topic. And I thought that that was a really interesting point that we can kind of get to this place of competency relatively quickly by learning some of the basics around whatever discipline or topic that we're pursuing. But if we want to master it, we've got to learn to find joy in the nuances and the little things. And I think the same is true of Scripture. I think if we want to be masters of God's Word, if we want to understand it well, if we want to be able to explain it to people and really take hold of it, then we've got to learn to find joy in the nuances of Scripture. So even though this is a well-worn parable, most of you probably know it. Most of you at home, if you pause this right now, you could probably tell it to the other people in the room. Even if you're watching this and you're not necessarily a church person, you didn't grow up in church going to Sunday school where they taught you these stories, you probably still at least have heard of the parable of the Good Samaritan. And we think that we know the point of the story. The point of the story is that everyone is our neighbor, and that's one of the points of the story, and that's a great point. But I think if we sink into the nuances of this parable, what we'll find is that there is a greater point waiting on us. This parable is found in Luke chapter 10. It begins in verse 25. So if you have a Bible there with you, and I hope you do, go ahead and turn, open that Bible to Luke chapter 10, and you can follow along with me as I tell you this story. So Jesus is teaching, and it says that a young lawyer asked him a question. So we need to understand right away that a young lawyer is not necessarily how we would think of a lawyer, someone who's gone to law school. A young lawyer in that context, in that culture, really had been going to seminary because the law was based on God's word, on what we call the Old Testament, what they call the Tanakh. The law was based on the law of God. So a young lawyer was really kind of a young theologian. And he's presumably talking with some friends, having one of those debates that you normally have. I went to Bible college, and there was all these different debates. In your college, whether it was Bible college or a liberal arts school, you engaged in debates about philosophy and about politics and about life in general, and you solved the problems of the world. It's one of the great things about being that age is the different conversations and ideas that you exercise. He's probably doing this with his buddies, and he sees Jesus, this well-known teacher, this rabbi, and he asks him a question. And so he said, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? That's his question to Jesus. What do I have to do to inherit eternal life? Another way of thinking about that is, what does God want from me? What does our Creator God expect from us? What does He want me to do? When Jesus responds like a rabbi does, He responds in the form of a question. And rabbis often did this. They didn't just come out and say the thing. They didn't just come out and make the point. They asked questions. They wanted to lead people to their own truths. And so rather than just coming out and answering him, he says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, well, what do you think? What does the law say? How do you read it? Which is a way of saying like, you're a student. You've studied this. You ought to know the answer to this question. What do you think it is? And the lawyer refers back to a well-worn passage in Deuteronomy, Shema Israel, and something that they repeated before every time they had synagogue or temple. And he repeats that and he says that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Amen. And Jesus says, that's right. And he says, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you have read it correctly. And we know that in other places in scripture, Jesus says these two things, love God and love others, sums up the whole Bible, the whole law and the prophets. And so, so far, this young lawyer is tracking right with Jesus. He's doing really good. But then he says, the Bible says, in order to justify himself, he asked. So the lawyer is having this conversation with his buddies. He's talking to his friends. He's debating over here. He's making a point. He's asserting something about who his neighbor is. And then Jesus is there. And so to kind of show off in front of his buddies, get Jesus to justify his answer in front of his friends, we presume, he says, yes, and who is my neighbor? Apparently that was the discussion or the debate of the time. There's a little bit of uncertainty. Is it just Israelites, the people of Israel? Is it the friends of Israel? Is it the people in my immediate neighborhood? Is it the whole nation? Is it the surrounding nations? Is it even people that I don't like? There was some debate about that question. And so this young lawyer invites Jesus into that debate with his friends to justify himself. And Jesus, rather than just answering his question, begins to tell a story. He says, and who is my neighbor? And Jesus replies in verse 30, he says, a man was going down to Jericho. He starts in on the story. And it's at this point where I can almost feel the countenance of the lawyer shifting. He's bold enough to ask Jesus the question. Jesus asks him a return question. He nails it. He gets it right. Love God, love my neighbor. And Jesus says, that's correct. And he's like, you see, I told you I'm right so far. He's feeling pretty good. And he says, and who is my neighbor? And Jesus says, there was a man on his way down to Jericho. And you can almost see the lawyer going, oh no, what have I gotten myself into? I can see the disciples over to the side. I can see James elbowing Peter. Peter, Peter, shut up, man. Listen, this guy's stepping into it. As Jesus starts into his story, that's when everyone begins to lean in and go, oh gosh, what's the point that he's making? And so Jesus says there was a man on his way down to Jericho. This is a well-worn road. It was very traveled. Jerusalem is in the mountains and Jericho is on the coast of the Dead Sea. And so people would often walk down to Jericho. And so that's where this man was. And he was attacked by robbers. There were some robbers hiding out in the nooks and crannies of the road because it goes through valleys. Incidentally, the road to Jericho goes through the valley of the shadow of death that David refers to in Psalm 23. That's a freebie. I'm just giving these things out. So he's walking down this road, and he's jumped on by the bandits, and he's attacked. He's robbed, they strip him of all of his things and they leave him on the road half dead and dying. And Jesus says, after that happens, a priest comes walking by. And they would expect, like we would expect, a priest to know what to do. A priest is going to do the right thing. A priest is going to care for this man, but he says the priest just walks on by him. Then Jesus says a little while later, a Levite walks by. And we would again expect, or that audience would expect, a Levite to know the right thing to do. And to help us understand what a Levite was and why they would have this expectation, To be a Levite was to be a part of a tribe of the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12th tribe was the tribe of Levites, and they were the priestly tribe. To be a priest, you had to be a Levite, but not all Levites were priests. Some were assigned duties in the temple. So the easiest way to think about it for us, because this is a priest who had leadership in the temple or in the church, and then a Levite who had duties and other leadership in the church, the easy way to think about that for us would be a pastor and an elder walked by. And so in our context, we would expect, like they would expect, that a priest and a Levite or a pastor and an elder would know the right thing to do, would do the loving thing. But in both cases, the priest and the Levite walked by the man and left him to die. And for years and years, I thought that they did this because they were jerks. I thought they did this because they were hypocrites, because they got up on Sunday and they said the stuff they were supposed to say, and they shook the hands they were supposed to shake, and they hugged the people they were supposed to hug, but then during the week they didn't really practice what they were preaching. I thought maybe they thought they were too important or too good, or that his case was hopeless, and so they just walked on by. And my whole life, I've judged the priest and the Levite for being terrible examples of love. But someone pointed out for me a couple of years ago a tension that was going on there that I didn't notice when I was a kid and encountered this story for the first time. You know, the man on the road was dying. He was essentially dead. And the priest and the Levite are not allowed to touch dying things. They're not allowed to touch something that's dead or dying. If they did that, they would become unclean. It's a violation of the law that they uphold to reach down and to help this man. Because they can't do it without touching him and without getting messy. They can't do it without getting unclean. So it's entirely possible, it's entirely possible that they saw this man, they wanted to help him, they felt genuine empathy and sorrow for him, but knew, I can't do this. I will become unclean. I am a priest. I am a Levite. I have duties in the temple and I need to be able to perform those, so I can't help this man, and they walk on by. Then Jesus introduces a Samaritan into the story. And you've probably heard that there was tension between the Hebrew people and between the Samaritan people. And maybe you don't know why that tension existed. Maybe you could perfectly articulate it, but for those who can't, this is why there's tension between Jews and Samaritans. The Jews were God's chosen people. They were descendants. The Hebrew people were descendants from Abraham. And throughout their history, by edict of God, they had taken great pains to maintain the ethnic purity of the line of Abraham. They were forbidden to marry people from other nations. They had to protect and maintain this line. And the Samaritans were a race of people from folks who had intermarried with other countries and other nations and other ethnicities. And so they had lost the purity of the race of the Hebrew people. And because of that, they were ostracized and forced to live in their own cities and their own towns. And so there was racial tension between the Jews and the Samaritans because the Samaritans weren't pure like they were. The other thing that deeply offended the Jews about the Samaritan way of life is the Samaritans claimed to worship the same God. They claimed the same lineage. They claimed that they were just as good with God as the Hebrew people were and that their forefathers went back to Abraham as well, just like the Jewish people did, and that they worshiped the same God and that they executed the same religion. But their religion actually gets traced back to a split in the kingdom between Jeroboam and Rehoboam when Jeroboam instituted his own religion to make money and keep the tax dollars there. It was this political maneuver that he made, and the Samaritans are the descendant of that fabricated religion that is kind of part of the Jewish faith, but not the entire Jewish faith. If we wanted to understand it in our context, it would be this religious division that we see between Christians and maybe Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses claim to worship the same God that we as believers do, but they believe different things about Jesus than what we do. And so while the claim is that everything is the same, what we as Christians believe is there are nuances there that actually make those very different. And so there is ethnic tension between the Jews and the Samaritans, and there's religious tension between the Jews and the Samaritans. And they didn't live in the 21st century with political correctness where we sweep over all of those things and be nice to everybody anyways. They lived in an era where hate was perfectly fine, and so they hated each other. Jews despised the Samaritans. They wouldn't even walk through their towns. They would inconvenience themselves and walk around them. And the Samaritans likewise were justified in despising Jews. They were justified in disdaining them, in there being tension between those two groups of people. And so when Jesus introduces the Samaritan man into the story, he's doing it on purpose. He's making a radical statement. And this is where everyone can feel the story begin to turn and the lawyer has to be going, oh no, what am I going to do? He's going to make me look like an idiot. And this Samaritan has every reason to leave this man dying on the road because this man is likely a Jew and he has every excuse to not help him. But look at what he does. We pick this up in verse 33. It says, but a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was, the man who was injured and dying. And when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Look at the remarkable love of the Samaritan. He doesn't just kneel down and give him some water. He doesn't just kneel down and bind up his wounds and give him oil and wine. And if he's making a journey, he likely needed that oil and wine for himself. He didn't make provisions to help someone convalesce, to heal someone, and to patch someone up. He didn't make provisions for those things as he went on his journey. He needed that. And it would have been enough if he knelt down and gave up his oil and his wine and bound up this man's wounds, touched him, becoming unclean, and the Samaritan understands the same rules that the priest and the Levite do. He just decides that this is more important than remaining ceremonially clean, spiritually clean. And so he kneels down and he touches him and he binds him up. And that would have been enough. That would have been love, but he doesn't stop there. He picks the man up and he lays the man on his animal. Presumably, he gave up his seat and now he has to walk the rest of the journey while this man rides on his animal. And he takes him to an inn. And it would have been enough to take him to an inn to drop him off and go, hey, this guy's dying. I need a room. And just leave him there and let it be the innkeeper's issue. But he brings the man to his room and cares for him overnight. He has a sleepless night to care for this man. And I don't know about you guys, but I have a four-year-old in the house. So every now and again, we have sleepless nights, and I would not choose them. I like to sleep. This man gave up a night of sleep to care for this man who was dying, and that would have been enough. But then he leaves some money with the innkeeper. He says, I have a thing to do. Here's two denarii. Here's 200 bucks. Take care of him. I'm going to come back through town. When I come back through town, you spend whatever you have to to help him get right. And when I come back through town, I'll pay you back for whatever you have to spend. Remarkable love by the Samaritan. And Jesus finishes his story and he looks at the young lawyer and he says, now you tell me, which of these three love their neighbor? And the young lawyer can't even bring himself to say the word Samaritan. He simply says, the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus' response is remarkable. He says, yeah, now you go and do likewise. You go and love like the Samaritan did. Often we make the point of this parable that our neighbor is everyone, even somebody that we should justifiably dislike or have disdain for, even people who are mean to us, even people who are different than us, even people who are different ethnicities or backgrounds or heritages than us. We should love everyone, and we kind of make that the point of this story. But I don't think that Jesus makes that the point of the story. I think when we sink into the nuances of the story, what we see is that there's a lot more going on there and that the way Jesus ends it, the point that he's making to the lawyer is not trying to define the neighbor, it's trying to define love. And the way that Jesus defines love is very simple. I'm stealing this from a speaker and an author named Bob Goff who has a book by this title, and I think it is the point of this parable. And I think the point that Jesus is trying to make is that love does. Love does. Love acts. Love doesn't make excuses. Love doesn't walk past. Love doesn't explain away. Love is not convenient. Love does. Love helps. Love is my father-in-law. He's driving down the road in the middle of winter. He stops at an intersection and there's someone spinning a sign on the side of the road on a particularly cold day. And this person doesn't have a jacket. And a lot of people might just pray, God, help that person feel better. I hope that shift is done soon or give them genuine empathy on their way by. But my father-in-law pulls over his car, gets out, takes his fleece off and hands it to him and says, here, you need this more than I do. That's what love does. Love acts. I think so often we think loving thoughts. We want to do loving things. We have loving ideas, but we don't put them into action. And Jesus' instruction to the young lawyer is not to say, hey, everyone's your neighbor. It's to say, you go and you love like the Samaritan did. And so what we see in this story is that loving our neighbor is easily excused away, but love doesn't make excuses. Loving our neighbor is easily excused away, but love doesn't make excuses. I have a friend whose wife is a nurse. She's been a nurse their whole marriage. They have three boys, one's in sixth grade, and then they go on down. And she only works at the hospital about once every two weeks, whatever the minimum amount of time is to keep up with her licensing and her employment and all those different things. And in the midst of COVID, it came to be her turn to come in and do a shift. And she could have very easily excused away, I've got boys to think about, I've got a family to think about, my mom and dad live in our neighborhood, we see them sometime, I don't want to expose myself and expose them. She could have excused away what she needed to do, but she felt at the end of the day that loving her neighbor was to go in and care for the community that needs care right now more than any other time in our life, was to go in and give a break to the nurses that have been exposing themselves to this danger and to this threat on a daily basis. She could have excused away what love was and stayed home and no one would have blamed her. But love does. Love acts and it doesn't make excuses. We've all done this. We're driving down the side of the road, we're walking on the sidewalk, someone asks us for money and we think, we feel a tinge that we should give them something, we should care for them in some way, but then we excuse it away and we explain it away and we say, well, they're just going to use it to make poor choices. We're on the way home. Somebody's on the side of the road and it looks like maybe they need some help and we think that we could pull over, but then we remember, well, you know, dinner's on the table. The kids are expecting to see me. The family's ready. I don't want to inconvenience them, so I'm going to go on. And the parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that, yeah, love is easily excused away. We can explain those things away if we want to, but that love doesn't make excuses. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see that love is messy. Loving our neighbor is messy, but love gets messy. Whatever, I don't know what the Samaritan was wearing that day, but they were good. They were probably decent tribal clothes, and what he didn't want on them was dirt and blood and grime. But he knelt down, and he cared for this man that was beaten to within an inch of his life, and he got messy. He lost a night's sleep. He got down into this person's problems with them. And we know that love is messy. When you're sitting in your office and you ask someone who passes by, hey, how you doing? And they come sit down in a chair and they go, well, we kind of internally go, oh, I did not bargain for this. I have a lot of things to do because we know that we're about to get messy. We know that they're about to start telling us some stuff and we're about to get in the middle of this thing. And so often we kind of refrain and we go, I don't want to make their problems my problems. I don't want to get in their business. I don't want to make this messy. I don't want to get involved in that. And so we kind of keep to ourselves. But what loving our neighbor means is acknowledging that loving our neighbor is messy and that love gets messy. This is why I love our Stephen ministers so much. At Grace Raleigh, we have Stephen ministry, and we have different people in the church who are Stephen ministers, and that's what they do. They get messy with people. Stephen ministers are trained to go in during hardships, during difficult diagnoses, or during losses, or in the face of addiction, or in the face of depression, or just times of high anxiety. And they go and they sit with people week after week, hour after hour, and they get in this mess with them, and they trudge through life with them, and they love them back to wholeness. They get messy with them. It may be that you feel that you need a Stephen minister right now. You need someone to talk to. You're anxious, and you need to share that. If you'll go to our website, graceralee.org slash care, you can find everything you need there to raise your hand and go, hey, I need to talk to somebody. Or if you want to love your neighbor by joining the ranks of Stephen ministers, you can sign up there and email our leader, Bill Reith, and get involved in loving your neighbor that way. But this story of the Good Samaritan shows us that loving our neighbor is messy and that love gets messy. Finally, in the story, we see that loving our neighbor is costly, but that love invests. Loving our neighbor takes something from us. It took the Samaritan's oil and wine. He gave him 200 denarii and said, I'm going to come back and pay this man's debt. Sometimes love costs us something. I remember when this lesson smacked me in the face a couple of months ago. We just recently moved, but before that we lived very close to the corner of Falls and Spring Forest. And there's a Harris Teeter Shopping Center in there. And there was somebody opening up a store for pets, I think called Pet Wants or something like that. And there was individuals who had been working in there for several days. It was late at night. It was like nine o'clock at night. And they're still in there trying to get ready. And I always root for locally owned places. I always root for people who have invested all of their savings and their hopes and dreams and opening up this thing. And it really kind of pulled on my heartstrings to see them in there working late and pouring their hopes and dreams into this place and their misguided affection for pets. And so I thought, man, I really want to encourage these people. So on my way into the grocery store, I knocked on the door and they kind of looked at me and I just kind of waved and they opened the door and they said, hey, we're not open yet. And I said, no, no, I know. I just want you guys to know that I'm rooting for you. I hope this goes well. I know that you've poured a lot into this. I've seen you working hard and I'm really rooting for you in this. Just wanted to encourage you. And they said, wow, great, thanks. They said, we're gonna open tomorrow. You can come back. We're giving away free yada, yada, yada. And I said, yeah, okay, great. And I walked away and I thought, I'm not coming back tomorrow. I'm not buying stuff for my dog. That's Jen's department. But I got to feel good because I was a good neighbor and I wished them well. But by the time I got back in my car and drove off, I thought, if you really love them, you'll go in there and you'll buy some dog treats. If you really want to support them, you'll go in there and you'll spend some money. If you really want to show them love, then it's going to cost you something. This is not about your ego boost and feeling good about yourself. This is about actually doing what they need you to do to love on them. And now, in light of the story of the Good Samaritan, I realize that love invests. Love is costly. It takes from us. But Jesus says that if the Samaritan was the one in the story that showed love, that we ought to go and do likewise. So grace, we're called to be good Samaritans. And that doesn't just mean that we're called to love everyone. That means that we're called to a love that acts, to a love that does, to a love that doesn't excuse things away, to a love that gets messy, to a love that invests. And now some of you, you may feel like the person that was left for dead. You may feel like COVID and the economy and the markets have just attacked you and robbed you and left you. You may need some people to love on you right now. And I would say this to you, if you are a part of Grace or you're watching this at all, and you feel like that person who's just been left on the side of the road, you're feeling beat up, if you're facing joblessness, if you are anxious because some of the jobs that you had lined up are getting canceled or are getting deferred and you don't know if you're gonna make up that income, if you're worried about being able to pay your bills, would you please let us know? Would you please tell us? If you're watching this on our website, on the live page, at the bottom, there's a space where you can submit a prayer request. Please tell us. On our website, you can find the email addresses of the staff. Email us. I don't want anybody, listen to me, I don't want anybody in our church hurting, facing job loss, not knowing how they're going to pay their bills, facing this time by themselves. I don't want it to be a secret that you've lost your job and you don't know what you're going to do and you don't know how you're going to care for your family, tell us. Let your church love you. Let us invest in you. Let us wrap our arms around you. I would hate to know that any of you are carrying a private anxiety or a private stress and we aren't able to do anything about it. Please let us love you if you feel like the person who's been beat up and left behind. For the rest of us, what a unique time to love our neighbor. If you have the means and you can, go support, go spend money at local places, go do the curbside pickup things, go get meals that you could just make at your home if you can afford it, if you can support in that way, go and do it. It doesn't seem like this is going away anytime soon, so we've got weeks to think about how we can love our neighbors and what love can do in the midst of this crisis. Let's right now, Grace, in whatever capacity we have, be the good Samaritans that love our neighbors well. And let's remember that love does, it goes, it acts. And let's take action. Let me pray for us. Father, we understand that you have made us conduits of your love, that we are able to love others because you love us, because you invested in us. Your love for us was costly and you paid that cost. Your love for us is messy and you got messy. Your love for us could have been excused away, but you didn't do that. You didn't make excuses. You came down here and you loved us and you continue to love us. And God, give us the power and the faith and the courage and the vision to love people like you love us, to love people like the Samaritan loved that person that day. Give us eyes to see the needs around us. Give us the courage to meet those needs. Let us in this time be defined by being a church that loves well. Be with us throughout our weeks, God. Be with our families. Give us grace and patience with each other. And it's in all these things, in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. Here we are again. I'm so glad to be able to share this with you. Before I jump into the sermon, I just wanted to let you know that we are opening up elder nominations right now through the end of April, through April 30. So you have a month to go online to graceralee.org slash elders and fill out a nomination form if there's something you think would make a great elder of the church. Our church is elder-led. The elder board is hugely important to me. At the end of this year, two of our elders, Andrea Hounchell and Burt Banks, will have completed six years serving the church in that capacity, and it will be time for them to roll off. At the end of last year, another elder, Bill Reith, rolled off, and so that means that going into 2021, we can add up to three elders if we wanted to. I will also tell you that we are really hoping to add some women to the elder board. Andrea, like I said, is rolling off at the end of this year, and that will leave us with one woman, Allie Snyder, on the elder board. So we would love to add some ladies to the board and get that good and helpful perspective as we continue on as a church. So if you have someone that you think would make a great elder, please go online to that website, to graceralee.org slash elders, and get that nomination in to us. We would really appreciate that. Now, as I launch into the sermon, last week we took a break from our series, Storyteller, where we are talking about the parables that Jesus, one of the greatest storytellers to ever live, we're talking about the parables that he told. And again, a parable is a short fictional story that makes a moral point. This week, we're jumping into a parable found in Luke chapter 7. So if you have a Bible there with you at home, I hope you'll open it up and look at verse 36. That's where this story starts. This week is going to be a parable embedded in a story. I've been doing vocational ministry now for 20 years. Just recently, I turned 39, and so it's depressing to know that when I was 19 years old, I took my first job in ministry with a ministry called Young Life. So for 20 years, I've been doing ministry vocationally. And during those 20 years, I've seen a lot of things change. I've seen a lot of examples of how to do ministry in some ways not to do ministry. But one of the constants that I've seen is the zeal of a fresh convert, the zeal and the passion for Jesus of someone who's coming to know him for the first time. There's a similar zeal for someone who has grown up in church or grown up considering themselves a Christian, but maybe wandered away or ventured away from the faith. And there's some sort of event that brings them back to Jesus and they have this fresh passion and this fresh zeal for him. For a lot of us, maybe that's our story, that we grew up as believers, and at some point in our life, we wandered away, and then we came back, and we were filled with that zeal and that passion again. And for me, I've been a believer. I've claimed a faith for literally as long as my memory goes back. I accepted Christ at a very young age and don't have much of a memory of what it was like to be in life without faith. And for some of you, that's your story too. And if that's your story, then you can probably relate to me that when I see the zeal and the passion of a fresh convert or someone who's coming back to the faith after a long time away, I'm often jealous of that zeal. I want some of that, you know? I want that passion for Jesus. I want that passion for the Father. I want to be as excited about the faith as they are. And often I'm not just jealous, but I'm convicted. And I wonder, why don't I have that zeal? Why don't I have that passion? It seems like after years or decades of walking with Jesus, of growing closer to the Father, of being guided by the Spirit, that we would have a more natural, deep passion and exuberance for God. It seems like that should grow over time rather than diminish. And if you can relate to that, if you've felt a diminishing in your own life of zeal for Jesus, then I think it would be great to look at the parable that we find in Luke chapter 7 and learn from Jesus what it means to be passionate for Him and try to identify what it is that fuels that passion. In Luke chapter 7, Jesus is invited over to a Pharisee's house. The Pharisee is a guy named Simon. He's invited over for dinner, and you can look in your Bible there in verse 36. He's invited over for dinner, and we pick up the story. He's reclining at the table. The tables back in the day were low, and so you would kind of lay on them with your shoulders towards the table and your feet behind you. And so Jesus was reclining at the table. He's talking to Simon, and as he's talking to Simon, a woman shows up. Scriptures say that it was a woman of the city, which is a nice way of saying that she was a prostitute. So in the middle of this dinner, a prostitute shows up, and she kneels down behind Jesus at his feet. And she begins to weep and cover his feet with her tears. She pulls out expensive perfume, alabaster, and dumps that on his feet. And she wipes his feet with her hair and she kisses his feet. And I can only imagine how awkward that would have been for Simon and Jesus and any of the other guests that were there to watch this woman do this for a prostitute, just to come sweeping into a dinner party and begin to act in that way towards one of the guests. Can you imagine how awkward it would be if you were at someone's house for dinner and in the middle of dinner, a prostitute walked in, a woman of ill repute came into the room and knelt down at the feet of someone and began to cry at their feet and wash them and kiss them? It would be super weird. But that's what's happening at this party with Jesus, at this dinner gathering with Jesus and Simon the Pharisee. And Scripture tells us that Simon muttered to himself, if he knew, if he were really a prophet, speaking of Jesus, then he would know who this woman was and what she did, and he would not allow this to be happening. And it's at this point that I think, before we continue with the story, that it's valuable to try to identify and empathize with what's going on in the hearts and the minds of the people in the story. I think for the prostitute, it's really clear. We don't have to do a lot of work to try to figure out what's going on in her heart and what's going on in her mind and her life. Can you imagine the gall that it would take to go into a house party like that and fall down at the feet of one of the guests and begin to weep and kiss his feet? I've never in my life cared so little what other people thought of me that I would be able to do that. She had to totally brush aside any sense of dignity that she had. She had to be willing and know that the Pharisees, which we'll learn in a second, were the upper crust, the high society. She had to know that those people were going to judge her, that those people were going to think that she was crazy. And she had to make a calculated decision to not care because this is Jesus, the Savior of the world. This is the one that's going to save me from my sins. And so it didn't matter to her, and she threw herself at his feet with reckless abandon. And you juxtapose that with the mindset of the Pharisee. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. They were the church people. They were the pastors and the elders and the deacons of the day. They were the leaders. To become a Pharisee, you had to know the law incredibly well. A Pharisee was like a senator, except in a religious senate. And so they had most of the Old Testament memorized. They knew it backwards and forwards. They were the ones that were entrusted by God to lead his people. They were the ones that were responsible for understanding scripture, for teaching scripture, for imparting knowledge on people. They were the ones in charge of leading Israel, God's chosen people. And what I think is worth acknowledging about Simon is that he likely thought that he was being magnanimous and generous in spirit to even have Jesus over to his house to begin with. We only see, to my knowledge, one other Pharisee dealing with Jesus on a personal level, and it's Nicodemus in John chapter 3, maybe the most famous of the Pharisees. And Nicodemus, even as open and as willing as he was to have a conversation with Jesus, he would only do it by himself under the cover of night. Yet here Simon is inviting in this radical teacher, this rebellious revolutionary into his home to hear what he has to say. Jesus's message ran counter to the Pharisees. It ran counter to what was accepted in that culture. It was a big, bold move for Simon to have Jesus over to begin with. Which is why, again, I think that it's very likely that Simon felt he was being generous in spirit. Almost a sense of, look at me, look at how open I am, look at how progressive I am, look at how open-minded and generous I can be that I would invite in this rebellious revolutionary to come in and peddle his teachings to my friends. There was probably some piety and some pride there. He allowed Jesus to come into his life, but not so much that he reacted like the prostitute and fell all over himself and fawned all over Jesus, but in a dignified way, in a way that he was in control and Jesus was his guest. And even though it was a big, generous thing for him to do to allow Jesus to come, he probably felt like he was doing Jesus a favor, like he was lending some credibility to Jesus's movement, that this was an echelon of society that Jesus had not been welcomed into yet. And we see even amidst that pride, a bit of skepticism from the Pharisee. We see in the passage that he mutters to himself that if this man were really a prophet, so he didn't even understand Jesus to be the son of God. He didn't accept him as a good teacher. He thought maybe he was a prophet, but now he even had his doubts about that. So he very skeptically allows Jesus to kind of come into this portion of his life and feels, I would argue, that he is being generous in spirit to do so. And it's at this point that I think it's worth asking, to which person do you most relate? The Pharisee or the prostitute? To which person in this story so far do you most relate? If you were to be at a party and Jesus were to show up, when Jesus does show up in your life, when you have an opportunity to praise him or to respond to him, to which response do you most relate? Do you respond to Jesus more like the Pharisee or more like the prostitute? Do we fall at his feet with reckless abandon, not caring at all who is around us and what they think? That prostitute only cared what Jesus thought of her and no one else. Is that how we respond to Jesus? Or do we respond like the Pharisee, feeling a sense of generosity and magnanimity of spirit that we allow him into our lives? Look how open-minded I am. Look how good I am. Look at, even in the face of all the different worldviews, I continue to stay staunch in the faith. Look at how good of a person I must be. Are we sometimes skeptical of Jesus, preferring to maintain our dignity in front of the other people that might be with us rather than fall at his feet and only care what he thinks? I know it's a difficult comparison to make. I know it's a convicting question to ask. But I also know that for me in my life, I relate far more to the Pharisee than I do to the prostitute. And my responses to Jesus and the way that I live out my faith, I relate far more to the Pharisee, caring what the people around me think, puffing my own self up with the sense of generosity that I would allow Jesus into my life, accepting him with some decorum and opening up my door so that he can come in, but not fawning all over him, not falling all over myself, not caring what anyone else thinks. And this story so far, if I'm being honest, I relate far more to the Pharisee than I do the prostitute. And I don't know where you are on that spectrum. I would imagine all of us are in the middle somewhere. Very few of us respond to Jesus like the prostitute, just fawning all over him the instant we encounter him. And very few of us are as cold as the Pharisee. Maybe we're a little bit warmer than that, but on the pendulum, on the spectrum of responses, I'm far closer to the Pharisee than the woman. And I wonder where you are. It's important to answer that question because of the way that Jesus responds to the muttering of Simon. When Simon says, yeah, when Simon is muttering and says, if he were really who he says he is, he would not be responding this way. And if I put myself in that moment, I would probably be turned off by what was happening too. I would probably be looking at that woman and judging her. Get yourself together. Come on, this is not the place. This is not the time. Have some dignity. Have some pride. I feel like I would agree with the Pharisee more than I would empathize with the prostitute. But look at what Jesus' response is to the Pharisee as he mutters these things to himself. And maybe what his response is to us as we side with the Pharisee in the story. This is when Jesus tells the parable, starting verse 40, and Jesus answering to him said, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered, say it, teacher. A certain money lender had two debtors.. One owed $500, the other owed 50, and the debt collector canceled both debts. Which one was more grateful? Which one loved him more? And clearly the answer is the one who was forgiven of the $500. And Jesus says, yeah, that's correct. And then he says this, this is great. Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little loves little. I love this passage. The prostitute responds to Jesus with the zeal of a recent convert, with the zeal of someone who is very aware of their sin, who feels the weight and the shame that she carries every day and looks to Jesus as the relief of that shame, looks to Jesus as the one who can forgive her of that shame, where the Pharisee goes through his life and he's a pretty righteous guy. He feels like he's a pretty good guy. He owes God a little bit, but it's more like $50 and less like $500. And so when his debt is forgiven, he feels almost this sense of entitlement that he deserves it. And what we realize is that this woman, the point that Jesus is making is she is reacting this way because she is aware of the depth of her sin. And you are reacting to me that way because you're not. And then he compares them. He said, when I came into your house, you wouldn't even give me the most basic of greetings. You're supposed to wash my feet. You didn't do that. She is crying on my feet. You could anoint my head with oil. You chose to not do that. She's anointing my feet with perfume. You could have greeted me with a holy kiss like you're supposed to, like it's customary, but you didn't do that. You wanted to hold me at arm's length. She is kissing my feet. What we see from this parable is that our passion for Jesus operates in direct proportion to our awareness of our need for him. Our passion for Jesus, that zeal that we talked about at the beginning of the service, at the beginning of the sermon, why is it that recent converts and people coming back to Christ seem to have a greater zeal than those of us who've been walking with him for a long time? Well, the answer is that our passion for Jesus operates in direct proportion to our awareness of our need for him. That prostitute was very aware of her sin. She was very aware, acutely aware of the condition of her heart and her capacity for evil and that her life had offended the creator God. That Pharisee thought he was squared away. He thought he was pretty good. He was what I think of. He fell victim. He fell into the trap that many longtime church people and believers fall into. He fell into the trap of pretty good. He fell into the trap of going, listen, I've got my things. I deal with some pride. I've got some ego stuff. Sometimes I lose my temper and I've got these quiet sins in the corner of my life. But on the whole, I'm a pretty good guy. And once you start to believe that, you start to think that somehow you're not as sinful as someone like a prostitute. Like somehow your sins aren't as great as theirs. Like, yeah, I'm sinful, but the volume of her sins is so much greater that she deserves, she is going to require a greater forgiveness than I do. We almost have this sense of entitlement that God owes us a forgiveness or that because we're pretty good, because we don't have any glaring weaknesses or glaring sin that people can point to, that we must be pretty squared away. And it's when we fall into that trap of pretty good that our passion for Jesus begins to wane because we forget our capacity for sin. And the point that Jesus is making in this parable, this is very important, the point that he's making in this parable is not, she has sinned so much more than you, Simon the Pharisee. This prostitute has committed so many more sins than you, so she's going to respond to me like this all the time. And you just can't because you're a pretty good guy and you'll never understand the depth of sin that she does. That's not what he's saying. What he's trying to get Simon to see, and I think what he is trying to get us to see, is that the difference between the Pharisee and the prostitute was not the volume of their sin, but rather his awareness of it. The difference between the Pharisee and the prostitute was not their capacity to sin. It was not their history of sin. It was not their total offenses against God, but rather it was simply their awareness of their sin. The sin of the prostitute is obvious. It takes five seconds of reflection to identify why she would feel like she wasn't worthy of God, to identify the shame that she walked around with, and to see the volume of her sin and understand her awareness of it. But it doesn't take much longer to identify the capacity and the volume of the Pharisee's sin either. I don't know about Simon in the Bible. He may have been a nice guy. He may have actually been generous of spirit. And it's possible that I'm being unfair to him. But the Pharisees on the whole were a disappointing lot to God. If you read through the gospels, you don't see Jesus be mean to anyone except for the Pharisees. And then sometimes he gets exasperated with the disciples, but he is hard on the Pharisees. He calls them a brood of vipers. At another time, he calls them whitewashed tombs, meaning you look good on the outside, but you're rotting away and dead on the inside. He actually tells some parables to the Pharisees to help them understand that they were the ones that were left entrusted with God's people, and they have run them into the ground. They have done a terrible job of leading God's people, and they have misrepresented the God that they are supposed to represent to his people. The Pharisees did a terrible job with the responsibilities that were entrusted to them. And so if you think about the life of an individual Pharisee, someone who on the outside looks like they have it all together and seems like they're doing pretty good, no major egregious sins, I would wonder how many people had their piety damaged? How many people had a Pharisee turned off to a God that he was supposed to represent because he portrayed through his actions and through his judgment, he portrayed God as someone who was in heaven looking down on people as kind of this cosmic cop making sure that you didn't get out of the lines and exacting revenge on the ones that disappointed him. Because of the model of faith that the Pharisees lived out, how many people had they turned away from the faith? Because of the way that they judged others and they held themselves in higher regard and esteem than anyone else, how many people did they make feel terrible just for having humanity in their life? If you were a Pharisee and you showed a sliver of humanity, you showed weakness, the people around you show weakness or the propensity to sin, they were ostracized. They were cast out. They could not be in the high society, the upper echelon of people. They had to put on airs. And how many, how much damage did that version of faith do, that legalism and that prideful faith that they lived out? How much damage did it do over the years? What we see in this story with this parable embedded inside it is that Jesus is gently, in that miraculous way that only Jesus can do, helping Simon see, Simon, you are every bit as capable of sin as this prostitute is. Your heart is just as unhealthy, is just as dirty, and is just as capable of the most egregious sin as hers is. The only difference between you and her is not how much you've sinned, it's simply your awareness of your sin. And through the centuries, this parable speaks to us too. And it serves as a reminder that maybe some of us have fallen victim of pretty good. Maybe some of us know how to present a pretty good front and make it seem like we have it all together. Maybe some of us have very neatly tucked away the secret sins and our private struggles so that we can put forward a front of this is a version of Christianity that everyone ought to live up to. And maybe we've been doing it long enough that we've even had the audacity to forget our capacity to sin. But Jesus reminds us that all of our hearts are just as capable of sin as anyone else's. That the most egregious evil is two or three bad weeks away from all of us. So, if you relate to me at the beginning and are jealous of this passion and this zeal that new converts seem to have for Jesus, and we wonder, is it possible to recapture that? I would say to you, yes, it is. And that if we want our passion for Jesus to increase, that we need to understand that it operates in direct proportion to our awareness of our need for him, of our need for his salvation and our gratitude for his forgiveness and the sense of delivery when he takes away our shame and that when we fall into the trap of pretty good, we forget that we need those things. And when we're told that we're saved and when we're told that Jesus loves us and when we're told that we're God's children, sometimes that falls on deaf ears because we feel in some ways entitled to those things. But this parable reminds us, no, no, no, the difference between us and the recent convert, the difference between those of us with muted passion and those with exuberant passion is not the volume of our sin or our capacity to sin. It's our awareness of our own sin and our own need and condition before the Father. So if we'd like a heightened passion for God, if we want to move through 2020 and everything that it holds with this undying passion and zeal for Jesus and who He is and what He's doing, then I would say it begins with a simple prayer that I would encourage us to pray on our own every day this week. Jesus, make me more aware of my need for you. It's a bold prayer. It's a courageous prayer. It's a bold thing to do to say, God, I want to see my ugliness so that I appreciate what you've delivered me from. God, I want to see my capacity. I want to understand who I am. I don't want to turn a blind eye to the capacity of sin in my life. I want to see it and understand so that I am more grateful for who you are and the salvation that you offer. I hope that you'll do that. I hope that if you came into this service this week and you would have agreed 30 minutes ago, yeah, I just don't feel the passion for Jesus that I'd like to. Reclaim that passion. Listen to the point of this parable and pray that God would make you increasingly aware of your need for him. And as he does that, I promise you will feel forgiven of more and more and your passion will increase and increase. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We are so grateful for you. Lord, I pray that you would make us ever aware of our need for you. That none of us would fall into the trap of pretty good. That none of us would feel a sense of entitlement that we somehow deserve your forgiveness, but that we would marvel that you offer it. God, may none of us ever walk in the pride that we are so squared away, that we are so good, that we follow the rules so well, and that we live for you so faithfully that we forget who we are and what you've done for us. Father, as we go throughout our weeks this week, make us increasingly aware of our need for you so that we might have a burning passion and desire for you. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Grace, good morning. My name's Nate. I'm the pastor here of Grace's Virtual Church for at least the next eight weeks. We've never done anything like this before. Churches have never faced a problem like this before, how to do virtual church in the face of a pandemic, in the midst of social distancing and quarantining, but I happen to believe that grace was made for eight-week hiatuses. Grace was made to be sustained by just our connections. It makes me so sad that we can't all be together right now, seeing each other, enjoying one another, singing with one another. I think that's probably what I'm going to miss the most over the next eight weeks is the corporate worship. I can't wait for the Sunday that we get to come back and cry out to God together. But until then, this is where we are. And I believe that we're built for this. We are a church that is built on connections. We say we connect people to Jesus and connect people to people, and those connections matter now more than ever. I believe as the weeks and even the months roll on, we are going to feel potentially more and more isolated and increasingly desirous of connection with others. And so we're going to work very hard as a staff to provide these connection points during the week. I hope that you're watching this live so that you can have a sense of participation with everyone else. I hope that you even got here a few minutes early and were participating in what we think of as the virtual lobby or the chat feature and where this video is being watched. So I hope that you did that. If you're watching this on delay later in the day or in the week, I hope that in this upcoming week, you'll make it a priority to be a part of the church at 10 o'clock every Sunday. I'm excited about those opportunities. We're going to be doing devotions and worship moments. Steve's going to be doing worship moments on Facebook Live. Aaron and Kyle and I will be sharing things, and we're going to do everything we can to have lots of opportunities for interaction. So it's vitally important that if you have Facebook or you have Instagram, that you follow us in those places so that we can all participate and share and watch together. My hope is that as we're kind of allowed by the CDC and the governors to come out of our caves and maybe meet in small groups, that maybe we could progress to watch parties together as small groups in our homes for sermons and for different things. But we're going to get through this. We're going to weather this storm, and we're excited about the opportunities to meet as a virtual church over at least the next eight weeks. We're in a series now called Storyteller, and we're looking at the parables of Jesus. Jesus told short fictional stories to make moral points, and so we are in the middle of that as a church. And I have a parable that I had prepared last week when we had to cancel the services that I was ready to preach about this week. But on Tuesday of this week, I had my men's group here in this space at 6 a.m. surreptitiously against the better judgment of others, and we met. And there was only five of us, don't worry, and I'm going to follow protocol moving forward, and we'll do Zoom calls. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's bedhead for those that still have hair. And we studied Mark 8 this week. And we went through Mark 8. And I've read Mark plenty of times. But this conversation in Mark 8 in verses 14 through 21, I've never noticed it before. It's a conversation between Jesus and the disciples. I've never really noticed it before. It's never really mattered to me before. And I'm not sure if I remember it, but this week as we read it and we looked at it as a group of men on Tuesday morning, it really hit me square between the eyes. And this conversation has really heartened me and encouraged me over the course of this week. And it's been a crazy week. New things come out every day. Every day we see new curves. We're all amateur epidemiologists. We all know what the words flatten the curve and extend the curve mean. We're all looking at other countries to see what's going to happen there. I feel like every day this passage gets a little bit more relevant because every day the fear gets ramped up just a little bit more. And so what I wanted to do for our first virtual service in the midst of a pandemic is take a break from the parables. We'll come back to those next week. I get to do the parable of the Good Samaritan and several others, and I'm really excited to share those with you. But this week, I just wanted to pause and maybe give us a word of comfort from a conversation that happens in the Gospel of Mark. So if you have a Bible there at your house, I hope you do. I hope you'll scramble and grab one and pull it out and be looking at this passage as we go through it together. But in Mark chapter 8, beginning in verse 14, there's this really important conversation with the disciples. I'm going to read part of it to you, and then I'm going to explain to you what's going on. So in chapter 8, verse 14, they had just fed 4,000 people, Jesus did, and now they were going across the Sea of Galilee on a boat. And even though it's called the Sea of Galilee, it's really a lake, but even though it's a lake, it's pretty big. I've been on it, and you can be in the middle of it and not really see anything but water. So it takes a long time to get across the Sea of Galilee. It says this, Now they, being the disciples, had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, this is Jesus, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. When we read that passage, we normally focus in on the words of Jesus, which is the right thing to do, that they would beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And I've noticed that part before, and it's likely that most of you have too. But the part that never really mattered to me was the disciples' distress over having no bread. So they had just fed 4,000 people. Jesus decided to feed the 4,000 because he noted to the disciples that they had been with them for three days, and some of them were weary and might faint if they had to go home then. So it had been an arduous few days for the disciples as well. Then Jesus takes their bread and he breaks it up and he puts it in baskets and they serve all the people. They serve the 4,000 people. And then after that, they get in their boat at night and they're going back across the Sea of Galilee. And they realize collectively, we only have one piece of bread. And we're not talking like a big healthy loaf here. We're probably talking like a smaller piece of bread like this, and they've got 13 mouths to feed. And this isn't a small problem. This is not like when we're at work and things get jammed up and we realize I'm going to have to skip lunch today, I'm not going to eat until dinner, or I'm going to have to run out and get something, or we don't have any food in the house, or whatever it is. This is a legitimate issue because they're hungry. They've already been pushing themselves. They've already gone without food. They live in what we would understand to be is a third world country. So there's no guarantee that when they get to the other side that there's going to be anything open yet, because it might be the middle of the night or early morning. And there's no guarantee that there's even going to be things for sale. And we don't know what their financial situation was if they had the means to just go buy the bread that they needed. They don't have their fishing equipment with them. They don't have their gear with them. They can't just catch some fish and grill them up and be okay. And so in this moment, the disciples are filled with uncertainty and fear. In this moment, the disciples are filled with uncertainty and fear. They're holding this single piece of bread going, what are we going to do? How is this going to work? We're going to go hungry. How are we going to get out of this? We're in the middle of a lake. We're miles away from shore. We have no energy to sustain us to get there. We have no guarantee that once we get there, we're going to have food. What are we going to do? In that moment, they're filled with uncertainty and fear, and it's a legitimate fear. And it's that part of the story as I was reading it, and the disciples are wringing their hands over what to do because they are legitimately fearful and uncertain about their future, that I realized, my goodness, this is all of us right now. This is every one of us. Our culture, our society, our community is filled with uncertainty and fear. We are collectively the disciples on the deck of that boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, holding on to our last piece of bread going, what are we going to do? This week, I posted on Facebook, I asked people, hey, I don't even really know how to do this, but in the face of the coronavirus and pandemic and social distancing and market crashing, what are you fearful of? What are you scared of? And in a couple of days, I haven't checked it in a little bit, but in a couple of days, I got 53 comments. I've never gotten 53 comments about anything. And what it tells me is, man, people are scared. People are fearful. We are collectively very unsure about our futures. I have a pessimistic friend who regularly throughout the day sends me articles that are more and more depressing about how much longer this is going to take and what it's all going to look like and when things are going to spike. And I know that you have those friends too. You may be that friend. And it's a manifestation of this fact that we, like the disciples, are full of fear and uncertainty. And our fears are legitimate. I was talking to somebody this week. They are a family now of three because some of their kids have moved out of the house, and they overnight became a family of five. Her brother and her son had to move back. She's got a son who just started a job that he loves in New York City. But where he works has been shut down, and he's had to come home on furlough, and he doesn't know what his next step is. He's got to be filled with anxiety and fear. His mom is filled with anxiety and fear because she doesn't know how she's going to cope with five people in the house when there used to be three. It's a different dynamic. I was texting with someone who has kids in college, and he said that, I asked him, is everybody back home? Are you enjoying that? And he said, yeah, yeah, everybody's home. It's been great. So far, we've played games every night. And I thought, that's really great for week one. You're going to be real tired of games in week five. It's a legitimate fear to think through how is that going to look and how is that going to go. And those are small anxieties. Getting enough toilet paper, that's a small anxiety. There's ways around that. There are some things that we're fearful of that we know are going to work out, but there's other things that we're fearful of that we don't necessarily see a path for. My heart breaks. I think of a ministry called Refugee Hope for an apartment complex behind the Falls Village Shopping Center on the Falls of News. Everybody in that apartment complex is an immigrant. Almost everybody, up above 90%, they're immigrants. And almost everybody in that complex, it's my understanding, have jobs that are hourly and not salaried. And most hourly employees are facing a significant curtailing or total deletion of their hours. Wondering when their last paycheck is going to be. Wondering how they're going to make it from here. One of the guys that posted on the Facebook posted the question that I asked about, what are you fearful of? He identified with that fear. He said, man, I work a job that is relying upon new jobs, and I'm not getting any new jobs, and I don't know where the next paycheck is going to come from, and I'm concerned for my family and how I can provide for them in the midst of this economy. We have other people who are immunocompromised, and they live in constant fear. Because one of the really scary things about the coronavirus that we're learning is it seems like it's possible to be asymptomatic and feel entirely healthy, yet be someone who is carrying it and unknowingly infecting other people. We have somebody who comes into the office to process giving, someone from the church, and she had to ask the staff, would it be possible for you guys to just not come in for an hour and a half so I can get my work done? Because she doesn't want to carry something back from us who feel fine to her husband that has some challenges that the coronavirus would really aggravate. I'm walking down, I shop at Walmart at 5.30 in the mornings to get the things that we need, and someone coughs, and I turn around, and I walk in the opposite direction. We don't trust anybody. We can't handshake. We're sanitizing our hands all the time. We are fearful. And I've seen in the past times when we were fearful. I've seen people be anxious. Somebody loses their job and they're not worried about how they're going to make this up. But I'm not sure I've seen a time in which there was so much fear. There was so much uncertainty. I'm not sure I've ever seen a time when everybody could relate. Some people are in retirement or nearing retirement and looking at the stock market and may even be close to pulling the trigger on retirement until these last couple weeks happen, and now we don't know. We're just weathering the storm. And whatever it is that we are fearful of, whatever the disappointments are that we are facing over the next couple of weeks or months as we are in the midst of the uncertainty of a pandemic and how prolonged it will be and how profound the impact of it will be, it occurs to me that we are just like the disciples on the boat holding the piece of bread going, how is this going to be enough? How is this going to be okay? Which is why I believe that Jesus's response to the disciples in that moment is such a powerful response for us in this moment. This is what Jesus says. In the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. And he said to them, and I love this statement, do you not yet understand? Do you not yet understand? I want to be careful to point out here that Jesus' tone with the disciples is one of frustration. They've just freshly seen the miracle, the feeding of the 4,000. They've been walking with him for a year or more by now. They've seen plenty of miracles, yet they're holding this bread, and they don't seem to be piecing it together that they can have faith in Jesus providing them bread in the future. And so Jesus says, do you not yet understand? So his tone with them is frustration. I believe that Jesus with us in this moment would not take that tone. I think he would take a more empathetic tone. I think he would remind us that he is the God who sees. I think he would remind us that he is the God who weeps with us. I think he is the God that would remind us that he is close to the brokenhearted and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. So I do not think that Jesus' tone with us in this moment would be one of frustration, but I do think the message would be the same. That the heart of what Jesus says to the disciples is the heart of what he would say to us. And I find it so interesting in this moment that Jesus didn't point to what he was going to do. He pointed to what he had done already. He didn't point to what he was going to do. He didn't say, I know there's only one piece of bread, but look, I'm going to break it. I'm going to fill these baskets over here. There's going to be enough for all of you. Don't worry about it. He didn't say, I actually stored away some fishing nets, cast them over that side of the boat, and you're going to catch a bunch of them. We're going to grill them up, and we're going to be fine. He didn't say, I know a shop owner on the shore. When we get there, we're going to have a feast. I've already got it set up. He doesn't paint for them what he's going to do. He just tells them what he has done. Because I miss sports so much already, I'll use the sports analogy. Jesus didn't point to the game plan. He pointed to the scoreboard. He didn't tell the disciples what the strategy was going to be. He didn't try to ally their fears by immediately resolving the situation. He didn't put them at ease by saying, don't worry, I have a plan. He just said, do you see what I've done? Do you remember the miracles? Jesus' message to the disciples, what he says is, I have given you bread before. I've given you bread before. He doesn't say, I'm going to give you bread in the future. He doesn't say, this is how it's going to go. He just goes, guys, listen, I've provided for you before. I've given you bread before. Do you remember the 5,000? And they say, yes. And it was more than 5,000. The Bible says there's 5,000 men, which means that there was women and children there. So the numbers are between 15 and 20,000. And on five loaves and three fishes, gee, if three fish, I don't even know, you guys can't laugh at me because you can't talk to me right now. With five loaves and three fish, he fed between 15 and 20,000 people. And there was 12 baskets left behind, an abundance, an overflow. And then a little while later, he did it again. He fed 4,000 and there was another abundance and another overflow. And when they are concerned because they only have one loaf of bread and they're filled with anxiety and uncertainty and fear, Jesus comes to them and he just gently says, hey, I've given you bread before. And I think that's such a powerful message for us right now. I think that's such a powerful reminder for us right now. That in the face of our uncertainty and fear, Jesus reminds us that he has given us bread before. In the face of our uncertainty and fear, in the midst of this pandemic, in the midst of an economic collapse, hopefully temporary, Mark 8 screams at us through the centuries, I've given you bread before. I don't think it was any accident that I stubbornly decided to meet with my men's group this week. I don't think it was any accident that we happened to be on Mark 8. And I don't think it was any accident that over the course of the week, I couldn't get it out of my head and just wanted to share that simple message with you that, hey, God has given us bread before. He's provided for us before. He's met us in the midst of our fear and uncertainty before, and He'll do it again. I think about Jen and I and where we sit right now. In 2007, in April of 2007, we bought our first house. And in May of 2007, the market crashed. And within a couple months, it was worth a fraction of what we paid. And we're sitting there going, great, this is not how it's supposed to go. We're supposed to buy a house and then develop some equity and then sell it and then we're living large. And that's not how it went for us. That wasn't our story. And so here we are 13 years later. We want to be real careful about when we bought a house and how we decided to do it. And we closed on a new one on March the 9th and then found out that day because someone texted me who's not my friend that the markets had crashed for the worst time in history, and we're going, great, clearly, it's terrible for the country for Nate and Jen to buy homes. And it makes us fearful, and it makes us uncertain, this sense of deja vu, and here we go again. But in this passage, God has whispered in my ear, hey, man, you never wanted for anything. You had all the things you needed. You made your payments fine. I sustained you with employment. I've given you bread before. And he'll give it to us again. And Jesus doesn't need for me, he doesn't need to point to exactly how it's going to all work out. I don't need to see the value of my home projected out over the next 10 years by Jesus himself to feel, okay, all I need to know is for him to point to the scoreboard and say, look what I've already done. I think about grace. The last time I preached, the last time I preached, it was a celebration. It was March 8th, and I was going, look at what God did. Look at the pledges that came in. It was above and beyond anything that we expected. Man, these are going to be high times for grace. It is green pastures and sunshine and rainbows ahead. I did not see global pandemic and market crash coming. It is an uncertain time for all churches. But here's what I know. Grace has seen harder times. We've seen thinner times. God has given us bread before, and he'll do it again. He has provided for us in the past, and he'll look out for us in the future. When we launched the campaign, I preached, I believe, on February 2nd, and the main point was me saying, hey, God's hand, in one one way or another has always been on this church, and we believe that it remains. And then when the pledges came in and we celebrated that together, we said, look, God's hand is on the church, and we're going to walk in faith into the future that he's painted for us. And pandemics and economic failures changed nothing. God's hand is still on this place. And we're still walking into the future that we believe he's created for us. And I don't know what your fear is. I don't know what your uncertainty is. And I wouldn't seek to mitigate it or minimize it or dismiss it by saying, hey, God's gonna take care of it. Because sometimes we don't know what it looks like for God to take care of things. But we do know that Isaiah 41.10 is true. We do know that we serve a God that says, do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and hold you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. We know that's true and we know we can cling to that. I don't know how God's gonna provide bread for you and your family. I don't know how God is gonna see each and every individual of grace and of those watching. I don't know how God's gonna see us through this season of uncertainty. But I would be willing to bet that God has provided bread for you before. I would be willing to bet that each one of you watching and listening can remember a time when you felt like the disciples on the deck of the boat going, I don't know how this is going to work. And that was years ago, and as you reflect back, you marvel at the way that God provided in the midst of uncertainty. And just because now, instead of some of us feeling uncertain and some of us feeling good about life, just because all of us share this common fear and this common uncertainty, just because it's universal does not mean that we serve a different God or that God can't provide. And I don't know what the weeks ahead hold for us as individuals, as a faith family, as families. And I don't know the uncertainty that you face, but I would simply encourage you in moments of anxiety, in moments of fear and uncertainty, remember Jesus' simple message from Mark 8. Do you not yet understand? I've given you bread before, and I firmly believe that he will do it again. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you, and you are good. You are near the brokenhearted. You tell us that we do not need to be dismayed, that we do not need to fear, that you will strengthen us, that you will uphold us with your righteous and your mighty right hand. And so God, we pray for that. We pray for that strengthening. I pray for the heartening of those who call grace home. I pray for the encouragement of those who are watching this and listening to this right now. Help us remember the ways that you provided bread for us in the past. Help us remember the ways that you've come through for us before. And help us have faith that you'll come through for us again. In this time of trial, God, let us cling to you as I always pray for this church and for the people that you love. May everything that happens over the next eight weeks, over the next months, over this pandemic and this quarantine and this distancing and all these things that we're not used to, may you use these circumstances to conspire to bring us closer to you. And God, we faithfully pray for and anticipate the day when we can come together again and celebrate you. In the meantime, may we remember that you provided for us before. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Listen, I'm supposed to dive into a sermon, but before I do that, I just wanted to stop and celebrate what happened here last weekend. I feel like that was a big deal. Yeah. For those that don't know, last weekend, our series, we had a campaign series that culminated in a pledge Sunday, and we had a goal to have $1.5 million pledged in a weekend. And I kind of just quietly thought maybe if we could crest $800,000, that would be great. That would be a step in the right direction. And then you guys blew us away, and God blew us all away with the fact that we hit our goal. And now our pledges are up closer to 1.6 as they continue to come in throughout the week. And if you are here, I've heard, I've talked to some different folks who have said, oh man, I haven't had a chance to pledge yet. I didn't get mine in. Is that still going on? Absolutely. Absolutely it is. And please don't think, oh, we hit the goal. So my pledge isn't useful. That's not true. Everything we get above and beyond, we're just going to buy that much more of an expensive building and really leverage. Everything we get goes to step closer to getting out of debt and helps our payments be lower so that we can do more with the resources that we have. So every bit counts and every bit helps. And I just stand totally humbled at our God. And I also feel like I owe you guys an apology for underestimating your spirit of generosity, for being hesitant about whether or not we can do it? That's right, that's right. I must have had small faith. You guys expanded it. I know for me, it's an affirming moment. When I opened up the series, I opened it up by saying, God's hand has always been on this place, and we believe that it still is. And my goodness, did he affirm that. So before we continue on, I just wanted to stop and praise God together. So would you pray with me as we praise God for what he did? Lord, I know that a lot of us have given you exaltations this week, have praised you this week, have exclaimed towards you this week and just saying thank you for your hand being on this place. Thank you for caring about our little church. Thank you for caring about this community. God, we have faith in you. We have faith that you're guiding us in this direction, that you're inviting us down this path, and so we are here to walk with you. We are here to thank you. We are here in gratitude for you, God. May this church be a place that always honors you. Thank you for loving us and looking out for us. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm so excited for our new series because our new series is all about stories. And I think that stories are a big part of the human experience. I think we all love a good story and we really love good storytellers. You all probably have that person in your life that you can think of who, when they start to tell the story, the whole room leans in. Everybody at dinner stops. Have you ever been in a place where somebody, you're with one of those storytellers and they start telling a story at the end of the table and whoever you're talking to, you're just thinking, please hurry up. Like I want to hear this story. For me, it's a guy named Billy Bryce, just this big, huge bear of a man. Every time he tells a story, I'm leaned in, man. I just want to hear it because there's something about stories that just connects with us. There's something about a good story that we all pay attention to. The more I thought about it, the more I realized stories are so powerful because that's for millennia how we as people have transferred truth and values to the next generation. And stories are powerful because they're emotive and participatory. They invite us in. Rather than just giving us a list of facts or a bullet point of suggestions, stories invite us in. We empathize with the characters. We put ourselves in the story. We feel what the people in the story felt. It invites us in to participate and to feel what's going on in a way that just a cold list of facts doesn't necessarily. This is why stories are so powerful in driving home points. A friend of mine this week that is, he makes short films, he makes movies, his whole life is invested in story. I called him and I said, give me your best 30 seconds on why stories are so valuable to us. And he brought up a great point. He said the things that I did, the stories invite you in and that they're emotive, but he said that stories invite you to mine for your own truth. They invite you to find the truth within the story, to find what's being communicated, to find what the real point is and make it your own. Rather than someone just dictating to you a list of facts and things that are true, a story invites you in to mine for your own truth. And this, I think, is why Jesus so often taught in stories. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we have a collection of teachings of Jesus that are called parables. A parable is a short fictional story that's used to make a point, typically a moral point. And Jesus was famous for teaching in these stories. To me, they're the greatest stories ever told by the greatest storyteller to ever live. And he told these stories to multiple audiences, and it would strike them all differently as they listened. To some, it was the Pharisees and they would hear the stories in a certain way. To some, it was common folks who were trying to figure things out and they would hear the story in a certain way. And then there was the disciples and they would hear in a certain way. And Jesus was always saying things like, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. He taught lessons in these stories so that you really wouldn't get it unless you were inclined to get it, unless you were open to the message of the story and to the hidden meanings of the parables. So for the next seven weeks, we're going to go through these stories of Jesus. We're going to look at the parables. I went through and basically just picked out my favorite ones, ones that I love, that have resonated for me over the years, that mean a whole lot to me. And the great thing about these parables is I'm going to tell them and I'm going to mine them for some truth that I think can serve all of us, but there's multiple applications to these. So you are invited to participate and come along and let these stories strike you however they would as we study them as a congregation together. So I'm excited to jump into these stories. I'm also just excited and relieved because I felt like in the campaign series, every week I had to like rally the troops for this new great vision of grace, and that was a lot of pressure. And now I just get to kind of open the Bible and be like, here's what I think it says. And that's way easier. So sermon prep this week was a lot of fun. I felt way less pressure. And this is one of my favorites. But before we dive into the parable this week, I wanted to preface it so that it hits us in the right way with something that I believe is common to the human experience. I think that to be a human is to feel the weight of expectation. To be a person, to be alive, to be human is to feel the weight of expectation. Here's what I mean. When I first started my career, when I went pro as a Christian, I worked at Greystone Church, which to be in ministry is just to be a professional Christian, and it's ridiculous, okay? We all have assigned roles, and you're going to see that as we go through this parable today. But when I started at Greystone, I think I was about 28, 29 years old, and I was the student pastor. I was the middle school pastor and the small groups pastor. And somewhere in there, I got invited to begin teaching on Sunday mornings. And as I did that, the more I did that, the more I taught on Sunday mornings, every time I would do that, people would come up to me afterwards and they would say, hey, what are your plans for your career? What do you want to do with your ministry? Do you want to be a senior pastor someday? Do you want to maybe plant your own church? Which in church world, I don't know if you know this, but if you're kind of entrepreneurial and you want to do your own thing, or if you're just a punk and you can't get along with anybody, then you go out and you plant your own church, right? That's what you do. And I always said, that looks like really hard work. You kind of parachute into a city, you get people to believe in you and give you money. And then you plant a church. And it seems like super hard work. And I said, I don't really think I'm wired to do that. But I don't know what I'm going to do. And people would ask me, are you going to plant a church? Are you going to be a senior pastor? Like, what are your goals? What do you want to do one day? And I just remember thinking, gosh, you know, I haven't really thought about it. Like, right now I have 150 kids. I'm trying to convince them that I know what I'm doing. I have no goals beyond trying to not screw up Sunday. That's all I got. But the more people would ask me, the more I felt like that was something I needed to think about. What are my goals for my life? What do I want to do? And I began to feel this weight of expectation. And the truth of it is, the weight of expectation that I felt is no different than what we all feel at different seasons in our life. When you're in college, the question when you meet anybody is, what's your major? What are you studying? Which begs the question, what do you want to become? What do you want to accomplish? What kind of person do you want to be? In your 20s and 30s, you're trying to figure out in your career, who am I? What am I going to do? What am I going to give myself to? What is my career going to look like? What are the expectations that are being placed on me? In your 40s and 50s, you begin to evaluate, how did I do? How's it going? Sometimes we do a mid-course correction. Sometimes we go, I'm nailing it. But we all feel this weight of expectation, this pressure to produce and to perform and to be. It reminds me of a comedian jokingly attributed a quote to Abraham Lincoln one time because all of Abraham Lincoln's quotes are so very simple. And so he made this one up, but I think it applies here. He says, whatever you are, be a good one. And I think we all feel that weight. Whatever you are, whatever role you find yourself in, if you're a daughter, be a good daughter. If you're a husband, be a good husband. If you're a teacher, be a good teacher. Whatever we are, we want to be a good one. We all feel this sense of responsibility and this weight of expectation that I'm supposed to accomplish something. I'm supposed to be something. I'm supposed to matter. And I think that that's an important thing to feel. It's a fair thing to feel. We should feel a weight of expectation. It's not good to drift through life never accomplishing anything. But to that weight of expectation, I think this story directly speaks. And this is probably my favorite parable. It's why we're kicking off the series with this one. This one is found in Matthew chapter 25, verses 14 through 30. I'm not going to read them all to you, but this is the parable. It's the parable of the talents. In the parable of the talents, Jesus is describing to the listeners the kingdom of God. And he says, the kingdom of God is like a master who assembles his servants. And he has three servants, and to one, he gives five talents, and to another, he gives two talents, and to another, he gives one talent. Scripture says, each according to his own ability. And he says, I'm going to leave. I'd like for you to invest these talents how you see fit. And a talent is just a denomination of money, okay? I'd like for you to invest this money how you see fit. And the master goes out of town for a long while, and he comes back. And when he comes back after being out of town for a while, he gathers the servants together, and he asks for his report. What'd you do? And the one with the five talents says, here, master, I know you to be a shrewd man, so I took the talents that you gave me, and I invested them, and I traded them in the marketplace, and here I have for you five more talents. So he hands back to him 10 talents. And the second servant does the same thing. He says, I knew you to be a shrewd man. You gave me two talents. I went, I invested them in the marketplace, and I traded, and now here are two more talents. He hands him back four talents. Each of them doubled the master's investment. And to each of them, the master says the exact same thing. Look at verse 21. It'll be up on the screen. After the one with the five talents gave him back 10 talents, two talents more, a total of four. He says the exact same thing. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your master. It's the same response. And then he goes to the one that he gave one talent. And the one talent person responds this way. Master, I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where. He's not the most capable employee, but at least he's got his money back. No harm, no foul. But that's not how the master responds. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and at my coming I should have received what was my own in interest. So he takes the talent from the one and he gives it to the one with five and he says, whoever has much more will be given and you will receive nothing. And he kicks him out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's an intense ending. I've always thought, man, I do not want to be that one talent servant. I do not want to be the one that takes what God gives me and buries it and gets in trouble for not producing. So we're going to come back to something in that story. We're going to come back to a statement that's made by the master, by Jesus. But before we do that, I don't want to miss the main point of this parable. The main point of this parable, what Jesus is driving at, if we want to do justice to it, I can't just blow by this. So the main point of this parable is the unavoidable truth that being a Christian means getting to work. That's the point of the parable. Being a believer, being in the kingdom of God, being a servant of the Lord means getting to work. It is an unavoidable truth. No one signs up to be a Christian and then just coasts the rest of their life like they're on a cruise ship or something at a buffet. We all have to get to work. So that weight of expectation that we talked about, that we all feel, is very real, and it comes from God himself. He places on us, if we are believers, he places on us a weight of expectation that we will get to work. Three weeks ago, I talked about some of this work when we talked about evangelism, and I shared with you the parable of the sower that scattered seed over four different surfaces, and the best surface, it took root, and the plant shot up, and what does Jesus say that the plants did? They reproduced 30, 60, and even 100-fold. And we said that's a tip of the cap to this weight of expectation that when we are believers, God expects us to reproduce ourselves. God expects us to share the gospel. He expects us to make disciples. We talked about the Great Commission the week before when we're told to make disciples, and we said, this is not optional. These are Jesus's marching orders to the church for the rest of time. Go and make disciples. Make no mistake about it. To be a Christian is to get to work, and there is a weight of expectation on each and every one of us who would claim faith to reproduce ourselves and others and to share the love of God with them. That's the point. But there is a beauty to this parable as we seek to bear up under this weight of expectation. And we see, I think, the beauty of this when we look at God's interactions with the five-talent servant and the two-talent servant. And we ask ourselves, okay, God does have an expectation of us. What is it? What are God's expectations of me? What are God's expectations of you? If we want to understand this, I think the first thing we need to do is be honest about the responsibilities that we've been given. The first thing we need to do is be honest about the talents that have been assigned to us. Be honest about the responsibilities that have been handed over to us. I think everybody reads the story and we go, man, I don't, I mean, I don't want to brag. There's a chance I'm a five-talent person. I think God's probably apportioned that to me. Maybe not. Maybe I'm this two-talent. I'm definitely not a one-talent. But here, let me help us all out, all right? Ain't nobody in here a five-talent person. Let's just get that off the table. One of the things we need to do in life is come to grips with the responsibilities that God has assigned to us. I think one of the damaging things we do in life and one of the damaging things we do in the church is we are a bunch of two-talent people running around disappointed in ourselves because we're not producing five-talent results when God never asked us to do that. So one of the first things we need to do is come to grips with the responsibilities that we've been assigned. If you look at the parable, who assigns the talents? The master does, according to their abilities. And if you take that a step further, in our life, who assigned, who gave us our abilities? God did. He's designed each of us. He's wired each of us. And he apportions to each of us responsibilities in his kingdom. But one of the worst things we can do is run around beating ourselves up because we're a two-talent person trying to produce five-talent results. I think of Metta this weekend. This weekend, we had our big student student event and we've got our great student pastor, Kyle, who's kind of heading that up. And we had about 40 kids participating in Metta. And in church world, we look at the way that Metta broke down and we tend to go, Kyle did the most. Kyle was the biggest deal. He had an impact on all 40 kids. He's the one that really nailed it with the responsibilities. And then we might look at the small group leaders and we go, they did good, but they did a little bit less. I think of a girl that we have, Jordan Shaw. She leads songs up here sometimes. She's a friend of ours. She's got two little kids. And her assignment for the weekend was to minister to a group of middle school girls, six to eight middle school girls. That was her assignment for the weekend. And what we're tempted to do, particularly in our American culture, is economize those things and say Kyle's impact was greater than Jordan's impact because Kyle impacted 40 and Jordan impacted eight. And I think that's entirely erroneous. Kyle is a single guy. He gets paid to do that. That's his job. That's what he has been assigned to do. Jordan did it for free. She left two kids at home. You know who the real hero of the weekend is? Dylan. Because he watched the kids to free her up to do that ministry, right? That was her responsibility for that weekend. And the difference she's going to make in the lives of those girls in a lot of ways is greater than the difference than Kyle is going to make. So it's not a value. It's not a numbers game. It's not a largeness of impact that we're comparing. It's simply what are the responsibilities that God has assigned to you? And to Kyle, he assigned the whole group. And to Jordan, he assigned a portion of the group. And I think the temptation is, if we're not even participating in something like that, is to degrade what we're doing even more. I think of Faith, who was over here. She left the service because her infant baby was fussing, and she knows that I'm easily distracted. And so she walked out, and it would be very easy for her to sit here and hear about Jordan investing herself in the lives of others, to hear about the great things that Kyle is doing, to see the people in charge of the food drive and think, gosh, I'm not doing anything for the kingdom. I'm not doing anything that matters. And to beat herself up for not returning the investment that God is making. But you know what she's doing? Her life is consumed with three kids. She's got Wyatt and Henry and a new baby, Katie. She can't see straight. She's probably not sleeping. And for now, for this season of life, those are the responsibilities that God has apportioned to her. It is not her responsibility to run around trying to impact everybody. She has those kids to think about now. I think so often we see five-talent people doing five-talent things, and we beat ourselves up because we're not doing that either. And that's the wrong way to think about it. The first thing we need to do under this weight of expectation is be realistic about what God has assigned to us right now. God has assigned to each of you, according to the way that he's wired you, according to the way that he's gifted you, he's assigned to each of you a ministry. It might be your kids. It might be a business. It might be a small group. It might be a single friend. But God has assigned to you responsibility of ministry. And your responsibility is to be realistic about what he's assigned you. And stop heaping guilt and pressure on yourself to do more outside of what God has asked you to do. And here's the really freeing part about that. Here's what I love about this parable. God's response to the five-talent person and the two-talent person. It's the exact same. It's the exact same. He doesn't look at the five-talent person and be like, whoa, you gave me 10 back. This is super impressive. Well done. You are a big deal in my kingdom. And the house that I'm making you in heaven is going to be nice. It's going to be on the lake. Two-talent person, thank you. Your community will have sidewalks. That's not how he does that. That's not how he does that. He says, well done, good and faithful servant. To both of them, you did the best you could with the resources that I gave you. And at the end of the day, that's the only weight of responsibility that we need to feel. We need to do the best we can with the resources that we've been given. In your season of life, in where you are, and the responsibilities that God has apportioned to you, your job, the weight of responsibility that you should feel, and the only weight of responsibility that you should feel, is to do the best you can with the resources that you've been given. If you're in your 20s and you're setting up life goals, you need to make it your goal that no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, no matter what God's apportioned to me, I want to know that I'm doing the best I can with the resources I have. If we're in our 40s and our 50s and we're assessing how have I done so far, the question we need to be asking based on this parable is, can I honestly say I've done the best I can with the resources I've been given? If we're trying to figure out how good of parents we've been, if we're trying to set goals for how good of a husband or a wife we want to be, if we're trying to assess whether or not we're a good friend, the one question that matters is, have I done the best I can with the resources that I've been given? Have I honored God with the opportunities that he's given me? Have I been realistic about the responsibilities apportioned to me? And have I done the best I can with those responsibilities? That's why when people kept asking me that question early in my career, what is it that you wanna do with yourself?? Where do you think God's going to take you? My answer became, my goal is to hear well done, good and faithful servant. My only goal, the only thing I want in life, the only thing I want in my career, the only thing I want to hear about my efforts as a pastor, about my efforts as a husband, as a father, as a friend, the only thing I really want to hear is one day when I get to heaven and I finally get to see the face of Jesus, I want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant. I wanna know that I did the best I could with the resources that he gave me. And I wanna be so bold as to put that in front of you and let you make that your life goal. I don't know what your life goal is. I don't know what you came in here thinking you should do with your life. I don't know what your mantra has been, but if you don't have one, I would invite you to borrow that from me. That one day when we see the face of Jesus, he will look at us and he will say, well done, good and faithful servant. Let us not put any more pressure on ourselves. Let us feel no more weight of expectation than to simply honor God with the responsibilities that He's given us, with the gifts and abilities and the way that He's wired us to do what He's called us to do. Let us collectively make our life goals well done, good, and faithful servant. Can I tell you that frees you up from so much? Can I tell you it frees you up from so much pressure, from so much comparing, from so much, man, that mom is doing all of these things and I feel like I can't get my life together. That guy has eight side hustles and I don't have any. That person is crushing it in ministry and I don't feel like I'm doing anything. Let's stop doing that and playing the comparison game and just ask ourselves, am I doing the best I can with the resources that I've been given? One day when I see Jesus, will he tell me, well done, good and faithful servant? What if we make that our collective goal as a church? We're dreaming big dreams and we're moving forward and we're gonna build a building and it's gonna be bigger than this one and we all have hopes and yada, yada, yada. But what if instead of worrying about all of those things, what we worry about is week in and week out in our small groups, as we serve the kids, as we pass baskets, as we encourage one another, as we rally around one another. What if what we worry about is simply hearing those words from our Savior, well done, good and faithful servant. If we do that, He will say, you have been faithful with a few things. I'm going to trust you with more. I think it is one of the most freeing life goals and truths that we could have, and I would encourage you to adopt that as well. Let's pray, and then we'll celebrate communion together. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for loving us. God, I pray that we would accept the responsibilities that you've assigned to us. I pray that we would be comfortable and secure in knowing that we are working for you. We are working under your weight of expectations and no one else's. God, I pray that one day as we see your face, we would hear those incredible words, well done, good and faithful servant. I pray that those who are faithfully serving, faithfully giving, faithfully working and have been quietly for years, that you would bolster them, that you would be with them, that you would give them confidence and courage to continue walking in their quiet ways. Father, I pray that we would honor you, that we would do the best we can with everything that you give us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.