Sermons tagged with Passion

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thank you for being here with us in person. Thank you for joining us online, if that's what you're doing. I am excited for this Sunday morning. I was probably more excited about this particular sermon in this series than any of the others, because this morning, this big rock is on a topic that I've invested a lot of time and energy thinking about, actually. We're going to be talking about time, and we should spend our time and how we should prioritize our time. And I will confess to you that I have nerded out on this subject. I've listened to podcasts and read books about productivity. If something comes across my news feed about this new study about how to be productive and how to maximize our time in the workplace and all that stuff, I will listen to it. I eat all of that stuff up. Now, it hasn't translated to actual productivity in my workplace, but I'm hoping that if I can just keep learning more things, like for instance, when you're in, when you're just, when you're locked in and you're focused, you're in the groove and you're doing the thing you need to do, you're maximum productive, you're being creative, you're knocking out emails, whatever it is. When you get interrupted, somebody texts you, somebody sticks their head in your office. Kyle starts to talk to someone in the office next to you if you happen to work next to Kyle. When you get interrupted, do you know how long it takes you to regain maximum focus? 26 minutes. Like it takes 26 minutes to regain maximum focus. I could do a whole sermon just telling you stuff like that. That wouldn't be much of a sermon. That would more be like a productivity seminar. So we're going to avoid that. But I've spent a lot of time thinking about time. Because of that, there are myriad directions we could go this morning as we think about the topic of time under the umbrella of God's authority. How would God have us spend our time? What would His priorities for our schedules and our calendars look like? We all know that if you really want to know what a person cares about, look at their calendar and look at their checkbook. And that will tell you what's really, really important to that individual. So we could talk about how to properly prioritize it. We could talk about how much time to make for God. We could talk about how would Jesus have us spend our time. We could do all of those things. And there's a bunch of different directions to go. And when I started out, the way that I write a sermon is I just write down everything I think about that topic, everything I know, all the Bible verses I'm aware of, every time the scriptures address it. And for this particular sermon, I had a big long list. And so the difficulty was on what do we focus on as we think about time? And I really landed on one sentence in the Bible. The first part of one verse that we find in Psalms. And we're going to spend the rest of the morning thinking about the idea of time through the lens of this one sentence that we find in Psalms chapter 46, verse 10. Many of you know this verse. It simply says, be still and know that I am God. Be still, God says, and know that I am God. It's this idea of at some point during your day, during your week, during your month, in your life, at some point, slow down. Be still. Quit doing all the things. Quit going to all the places. Quit stressing out about all the stuff. Quit being distracted by all the different things that can distract you. Be still. Stop moving. Stop going. Right now, I have a five-and-a-half-year-old who cannot be still. She cannot be still. When she's in trouble, I'll tell her, you sit on the stairs, and you sit there, and you do not move, and you do not make a noise. She cannot do it. It's impossible. And for many of us, with our schedules and with our temperaments, it's impossible for us to be still, to just slow down and be still and know that he is God, to focus on God, to focus on what Jesus has done for us, to remind ourselves of the gospel, to remind ourselves of God's goodness in our life. I think many of us struggle mightily to obey this simple psalm, to simply have regular times in our life where we are still and we know that he is God. This is why, incidentally, I think church attendance and involvement is so important. Because even if we're not prioritizing it at any other time in our week, even if our weeks just get away from us and it's just busy, busy, busy, and we're running 90 to nothing and we come into church on two wheels with our hair on fire, at least, hopefully, for an hour, we will slow down. We will be still. We will do our best to put aside all the other things that we've been thinking about that have been stressing us out all week long. And we will, in this service, collectively as a body, know that He is God. It's why I think the rhythm of church is an important one in the life of an individual and a marriage and a family. And so I want to talk about this idea of being still. And I want to talk specifically about why it feels like such a challenge for us sometimes. I think that there are really two camps of people. There's really two divisions of people as we think about how we spend our time and what kind of stops us from being still in the way that we need to be still. I think there's really two camps of people. And I'm not saying that you're all one or you're all the other. This is a sliding scale, but I would bet that everybody in this room has a lean. There are those who fill their days with nothing and those who fill their days with everything. There are those who with their margins, they fill it with nothing, just a bunch of nothingness. And then there's those who fill it with everything. And we're going to talk about what that means. But as we think about how we fill our time with nothing or everything, I want to be clear that I'm talking about the margins of our time. We all have roles in life to play that require time from us, right? Most of us in this room, we have to get up, we have to work every day. That's something that's required of your time. If you don't have to work every day, hopefully you're getting up and being productive. If you're a stay-at-home parent, you've got to get up and gosh, you definitely have to work every day. And so there's some things that we don't have an option. We've got to go to work. We've got to take care of the kids. We've got to run the house. We've got to do the things. There's some things where we just don't have a choice. But around those ways that we spend our time is our discretionary time. And it's that time that I'm talking about that we fill with nothing or with everything. The time when we wake up in the morning. Whether you realize it or not, I don't want to step on too many toes here, everyone has two or three hours of discretionary time in the morning. If you choose to fill that time with sleep, that's your business. But everybody can get up two or three hours just about before we really have anything that life requires of us. So most of us have discretionary time in the morning before our time is demanded of us. Most of us have a lunch break. We've got to drive to work, drive home from work. We have time in the car where we can choose what we're going to listen to and choose what we're going to do and choose what we're going to consume. We have time when we come home. I don't know what the rhythm of your house is. Maybe you have some dead space before dinner. Maybe it's just a mad rush to get the kids to bed and sit down and take a breath. And then you've got from then until whenever you go to bed as your own discretionary time when your parents have young kids to regain your sanity. You've got the weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, where there's probably not much of a demand on your time. So now we've got this discretionary time, these times in the margins. We're trying to decide what to do with it. And my contention is that we tend towards either filling that time with nothing or filling it with everything. I would love to say I'm an everything guy. I'm really more of a nothing guy. So what I'm about to say, I'm saying to me too. But when we fill our time with nothing, we just jump from one thing that doesn't matter to the next thing that doesn't matter. We wake up in the morning, first thing we do is we grab our phone and we start to scroll. We check Instagram, we check Twitter, and we check Facebook, and we check our email, and we check our news outlets, and whatever it is. And we just lay in bed, and and instead of getting up and being productive doing something that we would probably be wiser to do, we just scroll on our phones, right? We come home, we turn on the TV. Kids go to bed, we zone out. We binge watch The Office again. We're in the car, we have some time that we could use to fill ourselves with some Jesus, and instead we just put on something mindless. We listen to music that just kind of puts us in a good mood or whatever it is that it does, or we listen to like sports talk or political talk or whatever it is that women listen to in the car that's talk. I don't know what you guys listen to. But we just, every gap that we have, we just fill it with more nothing. How many of you, don't raise your hand, can't sit at a traffic light without looking at your phone? I think that maybe, this is just a side note, maybe the most damaging thing about cell phones is how incapable we are of not being entertained for just five stinking seconds. If the line's too long at Jersey Mike's, well, let's see what's going on in the news. And we just jump from nothing to nothing. Our time's required of us. We're focused on this. Now I can do whatever I want. What nothing can I fill this with? How can I entertain myself? What's the next drama that's going to happen? What's on Yahoo News front page? What's the next thing going on? And then political stuff happens. So I mean, I was doom scrolling Twitter a lot in December and January. We were all locked into that stuff. And we just wake up in the morning and we waste a little time. We go to work. We have lunch and we engage in a little bit more nothing and we come home and we get the kids. We take care of the kids and we do whatever it is we're going to do. We eat dinner and then we engage in a little bit more nothing. Watch a little bit more trash TV and then we go to bed. And we sleep in and we do the same thing the next day. And it's just a day filled with nothing. As I was doing research for this, I came across a sermon by a guy named Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards is one of the great American pastors and theologians. He was a key figure in the Great Awakening in the late 1700s. One of the smartest, best theologians that's ever lived. And he did a sermon on time. And he noted within that sermon the unique scarcity of time. It is a uniquely limited resource that we cannot get back in ways that we can recover other resources. And about time, Jonathan Edwards says, there is nothing more precious and yet nothing of which men are more wasteful. There is nothing more precious than time because we can never get it back, and yet there is nothing of which men are more wasteful. I think, if we're honest, that we tend to waste our time like NBA players waste their money. I heard a story this last week as I was in the car listening to the sports talk radio show that I like to listen to, which incidentally was not a waste of time this week because I'm using it in a sermon. So how about that? And there was this author who wrote a book. She wrote a book on Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is the, he is the MVP of the Milwaukee Bucks. They just won the NBA finals. He is a phenomenal athlete and he is like, he's a gem of a person. If you could, if you could create an athlete in a mold, it would be this guy. He's a really neat guy. And he grew up really poor in Greece. And they would sell, he and his family would sell trinkets on the beach to rich tourists. And it was not a very easy upbringing. And so when he came over to the United States, he was drafted in the first round of the draft. He's playing for the Bucs. He has money for the first time in his life. He doesn't know what to do with it. And so he still brings over these sensibilities and he's very conservative. And this author said that he relayed some stories to her about how he was blown away about how some of these guys spent their money. And she said, well, give me some examples. And she said, well, one guy, one guy gave me $500 for a Mountain Dew and a Snickers. He just, the dude was a veteran. He said, Giannis, go give me a Mountain Dew and a Snickers. He did. And the veteran gave him 500 bucks. That's wasteful. Other guys, he had two guys on his team who liked playing PlayStation 4, but they didn't like to be encumbered with like packing it. So they would literally on a road trip, they would go into a new city, buy a PlayStation 4 and the games they wanted to play, and then leave it in the hotel room and buy another one in the next city. Just appalling waste of money. I just saw a financial planner shake his head like just, oh my gosh. Just an appalling waste of money. But I waste my time like that sometimes. I look at my weeks and know that I've just doled out my time as if it's $500 for a Mountain Dew in the way that I invest it and spend it. And if you think that's ridiculous, if you think I'm overstating that, what's your screen time report at the end of your week? I don't know what Android phones do, but Apple phones, every weekend you get a screen time report. You average this many hours per day, it is up or down this percentage from last week. You ever see that and feel good about yourself? It always brings deep, deep conviction. It should send us straight into prayer and confession when that screen time report comes up. I think we waste time like some people like to waste money by just jumping from one numbing entertainment to the next thing without ever considering what's important. And then I think on the opposite end of the spectrum are those of us who fill our days with everything. It's just one thing after the next, just a deluge of activities, one after the other. A workaholic could fit here because there's hours that your job requires of you, and I'm all about going above and beyond. I don't want to decry working hard to get ahead and to provide and to be successful and all that stuff, but I do want us to realize that when we get to work before we're supposed to, that's a choice, and when we stay longer than we have to, that's a choice. It's a way that we're choosing to fill our schedule. When we volunteer for something, that's a choice. We all know people, and some of us are people, who volunteer for everything and say no to nothing and then just do and do and do and do all day long. We just run around with our hair on fire. I am convinced that the busiest time of anyone's life is families, particularly if families have two working spouses with children from ages 8 to 18. I don't think you can ever be busier than that season. It's crazy. And kids have stuff and we have stuff and we fill every single iota of our calendar with something that we're supposed to do. We'll come up with projects on the weekend and disappear and do those. And we allocate our time to this and our time to that. We have no way to pause. We run around frantically and we just do and we do and we do and we jump from one activity to the next activity without ever stopping to be still and know that he is God because our schedules are so full that we feel like we don't have space for anything else. And to those people, I would just say gently, is it possible that the rhythms of our homes are so frantic that we've effectively scheduled God out of our lives? Is it possible that we've allowed some of us, that we've allowed ourselves to become so busy that we have effectively scheduled God and scheduled Jesus right out of our life? Somebody told me one time, and this is, it's deeply convicting. It's probably not all the way fair, but it's mostly fair. If we aren't spending time with God on a daily basis, then we're simply telling him that he didn't make our 24-hour priority list that day. Good luck tomorrow, God. I think sometimes the rhythms of our homes get so frantic that we effectively just schedule them right out of our lives. And what I really want us to see this morning is that wherever we are on the spectrum, whether we fill our days with just nothing, just jumping from entertainment to entertainment, from nothing to nothing, or from activity to activity. That nothing and everything are simply distractions from the right thing. All that entertainment, all that pulling out the phone, all that screen time, all that binge watching, all that late night stuff, all that sleeping in, and then all the busyness, all the activities can sometimes simply be distractions from the right thing. I've made this point before, but I think it bears repeating. I think one of the greatest tricks of the enemy, one of the greatest guises of Satan is to trick us into wasting our time, is to distract us with nothing, is to distract us with our phones and with TV and with information and with nothingness and stuff that is frivolous and doesn't matter. And listen, that stuff has its place. You need to veg out and watch something that makes you laugh, that gives you an escape. We need to do that. But when it becomes too much, when it takes over everything, when it's just nothing to nothing to nothing, the enemy has us distracted. When it's activity to activity to activity that fills us with our own sense of self-importance, yet the activities that we're doing have no eternal consequences. The enemy simply has us distracted. See, I think for many of us in the room, it's one of my favorite verses these days in my life is Ephesians 2.10. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And it carries with it this idea that God made you, he gifted you, he designed you, and he purposed you. Each one of us. I think some of us walk through life feeling like we couldn't possibly have a purpose. I'm too small for that. And I would say, bupkis, God created you. He designed you in Christ for good works that you might walk in them. And in those good works, we know from other passages, we find the fullness of Christ. We walk with Jesus. Our hearts beat with him. We develop a passion for our Savior. I believe that we find Jesus in his work. So as we do the good works that we were designed to do, we grow more vibrant in our relationship with Jesus. We grow more passionate in our desire to serve God. And we live a fuller life that's filled with more joy because we are walking so closely with Jesus. And the enemy does not want you to experience that. He wants to rip you away from our Father's hands. And the deal is, for many of us sitting in this room, he's probably not going to rip us away with some addiction. There are some of us that he might be able to rip away with some sort of shadow life or sin going on, but for the vast majority of us in this room, it's not going to be some crippling addiction that tears us away from the work of the Father. It's not going to be some secret shadow life that tears us away from the work of the Father. It's simply going to be tricking you into spending your days on nothing or everything, day after day after day, until you look back on the month of the year and you go, what did I do? How much more of the work of Jesus for which we were designed could we do if we didn't allow the enemy to distract us with nothing or everything. I believe it's one of his greatest ploys. And I want to do everything I can to call it out whenever I can so that we can be, so that we can walk in the good works for which we were created. And it's why I landed on this one sentence in regards to time this morning, that we should be still and know that he is God. Because I firmly believe that being still is the first true step in the path to knowing God. I absolutely believe that this habit of being still is the first true step that we can take in the path to knowing God, in the path to our hearts beating like Jesus' heart. And I've said this in a bunch of different ways. I've said this phrase over and over and over again, and I will continue to beat this drum until God says this isn't my stage anymore. But as long as it is, I will continue to repeat, there is no greater habit anyone can develop in their life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in God's presence through prayer. No greater habit. And that's what being still is. And I say that it's the first true step to really knowing God because we can come to church and we can hear about God and we can serve and we can do his work and we can go to small group and we can have conversations, but until it becomes personal, until it becomes intimate, until it becomes a habit to wake up and let scripture speak to us, not me speaking to you about what I think scripture says from my quiet times. Let that supplement what God has been saying to you all week in your quiet times. Until we wake up every day and we spend time in God's word and then we pursue him in prayer. For some reason, for some people, that looks like going on a hike and just allowing God to be with us in nature. For some people, that means contemplative practices or meditative practices. For some people, that means listening prayer. For some people, that means getting on our knees and speaking prayer. For some people, it's reading a spiritual book and supplement to the Word of God. But until our pursuit of the Father becomes an intentional, personal one, it can never become an intimate one. So this instruction in Psalm to be still and know that he is God is, to me, the first fundamental step in actually knowing him. And I believe this to be true because I have seen this in my own life. I have seen in the ebbs and flows of my own spiritual health. That when I am consistent in this practice, I'm a better husband. I'm more patient with my children. I'm even more patient with Ruby when I'm having quiet times. That's my dog that I don't like. I even like pet her and invite her over sometimes when I'm praying and reading the Bible and inviting God into every moment of my life. I'm a better pastor. In those seasons where Jesus is enriching my soul and my spirit every day, I can't wait for Sunday to share with you what I have to share with you. In the seasons where I'm not doing that, in the seasons where I feel like I'm running on empty because I've been filling my days with nothing or everything, just to be honest with you, there are Sundays I don't want to preach to you. I want to get done with the sermon so I can go do whatever it is I really want to do that day. And it's because I haven't been filling my days with Jesus. It's because I've been filling them with nothing or everything. And I'm forgetting to be still. And we could talk about how you should spend the rest of your time and what you should volunteer for and what we shouldn't volunteer for and what really is important and what really isn't. And we can talk about God's priorities for your schedule, but I would just simply say, man, if you'll make it a habit every day to be still before the Father and let Him breathe life into your soul, you're a grown-up. You'll figure the rest of it out yourself. You don't need a sermon about that. If we'll do this, if we'll simply be still, God will breathe into our life in such a way that our heart will begin to beat like Jesus' heart and suddenly all the things, all the nothing and all the everything that we use to fill as a simple distraction from what's actually important, those things will become less important to us and we will pursue more Jesus. I've seen it happen over and over and over again in the lives of others and in my own life. So my encouragement to you this morning is to be still and know that he is God. My encouragement to you this morning is don't let this, what I say, be the only source of God and Jesus in your life. Because I am broken and I am fallible and I am often wrong. Pursue him on your own. Let him breathe life into you every day. This will be the first true step that we can take in our path to knowing God. And so I would say to you this morning, how still should I be? Just a little bit more than you are. Take that step. If you have no habit or pattern of waking up and spending time in God's word and letting Jesus refresh your soul there and in prayer, then just give it a week. Do it for seven days and get to the end of seven days and tell me that that was a waste of your time. Just do it for a week. If you're already in that habit, God bless you for being in that habit. You know that I'm speaking truth. Pick another time too. Do it in the evening. End your day with prayer. Let's all just step up our stillness just a little bit and stop and let God wash over us and fill us up and so breathe life into us that we can be his workmanship and do the good works in which we were created to walk in. However still or not you've been in your life, be just a little bit more still this week and see how God breathes life into you in that stillness. As we close, I have a quote. It's a long quote, but I think it's worth it. Growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, was one of my heroes, and he still is. He passed away right as I came up here to take this job, and it is one of my great sadnesses that I can't talk about being a pastor with Buddy. And every now and again, I'll go back and I'll listen to some of his sermons. They have them all archived all the way back to the 80s. And when I listen to them, it's like going home. I feel like a 12-year-old kid, 10-year-old kid sitting in church, just taking it all in. I really like listening to Buddy's sermons. Five or six years ago, I was listening to one. Actually, it was a little over four years ago because it was in my parents' basement when I was waiting for you guys to hire me so we could move up here. I was listening to one of his sermons and he was preaching on time. And Buddy spoke pretty extemporaneously, but this I could tell was prepared. He was reading off of a sheet of paper. He wrote it very intentionally and it was so good to me and so profound that I stopped and I typed it out. I would listen to a sentence and pause it and type it and listen and pause and type. And I've just kind of been sitting on it wondering when the best time was to share it with anybody at all. And it just feels very appropriate this morning to end with these words that have impacted me over the years so much. So I want to share them with you. And when I finish, we're going to have a chance to reflect and worship together. This is what Buddy says. Are we possessed with an inescapable passion to live in an intimate knowledge of God? The problem is not that we are engaged in actively evil. The problem is that we are just too active. It's not that we are criminally engaged. We are just inattentive to the voice of God. It's not that we're heretics. Most people I know are just hectic in their activities of mind-numbing nothingness. It should make sense to anyone that minds empty of God will be empty of meaning. Our hunger for God is numbered by our addictions to substitutes and stimulants that hide our starving souls. We are spiritual anorexics. We've morphed to a point where we don't even recognize what is the spiritual norm. Today's lifestyle is lived at a pace that makes contemplations all but impossible, and most people cannot imagine a life like Jesus lived. We can't imagine a life without constant informational connectivity. We live in a noisy world where there are a lot of things competing for our attention, TV, phones, Facebook, emails. But the unintended consequence of constant informational connectivity is divine disconnection. We are so distracted with inconsequential information, our brains and our hearts are overloaded with timely data, leaving no space for timeless deity. We're called to live with a preoccupation with God who is worthy to be pursued at all costs and is pursuing us. We find ourselves in an age that has pushed the knowledge of God into the margins. We arrogantly assume that God should be grateful for the crumbs of our overcrowded schedule. We call it efficient. But God has not called us first to be efficient. He has called us to be passionate. We are spiritually diseased. Never have we had more to eat and found ourselves more famished. Never have we had more stuff and been less satisfied. It is time we made time for the timeless.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jeffy. I can tell you've been paying attention. That's fantastic. That's great. I don't know if y'all noticed, that was all guys up here. We've got a new boy band at Grace, so submit the names for that band online, please. The best one we'll put in lights next week. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that. Particularly, I've kind of noticed every week as we gather in person that there's some folks who moved to the area or just decided that they wanted to find a church sometime in the last year and found us online. I've had a conversation a lot where I say, hey, I'm Nate, and they go, yeah, we know. We've watched about 10 of your sermons. I'm like, oh, gosh, well, God bless you for being here. But if that's you and you come through the doors, I would love to meet you. So let's make sure we do that in a Sunday here very soon. This is the last part, as Jeff said, in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For context, just so that we all know, we've kind of begun each week this way. Hebrews was written, we don't know by whom, to Hellenistic Jews, Jewish people who grew up outside of Israel as practicing Jews and at some point in their life converted to Christianity. Because of that conversion, they are facing great persecution from the Romans and from the Jewish community. And the author writes the book of Hebrews to encourage them to hang in there, to persevere in their faith. And so he does this by comparing Jesus to different facets of the Hebrew faith. And that's why we've called this series Greater, because he goes to great lengths to show us how great Jesus is. And we've said it's the most soaring and lofty picture of Jesus in the Bible. And that's important because of where we arrive at today. Today, we arrive at Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Probably two of my favorite verses in the Bible. If you've been going here for any time, you know that I say that about a lot of verses. I don't know which ones are my favorite, but I love these two. And these two, to me, to someone who grew up as a Christian, I don't have any memories before my family was involved in church. These are two of the most life-changing verses I've ever encountered. They changed the way I went about my faith years ago. And so my hope and prayer for you this morning is, if you're familiar with these verses, if you understand them the way that I do, that this can be a good reorienting or recentering for your life and for your heart as you move throughout your weeks and your months ahead. My sincere hope and prayer is that for some of you, this might be the first time you've heard the verses looked at in this way, and that they can be similarly life-changing for you. I think they're life-changing and hope-giving. And it's important to note that they follow this long dissertation, right? 10 chapters, 11 chapters long of this lofty view of Jesus. To compel these Jewish Christians to stay in the faith, to hang in there, he paints this incredible picture of Jesus. And every week we've gone through and we've done our best to point to Jesus as well in the different comparisons. And as Jeff prayed as the great high priest, and last week we looked at him as the sacrifice. We see him as the greatest messenger. We see his law is greater than Moses' law. And we talked about how all streams in the Old Testament converge on Jesus. All hope in the New Testament remembers back to Jesus and the promises kept and anticipates the promises that he will fulfill. Everything culminates on Jesus. And last week we even talked about how everything we do as a church and as individuals and that the Bible admonishes us to do really is to point ourselves and others to Christ. So that's kind of where he's been driving to in the book of Hebrews. And then we get to chapter 12 and chapter 12 starts out with the therefore. And I've told you guys that whenever we see one of those, we have to ask, what is this therefore, therefore? And in this case, it's because the preceding chapter is Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11 in theological and Bible nerd circles is called the Hall of Faith. It is a who's who of the Old Testament, where the author is trying to explain to them, to this audience, really how faith works and what faith looks like and what faith does. In chapter 10, he tries to define faith. And then in chapter 11, he says, let me show you what faith does. And he just goes through these Old Testament heroes. And he says, by faith, Abraham, by faith, Moses, by faith, Rahab, by faith, David, by faith, Solomon. He just goes down the line. So it's the hall of faith. And then the end of the chapter, he's talking about all these other saints that suffered. Actually, in the first week, I referenced chapter 10 and read about some of the persecution that they were going under. And then we know that that could continue for the rest of history, right? John Wesley and John Calvin and all these other great heroes of the faith that has come, Billy Graham, that have come through the years. And so chapter 12 starts off like this, and to me, it's a verse that really resonates. I've always really loved it. He writes this. I love the imagery of that verse. There is this sense that all of the saints that came before us are in heaven. And they've run their race. And now they're watching us. They've done their part. They lived their life for better or worse with regrets or with pride. They lived their life. They played their part. They turned in their time. And now they're in heaven and they're watching us. I kind of even get the sense, if you take this verse a step further, it's not just the heroes of the faith. It's not just the hall of faith, but it's every saint that's come through the centuries. Every Christian that's lived and died and is now in heaven, you get the sense based on Hebrews 12 that they're looking down on us since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses like there is this heavenly arena and earth is the playing field. And you get this real sense from Hebrews 12, one, that it's our turn to run, right? It's our turn. It's our generation's turn. It's our turn to live our life. You know, when I was growing up, this has kind of struck me all freshly. We're going to have a son here in four or five weeks, Lord willing. And when I was growing up, my whole life was sports, man. That's all I cared about. I played sports all the time. I watched SportsCenter. I memorized the statistics. I went to school and I talked about sports. I came home and I played sports. I got done with those and I watched sports. Like that's all I care about. The measure of a man was how good you are at the sport that you chose. And I didn't understand anything beside that. Now that's antiquated and silly, but that's how I grew up. And when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, I played a little bit of soccer in college. When I was doing that, like I couldn't wait to have a son and train him in sports. And now at 40, I've moved much farther. I've moved past that. And I'm like, I don't care if this kid throws a ball. Do whatever you want to do, man. Just be comfortable with yourself. Just learn to love yourself in your own skin, and that'll be half the battle. Be good at sports if you want to be. But if he does play, and if Lily takes up sports, that's my daughter. My time is done playing. I'm not going to go play competitive soccer anymore. I did it for one season in my 30s and thought this was a huge mistake, and I will never do it again. Like I'm out, okay? I will go compete against average to below average golfers. That's the height of my competitiveness. My time is done. As a parent, you know this. When you do your thing, when you go through your adolescence, and then you're a parent and you have kids, it's their turn to run. It's your turn to watch and spectate and cheer on. And that's one of the things I love about this verse is this picture that it gives us of living our life, of running our race. It's our turn to run. From the youngest in the room to the oldest in the room, it's still our turn to run. And there is a sense that heaven is watching and cheering for us. And one of the things that I like to think, now listen, I like to think this. I don't know that it's true. I hold this with a very open hand. If I get to heaven and God says, you weren't right about that one, I'll be like, yeah, I wasn't really sure. But, and I'm not going to quote a verse to help support this, okay? I just think that this could be true. I think it's entirely possible that the people in your family who came before you are made proud and joyful by what you do here. I think it's entirely possible that my papa still smiles in heaven every Sunday morning when I get to preach. I think it's possible. I like to think that could be true because in Hebrews it talks about this great cloud of witnesses watching us from heaven. And we acknowledge that it's our turn to run our race because of that, because they're watching, because God has commissioned us to run this race. What should we do? Well, it tells us that we should throw off the sin and the weight. This translation I read from the ESV and it says that we should lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely. I think it's the NIV that phrases it like this and I kind of like this phrasing better. It says that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. Because it's our turn to run, we should run the race that God has laid out for us. Because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, including God himself, we should run the race that he has laid out for us. And to do that, to run that race effectively, we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And I love that there's two things included there. Because as Christians, we kind of know the deal, right? We kind of know as Christians, no matter where we are in the theological knowledge spectrum, we know that when we become a Christian, we should try to not sin. I think we get it. Even if you're here, you're a brand new Christian. You're here, you wouldn't even call yourself a believer, you're spiritually curious. One of the things that you're loosely aware of about the Christian faith is, if you want to sign up for Christianity, we should try to not sin. I think we all know that, right? But here he says we should throw aside the sin that keeps us from running our race and the weight. So verse one introduces the idea that something might be prohibitive rather than sinful. It introduces the idea that something in our life might be prohibitive of running our race rather than simply sinful. A good example of this, this isn't true anymore because I'm just not in this rhythm of life, but an example of something that if you would ask, is this sin, you would say no, but is it prohibitive? Well, probably yes, is for me in years past, the NBA playoffs. When Lily was born five years ago, I was in the habit of waking up every day, and I still am. I just come down and I do it in the office. But at this point, I was in the habit of waking up every day and spending time in reading and spending time in prayer. But when we had Lily, she started waking up at like six o'clock in the morning every day. So I realized if I wanted to get that time with God, if I wanted to have my quiet time and do what I say is the most important habit that anybody can form is to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, spend time in prayer. If I wanted to do that, then I needed to get up at five. And so I got in a rhythm of waking up at five, having an hour to myself and God, and then Lily, I'd hear a little wah upstairs. I would read my Bible, I would pray, and I would read a spiritually encouraging book until I heard Lily. That was my rhythm. And then when I heard her, I'd put that down, I'd go upstairs, I'd be ready to be a dad. But when the NBA playoffs rolled around, I wanted to watch those things, man. I love the NBA playoffs. I don't care for the NBA regular season. There's 82 games. There's too many of them. It's a waste of time. Half the teams are going to make the playoffs anyways. We all know which teams are going to be at the beginning of the year. What's the point? But the playoffs are fantastic. I love watching those. The problem with the playoffs, especially in the early rounds, is there's three, four games a night. The last one will come on at 9.45 or 10.30. They're every night. So if you want to watch all the games, and I do, you would stay up, I would stay up late watching those games. And you say, is it a sin to watch the NBA playoffs? I mean, I can't point you to a Bible verse that says yes. But here's what I knew. Here's what I saw in myself season after season. I would watch these games. I would stay up late. And suddenly, I'm like getting up at five every day. Suddenly, I'm getting up when I hear Lily's voice. Suddenly, I'm out of sync in my walk with the Lord. I'm falling out of that daily discipline. Or if I could make myself wake up at five, how good do you think my prayers were after four and a half hours of sleep? Not very coherent. Not really giving God my first and my best, right? So for me, what I learned, was it a sin for me to watch the playoffs? I don't know. Was it prohibitive of me running my race? Yeah, it was. So that was a weight, something that was prohibitive, that was preventing me from being as effective in my life as possible that I had to lay aside. So what I started doing is recording the late game, then I would get up at the normal time and then just watch and then just fast forward through the breaks while I was holding and tending to Lily, which is kind of a better way to watch a game anyway, so I've kept that practice. But I love this idea of something that can be prohibitive and not simply sinful because of that. It's important that as we consider running our race and as we consider, as we calibrate our own morality for what our soul and our spirit can handle, for what's good for us and for what's not good for us, I want us to actually move away from asking a certain question. Let's stop asking, is this sin? Don't ask, is this sin? Ask instead, is this helpful? When you're thinking about allowing something in your life, or you're thinking about something in your life that you have, don't ask, is this sinful? Ask, is this helpful? I don't know about y'all. I don't know how often you talk about this. But as a pastor, I get this question pretty frequently. Is it a sin to blank? Is it a sin to binge watch Breaking Bad? Is it a sin to watch the playoffs? Is it a sin to just have maybe more drinks than I should on like a Friday when I don't have any responsibilities the next day? Is it a sin to do blank? Can I just tell you something? That's a Bush League question to ask, man. That's a little baby Christian question to ask. Is this sin? And I don't mean to be too mean about it, but really what that question implies is, what's the bare minimum I have to do to keep God happy with me? Is it a sin to do blank? Like, how does God feel about this? Are we still good if I do this? This is us admitting when we ask that question. It's us admitting, what's the least amount of effort I can put into my faith so that I'm still keeping God happy? And here's the thing. The least amount that you can put into your faith to keep God happy is to accept Christ as your Savior. And the good news is that's the only thing you can ever do to keep God happy. It's to simply believe in the sacrifice of His Son. Once you do that, you are as loved and as accepted and as approved of, and God is as proud of you as he will ever be. After that, it's simply about living in his goodness. But when we ask questions like, is it a sin if I blank? That's Bush League, man. That's small thinking. We need to ask instead, is this helpful? Is it a sin for me to stay up late and watch the NBA playoffs? Probably not. Is it helpful in my race? No, it's not. Is it a sin when I get my screen report back at the end of the week and I've looked at my phone for four and a half hours a day? I don't know. Did that help you run your race? Is it a sin to watch this particular show? It's got a little bit of nudity and a little bit of violence and a little bit of cussing, but I think it's okay. I think it's all right for me. I think I can watch that. And what I've noticed over the years is as Christians decide whether or not a show is appropriate for them to watch, that the scale of their morality operates in direct proportion to the quality of the show, right? The better the show, the more okay things get, right? Because we really want to watch it. Is it a sin to watch a show that may be borderline? I don't know. Is it helpful to you? How does your soul feel after you watch it? You feel like you need a shower after you finish watching the show? Then maybe, yeah, I mean, it's not helpful, right? I think we think about morality like people who are trying to cheat on a diet. Like if you could go over to the Olympic Village when Michael Phelps is swimming in his 11,000 different events that he does for every Olympics. He's won like nine gold medals in one Olympics, I think. If you go over there and he sits down for dinner one night knowing that he has a big race the next day, he's not looking at a steak with crab meat on top of it and some sort of cream sauce going, is it bad for me if I have this steak? No, he's thinking, is this going to help me win my race tomorrow? I don't want anything entering my body that's not going to help me accomplish my goal. We need to stop thinking like Christians trying to cheat on our diets and start thinking like athletes trying to perform in the race that God has set us about. So let us, in our moralities, stop asking, is something a sin? And start asking, is this helpful? Does this help me run my race? Now listen, this idea, this admonishment from, in this particular case, the author of Hebrews, to run our race, to let us lay aside all the weight and sin that entangles and run the race that is set before us, that's an idea that's common throughout scripture. That means live the life that God wants you to live. That means be the person that God created you to be. It said this way in this chapter, which happens to captivate me because I'm a competitive guy and this stuff resonates with me, but maybe it doesn't resonate with you. Maybe the way that Paul says it in Ephesians resonates with you more. When Paul says in Ephesians 2 verse 10 that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. This idea that the creator of the universe designed you very intentionally, created you in Christ, he purposed you, he set you down, he wound you up, he set you down, and he faced you towards some good works that he designed you to do. So go walk in those good works. Or maybe we like the imagery that we find in Timothy when Paul again explains that God is the master of the house and that we are all vessels. We're all utensils within the house and he's going to reach in the cupboard and he's going to pull out the utensils he needs to get the things done that he wants to get done. So just be ready to be a vessel. Maybe we like the way that Jesus tells us to do this. When he says that we are to be a city on a hill, or a light to the world, or the salt of the earth, maybe we prefer that imagery. Or maybe we like it when Jesus just comes out and just says it flat, straight up in the Great Commission, going to all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's all the same idea, guys. It's all the same stuff. It's just repackaging to try to connect with us in different ways based on different personalities that shared it when they wrote it in the Bible. But it's all the idea of we run our race. We live our life that we've been designed to live. And this idea is not a new one to us. Again, even if this is your first view at Christianity, if you're not very familiar with it at all, one of the things you know fundamentally is that if you are going to sign up for this life, then you're committed to trying to get your act together so that you can follow God better, so that he can use you more. That is a ground level foundational understanding that all of us have of the faith. So we can add to it that we shouldn't sin and we shouldn't allow things in our life that are prohibitive from running this race. But this effort to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles and run the race that is set before us, walk in the good works that God designed us to do, be the city on the hill, make disciples of all the world, however we want to phrase it, this idea that that's what we should be doing is one that we're familiar with. So the more interesting discussion is how. How do I run my race? How do I do that? How do I throw off the sin and the weight? That's to me where the rubber meets the road because none of you came in here this morning thinking in your lives that I have nothing in my life that I need to get rid of. I have nothing that I need to add to my life. I'm doing pretty good. If you did, email me. You're the new pastor. I'm going to sit down for a few weeks and listen to you. None of us came in here thinking that. The real interesting question, especially for Christians, is how do we do it? Okay, there's some stuff in my life that doesn't need to be there. I know. How do I get rid of it? There's some things in my life I need to start doing. I know. I've been trying. How do I actually get that to take? And I think that this question resonates with us so much because for most of us, if not all of us, for all of our lives, the answer to this how, okay, how do I get rid of things so that I can run my race? The answer to that question has been white-knuckleled discipline. It has been try harder. Draw more lines. Make more declarative statements. Double down on it. Last time I tried to beat this, I failed, but I didn't do this. I didn't take this step, so this time I'm going to draw the line here, and I'm never going to cross it again. And we try to eradicate sin from our lives with white-knuckled discipline. And we could use any sin here as an example. Anyone would fit. I'm going to go with the sin that is very common now, something that a vast majority of us have dealt with, or at least a majority of us have dealt with, which is this idea that we can pull out our phones and we can look at anything we want to at any time. And a lot of times, in a lot of days, we look at things on our phone that we ought not look at. But you could pick worry. You could pick gluttony. You could pick selfishness. You could pick greed. You could pick any sin you wanted to and place it here. But by way of example, let's choose the sin of pulling out our phone and looking at stuff on there that we ought not be looking at. And maybe this has been a habit in our lives for a long time. And we hear a sermon like this and we go, yeah, I'm going to throw off that sin and that weight. I'm going to stop doing that. I don't need to do that anymore. I want to run my race. How do we do it? And this is a sin that you've tried to beat before. And you do it by white knuckle discipline. God, I swear I'm never going to do this again. We put timers on our phone. We set it aside. We call our friends. We ask for some accountability. We commit to a new regimen of quiet times. We're going to do whatever it is we have to do. This is the time I'm going to beat this sin. How'd that go for you before? If you have ever drawn those lines in your life before, then I know that you have also failed. White-knuckle discipline, maybe because we're dumb Americans, is the only thing we know to try to get better at things. But when we're talking about sin, that doesn't seem to work, does it? And when we try to white-knuckle our way to holy, what we end up doing is failing. And when we fail, one of two things happen. Either we think we are not good enough for our God or our God is not big enough for our sin, right? We read these passages that we're no longer a slave to sin. I can walk in total freedom. And we're thinking, well, it certainly feels like I'm a slave because I don't know how to stop picking up my phone and looking at stuff I'm not supposed to look at. I don't know how to not have that drink when no one's around. I don't know how to not think those thoughts when no one knows what I'm thinking. I don't know how to not gossip about people when I know I should just keep my mouth shut. I'm told I'm not a slave to sin, but it doesn't feel like it. White-knuckle discipline leaves us in this place of disillusionment where we're disillusioned with ourselves and we're disillusioned with God. So just doubling down on effort, leaving here and going, I'm going to try really hard to run this race. You will for a couple days. If you have really good discipline, you might even do it for a couple of weeks. But eventually, and you know this in your soul, you'll be right back to the same stuff that you've already been up to. So then, how do we do that? How do we run our race? How do we actually succeed in throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles? Hebrews tells us how, and it's beautiful. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2. Here's the answer. You want to know how to throw it off? You want to know how to finally get over that sin? Look. Verse 2. You want to know how to defeat sin in your life? You want to know how to throw off the sin and the weight that prohibits you from running the race? Then listen to me. Your soul was created to and yearns to run. You want to know how to do that? Focus your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Doesn't that make so much more sense? Focus your eyes on Christ, on the single one, on the Messiah, on whom all the streams in the Old Testament converge, on whom all the hope in the New Testament relies, on whom all the hope in the New Testament church looks forward to. Focus your eyes on Christ, your high priest sitting at the right hand of God in his majesty in heaven who's going to come back on a white horse and make everything right again, who by his death and by conquering the grave and by ascending back up to heaven has won for you redemption so that you can look forward to an eternity where there's not any more stuff that doesn't make sense, where the weeping and the crying and the pain are former things. They are not a part of reality anymore. We focus on that Jesus, and when we do that, we throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. How do we get rid of the things in our life that we don't want in our life? We focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We do what we've been doing for the past five weeks in Hebrews, coming here every week and going, hey, Jesus is a pretty big deal. And you might say, okay, that's moving, that's good. How does that actually, how does that work? Well, I think it works like this. Jesus says in the Gospels to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. And at first read, it kind of seems like God is saying, prioritize me first and I'll give you all the things you want. Focus your eyes or seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and I'll make you a billionaire if that's what you want. But that's not at all what that verse means. What I've come to understand that verse to mean over the years is when we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that our hearts start to beat in sync with the heart of Jesus. Our heart begins to be enlarged by the things that move Jesus' heart. The things that Jesus celebrates become the things that we celebrate. The things that grieve the soul of Jesus become the things that grieve our souls. And the more we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the more our heart beats in rhythm with God and the things that we want for others are the things that he wants for others. And the things that we want for ourselves are the things that he wants for us. And so in Hebrews, when we're told to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, we're being told that because as we focus on Jesus, as we fall more in love with him, as our heart begins to beat in rhythm with his heart, then our interest in the other things, our interest in the sin and the weight that so easily entangles, they simply fade. They simply go away. If you want to focus on not looking at your phone, then don't think about not looking at your phone. Think about Jesus. And what you'll find is the more you focus on him, the less interested you are in whatever's on this stupid device. We think that to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us in our life, that we need more discipline. We don't need more discipline. We need more Jesus, man. We don't need more discipline. We don't need more strength. We don't need more American cowboys running around there trying to white-knuckle their way to holiness. We need Christians who admit that we can't do it, who know that our strength is insufficient, who have had plenty enough life lessons in however many years we've been trying to walk with the Lord to know good and darn well that we don't have the strength to will our way to holiness. That our only hope for any of this is Jesus anyways. Let me show you what happens when you focus your heart on Christ. When you focus your heart on Christ, he so fills you up that you don't have room in your heart for things that he doesn't want. When you focus your heart on Christ, you don't have to ask yourself, is it a sin to watch this particular show? You just have to ask, does my soul really want me to consume that? We're so focused on Christ that our heart is beating with us. The things that we shouldn't watch or shouldn't participate in aren't nearly as tempting anymore. If you've ever had the experience of being on a diet and really sticking with it and learning how to eat right, it's amazing to me how a month into a diet, stuff that you used to go nuts over, you're now looking at that going, oh, I know what that's going to do to me. I don't want to touch it. Just give me the salad. And six months ago, Nate would be like, salad? What's the matter with you, man? And now I'm like, I don't want to deal with all the stuff that's going to happen if I eat that big hamburger. Just give me something light. I've got things to do. The more we focus on health with Christ, the less interesting other things are to us in our life. And here's the other thing. A heart that is growing in love towards Jesus does not have space in it to grow in love for other sins. A heart that is growing more and more in love with Jesus every day, a heart that is waking up and spending time in God's word and time in prayer. A heart that is coming to church and taking in the message and singing exuberantly to God when given the opportunity. A heart that is embracing small group and talking about spiritual things in small group and finding other outlets, other things, other things to consume during the week and turning off the radio if you still have a commute, if that's a thing that exists in 2021 and just taking some quiet moments between you and God, a heart that wakes up thinking, how can I begin to pursue Jesus better today, does not have space in it for the sin and the weight that we've been carrying for years. So let us not focus on the sins that we need to eradicate. Let us focus on having hearts that are so full of Christ that there's no space for the other things in our life. And then here's what it does that I think is really, really practically valuable for us as we think about getting rid of the sin and the weight in our lives. Focusing on Jesus creates an untenable tension in our hearts. Focusing on Jesus creates an untenable tension in our hearts. Take whatever sin you want. We've been using the sin of looking at your phone, of looking at things you're not supposed to. And I'm going to skirt the line of being too liberal and casual with sin here, but if we could sit down in my office and you would come to me, whatever your deep, dark sin is, whatever the thing is that eats your lunch that makes you think that I wrote this sermon for you, that thing, whatever thing that is, if you could come to my office and sit down with me and you say, Nate, I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want it out of my life. What do I do? I would tell you, listen, take that sin, whatever it is, and set it aside and acknowledge that it has become so ingrained in you and who you are that there are parts of your psyche that you don't even know that whether it's a dopamine hit or whatever it is, that you're going to rely on that as a crutch. That's going to continue to be a sin for you. And I would even encourage you, don't think about it. Don't think about trying to stop it. Just think about more Jesus. Just focus on Christ. And if you wake up in the morning and you have a quiet time, and you focus on Jesus, and then at night you do the thing that you're not supposed to do, but you know good and well that you're going to have that quiet time in the morning, and you make yourself get up, and you make yourself have that quiet time, even though you feel like garbage for what you did the night before, and you keep doing that, eventually you will create an untenable tension in your heart where either Christ or the sin is going to win, but you can't keep straddling the fence like you've been doing. Either I'm going to keep having my quiet times and keep focusing on Jesus and keep pursuing him on a daily basis and stop doing the other things that make me feel like a hypocrite when I do this, or I'm just going to walk away from Jesus entirely and I'm going to embrace this sin. And you're here this morning because you don't want option two. You want option one. So quit worrying about the sin that we need to get rid of in our life. Start worrying about consuming more Christ, and that will naturally eradicate the other things in our life by creating an untenable tension in our heart where we say to ourselves, if I'm going to get up tomorrow and pursue Jesus, I don't want the feelings of what this thing is going to give me when I do that. So no thanks today. And if we can do this, simply focus on Christ rather than focusing on our sins, I think what we will find on the other side of that focus is a freedom that we've never had before, is a belief and a hope that we've never experienced before. There's a picture in Malachi when it says that a forgiven person skips like a calf loosed from his stall. I want you guys to run through life like that. I want you guys to run the race that your soul yearns to run, and I want you to acknowledge with me that we don't do it by white-knuckle discipline and trying harder. We don't will our way to holiness. We admit defeat. We admit that we need Jesus. We focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we allow his enlarging of our heart to eradicate within our heart the desire for anything but him, slowly but surely over time. That's how we deal with sin. That's how we throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that we were designed to run. So my prayer for you is that you will run it. My prayer for you, after walking through Hebrews together, is that our hearts will be so enlivened by Jesus, so impassioned for him, that we will continue our pursuit of him to the expense of everything else in our life so that as a church, as individuals, we will skip like calves loosed from our stall, that we will run the race that God created us for, that our souls yearn to run. That's what I want for you. And that's what I'm going to pray over you right now. Father, would you please help us to run our race? We, all of us, have folks in heaven who are cheering for us, who I believe are made proud by us. God, we hope that the way we live our life, that the humble decisions that we make, not the great grand things that we do, but the daily decisions to pursue you and the results that come from that. God, we hope that those would make you proud. God, give us not the strength, not the discipline, not the determination to run our race. Give us the focus. Give us the humility. Give us the passion. Give us the desire for Jesus that we need to run our race. God, if there's someone who can hear me who feels like they have a sin or a weight in their life that is just dragging them down, I pray that you would breathe that fresh air of hope into them this morning for the first time in maybe a long time that it might be possible to live life on the other side of that sin. That it might be possible to run with you without that encumbrance wrapped around their ankle. Father, would you focus us on Jesus and captivate us with who he is so much so that our hearts have no room in them for anything but him. It's in his name, our high priest, that we pray. Amen.

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

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.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. Happy New Year, and thank you for choosing to spend your first Sunday of the year in church here at Grace. I'm excited for this year, for all that it holds for our church and all the things that hopefully God has for us this year. I think 2020 is going to be a huge year in the life of Grace. As we launched the year, I wanted to start with a series that would be helpful for everybody. So if you're here this morning, wherever you are on the spiritual spectrum, if you're one who would say, you know what, I'm not even really sure that I'm a believer or that I want to be, but I want to try the church thing. I want to try to understand faith a little bit more. If you're here as a representative of a New Year's resolution to attend more regularly or whatever, or if you're somebody who has really highly prioritized your relationship with God for a long time, my goal for this series is that it would be practically useful for all of us, that you'd be able to take things home every week and really kind of assess, how do I implement these things in my life? I'm hopeful that this can be a very helpful series. That's why it's called I Want a Better Life. I don't think anybody, if we said like, how's your life right now? Is there anything that you want to be better? Very few of us would say like, I'm killing it. I mean, there's nothing else that I could find. Like, Kyle Tolbert's the only person I know who'd be like, nope, totally happy with everything in my life right now. This is fantastic. Kyle's our super energetic student pastor, for those who don't know. So we all want a better life, and so next week, we're going to look at, I want better kids. We're going to look at parenting. Then the week after that, I want a better marriage, which I know that there's only a couple of marriages in here that really want to be better. The rest of you are doing great. For those few, we're going to talk about wanting a better marriage. Then the last Sunday of the month, I'm really excited about, we're going to talk about, I want a better me. Mental health has come to the fore of our culture, and I think as a culture we have an increasing awareness of that. And so I want to take a week and look at mental health and what it means for a believer to be mentally healthy and how the church can accept and embrace and rally around the mental health of us individually and of the people in our lives. So I'm excited for that week. This morning, I wanted to start 2020 by talking about our schedules. So this morning is I want a better schedule. I wanted to talk about our schedules because I feel like as a culture, we are busier now than we've ever been. I feel like there are so many pulls and so many pressures and so many different things and obligations and senses of ought that pull us into things that we just give our days and our mornings and our evenings away to, that as a group of people, as a culture, a society, I think we are very likely busier than ever. I remember when I was a kid, which was in the 80s, which for me feels like a long time ago, I saw somebody tweet the other day, or I guess it was on January 1st, that we are now as far away from 2050 as we are from 1990, which is super depressing. But in the 80s, when I was growing up, man, Sundays, I just saw somebody over there doing the math like, they're very slow. I saw, in the 80s, you didn't schedule anything on Sundays. Sundays was a blackout day. There's no nothing on Sundays because Sundays was church day. I even remember growing up, you didn't have practice on Wednesday night. Nothing was scheduled on Wednesdays. That was a sacred day too. And now, man, like all gloves are off. Everything can be scheduled at any time. And people will obligate you to things so quickly. We took Lily to preschool to start that. And on orientation night, there's a large sign-up sheet that everybody just stares at you as you stare at it. And they're watching you. Where are you going to write your name? Surely you're not going to walk out of here without writing your name on something. And I thought, bad news for you guys. I'm not volunteering for anything. And I didn't. But my wife is sweet. Jen is so nice. So she signs up to be library mom, not knowing that it means like once a week she has to pick up books from the classroom and then take them to the library and then check out all the other books that the preschool now wants, which is funny because the amount of money we give the preschool every month seems like they can afford books, but what do I know? So that's what Jen does like every other day, but she loves it and she's continued to do it, but there are opportunities and things that get our time so frequently. I actually hold, I don't think that there is a busier season of life than that of parents of elementary and middle school kids. From a pastor's perspective, I get to see kind of all seasons of life and which groups of people can engage in which activities in the church. And the hardest ones to grab a hold to are parents who have kids in elementary and middle school. And it's not because they don't care about spiritual things. It's because they legit don't have time for anything. I had some of the moms in the church who have kids in that demographic. I emailed them and I said, hey, can I have your schedules? I just want to get a sense for how busy your lives are. Y'all, it was crazy. It was crazy. As I read through their schedules, literally stem to stern every day. The thing that stuck out to me most was one of the moms who has three kids put, I'm just reading her schedule every week. These are the consistent things every week. And it was all the time. And then she said, there's an asterisk, and the asterisk says, these are the activities that we can predict. There are unpredictable activities such as all these things, right? Swim meets and committee meetings and mom things and dance recitals and all the other stuff that fill up all the time. And she had a note on Friday afternoon. The schedule on Friday afternoon was from four to six o'clock, free time, nothing to do, smiley face emoji. For two hours on a Friday. That's it. That's the free time that the whole family has together. And I thought, my goodness, that's so busy. And some of us can relate to that. So listen, I'm not here this morning to demonize busyness. It's not inherently wrong to be busy. As a matter of fact, in defense of the moms that sent me their schedules, they made each of those decisions as a family. And sometimes you're just in a busy season or a season of hustle, and that's all right. So I don't want to demonize busy, but I do want us at the beginning of this year to think critically about how we assemble our schedules. How is it that we allow things to be put on our schedule? I also want to say up front that in our culture a little bit, we wear our busyness on our sleeve like a badge of honor, like being exhausted is a thing to be respected. That's stupid, right? That's all I have to say about that. That's a dumb thing. We shouldn't be proud of how busy we are. We should accept it if we choose to be busy, but it's not a thing to be admired that someone else is so busy that they can't wake up and look in the mirror and think, I feel rested. That's too busy maybe. But I think a bigger reason why we end up so busy with our time so obligated is that we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's builds a menu. Okay, we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's, the restaurant, builds a menu. Now, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know how much fast food is a part of your world. Fast food is a large part of my world. It always has been. It is near and dear to me. I'm in a weight loss bet with my dad and my sister right now, and so it is not a part of my world, but I think I'm going to lose the weight by about March, which means come April, back to Hardee's, baby. But if fast food is not a part of your world, then you don't know that in the early 2000s, Hardee's, as a restaurant, just completely forgot who they were. They did breakfast. They did biscuits. We know about biscuits. The rise and shine biscuits or whatever they are. Those are delicious. But then they said, let's get into burgers and let's do roast beef sandwiches and let's have curly fries and let's do chicken tenders and let's serve fried chicken. And how about soups? I'm pretty sure at one point there was an experimental deli counter at a Hardee's somewhere. I would have loved to have been in the boardroom just listening to these meetings where some intern says, you know, I think Arby's is making some real hay with that roast beef sandwich and curly fries. We need to get into that market share. And the rest of the really smart executives around the successful restaurant board went, yeah, sounds good. Let's do a roast beef sandwich. Let's figure it out. And they just started adding things to the menu. If you were paying attention, it was just this total hodgepodge. They did everything. I can't imagine what their inventory looked like. And then when that failed, they just went to, let's just do really ridiculous attention-grabbing commercials, and nothing worked. And the thing is with the Hardee's menu is none of the things were bad, right? Roast beef sandwich, that's good, but let's just let Arby's do it. Fried chicken, that's great. Let's leave that to Popeye's. They didn't do that. They just kept adding all the things. Anytime anybody suggested a good thing, boom, got put on the menu. And it led to disorganization, and it's not a very good restaurant. So I think that what we need to do is we need to build our schedules a little bit more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's. We need to build our schedules more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's because I think that we do what Hardee's does sometimes. Somebody suggests something that seems like a good idea, and we're like, yeah, I mean, I guess I should. We go to preschool, and there's a sign-up sheet, and everyone's staring at you, and my sense of awe is going to make me sign up for something. I can't leave here disappointing these strangers that I don't know again. Or we do the same thing with PTA, or it's time to coach ball, or it's time to be on the committee, or Nate called me and asked me to do this thing, and I really don't want to do it, but it's the pastor. I feel like I have to. So we just, when we get good ideas, we put that on the calendar, we figure it out, and we build it like Hardee's builds their menu, and maybe we need to build our schedule more like Chick-fil-A. Now, we know about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A does one thing, chicken. That's it, chicken sandwich. And then they grilled it. And then with an act of Congress, they made it spicy. That's it. That's all they do. And you know that there's been some pretty good ideas in the boardroom at Chick-fil-A over the history of the restaurant. You know people have suggested some really good stuff. Why don't we do rotisserie chicken? No. We do chicken sandwiches. This is all we do. And the other thing I love about Chick-fil-A, if they put something on the menu and it's not working, get it out of here, man. They're ruthless about it. They really streamline what they allow there. They don't have a chicken salad sandwich anymore because they got away from the old one that was mashed down and in the warm bag and was delicious and they tried to go fancy and that didn't sell. And so now they don't have one because if it's not doing what it's supposed to do, get it out of here. They really streamline their menu. And I think that we need to build our schedules like that. So the question becomes, how do we build our schedules like Chick-fil-A builds a menu? How do we streamline it according to what's important to us, so that we don't live our life by default, so that we don't look back on the last year and go, how in the world did I invest my time? How do we do that? Well, I think that there's a biblical principle to help us, and we can find it in Matthew chapter 6. If you have a Bible and you want to turn there, go ahead. The words will be up on the screen in a minute. Matthew chapter 6 is the Sermon on the Mount. It's in the middle of it. It's Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It's Jesus' first recorded public address. I love it so much that we did a whole series on the Sermon on the Mount one time. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is just dispensing wisdom and instruction for life. And in chapter 6, he says this. Verse 19, the words on the screen are going to start in verse 20 don't matter, that are temporary. And the purpose of this morning, don't invest your lives, don't invest your time, don't invest your effort and your energy and your talent and your resources in things that don't matter, but rather treasure up for yourselves, make priorities of the things that will matter for eternity, of the things that will matter after you're gone. Orchestrate your life around those things, treasure those things. And so, to me, the very obvious question in light of, in thinking about our schedules and in light of this passage and this principle is what are my treasures? What are my treasures? And normally when I do a note like this, I say, what are your treasures? It's me talking to you, but I really want you to internalize it this morning and think through what are my treasures? What are the things that are most important to me? What are my biggest priorities? And I was always told growing up, if you want to know what someone treasures, look at their bank account and look at their calendar. Look at how they invest their resources. How do we spend our time and how do we spend our money? And so if we think about time, if I were to go home with you or grab your phone and look through your calendar from 2019, what would your calendar say about what your treasures are? Because you can't fake that, right? We can say, oh, God's most important to me, my family's most important to me, or my friends, or whatever it is, my job's most important to me. We can say whatever we want is most important to us, but all we have to do is look through our appointments and the way that we spent our time, and we'll know what we really value. If we could follow each other around on the weekends, what would we learn about each other that we value? If we could see each other in the evenings during our discretionary time, that one family in the hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, what would we learn about what they value? If we were to look at our schedules and our calendars from 2019, what is it that we treasure? And so what I want us to do this morning is a little bit of homework. In your bulletin there, there's the question, what are my treasures? And there's five blanks, okay? I don't want you to fill those out here. What I'd love to invite you to do is take the bulletin home with you and prayerfully think through, God, what are the things in my life that you want to be most important to me? A better way to ask the question is, God, what are my God-ordained treasures? What would you have be important to me in 2020? How would you have me prioritize my life? I think it's a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of the year to take that home and sit down and prayerfully say, God, what do you want to be important to me? What have you placed on my heart that I need to value? And it's actually a helpful exercise. I did it this week. I just sat down and I thought, if I'm going to ask everybody to do this, I need to do this for myself. I haven't written down my priorities anywhere. I just kind of go. And a lot like Hardee's, my schedule by default just kind of happens. And so if I were to be intentional about building my schedule and listing my priorities, how would I list them? And so I'm going to share them with you this morning, not because they need to be yours and not because you need to copy my list, but just as an exercise of trying to figure out what should be important to us. And then how do we organize our life around those things? So these are my top five priorities in my life as I thought through them this week. You see, the very first thing up there is spiritual health, my relationship with God. The Bible has a lot to say about pursuing God. David writes in Psalms that as the deer pants for the water, so his soul longs after God, that that's how much we should long for God. I almost preached out of a passage where Jesus is interacting with Martha and Mary in Luke, I believe chapter 10. And in that story, Jesus is going to Martha and Mary's house. And Martha is doing what most of us would do and is scrambling around getting everything right, making sure the table's set correctly and that the napkins are folded and that the room that Jesus is never going to go in in a million years is vacuumed and that the curtains are just right. She's doing all the things that you're supposed to do. This is the Messiah, after all, and he's coming to my house. I'd like for it to look nice. And she gets upset because Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary's just sitting there soaking in Jesus's presence. And Martha thinks she's lazy and she gets on to her. Hey, you should help me. And Jesus actually defends Mary and says, Martha, Martha, you are concerned about all of these things, but only one thing matters, and Mary's figured it out. So I believe that if you're a believer, this is the one where I would say you should really write this down too as your top priority. But don't do it unless you mean it. Our spiritual health has got to be our most important thing to us. Because here's what I know about myself. I don't know what you've learned about yourself as you've pursued spiritual health over the years or as you've considered it, but for me, I'm a better everything when I'm walking with the Lord. I am more gracious with my time. I'm more magnanimous with other people. I'm more patient with inconveniences. I'm more considerate of Jen, my wife. I'm more present with Lily, my daughter. I behave better in elder meetings. I'm nicer to the staff and don't want to get out of meetings as quickly. I leave my door open a little bit more often so I can chit-chat, which is not really a thing that Nate loves to do. But when I'm walking with the Lord and he's filling me up, I become a more gracious and more kind version of myself. And I become a better husband and I become a better father and I become a better pastor and I'm walking in a sense of joy and contentment and completeness that I cannot experience away from the Father. So I would be a very strong advocate to putting as your number one priority your spiritual health. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're thinking things through, I would still submit to you that probably the most important thing in your life is being spiritually healthy. I think if you go down that path, it will lead you to serve the same God that I do. But I think for all of us, this is a pretty compelling top spot. Next for me is Jen. It's my wife. In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about marriage, and he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, who gave himself up for her. So if we look at Jesus, his first priority was to God and being obedient to him, and then his next priority was the church. And husbands, that's how we are to love our wives. We're going to talk about this in a couple weeks, so I'm not going to step on that too much. But my Bible tells me that I am to sacrifice my life for my wife. I'm going to lay myself down for her, and I will, listen, I'm up here preaching this to you. She's sitting right there. She knows I don't do this all the time, all right? So let's not act like you should be like me in your marriages. No, we should work on this together, right? No, we don't want any liars up here. We're doing our best. But I know that this is how I should prioritize that. And what does it look like to prioritize these things? If we're to say that spiritual health is my number one priority, then what does it look like as far as building our schedule to do that? Well, first we have to identify the things that make us healthy. I think it's time in God's Word and time in prayer. And so for a lot of us, that might mean adjusting our schedule and going to bed a little earlier so we can get up a little earlier. Cutting out that last episode of whatever it is. Being willing to not see the end of the game, which by the way, go Titans last night. So that we can get up earlier the next day and invest in spiritual health. Maybe it means next week signing up for a small group and prioritizing that in our schedule. Maybe it means not committing to the things that are going to require our time on Sunday morning or some other time where it can be spiritually helpful to us. Maybe it means paring down some of the things in our schedule so that we can have more time for God. And if we think about prioritizing our marriages, I think anybody who's in here who's married, their spouse would be in the top at least three, okay? If that's not it, come see me. But how do we practically schedule for that? I know for us, it's going to mean me being more intentional about finding babysitters and getting out to spend time together. It's intentional about getting home for meals, not stopping by in the middle of the day if it's a full day. We can't just say that these are our priorities. We have to think practically about, okay, if those are my priorities, then how does my schedule mirror that? After Jen is my daughter Lily. I think she has to be after Jen. And if parents, if we're not careful, we'll let the kids sneak up over our spouse, won't we? But I think one of the best things I can possibly do for Lily is to love her mom in such a way that she wants what we have when she grows up. What a thing to say about your parents that they might want that. I think one of the best things for Lily is to grow up in a house where her parents love each other. And listen, we don't have a perfect life or a perfect marriage. I'm just saying that this is what Lily is supposed to see. And it's what I want to give to her. I want to love Lily so well that when guys try to date her, she knows. You're not going to love me anywhere like my dad does. Forget it. I want to love her so well that she doesn't put up with dummies when she's in high school and college. I really do. And I have her listed above the church. And I'm just going to tell you guys this right now because I want her to know as she grows up and we lead this church together that she means more to me than you guys do. I want her to know that. I want her to never think, man, my dad loved those church people, and sometimes it felt like he didn't love me as much. I don't want her to feel that. I don't want her to feel like she's taking a back seat to my job. I do want her to feel like she takes a back seat to my wife because I want her to marry a guy that does that too. And we're going to talk about this next week, but Lily's got to be on there because God's called me to disciple her and to train her in spiritual health as well. After that, for me, are my family and friends. My immediate family and my friends, I lump those together because for me, friendships are super valuable. I believe what Solomon says in Proverbs when he says, the companion of the fools will suffer harm, but the companion of the wise will become wise. I believe in the adage, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future. We believe passionately that you need people in your life who love you and love Jesus and have permission to tell you the truth. And so for me, I prioritize friendships. And I prioritize them sometimes over my job because I believe that we all need safe spaces where we can be completely ourselves and completely vulnerable and still completely loved and accepted. That's a picture of godly biblical love. It keeps us sane. For me personally, I want to be your pastor for 30 years, not three years. And part of that and the help for me is having good friendships both inside and outside of the church that give me life where I can just be myself. So for me, I prioritize those. And then my job. You guys. I put it there because I think the tendency is, for any of us who have careers that we care about, is to allow that to leapfrog everything else in our life. Is to allow that to steal time from other things. And I hear often from people who are retired that one of their biggest regrets is working too much. And I don't want to say that. So on the front end, I try to constantly remind myself because it will eat me up. You guys know how it is with work. There's always more to do. There's always more to think about. There's always something else to be done. There's always the next hill to climb. There's always something urgent. There's always the phone call and always the email and always the thing to respond to. It's not going to go away just because you choose to respond to this one. The next wave is coming. So at one point or another, you have to draw a line and you have to say, these are my God-ordained treasures, and I'm not going to let this one overtake ones that it shouldn't. So we have to measure how highly we prioritize our jobs or whatever else may go there that tends to eat away at your time. So my hope is that you'll go home and you'll say, God, what are my treasures? What are my God-ordained treasures in my life? That you'll physically write them out and then ask this question, what would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? What would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? If I say these are the most important things to me in 2020, then what's it going to take to organize my life around those things? What am I going to have to give up? What am I going to have to reprioritize? Who am I going to have to willingly disappoint and say, I can't do this thing anymore because I'm going to prioritize these things? And if we ask that question, what's it going to look like if we radically reprioritize our life around these God-ordained treasures, I actually have an example of what that could look like. As I was thinking through this this week, there's a family in our church, Wynn and Elisa Dunn, and they've got two kids, one in elementary school, one in middle school. I think the daughter might be in middle school now too. I got to figure that out before they come in the second service and I offend her. But I noticed on their Facebook feed is a lot of pictures like this. I think, Lynn, we have a picture of their family. Yeah, that's them doing something involving harnesses. It seems very fun. They do stuff like this all the time, all the time. They are forever going on little family outings and vacations and retreats. As a matter of fact, listen, I don't check up on you when you don't come on Facebook, but often if I don't see them on Sunday, on Sunday afternoon or Monday, I'll see a picture of their family together somewhere. Family time is big for the Dunns. And so I called Wynn. I said, hey man, this might sound weird, but I'm doing a sermon on this. I kind of explained it to him. And I said, you guys seem to be hanging out as a family all the time. Your kids are in middle school, and they seem to still like you and want to be seen in public with you, which is a big win for Wynn. And so I asked him, like, what's your philosophy around family? Like, what led you to value it this way? And he goes, well, do you know my full story? I said, I guess I don't. And he told me that years ago, he had a really lucrative job. It was a very high-paying job, but it was a high-stress job. And it consumed him. This was in the days of Blackberries, and he was forever on it. It was ever-present. Dinners, weekends, vacations, it was always, when can you do this one more thing? When can you just take this call real quick? Can you just close this out? Can you just put out this fire? It was always a part of him. And he says it was causing a lot of stress in his marriage, particularly as they invited kids into this marriage. And now his wife is home caring for the baby and he's never present. And it was causing tension and it made things difficult. And the kids began to notice how committed he was to his phone and his job too. So much so that he told me that, I think it was about 10 years ago, they went to Busch Gardens as a family. And as he was getting out of the car, he said, you know what I'm going to do? And he took his BlackBerry out and he put it in the car and he shut the doors and he locked it. And he said, when he did that, everybody in his family started crying because we've got our dad. He's going to be present with us today. I'd love to be the ticket taker at Busch Gardens that day. What's the matter with you guys? Like no one made you come. You can go back home. But his family cried because now we get dad. And it didn't take too much longer after that until he looked at his life and he said, man, I'm prioritizing things that I just don't want to prioritize right now. And so he changed careers. He called an audible, left the very high paying job, changed careers and chose a career, chose an industry that would allow him to have more time with his family. Made an intentional choice to radically reprioritize his life around what he believed to be God-ordained treasures. He said that was nine years ago. I said, as you look back on that, do you have any regrets? Or was it just best decision you ever made? And he said, you know, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I think about the money and what would be possible if I had it. But no, there are no regrets. I love my kids. My kids love me. I have a good family, and it's so much more valuable to me than any resources that I could have. And so I'm praying that for some of us, this is just the nudge that you needed because there have been things going on in your life and you're too busy and you're too caught up and you see things slipping away from you that are important to you. And maybe the Holy Spirit's just working in your heart right now to say, hey, why don't you let some things go? Maybe this needs to be the year that you get okay with disappointing people. Where you realize, you know what? If the stranger's disappointed in me for not doing the thing that they want me to do, I'm going to be okay. Maybe we need to step away from things. I'll even say this. I want to be your pastor before I run the business of the church. If you need to step away from church things, sorry Aaron, for your own health, do it. Claim your schedule around your priorities. And in 2020, let's make some changes and reprioritize our lives around these God-ordained treasures so that when we get to the end of this year and look back on our schedule and we look back at how we invested our time, we go, yeah, I invested these things in treasures that matter for eternity so that we had a better year this year than we did last year. So I hope you'll do that. I hope you'll take the list home. I hope you'll pray through your priorities, and I hope that you'll have the courage to reprioritize your schedule around the things that you and God agree are super important to you in 2020. All right, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, I'm going to pray over the year, too, as we kick it off together, and then I'm going to dismiss and we'll go out into the world. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for you, for your presence, for your goodness, for how big and marvelous and miraculous you are, for how much you care about us, for how much you care about how we fill our time. Lord, I pray that we would be courageous in naming our priorities. I pray that we would be courageous in building our schedule around those. God, if we have to say no to some things, then give us the audacity to do that. If we need to say yes to some things, give us the discipline to do that. God, we know that decisions that we make and things that we resolve to do often falter and flutter. God, I pray that you would be with us and give us your strength to see these things through so that our lives might change in profound ways, God, if that's what you would have. Lord, I pray over this year, may all the events of this year conspire to draw every one of us closer to you. Will you overcome doubts? Will you overcome fears? Will you overcome hesitation? Will you overcome hurt? Will you speak to us in the triumphs so that we don't take credit for those? Will you speak to us in the tragedy, God, so that we don't get overly angry at those? Will you please conspire everything in our life to draw us more closely to you so that we might know what it is to walk with you? For many of us, God, make this the year where we finally break the chains of the old habits and walk in new habits. God, please bless this year and bless us as we walk in it. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.