Sermons tagged with Paul

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and this morning I am so excited to have the opportunity to preach to you guys out of the book of 2 Thessalonians. Now, I don't know who in here has recently read through 2 Thessalonians, or even if you ever have, but it's a pretty interesting book, and if I'm being completely honest, as I read through it a couple times, I read through it and kind of just shook my head. I was like, I don't really know what I'm going to preach out of this. I don't really know what of this is applicable for like a Sunday morning at Grace in 2023, but I guess here we go. No, but it's an interesting book because of the reason why it was written. To give a little background, those of you who, those of you might have been here for a couple of our other Sunday mornings where we have gone through some of Paul's writings. First and second Thessalonians are two letters that were written and attributed to Paul and Paul's ministry written to the church in Thessalonica, written to the city, these people who he had gone and spent some time with, and after spending time with them, had written them two separate letters. Now, the more interesting part is why and the occasion for why he's actually writing the second letter. He's got a great reason to write the first letter. I actually got to preach on 1 Thessalonians a few weeks ago, and it's a beautiful letter, and it just so well just describes exactly what Paul is trying to do and say, and you read it, and you're like, this is awesome. And then 2 Thessalonians is written basically for the opportunity for him to kind of address and to correct a misunderstanding that some of the people in Thessalonica had around the first letter. So basically the reason why he's writing it is to say, hey, look, you misinterpreted what I said here, and it's actively messing you guys up, and you're kind of not only believing the wrong things, but now you're doing the wrong things, so this needs to be addressed. And so, because of that, what that means is, before we're fully and adequately able to dive into 2 Thessalonians, we have to give a bit of a background, a bit of review over 1 Thessalonians. And now, look, I looking around and I see, everyone, I see on your faces, you're like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We have been listening nonstop to your sermon from July 4th weekend ever since you preached it. I can see it. You're all like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We've listened to that sermon like five times. It was just so meaningful and so beautifully written and especially spoken. No, but in case any of you might maybe aren't there, maybe you missed that Sunday, you missed that sermon, or just in case it's helpful to have a reminder and to have a bit of a review, let's jump into it. So the first part of the review I want to get to is not about necessarily 1 Thessalonians or even 2 Thessalonians, but more of a general, here's who Paul is. Paul, once he became a Christian, he devoted his entire life to ministry. Paul's goal, his ultimate point of his life was this. He wanted to share the gospel with all people, and he wanted to call them to repent and to live lives that were reflective of that gospel. For him, to live meant to teach people who Jesus was. And one of the reasons why I love 1 Thessalonians is because when he writes that, and as we previously discussed, as he writes this letter to the Thessalonians, we get a pretty distinctly clear picture at what Paul thinks is the best strategy in being able to do it. What Paul believes is the best way that us as believers are able to share Christ with the people that are around us. And so that's what he does. He writes it. He says, this is what I did. This is what I want you to do. And basically it was this. Paul believed the best way to minister and to share the gospel was through building relationships, through genuine relational love, and without any expectation of reciprocity. When he went into Thessalonica, he didn't go in and stay kind of on the outskirts of town. And then when he woke up, he would go to the center of town, find a stage, and just preach in front of these people who he didn't really know. But hey, I've got the good news of the gospel, and so you need to listen to me. He didn't do that. He went and fully immersed himself into the community, fully immersed himself into the culture, getting to know these people, spending time with these people, eating meals with these people, and building these loving and lasting relationships with these people, because in his view and in his mind, the best way to adequately and rightfully share the love of Christ and to share the gospel of Christ was through building those relationships. He even got a job while he was there. Not only was he just actively meeting people and building community, he actually literally was serving in the community. He was working amongst the people and building relationships with the people he was working with, the people that he was working for, and ultimately, one, to just have one more immersion into the culture, but two, so that it didn't feel like, so that these people didn't feel like he was using them for reciprocity, so that these people didn't feel like he had any other motive for why he was preaching. He didn't want them to be like, man, that guy comes in here, he's preaching us the good news, and that's just because he wants the good money and the good food that we'll give him for bringing up this great news. No. Paul wanted to get a job. He wanted them to know, hey, I'm earning my living. I'm earning my living amongst you and around all of you. I want you to see that because I want you to see that the only reason I'm bringing you the gospel, the only reason I want to get to know you better is so that I can share the love of Christ with you and no other reason than that. And so, unfortunately, he has to leave abruptly. His life's in danger because some people were upset about his teachings. He has to leave abruptly. And he finds out through the grapevine later on that man, his teaching, that his work in Thessalonica had not gone in vain. That the gospel had taken root and was expanding like wildfire. That all of these things that he had done for these people, all of the ways that he had taught and encouraged them on how to live, how to live a life for Christ, of how to live this kind of lifestyle evangelism where, hey, your life should be centered around the gospel so that you're bringing the gospel to anyone that you come in contact with. They were doing that. And so people are being more deeply rooted in Christ. The people in Thessalonica, they're adding to the numbers daily of the people who are giving their hearts and giving their lives over to the gospel, over to God and over to Christ. Not only that, but I found, we talked about this when I preached, I found out that one of the biggest attributions to Christianity becoming a world religion was the fact that it spread out so widely from Thessalonica. So many people in other cultures, in other cities, and even in other nations would come to Thessalonica for the sake of trade. They were there all the time. And because the gospel had such an impact and had such a deep-rooted movement going on in Thessalonica, it was encouraging and impacting all of the people who were coming in, and those people were going out into their places that they live, and they were spreading the gospel there. Incredible stuff. It was awesome. And so Paul finds out about this. And so out of the joy and excitement to hear such things, he writes his first letter, 1 Thessalonians. And in the letter, he writes about how much he misses them. Like we already established, he built and established some deep-rooted relationships and loving relationships. So, I miss you guys so much. I can't wait to see you soon. And he reminisces a bit on his time there, on his time where he spent time getting to know them and sharing the gospel with them and all of those things, and then just talks about how excited and how proud he is of them, that they have followed in his footsteps and they are now living out the gospel the way that he had called them to do. And then finally, he takes the rest of the book, mostly, to encourage them to continue to do the same. To encourage them to continue to do good, to continue to live their lives for Christ, and to continue to make Christ known in everything that they do. And it's a beautiful book. It's awesome. But there was one problem with that letter. And the problem in that letter is that there's one specific thing that Paul wrote about that he meant to use as encouragement, but ended up kind of being used as something a little bit different. In the end of chapter four, the beginning of chapter five of 1 Thessalonians, Paul takes some time to talk about the second coming, to talk about what he refers to it as the day of the Lord. When Christ comes back, when the Lord comes to bring all of the believers up into eternity with him, to spend eternity in perfection in heaven in his presence. He talks about it for a couple reasons. There were some worries and some fears amongst the people that needed to be addressed, and so Paul uses that to address that. But one of the main reasons that he does that is he wants, he's kind of like, hey, this will, it'll come like a thief in the night. We don't really know exactly when it comes, when God, when God will come back, when Christ will come back and bring all of us up. And when he does so, he kind of is saying that basically to say, hey, look, Paul wanted the Thessalonians to understand that their time on this earth was short, so they needed to make every second count. Time is short. We don't know the day or the hour when Jesus is coming back, but it could be soon. And if it's soon, be ready, be excited, and live your life in a way that is significant. It's basically saying, hey, spend the time you have left on earth pursuing and making Christ known in your lives and worlds the ways that I've taught you. All the ways that you've been doing already. You're living out these lives that I've taught you and that I've shown you and I'm so encouraged to hear that. Continue to do that. Continue in the reminder that, hey, we don't know how much time we have left on this earth, but as long as you're here, live it out for Christ. Well, it's not exactly how they read it. There was a group and a portion of the Thessalonians that when they read that, they didn't recognize that, hey, the point of what he's doing and that the point of what he's saying is that you should pursue Christ and know Christ and make Christ known even more because we don't know what's going to happen next. They actually kind of mistook it as the opposite. And their misunderstanding was such that they thought he was being literal with, hey, the Lord could come at any point. The Lord could come at any time to saying, hey, the Lord's getting ready to come. So get ready. And upon hearing that, some people decided, okay, well, I don't really, that my life on earth is really that worth it now because we're just going to wait for God to come. And so what happened was instead of these people being encouraged to continue to live out their lives for Christ, they kind of were discouraged to live out their lives. Basically, the Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words, well, yeah, go ahead and throw it up there. The Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words caused a group of them to quit their jobs and deem their earthly lives as seemingly unimportant. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the kid who wakes up and knows that they've got friends coming in from out of town who are driving in, don't know when they're going to get here, don't really have any conceptual concept of time, so it doesn't even matter if their mom tells them when they're going to get here. They just know they're coming. At some point, they're going to drive into that driveway, and I've got to be ready. And so to prepare for them to get there, the mom is like, hey, buddy, you got some chores. We have things that need to be done. You've got work that needs to be done before these people get here to prepare for them to be here. But the kid is just so excited. He's just so excited that these people are coming, that he is completely uninterested in doing the work that his mom's asked him to do. Chores, schmores in his eyes, you know what I'm saying? And instead, he just is like, you know what, I've got to stay right here because the window's right here. If I don't have, like, if I don't check every 30 seconds to, like, to see if they're here yet, then they might just not appear, you know? And so they spend the whole day, instead of working and doing what their mom asked them to do, they spend the whole day, instead of just kind of wasting away, not doing any of the things they've been asked to do because they're just way too excited about these people coming. Y'all probably know a little, I'm sure some of us have kind of been there before. A lot of you are parents. I'm sure your kids have done that before, but that's kind of how they behave. That's kind of how they reacted. Hey, if Jesus is coming back, if he's coming back at any point, then what's the point in me living my life now? Sure, I've got this earthly life, but I'm about to have an eternal life any hour at this point because Paul just told me so. So what's the point in going back to work? Why do I have to do all these responsibilities? I've already done my part. I've checked off my boxes. I've already given my heart to Christ. So what's the point of me having to do any of this now? They just were like, hey, I'll just sit back and I'll wait to go to heaven because it's going to happen at any point in any moment. And as you can imagine, in the same way that the mom was probably pretty unhappy with her son, who didn't do anything she'd asked him to do, Paul, when he finds out that this had been the reaction of some of the Thessalonians, was not super excited about it. So he writes 2 Thessalonians. He writes 2 Thessalonians, and predominantly, to be able to correct not only this incorrect view and this incorrect theological belief, but this incorrect behavior that he was not super thrilled about. And so he takes time to kind of outline, hey, there's a couple things that need to happen before the second coming of Christ. It is not immediately imminent to the point that like, hey, you could wake up that like at some point you might just not wake up tonight because Christ has come and brought you back home. There's things that have to happen. I'm not going to get into those. You can read some of those. It's great. It's helpful. It's useful to know and understand. But all that to say, Paul writes about those because he wants them to kind of like chill out, like, hey, whoa, buddy, Jesus is not coming back in one hour, so let's chill out there, and let's not teach other people that that's what's happening. But then he takes time to address what he calls people who were kind of falling into idleness, leaving their jobs, leaving their secular human lives, and just sitting back and waiting for Jesus to come. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3. But the first people he addressed are actually not the people who had fallen into becoming idle. The first people he actually addresses are the people who had not fallen for that. The people who had read his message and whether or not they understood it, they were like, hey, Paul had given us a mission. Paul says we need to be at work. We need to be working. We need to be living our lives. We need to be getting to know people and living amongst people. We need to be doing what God has called us to do. And so Paul addresses them first and is a little bit harsh. Basically, ultimately saying, hey, look, here's the deal. I know some of you are probably kind of helping and aiding some of these people who have left their jobs and don't have money to buy food and all that stuff. They're not your problem. You don't really need to be helping them out. They're people who have decided, hey, I know I can work, but I'm just not interested. They're going to help me out. He even says in verse 10, he's very specific when he says, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Then he takes a little bit of time to allow them to recall his time there. One thing that Paul does in his writings, he wants to make sure that it doesn't come off that he's holding people to a different standard than the standard that he is holding himself. And so he recalls his time there. Hey, don't you guys remember that when I was there, that my whole mission and my whole goal and all of my ministry was set and based around the job that I was doing and the life that I was living? Did you see me just like wasting away over to the side because like, hey, God's got me, so whatever. No, I was there. I worked a job. I brought money in because I didn't want people to feel like I was using them for their money. I wanted them to know that I just wanted them to know and love Christ. And then, finally, he addresses the people who had fallen into their idleness. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3.12, which is not on the screen, so I'm just going to read it. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Hey, this isn't encouragement, but it's also a commandment. If you left your job, and if you are shirking your life's responsibilities, if you've decided that your human life is just kind of done at this point because you're waiting for Jesus to come back, it's time to stop. I'm not just encouraging it, I'm commanding it. It's time to stop, go back to work, do your work. And so, and, so I read that, and we talk about that, and I think everyone in the room is like, yeah, cool, man. That makes sense. You shouldn't do that. But like I kind of opened with, I really struggled as I read that to go, okay, so what's the value for the people at Grace? I mean, I guess I could stand up and just say, hey, look, Grace, here's the deal. If any of you guys have been doing some extra research on the second coming recently, and if in your research you've decided that Jesus could come back at any moment or any day, and so you've decided that because of that, you're going to leave, you're going to just leave your human responsibilities behind, you're going to leave your job and not worry about providing for yourself or anybody you need to provide. If you're doing that, I would encourage you and command you that instead you should not do that. Go back to work. Go back to your responsibilities. Go back to your family. They miss you. No. It's not a super effective tool to communicate to all of you guys. But after reading it a few times, I realized that this section where he addresses the idleness, he doesn't stop at just addressing the people who had fallen into their idleness separately from the people who had not fallen into idleness. He goes one verse more. He goes one verse longer, and I think that what this next verse does is to help us understand why maybe the sin that they had fallen into and fallen under is maybe a little bit similar to something that we fall under and fall into sometimes. So the next verse actually is on the screen, and this is to address all of the believers in Thessalonica. The ones who had fallen into idleness and the ones who are still doing exactly what Paul had called them to do and what the Lord calls them to do. And this verse says, and it's verse 13, as for you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing good. After the command, hey, don't help out people who don't need your help and are just trying to get it. After the command to, hey, go back to work and start doing your job and get back to your lives that you were already living. He says, and all of you, every one of you, do not grow weary in doing good. And what this verse did, finally, after reading it countless times, what it finally did is it reminded me of 1 Thessalonians. And it reminded me of why Paul wrote about the second coming in the first place. It reminded me of why, of why it's important that Paul finds everyday life and work so important in the first place. Because that, our lives, the lives that they lived and the lives that we live, because that is where the Lord has placed them and that is where the Lord has called them to live for him. Paul's point in talking about idleness, Paul's point in telling people to go back to work isn't just for the simplicity of, hey, go back to work, you goofballs. His point is don't neglect the human secular life that God has uniquely given you and called you to. Instead, use that life to do good, serve and love the people you're around, and continue to build relationships that share Christ's love and point people toward Christ. What the Thessalonians who fell into idleness had done is they had forgotten that until Christ had actually come down to get them, that the Lord was not done with them yet. Hey, if you're still on earth, even if it's for one more day or one more hour, if you're still on earth, that means Christ still has you on earth on purpose. Their lives on earth had been created for them by God to do exactly the work in him that only they could do. They'd forgotten that Paul's teaching that all of life is meant to be lived out for Christ and that there should be no distinction between different parts of life. Sunday morning is not more spiritual or more holy than Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday night small group does not become more spiritual or more holy than being in the office on Friday morning. There should be no distinction. Doesn't that remind us of what Paul already taught us of how to spread the gospel? He didn't say, hey, everyone leave your jobs so you can become preachers. He said, hey, guess what, everyone? The Lord puts you in your jobs for a reason. He's trying to use you in those jobs. And ultimately, I think the big tragedy that Paul is trying to address is this, that their misunderstanding had removed them from their quote-unquote secular lives, and Lord had given them lives where daily they interact with people who need the love of Christ. And because they had decided they were done with all those earthly responsibilities, they had effectively walked away from all of the people who needed Christ's love the most. And Paul couldn't stand it. And so Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. And doesn't that sound more like something that we maybe need to hear and be reminded of? Isn't that a truth that maybe makes a little bit more sense on our end? Don't we sometimes, even though maybe we're not leaving our jobs, maybe we leave God at the footsteps of our jobs, forgetting or not being willing to acknowledge the fact that the Lord maybe has us there for a reason that's his and not just for the sake of you doing a job to get money. I think what the connection of 1 and 2 Thessalonians does such a beautiful job is to remind us that our time on this earth is short. And so we should live it meaningfully, reflecting the Father who not only created us, and not only saved us through the death and resurrection of Christ, but the Father who is with us every second of every day. Father who's guiding our steps and working to use us for his glory and his plan. The Father who decides to allow, to allow us in our short and ordinary lives to make an eternal and an extraordinary impact on the people that are around us. So then I turn it around and I ask a couple questions. How often, Grace, do we miss or how often do we overlook the Lord's presence and the Lord's guidance in our day-to-day lives? How often do we miss that the Lord is trying to work inside of our lives every single day? Or, how often do we find ourselves so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we are unaware or unwilling to see why the Lord might have us in those places and why the Lord might have us around those people in the first place? I think what Paul wants us to realize is this, that as a Christian, every moment is holy because we carry the presence of God into every single moment that we walk into. And maybe more directly, every time we separate our secular lives from our spiritual lives, we are missing the opportunity to expand God's kingdom and extend the heart of Christ. God is with us every moment of every single day. He's with us so we get to experience a relationship and a knowledge of him. But he's with us because he is trying to guide us into every moment of our day so that we can turn that and extend the heart of Christ to the people that are around us. And so I want to close with a quote. It's a quote that has been meaningful to me in years past as I ponder, hey, what does it look like to make my everyday life more centered around God, more centered around Christ? What does that look like? What does that mean? It's a quote from John Ortberg. And I'm going to read it. And it's a little different than some of our other blanks. And I'll tell you why. So, and it's actually, you can read it up here or it's on your sheets. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to scripture or blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. I'm going to read that one more time. This time I'm going to read it as a blank. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. So the quote, that blank is meant to be scripture, but I removed it because I want us to be thoughtful about what else could maybe go in that blank. Certainly one of the best ways to be able to experience and to know God better and to know what God's plan for us is on a day-to-day basis, one of the best ways to do it is through scripture. And when we meet with God and we dive into scripture, we don't just do so willy-nilly. We do so knowing, hey, we're about to meet with God. And so we come in with an attitude of expectancy. But what if we changed it up? What if we said, if I come to work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. If I come home from work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. When I hit the golf course on a Saturday morning with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. Fill in the blank. If I enter into blank, whatever that blank is, at each part of the day, with expectancy. Expecting the Lord to move. Expecting the Lord to already be there. Expecting the Lord to guide my path as I take each and every step. How would our lives look different? How would each phase of our lives look different? Not just when we walk into church and we get to celebrate the Lord, but when we walk out of church into lunch. Grace, I believe that if we walked each step of our lives with the attitude of expectancy that God is going to move, then that could really change things. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that we never grow tired and we never grow weary of doing good. Lord, as you have called us in everything that we do to do good for you, to live out a life that is reflective of you in the gospel and to make most of you in every step that we take. Through relationships, through building relationships, through sharing your gospel through whatever it looks like. God, I just pray that we stay and remain mindful that you're always with us, not just in small groups, not just on Sunday mornings, but every step of the day. And Lord, may we not ever try to separate our life from your life because you never do that. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

All right, I see no one paid extra for the splash zone this morning, but I feel like I should like just stand down here and preach, but no, it's good morning. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. As most of you probably know by now, the month of July, our head pastor, Nate, is actually taking a sabbatical. It's something that was afforded to him as he has spent diligent, full-time service to this church, ministering to all of us so lovingly and so well for seven years. And so he is taking some time during the month of July to refresh and recharge spiritually in all other ways, spending time relaxing with family, on vacation, all of those things. And so I'm super happy for them. I'm super excited that he's getting the opportunity to do that. And honestly, I'm really excited for us and what that means for Grace, because you know he's gonna come out of that time ready to run in August, ready to run alongside of us in August as he comes back spiritually, recharged, and re-energized. But that also means is I get to preach this morning, which is really cool. Yeah, like cool. All right. I wasn't fishing, but I am thankful for it. I will say, like, I am mostly very excited about it. We're in our series 27, and in 27, we are going through a different book of the New Testament each week. Now, the reason why I'm mostly excited is because I think that there's a small part of me that thinks that Nate might have set me up for failure for this. Because as we talked about this series, we knew that he was going to be on sabbatical. And so there were a lot of voices, a lot of people talking, discussing, hey, what should this series look like? How should we do this series? All this stuff. And one of the main things that Nate made very clear is, hey, don't worry about us going in order. We're not going to go in order all the way through the New Testament. Just choose books that you're going to love and that stand out to you in your preparation. Awesome. Thanks so much. Man, Nate's the best. He doesn't want to be holding us to a certain book. He wants us to pick the book. And then Nate decides for the first four weeks, he's going to do the first four books in order of the New Testament. So while we know in his office that he has decided we don't have to go in order, now you guys are coming ready for an Acts sermon, and I'm hitting you with 1 Thessalonians. And not only did he set me up for failure, but he also knew if there's rioting in the building because I go out of the order you guys are ready for, he's gone. He's on sabbatical. He doesn't have to worry about it. So if you will, please bear with me, and please put down your, you know, whatever pickaxes that you're going to come to me because I'm breaking out of order because I am this morning going to peel off the Band-Aid and we are going to jump into the book of 1 Thessalonians. Now, one of the distinct things about the New Testament, as a lot of you guys know, 13 of the books are attributed to Paul and to Paul's ministry, the Apostle Paul. He wrote these letters to these different churches in these different areas, and they were all named after the areas in the people that he's writing to. And those are, and they're all written by Paul. And so for a lot of this series, we're going to be bringing up this guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul. Now, the thing about Paul, he was not a big fan of Christians. He persecuted them. He wanted to kill them. He thought like, hey, like get rid of this ideology of Christianity that you think exists because this is not, this is not it. You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I'm not having it. Until God kind of hit him literally in just this, he blinded him. I don't know what else to say. I don't really know what word I was searching for, but he blinded him and sent a Christian to go spend some time with Paul, teach Paul the truth, and then literally God opened Paul's eyes, both literally and figuratively, to the gospel that, hey, Paul, you're right that I am God, but you're wrong about who Christ is. This Jesus who came and lived, came and lived because I sent him as my son from heaven to earth to live a perfect life and to die a death signifying the death of all sins of the people who believe him. And he was resurrected from the dead, just as you've heard people tell. And that resurrection signifies that all those people who would believe in him and believe in Jesus as king and trust him as their Lord and Savior, that they are raised to life as well. That when God looks at them, they don't see the imperfections of their lives and of their walks in their life, but they see the perfection of Christ and the holiness of Christ because they have entrusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And once the Lord told Paul that, Paul's life was then about one thing and one thing only, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul did, when you read about his ministry and acts, when you read about his ministry and read his writings to each of these different churches as we're gonna go through, he has one goal and one goal only, and that Paul's ultimate goal was to share the gospel to all people and call them to repent and live a life reflective of that gospel. It's the only thing that he cared about. I want to make sure everyone I come in contact with knows who Jesus is, and I want to make sure everyone that I encounter not only knows who he is, but will give their hearts to that Christ and give their lives to the ministry of that Jesus, just as I have. And that's a lot of what 1 Thessalonians is. That's the goal of 1 Thessalonians is Paul writing to the people in the church of Thessalonica, some as reminding himself and just reminiscing on his time there, some to say, hey, like I'm so excited that this is taken, and some to say, hey, continue and press on. That is the goal of this. But as I was going through each one of his letters, as I was going through each book in the New Testament, man, what really jumped out to me about 1 Thessalonians is outside of clearly this being the goal, as it so often is in Paul's writing, I think that he just gives a really, really excellent description of exactly what that looks like. I think that's super valuable, because I don't, if you're like me, there's times where I hear sermons, or there's times where I'm reading through Scripture, and it is abundantly clear what Scripture would have me do. It's abundantly clear, okay, yes, I do love God. Yes, I know that I should go and tell more people about Jesus. Yes, I know I should minister to these people. I know I should make disciples. I should do all of those things. But sometimes I feel like it's a lot harder through Scripture to find, okay, so what exactly does that look like? And I think we find a pretty excellent description of what it looks like when we read the book of 1 Thessalonians. And so before we jump in, I want to give you a little background, a little history. So Paul and one of his ministry partners named Silas, you can find in the book of Acts, Acts 17, where they spent some time in Thessalonica. They go and join their community and start preaching the gospel, telling people who Jesus is, telling people, hey, this Jesus who came and walked on earth died for you so that you could have eternal life, so that you could have this eternal relationship with God the Father, all this stuff. And boy, was it effective. I mean, as they were preaching the gospel, the Lord was just taking hold of the hearts of the people in Thessalonica. And man, I mean, there was, it was like wildfire the gospel was spreading in the area. And it's incredible to read about. It's incredible to see. I mean, literally, it's like, it's like, you know, one of those church revivals where you see the Lord clearly moving. But in this case, it wasn't necessarily a revival because these people are coming alive for the first time. This entire city is hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. And so it would be more of just a vival, I guess. They're becoming alive for the first time. I don't know. I don't know words like that, but that seems right. But it's incredible to read about how the Lord was moving, but then that brought some consequences as well because there were still Jewish people in the area who, like Paul was prior, was not happy about Jesus taking over, wasn't happy to hear that there were these two guys that were spreading these claims that they felt to be inaccurate, and so they started persecuting the people and kind of looked like seeking out Paul and Silas to the point that the Christians felt, the Christians and Paul and Silas all felt so distinctly worried that they ended up smuggling them out of the city at night one night because they were like, hey, if they find you, I think they might kill you. And so it is best for you and it's best for everybody if you can go ahead and leave, if we can get you out. And so they got out, they got out safely, and they got out knowing, hey, we know that a lot of people love Christ and give themselves to Christ, but man, Paul is really pretty downtrodden about the fact that he had to leave. As you read in 1 Thessalonians, there's a bit, especially on the early part of 1 Thessalonians, where he's really upset. It kind of takes on this flavor of, some of you guys probably know this, when you were a kid and your parents let you know that one of them got a new job in a new town or a new city and you were going to have to move, which meant, hey, all of these relationships that you've built, all of these friends that you have that you dearly love, you're not going to be able to see them much anymore, and you don't really have much say in that matter. You're just not going to get the amount of time that you hope to get with these people that you love. And that's kind of how Paul starts off this writing, just kind of really sad and really upset about the fact that he was having to be pulled out of this place with these people who he had really grown to love and adore. Not only that, but he got to see the way that Christ had begun moving in that place, and that excited him, but he just, he almost felt like he was leaving them when they needed him most to really learn, and to really learn from him and imitate him what ministering to other people looked like, and establishing roots where they had built a foundation of Christ. And so he just kind of felt like he got the short end of the stick on that and was really upset. So what he did is he sent another ministry partner named Timothy to go check in on him. Timothy, go spend some time with these people. First and foremost, let them know that I am praying for them every day. I pray that the Lord is continuing to move in their hearts, move in their lives, move in their city. But man, I also just pray that soon enough I get to come and see them again, to see my friends, the people that I love so much, once more. Let them know that, please, and spend some time with them. See how they're doing. See how the church is doing. See if the gospel is continuing to move, and report back to me. And so he does. He goes, he finds out, and he comes back. And the response is really positive. It's really good and exciting news that while obviously there's still issues going on in Thessalonica, but the gospel has just absolutely taken off. Where a foundation was set and where Paul had ministered to these people and showed them Christ, they were building upon that foundation and continuing daily to bring more and more people into the faith under Christ. And not only that, but it was moving outside of the city walls as well. I learned actually in researching that Thessalonica, how it is set up, it's actually kind of a, it's a trade town. So a lot of people in the rest of Macedonia and all over those nations, and also in the Roman Empire, all congregate to Thessalonica to do trading. And so while there is this there's this vival happening amongst the Thessalonians, as the gospel is traveling and hitting and encouraging so many people in this city, it is also moving outside of those city walls because as people are coming in for trade consistently, those people that are there are spreading the gospel to them as well. I actually read in a William Barclay commentary. This is really cool and really interesting. He basically said that you cannot understate, you cannot downplay how important the Christianity expanding outside of Thessalonica was for Christianity becoming a world religion. That's how important Christ taking over the hearts of the people in Thessalonica was. One of the main reasons why Christianity spread worldwide. And so you can imagine how Paul wrote to these people in response to this. First Thessalonians is in response to Timothy coming and telling him this unbelievable news. And as you can imagine, he writes just completely joyful and absolutely elated, which we've been there too, right? You've got, I mean, a lot of you guys are parents. You've raised kids that are still alive, which is like unbelievable to me, but good job for y'all. But you have kids and you have people in your life that you love and that you invest so much time and energy in. And so when you see them do well, when you see them do the thing that you helped them be able to do, get to that next step, get to that next point in life, when you see them come to know Jesus Christ for the first time, there's nothing better, right? There's nothing better, one, because somebody that you love is doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well, people getting to know Christ, Christ being shed and spread, Christ being spread through the nation and into other nations. And so that's how he writes. He reminisces on his time there spent with these people, building relationships, growing to love them, being a part of the culture, being a part of the community, and sharing the gospel through them, saying, hey, like, I'm so happy that I was able to minister to you in this way, and I'm even happier that the Lord is moving now, and that you guys are imitating the way that I ministered to you guys, and now you're ministering to other people in the same way, and it's effective, and I am so happy to hear it, and I think what that does is it opens up the door to asking a question. The question is, how did Paul minister to the people in Thessalonica? Okay, this is awesome. Paul ministered to these people. So many of them started giving their hearts and giving their lives to Jesus, and now they're doing the same thing that he did, and it's continuing to work incredibly well. And I think that 1 Thessalonians does an excellent job of telling us exactly what. And so as you go through, I think the whole book does a good job of sharing that, of sharing that directive, of giving, of saying, hey, this is exactly how it was done. I think in particular, chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, does a really excellent job as to making something that seems a little bit inaccessible very accessible, not only for the people in Thessalonica, but I think for the people in this room. It's a very doable strategy of ministering to people that we can emulate. And so we're actually going to start, we're going to start in verse 7, and then we're going to go backwards, because as we've established, I'm not going in order. So if you will, please just read with me verses 7 and 8. Let me read that one more time. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. We came and we brought you the gospel, but we brought you so much more than that. We brought you our whole selves. We gave you ourselves. I think it's a pretty excellent summation to say that Paul ministered gently and sacrificially through genuine relational love. He didn't share the gospel from a distance. It's not some guy who rolls up into this community during the day, sets up a pulpit, and preaches throughout the day, sharing the gospel, and then goes back to his place away from everybody afterwards. He immersed himself into this community. He built relationships with these people. He chose to serve them and love them well and intently. He goes after them, becomes a part of them, and builds through relational love these relationships and these friendships with these people so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that this person cares about me, that I am loved by this person. What's he doing? He's showing the love of Christ to these people so that he can share with them the gospel of who Jesus is, and they're going to be willing to hear it. I think what he realized is that we should strive to present the truth of Christ through imitating the love of Christ. We hear a lot about what it looks like to share the gospel, and I get a ton of questions about how am I supposed to do that. Like, I don't really think I'm meant to be Paul and go with a couple guys to different nations and different cities and preach to them until I'm thrown in prison and then write letters to them. But clearly what Paul is saying here, because Paul echoes a lot in his time and in his writing, I am ministering to you in this way and I am calling you to imitate and minister to other people in this way. How am I calling you to share the gospel? The same way that I'm sharing the gospel with you. I'm coming, and I'm going to be a part of your lives. I'm going to build friendships, and I'm going to love you well. I'm going to love you out of the love of Christ that I have received from Christ, and through that, through me loving you like Christ, I am going to share the truth of Christ with you in a way that is impactful, in a way that is meaningful, and in a way that you are going to be willing to hear from me because you know that I only genuinely care about you. He actually goes a little bit deeper in verses five and six. And so, hey, like, we're disciples of God. We could have come in and told you, hey, these are the things that you need to know. These are the things that you need to do. These are the things that you need to figure out so that you can be saved. But instead, he said, hey, that's not, that wasn't our goal. Our goal wasn't to share the gospel in this impersonal, in this formal, impersonal way. It was to share the gospel as personally as possible. Now, the wording of the greed part, I want to go dive into that a little bit, because as I kind of told you, he's a little bit repetitive with the things that he says throughout, and I think that is probably because they're important. Paul thought it was very, very meaningful and a very useful tool of ministry to, when he went into Thessalonica, not to establish a church and be the head of that church, not to be a guy who, what he did is, hey, I'm bringing you the gospel. I'm kind of going to be the minister here, and so please pay me, bring me food, give me shelter, so that I can bring this good news to you. Instead, Paul talks pretty distinctly about that he got a job in Thessalonica as soon as he got there, because he wanted to work amongst the people. He wanted the people in Thessalonica to know, hey, I care only's awesome that you're doing ministry and that that's your full-time job, but he's kind of saying all of you guys, y'all are doing it the way that he would do it. Y'all are doing it the way that he's calling here. That's how, I think that's ultimately maybe the thing that stuck out most to me in this is this is a message for the people of the church that aren't working in the church. I have to work hard to make sure I don't do that. I have to go out of my way to make sure that my students know that, hey, I'm going to minister to you and I'm going to love you while you're in this building, but I'm also going to go outside of these walls to make sure I'm a part of your lives, ministering to you, getting to know you so that you know without a shadow of a doubt that, yes, sure, this is Kyle's job to do this, but the only reason he's actually doing it is because he loves me, and he wants me to know the gospel. But you guys aren't beholden to those things, and I think that what Paul is saying is, y'all are doing it right. That's the way that he would call us to minister. And what I think he realized is that there is a purity of intention when you have nothing to gain from the people you are specifically loving and pouring into. How pure is your motivation when as you're building relationships and as you're building upon foundations of relationships, when you're loving people well, going out of your way to serve people, that you're asking of nothing in return, to where they know that you're only doing that because you care about them, just in the same way that you know that the only reason you're doing that is because, hey, the Lord loves this person, and so do I, regardless of who they are. And I think what I love about this is that this is a message that I, like, this is something that I see people in this church do really well. I think this is certainly something to be like, yes, I need to do this, whatever, but like, I see this all over, all over the place in this church. I got a buddy, Preston, that comes to the church that he's maybe one of the best possible, like, friend makers that I've ever met. Like, when I watch him in conversation, I'm just like, gosh, man, like, that dude genuinely cares about everything that everyone says to him. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if he's just trying to be like Jesus or whatever, or if he's just, well, you know, like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just so taken aback at how good he is at making people know, hey, you are my friend and I care about you. And recently we had a conversation. He said there was a guy in his office who obviously was his friend because he's been around Preston and that's what Preston does. He makes friends. And he was like, hey man, like, I just seem to notice you really care about people a lot. And you honestly seem to be a lot more content than I am with life. You don't seem to get quite as upset about stuff. You love people well. And I just kind of want to know what's your secret. I want to be more like that. I want to understand how to do that better. That opened up the door for Preston to be able to tell him about Jesus. That door doesn't get opened if Preston is just trying to give him the gospel but not give him any part of himself. But Preston gave of himself, built this relational foundation that that guy wanted to ask Preston that question. I think about my buddy Logan, another guy who comes to the church. He, two of his best friends are two people he served in the Navy with. Neither one are believers, actually. But Logan has loved them well and has built that friendship to a point that he's able to share the gospel with them, and they're not going to be turned off. They're willing to listen. Not only that, but they love him so much that they want to support him in whatever the way they can. So he's actually, he hosts every other Monday night, he hosts this film watching group where the point of it is to watch this film and then talk about how it relates to the gospel. And guess who's on Zoom every single week from all over the nation? Those two guys. They want to be a part. They want to talk about film, and they listen. They get to hear about the gospel every other week on Monday night where outside of that, they don't hear it at all because they have a friend that they love and want to support a cool thing that he's doing. They hear the gospel because Logan has loved them and has loved them well and has built that relationship to that point. My wife, Ashlyn, she rules. I don't know if I've seen more tears than watching her go from two offices, one in Garner and one in Cary, to just being in Cary. The people in that Garner office, there were just so many tears because Ashlyn is the friend on staff, on staff with those people who's going to always consistently love them well and encourage them, point them back to Jesus and be a light in their life. You don't know how effective you are at that until you leave and you find out that the response is everyone being so upset. She had a mom say, hey, I know we live in Garner, but we're going to be there in Cary. I can't stop crying. My daughter genuinely says that Miss Ashlyn is her best friend. We're going to stick with you. That happens because Ashlyn loves very well. She's got a person in the office who just, in the carry office, who just experienced a tragedy and reached out to everybody, said, hey, this happened. Please don't ask me about it. I'm not ready to talk. A week later, guess who's, guess who walked in, whose door she walked in because she wanted to talk? Ashlyn. Because Ashlyn, she knows that Ashlyn loves her well and is going to point her to Jesus and point her towards the light. And finally, I look at, I look at Karen and Chris. I know Chris isn't used to being praised on a Sunday morning, but since Nate's gone, we're just gonna, we're gonna break all the, we're gonna break all the molds here. But I mean, their, their youngest daughter is my age, graduated in 2011, and they right now have decided, you know what, we're tired of having all this stuff, we want to have somebody come and live with us. They have somebody from, a soccer player from South Africa currently living with them, a college student, which like, I don't know, can't be like insanely fun, and't be insanely easy. I mean like super nice dude, but like, you know, they've been living with a lot of freedom for a long time by themselves. And so they're just hosting kids over at their house all the time, college students, just college dudes, just rolling up, soccer players, probably acting a fool. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Definitely not acting a fool. I know you're not, bro. But I mean, how easy is it? How easy would it have been for Karen and Chris to love them well by supplying them with Chick-fil-A coupons so they feel like they have some other food? To bring them some candy, bring them some extra clothes, whatever, and just check in on them every once in a while. But what they recognize and what they realize, in the same way that Paul knew was incredibly important, is if I want to truly impact the people that are around me, then I need to truly be a part of their lives. I need to truly build relationships with these people built on a foundation of the love of Christ, loving them well, encouraging them well, and that is a true and ultimate way to make a gospel impact. And that is where then the door is open to truly not only share the love of Christ through your actions, but share the truth of Christ in your words, and to truly share the gospel to the people around you. And in Paul's writing, Paul kind of says the same thing. He's like, guys, I want to encourage you in this, but you're doing it really well. Actually, I want to read it because I think it's beautiful, and I think that the simple way that I want to encourage you, Grace, who does this so well, is the same way that Paul encourages the people of Thessalonica. So if you will, please, let's read verses, or 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, be able to show and share the gospel to so many other people. So my simple question for you that I want to close on is this. Who and where can you do this more and more and continue to do it more and more? So I want to close this morning in a prayer, but I want to, it's kind of a specific prayer. Ashlyn, my wife, she wants to be as helpful as possible in my sermons, and sometimes she feels like, I gotta like, you know, she feels like she's unhelpful. I'm like, Ashlyn, you're great. Just you loving me is very helpful. But she knew kind of what I was talking about this morning, and she was reminded of a song, it's actually by Casting Crowns, throwback, called The Bridge. And this song, I think, just does an absolutely beautiful job of just giving the same encouragement and the same prayer that we pray as we try to share the love of Christ so that we can share the truth of Christ. So if you will, we're just going to pray, and I'm going to pray over us these lyrics from this song. Bow with me. With love, we earn the right to speak your truth. It's not just what we say, it's what we do. I want to be a bridge, God, that leads to you. So reach through me and let them see, Lord, let them see. Lord, let us love like this. Let us share the gospel like this. Not formal, not impersonal, but as personal and as loving as we possibly can. We love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. We are in the second part of our series called 27, where we're going to be this summer and next summer going through the 27 books of the New Testament and kind of giving you an overview of each book with the goal of kind of raising the biblical literacy of the church, making us more aware of and comfortable with the Bible, and kind of knowing what each of the books are about. And hopefully this series serves to drive you into God's Word. This week we arrive at the Gospel of Mark. Last week we looked at the Gospel of Matthew. And in the next two weeks we'll look at Luke and John. So we're kind of doing a sub-series here in June of the Gospels. As I was thinking about the Gospel of Mark and the message of Mark, I was reminded of a story that I heard a while back. I think I actually heard Andy Stanley talking about this. Andy Stanley is a pastor out of Atlanta. A lot of you know who he is. If you don't know who he is, you're probably not a very good Christian, but we're happy you're here. But he's a pastor out of Atlanta, really great. I really love a lot of the stuff that he does. And I think I heard him tell this story, but I also went online and it's been written about a couple different times in a couple different ways. But in January of 2013, then President Obama, he had just been reelected, and he invited Andy Stanley to come give a sermon the morning of his inauguration at St. John's Episcopal Church. And in this room was going to be, of course, Barack and Michelle and their family, but cabinet members, his staff members, very high-level people, easily. This is the most powerful room in the world. And Andy Stanley is invited to give a sermon to the most powerful person in the world. And it makes me wonder, when I first heard this story, my immediate thought is, oh my gosh, what are you talking about? What do you preach to that room? What do you preach to someone who's about to take the oath of office for the President of the United States. And I wonder what you would say if you had 20 minutes before the next president takes office, regardless of your political affiliations. I couldn't care less what they are. Just stick with me on this. Don't be the guy that's listening to this part of the sermon being like, I'd tell you what I'd tell him. No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't, all right? Shut up. What would you actually want to say to try to be maximum helpful and inspirational to the leader of the free world? It makes me so nervous to think about that and what I would say. But here's what Andy Stanley said, and it's stuck with me ever since. He asked this of President Obama. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He's saying this to the man who is and will continue to be the most powerful person on the planet. And to a very powerful room, Andy Stanley says, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He speaks right to where they are, and he answers it with this. You leverage your power for the benefit of the other people in the room. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in this space? You leverage that power and that authority and that influence for the benefit of the people around you, not for yourself. That is a great message to the President of the United States. I don't know what the passage was. I looked hard to try to figure it, to try to find it, to try to find the actual sermon, because all that is, all that you can find if you Google it is a bunch of really conservative Christian online magazines who are upset that he called President Obama the pastor-in-chief during the sermon. Everybody got all worked up about that. So there's tons of articles that he had the audacity to say that, which who cares? And you can't find the actual sermon text. I wish I could find the sermon text because I'm certain, I'm certain that Andy preached this out of the Gospel of Mark. I'm certain that he did. Because I bring up that story. What do you do when you're the most powerful person in the room? You use your power and your influence for the benefit of the people around you. And he looked at President Obama and he said, you are in a very big room. My hope and prayer for you is that you will leverage everything that you have to make it better for the people around you. I wish every government official could listen to this sermon the day they took office. And I'm certain that the sermon came from the Gospel of Mark because that distilled down is the message of the Gospel of Mark, is to be a humble servant. Last week, I told you that Matthew was written to the Jewish community and depicts Jesus as a king. This week in Mark, Mark was written to the Romans to depict Jesus as a servant. Mark was written to a Roman audience and depicts Jesus as a servant. Mark was written by a guy named John Mark. You may recognize him if you're familiar with the book of Acts. After the first missionary journey, Paul parted ways with him and Barnabas, and then eventually John Mark got back in Paul's good graces and was with the disciples during this time. He was also very close with Peter, and his gospel is really a collection of the stories that Peter told John Mark. So this is almost the gospel according to Peter, but John Mark happened to be the one that wrote it down. It's a very urgent gospel. It's a very quick gospel. If you've never read a gospel before, I would tell you to start with Mark. It's very action-packed. It just goes from one thing to the next, and it's a very succinct gospel, and it was the first gospel written. And again, it was written to the Romans because the Romans were very prevalent in that day and age. And it was written to portray Jesus as a servant. And it's interesting that each of the Gospels is written to a different audience. Matthew is written to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, Luke to the Greeks, and John to the whole world. And in each case, Jesus is depicted in such a way that it's very clear that the author's intent is to kind of arrest your attention and make you look at this Jesus figure. So when you're a Jewish person and Jesus is depicted as the king, that's what you expect him to be. So you're listening, you're all in. When you're a Greek person and Jesus is depicted as a man, as a human, you're all wrapped up in humanity and humanity being the apex of creation. And so you're paying attention. When you're reading the Gospel of John and it presents this man as a god, you're leaning in. That's interesting to me. And so to a Roman person, getting a message about this all-powerful creator god who takes on human form and is the most powerful person, literally, who has ever lived, it would arrest your attention to note that he was a servant. Now, why is it so powerful to depict Jesus as a servant to the Roman audience? Well, to a Roman, the whole point of having power was not to have to serve anyone else. To the Roman mind, the whole point of accumulating wealth and influence and power and authority was to put yourself in a situation where you didn't have to serve anyone else. You had someone serving you. To grow were very comfortable with servanthood. They did not have the sensibilities that we had. If you were a rich person, you had some servants. How you treated them was up to you. And to be a servant was to be the lowest of the low. It was better to be poor and have your own hut to live in, but no one telling you what to do every day than it was to be the servant in the home of a rich person where you just lived at their beck and call. Or beck and call, I don't know. So to the Roman mind, they would never ever have expected Jesus to be depicted as a servant because that was the lowest of the low. And to them, as you accumulated power and authority, you accumulated servants. The whole reason for having more power was so that you had to do less things for yourself. And you know, even though in the United States, we certainly don't have a servant or slavery culture, but we do think of authority and power in a lot of the same ways. We do think that to grow in authority and to grow in power and influence means that you have more people around you to do more things for you. We start to develop this idea that certain tasks are beneath us. I don't have to do that anymore. Remember, I saw one of the guys on Shark Tank, one of the sharks in the NBC hit show, Shark Tank. If you haven't heard of it, I'm not going to explain it to you. But they're billionaires, and one of them makes a comment that he doesn't wear a watch. And they were like, why don't you wear a watch? He goes, I don't need to. Whenever I get somewhere, I'm on time. And you're like, oh, oh, you're a jerk. As people accrue power and authority and influence in certain circles, we just assume that there's going to start to be some tasks that are beneath them, and there's going to be rights and privileges that come with their influence and power. One of my favorite stories that came out of the Donald Trump presidency, don't worry, I'm not going to say anything. Just know that whenever, if you're a pastor and you say any president's name at all, the whole room goes. This is going to be fine. I've read biographies, different accounts. This is, this is, this is, this is actually, this is a verifiable fact that in the Oval Office, I believe underneath the Resolute Desk, the Resolute Desk is the name of the President's Desk. If you didn't know that, I will not belittle you for not knowing things about the Bible here, but come on, that's just basic U.S. stuff. You got to know what the Resolute Desk is. There's a button under the Resolute Desk, and President Trump would delight in having guests into the Oval Office, and he'd say, hey, watch this, and he would press the button, and a few minutes later, a waiter would come in with ice-cold Diet Cokes, and he would love that this button would usher in Diet Cokes, right? And I think that's delightful. And I've heard, I've read somewhere, I don't know if this is true, I just want to believe it to be true, that Joe Biden kept that, President Biden kept that button in place, and for him, they bring in ice cream sundaes. Isn't that fun? I love it. Grandpa Joe bringing in ice cream sundaes for the kids. This is great. Now, what we would expect and what the Romans would expect is for Jesus to be the one hitting the button. And what Mark says is, no, he's the one bringing the Cokes. He's the one in the kitchen waiting for the call, cracking it open and pouring it over ice and bringing as many as is needed, and he's doing it with a smile on his face. That's who Jesus was, and that's how he's depicted. And to a Roman mind that would expect someone in authority to just continue to be in authority the way that everyone around them is in authority. It's pretty groundbreaking to think that Jesus is the one bringing the cokes, not hitting the button. And to the American mind, I think it does the same thing. Because if we're being honest, we don't think of people in authority as typically as the people bringing the Coke. We think of them as the ones that are hitting the button. And so I think if I had to summarize the book of Mark, if there was a summary verse, what is Mark about? What does Mark want us to know? What is he trying to communicate, not just to the Roman audience, but to us and to all people for all time? In Mark's words, what's he trying to communicate? Well, we actually have that in Mark chapter 10, and it's Jesus's words. On the screen, we're going to start in verse 43, but I'm going to start reading from verse 42. Verse 42 says, That is the summary verse, the summary passage of Mark. That whoever wants to be greatest among you must be least. Whoever wants to be first must be last. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. That's the message of Mark. And I love how Jesus begins this discourse. Do not be like the Gentiles who lord their authority over one another. Have you ever had an experience with someone who got a scintilla of authority and it just went straight to their head and they were the most annoying humans on the planet? I have. His name was Philip, and I'm going to tell you his story. Normally, I do not use names to disparage people. I just say a guy that I know, but this time, Philip has it coming. This is years ago, 24, 25, I'm working for my dad, and my dad's an accountant. In the 70s, he got into this weird niche of accounting where he audits housing authorities. He travels around the country, and that's what he does. And so I'm working for my my dad and I'm on a trip, I think Dallas-Fort Worth, I'm working with Phillip. Phillip is my age. This is his first time on a business trip being the auditor in charge. It's on the work papers. It says auditor in charge, Phillip. I won't say his last name. That's not fair. Then you'll Google him or something. But he's listed as the auditor in charge. It's a big deal. And it's just me and him traveling. He's the boss. And I was very clear. I knew that I had that job because of who my dad was. He had a CPA. As Philip did. He passed the test. I had theology classes. I had nothing. Dude, you're the boss. Whatever you need me to do, I'll do. And so there's this one test that I would run in the test and control series, and I had to schedule out an account. This particular account was about $12 million. And I had to just basically retrace it through the year and make it zero out. And I don't even know what that means now. I don't know how to explain to you. I could get Greg as an accountant, he could come up here and he could kind of translate for you guys. I don't know what that means. I just know that I needed to zero it out. I needed to make sure that everything they were inputting into it had a reliable source and that it all matched up and that they weren't cooking the books, which I'm the guy to make sure no one's getting away with anything financially. I sure do know. Gosh. So anyways, I've got to schedule this thing out. And I'm scheduling it out, and I get the difference down to less than $100. And I'm going back through. It's one of those, I've got to stack. I've got this book, that thing that was printed out on the dot matrix with the green and white paper, and I'm flipping through, and I'm highlighting, and I'm looking, and I got it down to $100, about $100. And once you got the difference down to a small enough amount, you could just put on the cover page to make it all zero out, you could just put that amount there and you could write next to it, immaterial difference, which is accounting speak for, we didn't figure this out, but we're pretty sure it's fine. That's what that means. Like it's,, this doesn't matter. It's a, it's a hundred dollars and a 12 million dollar account. No fraud here, all right? So, I've been working on this thing for six or seven hours. I get it down to a hundred bucks. I can't get it down any lower than that, and I go to Phillip. I say, hey, Phillip, I've got this thing down to about a hundred bucks. Can I just, you cool if I write this off as an immaterial difference? And Philip goes, I just really want to do this one right, Nate. So I need you to go find me that $100. And I'm like, okay. All right. So I go back to the office. I'm like, I got to find this. I got to find the new sheriff in town. It's $100. Okay, here we go. So I'm flipping back to the thing again. I'm looking for it again. I find some stuff. I'm looking and I've got it down. I've got it down to four cents. Got it down to four cents. I know. And I'm just, I've got to find this four cents. I don't even care about Philip anymore. I've got to find this four cents, right? We go to dinner. We're done. I come back the next morning. I spend all morning looking, thumbing through this thing for the four cents. I had it memorized, right? I can't find it. I have to admit defeat. And I'm like, gosh, I don't want to go into Philip's office, but I got to go into Philip's office. I'm like, hey dude, I got it down to four cents. I'm going to write that off as immaterial difference if that's all right. And Philip looks me in the eye and he says, I'm going to need you to find me that four cents. I have never been closer to jumping across a desk and strangling someone out than I was in that moment. I was livid. So I go back to the office and I'm like, I can't find the four cents. Let me see what I can do here. So I grabbed the previous year's work papers. So because every job you go on, you bring the work papers from the previous year in case you need to reference something, see what we did last year, or in this case, discover that your boss is a jerk. So I found the folder. I opened it up. I go to the test that I'm working on. And guess who did that test last year? Philip did. And do you know what he wrote off as an immaterial difference? $208. I'll never forget that number. It was $208 to my four cents, and I was so mad. And I went back to him, and I told him, you know, last year you wrote off $208 as an immaterial difference. I think four cents in a $12 million account seems pretty reasonable. And he said, I need you to find me the four cents. So I went back to the office, and I wrote it off as immaterial difference, and I never looked back. I tried to play nice to you, Phillip, but guess what? My dad's the boss, and I know that he's going to take my side on this, so I'm not even that worried about it. I didn't want to do this to you, but I had to. Don't be like Philip. Gentiles, when they get an ounce of authority lorded over you, and they want to make sure that they're afforded the respect and the rights and privileges that come with leadership, you're going to address me as this, as doctor or pastor or whatever, Mr. or Mrs., if they're C-suite. You're going to address me as this. You're going to talk to me like this. You're going to defer to me. And sometimes when people get in power, they're nice until you start acting like you're equals. Then they got to make sure that you know how things balance out. That's what Gentiles do. They lord their authority over people. And worse than being annoying, when Christians do this, we push people away from God. If you're a leader in any capacity, small to large, and you allow that authority and that position of power and that influence to go to your head, and part of what you try to do with that influence is maintain your influence, and you lord it over people, you're actually pushing people away from Jesus. You're actually harming, you're not just harming yourself and harming your relationship with that person, you are harming the very kingdom of Jesus if you hold your leadership and authority in ways that the Gentiles do. If you hold it for yourself rather than for others. And what's actually interesting among many things that Andy Stanley said to Barack Obama that day is he came back at the end and he said, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? Will you leverage that for the benefit of the people around you? And then he says, and actually, to do anything less than this is to think that you're greater than Christ himself. To do anything less than serve is to act as though you're greater than Christ. Because the greatest one of all time came to serve and to be last. So when we don't do that, we are declaring to ourselves in our tiny little universes that we are better than Jesus. And in church, and this is the converse of this, when we do serve, when we do carry leadership, when we do carry authority like Jesus did, when we do that, we can actually pull people into Jesus by being Christ-like. We talk a lot in church about being Christ-like, about being more like Jesus. When the word sanctification comes up, sanctification is this time period and process from the point in which we become saved. Our salvation process starts to when it is sealed and done when we go to heaven. That intermittent time when we are in God's hand but we are not yet perfected in heaven is sanctification. And I always describe sanctification as becoming the process through which we become more like Christ in character. That's what sanctification is. So in the Christian journey, in the Christian life, we are all of us who would call ourselves Christians, seeking to be more like Christ. And so what Mark says is, if you want to be more like Jesus, serve others more. If you want to be more like Jesus, then anytime you have any influence anywhere at all, use it for the benefit of the people around you rather than yourself. And when you do that, it will draw people into Christ. That's the message of Mark. That when we don't carry our authority and our influence like Jesus does, we push people away. And when we do carry it like Jesus did, we draw people into him with Christ-like character. Now, I know that there are some of you who may be thinking to yourself, like, dude, I'm not in charge of anything, okay? I don't lead anybody. I don't have circles of influence. I don't do that. I'm not in charge of anyone anywhere. I get that. We move into seasons where we have greater and less influence. But I would submit to you that we all do at some point in our life and at some point in our week. Maybe you're a stay-at-home mom. You're in charge of those kids. Might not feel that way all the time. Might feel like they're in charge of you, but you're in charge of those kids. How are you going to exert your authority over them? Are we going to be the kind of parent that makes sure that our kids know who the boss is at every moment of every day? Are we going to be the kind of parent that sits lazily on the couch and the purpose of our kids is to go get us something from the fridge and bring it to us rather than engaging with them? How are we going to use the influence and the authority that we have in our homes? If we go to school and we volunteer, we're in charge of those kids for at least for a small amount of time. If you're over there, you're in charge for a small amount of time. If you're working at Summer Extreme this week, you're in charge for a small amount of time. We all move into places where we are the one who is in authority, where we are the one who has the most influence, where our voice is the heaviest one in the room. And when we are, how are we going to treat it? How are we going to usher a little bit of Jesus into their day, into that moment? Even when we go sit down at a restaurant, we are in authority over our server. What can we do in that meal to serve them, to show them a little bit of Jesus, to make their day a little bit better, to leave a good imprint on them for that day? How can we carry the authority that we have, even in that small situation, to bring them closer to Jesus and not push them further away? We can do this in the drive-through, in a position of authority. We are in authority. The people helping us are the people who are working for us. We can show them a little bit of Jesus just in that moment to draw them closer into our Savior. And if you don't think I'm right, go through a drive-through with my wife, Jen. Because when we go through a drive-through together, this is, I'm not making this up. When we go through a drive-ru together, if we get the food and the drinks and it's done, like we've reached the end of this exchange, and I've not been adequately kind to the people that we've been talking to, she will lean across me and say very loudly, thank you so much, you're doing great, have a nice day. And then look at me. Now, I didn't know there was such a thing as vindictive kindness, but she has figured it out. And she'll sprinkle a little Jesus on both of us on the way. A little bit on them, make their day better. A little bit on me, make my day worse, but I need to get better. I think we need to realize when we have opportunities to act in unexpected ways, to show people the kindness that exudes from our Savior, be those conduits of grace that we talk about being around here. But to more of you, not maybe more of you, but to a big portion of you, you do have some authority. You do have people who work for you. Maybe you're a team lead. Maybe you just got a new job and there's new people that are listening to you now and you've got to figure this out. Maybe you've got two employees. Maybe you've got 200 or 2,000. I know that we do have a lot of leaders in this church. And to those of you who do have people working for you, those of you that do have the opportunity to influence. Now here's what I would say about you, the ones that I know who do carry influence here. I know that you know this already. And I know that it means a lot to you to try to be the type of leader that Jesus was. And I know that serving your staff and serving the people around you matters a lot. But let this morning be an encouragement and a reminder for you to dive back into that. If you're here this morning and you do lead somewhere, you're on a board, you run a classroom, you have employees. You run a business. You oversee whatever. And you have been using that authority to serve yourself and to help yourself climb? I get it. That's how the world handles authority. But in your efforts to do that, I just want you to know as a Christian, you're actually pushing people away from you and from your Savior. But Jesus shows us that there is a way to lead and to have influence and authority that will be so radical that it would draw people into him. And for those of you who do lead, I wonder what could be better one day at your retirement party or after you're gone and there's a group of your employees and coworkers sitting around and they're talking about what it was like to work for you, what it was like to be led for you. What if the ones who believe in Jesus said about you, because that person was in my life, I'm closer to Jesus than I would have ever been? What if what they said about you after you retired, and no one's around, and they're not saying this to blow smoke up your dress, they're saying this because they mean it, because God put that person in my life, I'm closer to him than I think I ever would be because I got to watch them serve God faithfully for years. What a privilege it was to work under them because of what it showed me about who their Jesus was. What if the people who don't know Jesus but work for you would say about you, after seeing you at your best and your worst, after watching how you leverage your influence and authority, what if they were to say about you, you know what, I don't share the faith that they do, but they're one of the ones that I believe when they say it. I don't know that I believe like they do, but I know that they believed. I know that they love their Jesus. They were the real deal. We all, in different times and different ways, move into and out of positions of influence. The message of Mark is that when you find yourself there, remember, you can leverage your authority to get people to serve you and do what you want. But that's not what Jesus did. And that's not what he told you to do. And I am convinced that the best thing possible that anybody could say about you after working with you or for you or being under your leadership for any amount of time is, I am closer to Jesus because God put that person in my life. And we get them there by serving them. That's why Jesus says, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So whether we lead in small ways at the drive-through or in big ways, leading in life. We should carry that leadership and that influence and that authority like Jesus did and try to use it to serve others. Now a couple practical things on how we do that and I'll wrap up. Two things. How can we begin to be people who serve like Jesus served? Well I think one of the things we can do is that we can begin to equate serving with being Christ-like, not being belittled. We can begin to equate serving with being like Christ, not being belittled. This week, I reached out to an old friend of mine who is a pastor about an hour and a half away from here. And he and I worked at summer camp together years ago and have loosely kept in touch. And I emailed him and I just said, hey, man, I'm so sorry that it's taken me six years of living this close to you to try to get together, but I'd love to get together and just talk as pastors and buy you lunch sometime. Let me know if that's going to be possible. And he emailed me back, and he said, is Ruth's Chris or nothing for me, which is pretty typical of this guy. It's funny. And then he says, I'll have to get back with you on when. If you don't hear from me, feel free to email me again. And I thought, nope. If you don't email me, we will never speak in our whole lives. Because what did he do? He belittled me. Made me a secretary. I'm not your secretary. But as I was preparing the sermon, and I wrote that point, well, looks like I'll be emailing John. Because it's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not to be belittled. When we get asked to do something that we feel is beneath us, jump at it. Do it. It's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not be belittled. The second thing we can do is we can pray this prayer of confession and repentance. And as we consider the message of the gospel of Mark, and we consider this idea that to be first we must be last, to be great we must be least. I would encourage us all to pray this prayer together as I pray here in a second, but the prayer is simply this. Father, show me where I'm leveraging my power to be served rather than to serve. Whatever power and influence you've given me, however loud my voice is in a particular room, would you please show me where I'm using that influence and that authority for myself and not for the people that are around me? And in praying that prayer, hopefully he will open our eyes to greater opportunities of service and servanthood so that we can be like Christ and serve people towards the kingdom of God. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for who you are and for how you love us. We know that your son could have showed up and just lorded it over us, and he would have had every right to do it, to just ascend to the throne, to be the most important and most powerful person in the room. He could have done that, but he came meek and mild, and he came as a servant. God, as you move us into positions of authority and influence, would you remind us of the way that your son came and that your son led and that your son served so that we might do the same? Would you, Father, in your goodness, keep us humble, make us eager to serve, give us a heart that sees the needs of others and meets them where they are, and deflate our egos where they're too big and where they're making it hard for us to serve like we need to. Thank you for your son. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for how you've loved us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Man, that was good. I tell you what, I tell you what, I love you guys. I love this place. I love this church. It is so special. God's doing something here, y'all. He's doing something in me. He's doing something in y'all. And I fully, fully believe that the brightest days of grace are ahead, that he has a lot for us to do in us and through us. And I'm excited about those. This morning, we are starting a new series. And I got to say this too. I expected for this morning to be terrible. Can I just tell you that? I expected it to be dead in here, for there to be sporadic attendance, and for it to just be a lame Sunday. I'm coming back from South Africa. I don't know what day it is. I feel like eating lunch right now. I have no clue what's going on around me or where I am. We have a team coming back from Mexico that represents a lot of our core folks. Did you guys just clap for yourself? Is that what just happened? Good job, everyone. Yes, we are the best. We got students coming back from Metta. They're all ready to fall asleep. Yeah, this is great. And then it's the middle of October, and if you don't know anything about Grace in October, it's like July 2.0. Everybody goes to the mountains to see leaves, I guess. I don't know. They don't come here to see me, and so it's just kind of sparse here. And I thought this Sunday is going to be dead. And then I'm sitting here worshiping and I'm like, holy cow, God, this is amazing. That was some of the best, most energetic, enthusiastic, sincere worship I've heard come from us. And I'm just fired up, especially about what I get to share with you this morning as we start our new series called Great Prayers. So what we're going to do for six weeks is just open the Bible and look at some of the more impactful prayers that we see in Scripture. And hopefully by looking at these great prayers, we can become greater prayers, but we're not going to talk about how to pray. We're not going to talk about having devotions and that prayer time needs to be a part of our life. And here's why. We're simply going to look at some of the most impactful prayers and meaningful prayers in scripture and kind of ask the question, what can we learn about them for our prayers? And so the one that we're kicking off with is very near and dear to my heart. It's very special to me. This is my prayer over grace. It's what Rachel Gentile just read. As she got up here to read, I leaned over to Jen, and I said, she's just the best. And Jen has tears in her eyes because she loves Rachel. And she's like, I know. Maybe I'm just jet lagged. I don't know. And I don't love Rachel that much. Maybe I'm just fatigued. You're not a big deal, Rachel. It's whatever. We're glad you're here. But this prayer, it's the one that I pray over grace. My office at home, I've got it sitting in the corner now. I need to get it framed and then hang it up. But I've got this prayer written out on a big piece of paper in calligraphy that we had a friend of ours do for us. When I come and pray over children who are born at grace, this is what I pray over them. When I pray for grace, it's what I pray for grace. When I pray for my children, it's what I pray for them. When I pray for you, it's what I pray for you. And so for me, it's perfect that this prayer sermon is coming right on the heels of traits of grace, where we're saying this is what makes grace, grace, and this is who we are. And so now right on the heels of that, we say this is to me the prayer of grace. And I think it's safe to call it the prayer of grace because the greatest church planner of all time, one of the most influential Christians who ever lived, Paul, the apostle, is the author of this prayer. And what I think is cool about it is that it's really mirrored throughout the rest of the Pauline epistles, the other letters that Paul wrote to the churches. So for those of you who may not know exactly what Paul did, you just know he's kind of a name of one of the saints that we talk about in church sometimes. Paul wrote a third of the New, or two-thirds of the New Testament, as far as the books that are attributed to him. Paul planted seven to ten churches right after Jesus died. He's responsible really for the early church movement throughout Asia Minor. And once he was converted on the road to Tarsus, Paul spent the rest of his life traveling around these cities on the Mediterranean coast, planning churches and encouraging the church leaders and the people within those churches, and then writing letters back to those churches as he was going on his four different missionary journeys. If you count the journey on the slave ship that shipwrecks at Malta and then eventually makes it to Rome, then there's four journeys. And so all through those journeys, he's visiting the churches and then he's writing letters back to the churches that he's already visited or that he longs to visit. And in most of those letters, he has a prayer. There'll be a preface and it'll say something like, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And that's what we see in Philippians. And sometimes it says, whenever I think of you, I pray for you and here's what I pray. But if you'll read Paul's letters carefully, what you'll see in these prayers when he prays for those churches is that they're remarkably similar and that he essentially prays for the same thing for all the churches. And so it's interesting to me to look, what does Paul pray for the churches? What's the singular thing that he wants? What does he always pray for no matter what else is going on? But before we look at and examine what he prays for, I thought I would ask you what you think you would pray for. Put yourself in the shoes of Paul. You spent your life planting these churches, investing in these people. You want to see them grow. You want to see them flourish. You want to see the communities evangelized and reached. You're hopeful for these churches. Not only that, a lot of these churches exist in cities and in empires that are under persecution and oppression, where it might even be illegal to be a Christian and to be in these churches and definitely to be leading these churches. So if you were to write a letter to these churches and you were to include in that letter a prayer, here's what I hope for you. Think with me sincerely, what would you pray? What would you hope for them? What would you want for them? Would you pray for safety? I would. Would you pray for relief from persecution? Would you pray in a day and age when a life expectancy isn't long? Would you pray for health? Certainly you would know some people there who were ailing. Would you pray for the success of the church? May you reach the community. May your love abound so that others come to know Jesus. Would you pray for the health of the church, for the wisdom of the leaders? If you were Paul, what would you pray for? And then think about it in terms of the people that you do pray for. Hopefully, hopefully you pray for the people in your life. If you have kids, hopefully you pray for them regularly, if not daily. If you don't, that's okay. Maybe you have an eight-year-old and you're thinking, gosh, I have not really prayed for that kid very often the first eight years of their life. Okay. Well, they don't have to go any more years without you praying for them daily. So start doing that now. Hopefully you pray for your spouse. Hopefully you pray for them daily. If you don't, that's okay. They've gone however long they've gone without you praying for them daily. But start now and don't make them live that life anymore. Pray for them daily. Hopefully you pray for the people that you love. Hopefully you lift them up to God and you ask for what's best for them. And when you do, what kinds of things do you pray for them? If we pray daily, maybe there's daily prayers, but I think a lot of us probably relegate prayers for others to when there's something urgent going on in their life, right? When there's a tricky relationship, when they've reached a difficult season, when they're awaiting news for a diagnosis or they've received it and now they're undergoing treatment, when there's a difficult situation at work, when there's a difficult situation with their family, with their kids, or with their marriage, then we lift them up. And so when we do, it's often a petition, right? God, save their marriage. God, help them here. God, help me here. Help them do that. God, I just pray for protection for my children. We've got one girl in the youth group who recently turned 16. I'm very certain that her parents are praying prayers of safety on the road and for the other drivers who are around this particular young lady. Those are the kinds of things we pray for, like circumstantial help in this situation. And listen, those are good prayers. They're good prayers. And we see those throughout the Bible. We see David say that God is his fortress and his strength and he prays for protection. We see Paul at different places pray for healing. We see Paul pray urgently and petition God that communities would be reached and that the gospel would be expounded. So we see all of those prayers in scripture. But when we look at Paul's prayer, to me, as we read it, and I'll read it again here in a second, to me it speaks just as loudly what he doesn't pray for as what he does. And I think that we have a lot to learn from that. So let's look again at the prayer that Paul prays, and let's ask together, what is it that he's asking on behalf of the church. Verse 14 in Ephesians chapter 3. So here's what Paul prays. the triune God, that you would be strengthened by the Spirit, that you would be indwelled by the Christ, and that you would be filled with the fullness of the Father, resulting in knowing God along with the saints. So when we say knowing God this morning, we mean the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So Paul's prayer is that we would know God. That's the prayer, that you would know God. Not for safety, not that everything would be okay, not that the people would be healed, not even for success and growth of the church, not for anything circumstantial, but a singular prayer for them is that they would know God, that they would know him deeply and so commune with the other saints that know him. And it is my prayer for you that everything in life would push us to this place where we know God more deeply. It was the apex value for Paul. Again, do we see in other places him praying for those things? For safety and for protection and for growth and for the expounding of the gospel? Yes, absolutely, he prays for those things. But it's not the first thing he prays. It's not the apex value. It's not what's most important to him. To help us think about this idea of like this apex value, this thing that's so valuable to me, I'm going to pursue it above and beyond anything else. I'm going to tell you a snippet of the story of me getting home from South Africa, which is a heck of a story. But our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg kept getting delayed. And we had to catch a flight in Johannesburg from Johannesburg to Atlanta. And that margin of time between when we were going to land and when we needed to be at our gate kept shrinking. And I'm looking at my buddy that I'm traveling with, and it kind of dawns on both of us, because he's a more experienced international traveler than I am, and he didn't do me the favor of advising that I not check a bag. So this is really his fault, and he owes me money. But I didn't know not to check a bag, so I had a small bag, and I checked it, figuring it's an international flight. We're going to be there for six days. It seems like the time you check something. Anyways, I checked it. So we're looking at each other going, and he's like, dude, you ain't going to get that bag. You do not have time to go to baggage claim, go to check-in, go through security, and get to the gate. You've got to choose. Do you want what's in that bag, or do you want to get on that flight? Do you want that stuff, which, in that bag, or my Crocs, guys? I know. I know. Oh, man. That's great. If you're watching online and you don't know what just happened, I'm not going to explain it to you. You just got to be here. You just got to be here. So sad. But I know I want to get home. I want to see my family. I want to see my church. I don't want to spend more money on another ticket that's going to cost more than the content of my bag. So even though I really want that stuff and I like some of that stuff, it's just my apex value in this situation, my biggest value, my biggest priority is to go home. So even though it hurts a little bit, I'm going to make a choice to pursue the thing that I need the most. It was the apex value. My value is to go home, see my family, to be in my house. Paul's value for us is that our souls would go home, is that our souls would find rest. And if on occasion we have to leave a bag behind to get closer to the Father, so be it. If on occasion the sickness is what's acting in our life to actually conspire to bring us closer to God and drive us to a deeper knowledge of Him that we would be filled with his fullness, then so be it. Paul prays that our souls would go home, that our souls would find rest in God, that they would go there first and foremost, and that that's what we would want to sacrifice anything else for the sake of knowing God. Maybe this is why Paul writes in Philippians 3.8 that he considers everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. So if we want our prayers to mirror the ethic of Paul, then when we pray for ourselves and we pray for others, we pray that our souls would go home. We pray that our souls would find their rest in God, no matter what else we have to go through. So if we have a child who's wondering and they don't know about their faith and we see them making decisions that we might not make, the prayer to pray for that child is, God, would everything in their life that they're experiencing somehow conspire to push them closer to you so that they might go home? When someone is sick, sure, we pray for them to heal, but we layer that prayer at the end with kind of a tip of the cap to Jesus' prayer, to the Lord's prayer where it says, not my will, but your will be done. Yes, Father, I pray that they'd be healed. Yes, Father, I pray that they would be okay. Yes, Father, I pray that you would bring relief in this situation. But more than anything, I trust you and I trust your sovereignty. And I'm praying that you would use everything in that situation, use all the circumstances in their life. I pray that they would conspire so that they might simply know you more so that their souls could go home and find rest in you. That's what we pray. And when you ask me to pray for you, when someone's sick or someone's's marriage is struggling, or someone's child is wandering, or things are hard, I always pray the thing that you ask me to pray. But I always follow it with, but God, whatever you choose to do here, would the circumstances conspire to push them closer to you, that they might be filled with your fullness, that they would be indwelled by your Spirit, that they would be strengthened by your Spirit, indwelled by your Son, that they may be filled with the fullness of the wisdom of the Father, that they might know you. So I want to encourage you too, parents, as you pray for your children, pray this prayer over them. We can't possibly see all of the winding roads that may eventually lead them to a greater depth of faith. I can tell you in my own life, there's been two times in my life when I thought, I'm going to have to walk away from this. I can't believe this anymore. This is untenable to me. And one is way more recently than you think it was. But that when I walked through it, and when I got honest about the God that I was pursuing, and when I started pursuing answers to the questions that I had, God opened my eyes to a greater faith and a greater depth of desire for Him. And I feel like as I walk through those points of inflection in my life that God used them to bring me closer to Him so that I might desire Him more. We never know how God is weaving lives to bring us closer to Himself. So sometimes we don't pray away the circumstances that He has brought about to work in. Sometimes we simply trust Him. All the time we simply trust Him. And we say, God, not my will, but Your will be done. We say, Father, I just want to echo Ephesians 3 and pray that everything that happens in the life of this person would conspire to push them closer to you, that they might know you more, that they might know what it is to walk in your peace. That's our prayer for others. That's our prayer for Grace, that God, whatever you do here, if we languish in the small room with the pole in it for the next six years, who cares? God, with all the events that Grace conspire, that we might know you more and do greater things in your name so that other people might come to know you more through us. Who cares where we meet? If we move into a big fancy new building and we do it in a year and a half because God just decided that's what we need to do and hundreds more people come, who cares? God, with the events of these people coming, conspire so that they might know you more and be pushed closer to you. It's our only prayer. And if you were to ask me, Nate, why is this Paul's apex value? Why is this the thing that he feels is most important? Well, the first answer and the most important answer is this is exactly what we were created for. This is why God made us, so that he could share Himself with us so that we would know Him. That's what heaven is. I think we mess up. I think we make a mistake when we make heaven about our personal salvation. Am I in or am I out? Am I going to burn or am I going to be in there for forever? That's kind of silly. The purpose of heaven is that we would be reunited with our creator God and experience eternity in harmony with him forever. The purpose of heaven is that we fulfill our ultimate purpose of just knowing him. And so every inch we move closer to knowing God, every bit of depth that we gain in our knowledge of him, every bit of closeness that we experience in our relationship with him is a way to bring heaven down here on earth. And so not only we experience heaven, but those around us get a little glimpse of what heaven's going to be like with every inch that we move closer to the Father, with every embrace that he uses to pull us in as this small reflection of what heaven will be one day. That's why Paul prays that we would know him. But as I was thinking about it this week, writing this sermon on various flights at who knows what time of day it was, depending on the time zone, this thought occurred to me that, you know, we are at our most gracious and most peaceful when we are experiencing the most closeness to God. Another way to say it is, the closer we get to God, the more grace and peace that we walk in. The closer I get to God, the more I pursue Him, the more I know Him, the more I love Him, the more I experience Him, and I feel his goodness in my life, the more gracious I am with myself and others, the less annoyed I get in traffic, the less annoyed I get with my kids, the less obnoxious I think someone is, and the more I realize they're just a hurt person who's hurting other people, and they need God's goodness just like I do. Isn't it true? In the times in your life, when you look back and you would say, or maybe it's right now, and you would say, I'm as close to God as I've ever been, or in that season I was as close to God as I've ever been, weren't you also your most gracious with yourselves and with others? And isn't it a good indicator that we're not walking with God when we begin to lack grace for ourselves and we begin to get really hard on others and we become harsher versions of ourselves? And isn't it true that the closer we get to God, the more peace we experience? And the more we know him, the more certain we are that he'll take care of us. I did not know. I did not know if I was going to be home today. Catching that flight was, I don't think you can cut it closer. I really didn't know if I was going to be here. But I also really didn't pray about it that much. My only prayer while I was sitting there wondering if I was going to make it was, God, if you want me home, I'll be home. If you want me to preach, I'll preach. If you don't, I won't. And I'll get to keep my crocs. So Lord, your will be done. There was an upside to both, you know? But my only prayer was, Father, do what you want. I trust you. Whatever, if you want me to get home, we'll get home. It's kind of like, it's one of the things that raising the money for the building taught me. We did the campaign really, really dumb and it was just kind of like, well, you know, God, if you want us to have the money to buy the land, then we'll have it. If you don't, then we won't. Now we need to raise more money to get into the building. And you know what? If God wants us to have the money, you're gonna give it. And if he doesn't, you won't. Okay. The closer you get to God, the more peace you experience in life. And so I think it's, and honestly, the times in our life when we're drifting from God are sometimes the times when we get most honest and we try to seize the most things and we worry about the most things that we can't control. And then the closer we drift to God, the more of his peace that we feel. And so I think it's very true that the more we know God, the more gracious and peaceful we are. And as I was thinking about that, I was also reminded of the fact that Paul signs off almost all of his letters, grace and peace. He almost always says grace and peace to you, to the saints and wherever. And I've always paid attention to that. And I've always wondered why that is, especially if you juxtapose it or you compare it with the passage in Corinthians, where it says these three things remain, faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. Like why doesn't he ask for faith, hope, and love to you and all the saints? He doesn't do that. He asks for grace. He wishes them grace and peace. I've always wondered why. And maybe, just maybe, it's because Paul knows that grace and peace are byproducts of knowing God. Paul knows that if God answers his prayer in Ephesians 3, 14 through 19, and then Colossians 1 and in other places, that the people in the churches will know him. And if they know him, they will be people who are filled and who will walk in grace and peace. And so by blessing them and wishing upon them grace and peace, what Paul is really doing in his Pauline way is saying, I hope you know God. I hope you grow closer to him. And so I'm praying grace and peace unto you this morning as well. If you are a praying person, I hope that this great prayer can influence the way that you pray for others. Sure. Pray for the circumstances. Pray for protection and pray for health and pray for success and pray for reconciliation and pray for forgiveness and pray for all the things. But layer over them this apex value from Paul, that the person you're praying for, that the body that you're praying for, the family or the church or the people that you are praying for, would simply know God. That even in the circumstances that you're praying for, that all of them would conspire in some miraculous and unknown way to draw people closer to the Father, that He would use those circumstances to pull people near to Him, that they might experience the grace and peace of their soul going home with God. If you're not someone who prays for the people in your life regularly. Okay. You don't have to be that. If your children have not had the benefit of a praying parent, they can now just start. If your spouse hasn't had the benefit of a praying spouse, if your friend hasn't had the benefit of praying friends, if your co-workers haven't had the benefit of a praying co-worker, okay, they can. Anytime you want. So I hope you'll be people who pray for people. And when you do, I hope that you'll pray according to the ethics of Paul as he prays. That whatever happens, whatever they experience, whatever highs and lows they walk through, that if there's success in their life, celebrate that success, but pray fervently and ardently that it would bring them to a deeper knowledge of God. If there's struggle in their life, pray for a relief of that struggle, but pray first and foremost that that struggle would bring them to a deeper knowledge of their God that they might walk in grace and peace. As I encourage you to pray that for others, let me pray that over you as we wrap up. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you're doing in this place. I thank you for what you're doing in me. There's so many things to pray for. In this room, God, there are struggles that no one knows about. There are hurts and hangups that have not been articulated or that have. Our mind goes to places of stress and of urgency. And so, God, I pray that your hand would be in all those. In this room, God, there's also seasons of celebration, of goodness, of sweetness, of joy and blessing. Whether it's in the highs or in the lows, God, may we not forget that you are the author of those things. And may everything happening within them conspire to push us closer to you. God, I pray for grace. I pray that you would work in the lives of the people who are here and who are at home. And that all the circumstances that are working in their life right now would conspire to bring them closer to you. That they would be strengthened by your spirit. That they would be indwelled by your son. That they would be filled with the fullness of the father. Help our souls to find their rest in you, to go home to you, and so walk in the grace and peace that you offer us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this cold February morning on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope everybody's got fun plans, or if you don't care about the Super Bowl at all, I hope you have a nice dinner planned for yourself. This is the third part in our series going through the book of Colossians. And this week, as we approach it, I wanted to approach the text with this kind of idea in mind. We're going to be in Colossians chapter 2 and then on through chapter 3 in some different portions of it. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. And then if you're at home, please turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. I would also call your attention to the bulletin. The bulletin looks a little bit different this week. There's no place for you to take notes. So note takers, you're going to have to get creative. Instead, I've put a prayer on the bulletin that we're going to pray at the end of the service together. You'll pray silently as I pray it aloud. And by the time we get there, hopefully the prayer makes a lot more sense and is meaningful and is something that you will carry home with you. But we'll talk more about that at the end of the service. If you're watching online, this bulletin is attached to the grace find that you should have received this week. So you can download that if you want to, or you can just email someone on staff and we'll be happy to send it over to you if you find it helpful and want to pray it throughout your week. But as we approach the text this week, I wanted to start here. I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to eat healthy, okay? By the looks of most of us, this has been an effort at least at some portion of our life, but there have been a lot of times in my life when I have decided that I'm going to begin to eat with some wisdom. I'm going to start to eat well. I'm a person who's had a lot of day one workouts, and I've had a lot of day one diets. Okay, there's more in my future. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Not today. It's Super Bowl Sunday. This is not the day to start a diet, but tomorrow is fresh and hope springs eternal. But whenever I decide that I'm going to eat well, right? I'm going to eat responsibly, which is like a rabbit. Whenever I decide I'm going to do that, I feel like I am a person who is at war with myself. I feel like I am two separate people. I am one person who wants to eat well, and I am another person who just loves food so much that he's angered by me who wants to eat well. Because I love food. I don't know about your relationship with food. Mine is probably not healthy. If I know that I'm going to have a certain dinner that night or that we're going somewhere like a restaurant or something like that, I already know what I'm getting and I wake up thinking about it. Like I look forward to it throughout the day. That's how much I love food. For the Super Bowl tonight, we're going to have pigs in a blanket. I'm going to dip them in spicy mustard. I'm going to eat more than I should. I'm already excited about it, okay? That's just how I am about food. So when I decide that I want to eat well, it's really difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I have certain stumbling blocks. It's pretty easy for me to eat well around the house. I kind of do a good job not snacking when I'm not supposed to. I don't drink the soda and stuff when I'm not supposed to. I drink black coffee and water, and that's pretty much it during the day. That's not very challenging. But what is challenging is when I'm trying to eat well, and my sweet wife on a Friday or Saturday will say, you want to go Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do, okay? I always want to go to Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit. That answer is never no, okay? You ask me, Nate, do you want a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. But you just had three. I don't care. You're offering me one. I want another biscuit. I like biscuits in the morning. So that's tough, all right? The other time it's tough is when I go out to eat. Because I'll go out to eat. I'll go to places that I like, and they have food there that I like. And one of the places I think of is Piper's. I go to Piper's because I meet people there for lunch with a lot of regularity. That's kind of my default spot. And they have salads, like I see them on the menu, right? They got grilled chicken and some fruit or some whatever, some balsamic whatever, less delicious thing that they have there. And I know that I need to order it. And I have girded my loins. I'm ready for this choice. And I go in there and I don't even look at the meat. I look at just the salads. I don't look at the other things. But see, here's the thing. This Piper's has one of the best Reuben's in the city. They really do. It's delicious. And that's what I want, right? I want the Reuben. And I've been thinking all day about how I shouldn't have the Reuben. And I've made the decision, I'm going to get the salad. I'm going to eat the thing that I don't want. But then it's like Satan's working against me or God's just giving me a special grace and telling me it's okay. I'm not sure which sign. And the table next to me will receive a piping hot, crispy toasted Reuben. As I'm sitting there trying to muster up the discipline to order my salad. And I look at that Reuben and I look at those fries and I look at that ketchup and the waitress says, what do you have? That! I want that Reuben. I did not want a salad. And I cave, right? So for me to be on a diet is for me to live at war with myself. I bring that up because I think that you'll know that this is true. Those of you who have been a Christian for any amount of time, to be a Christian is to be at war with yourself. To be a Christian, to be a believer, is to know the good you ought to do and yet still struggle to do it. I even think, and this is a sad reality, it should not be the case, and hopefully God can deliver us from this, and hopefully this sermon moves the needle on this a little bit, but I even think that to be a believer is to be constantly disappointed with how spiritually mature you are and how spiritually mature you think you should be by now. Because we know the good things we're supposed to do. We know the kindness we're supposed to show. We know the greed we're not supposed to have and the pride that we're supposed to iron out. And we know all the different things and our hidden sins and the stuff that we look at and whatever it is, the stuff that we consume. We know what we're not supposed to do and we know what we are supposed to do. And we try like heck to be that person, but we are a person who feels at war with ourself because there is the person within us who wants to eat right and there is the person within us who really loves a good Reuben, whatever that might be for you. And they exist at war with each other. I am convinced that to be a believer means to live in a state of tension within yourself of who you know you should be, of who you know God created you to be, of who you know God designed you to be, and yet not being able to walk in that. There's a verse that's super challenging for me where Paul tells us that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And I don't know about you, but I don't get to the end of too many days, much less weeks, where I look back on that week and I go, yeah, this week I was obedient to that verse. And if we're honest as Christians, it gets tiring to know that that's true. It gets exhausting to constantly fall short. Paul actually describes this tension in one of my favorite passages. It's one of the most human things to me that's written in the Bible, particularly by Paul in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes specifically about this tension in the Christian life when, in my inner being, but I see in my members another regenerated person as God has rescued my heart and claimed it and one day will whisk me up to heaven. He's given me eternal life and I'm living as a new creature that we're going to talk about more in a minute. I feel in this inner being a desire to live the righteous life that God has called me to live. And yet, also in my body, is a desire to revert back to my old self. It is a desire to revert to who I am without Jesus. It is a desire to indulge the flesh. It is a desire for the things that I used to consume that I know I don't need to consume anymore. That exists within us. And then he exclaims at the end of it, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will finally give me victory? How will I finally live the life that I'm supposed to live? And so that's where we arrive this morning. In Colossians, is this age-old question that all Christians face, that Francis Schaeffer, an author in the 20th century, framed up in a book entitled, How Should We Then Live? Meaning, in light of the gospel, in light of what we talked about in week one, the picture of Jesus that Paul paints for the Colossians, remember, they're facing pressure from within and without to go back to rules and aestheticism and to be legalistic and add on more rules than what is necessary so that they can live a righteous life, and then pressure from the more liberal part of their community to say none of the rules matter, how we live doesn't matter at all. You have total grace to do whatever it is you want to do. And so Paul, to that pressure, paints a picture of Christ as the apex of history and the apex of hope, as the connection point and nexus between the spiritual realm and the physical realm, how he is the creator God over everything, this majestic picture of Christ. And so the question becomes, how do we live in light of that picture? How do we live in light of the gospel? I am saved. I am a new creature. God has breathed new life into me. I am no longer a slave to sin, as Paul describes in Romans, but now I have this option to move forward with the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in me and to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received. Now, how do I do it? How do I do it? That's the question that we come to in Colossians. And it should be a question that matters to each and every Christian. Father, how do I live a life worthy of the calling that I've received? How do I grow into spiritual maturity? What do I do practically? How do I live the Christian life? And it's an important question because it dictates how we pursue God. And to this question, I think we often answer it in the same way that we're trained to answer any other question in our life about how we get better at a particular thing. If you want to get better at exercising, what do you need? You need more discipline. You need to wake up. You need to do it. You need to be more disciplined in the way you pursue exercise. If you want to eat better, what do you need to do? You need to be more disciplined. You want to do better at time management. You need more discipline in time management. You want to be more focused. You want to be more productive. You want whatever it is, however it is, you want to grow and be better. What is the fundamental requirement of that pursuit of better? It's discipline. We need to do better. We need to come up with structures and systems that we follow, and I'm going to white knuckle my way to success here. And the most disciplined people within our field, they achieve the most success. The most disciplined people at the gym look the best in a t-shirt. The most disciplined people, when they go out to eat, they have the healthiest hearts. Like discipline is the root to how we accomplish success. And so, because that's true, and so very many areas of our life, even though we could philosophically talk about whether or not that's true, because we think that's true in so many areas of our life, we also just by default apply that to our spiritual life. If I want to be more godly, then I need to be more disciplined. I'm going to set up more rules, more regulations. I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to be the type of person that is defined by these things. We focus on our behavior and our self-discipline. And I think when we are faced with the question of how do I then live? How do I become the Christian that God has created and designed me to be? I think that in our culture, our default answer is to attempt to white-knuckle discipline our way to godliness. And here's what Paul says about that knee-jerk reaction that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. Listen, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self- we be the people that God asks us to be? And their response, it seems, at least initially, was white-knuckle discipline, aestheticism, following the rules. The better you follow the rules, the more God loves you. It's a very simple exchange. That's what legalism says. And so they're just going to be try-hards. They're just going to be do-betters. That's just what they're going to do. And to help them try really hard, they set up all these rules and parameters around their life. And they say, whoever can follow these rules the best is the greatest Christian. But Paul says, that's fine. Set up your rules. Have all your standards. Set the boundaries really far away from the actual boundary. He says, but all those rules and all that, the way that it looks, the way that you're living, just dotting all the T's and crossing all the I's and really, really, really having these policies in life that keep you on the straight and narrow. Paul says, yeah, those have the appearance of wisdom. And I would add in our vernacular, godliness, but they do nothing. They do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh that is the reason for the sinning that we need the rules for. For instance, let's say that what you struggle with is pride. Okay, I'm having to make some assumptions here because I don't have the struggle, but if you do, let's say that something that you struggle with is pride and you go, you know what, God, I gotta get rid of this. I gotta be better. I'm gonna be better at being more humble. I'm gonna try to push out my pride. And so we take intentional steps. Maybe we're people who will maybe kind of fish for compliments sometime, or maybe we'll ask people what they thought about something. And really all we want them to do is tell them that we did a good job or that we're good at this or that we're good at that. And there's ways, if you're a prideful person, there are ways to go through your life and get the people in your life to affirm you. And if you are this person, you're exhausting, okay? I've exhausted others. I say that as a friend. That's not a good road to walk. But let's say that you're a prideful person, and so you need other people to affirm you all the time and the things that you're good at, but you realize in light of the gospel and in light of God's word that pride is not good, and so we need to iron this out of our life. So we go, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to ask other people for compliments. I'm not going to ask other people to affirm me. I'm not going to seek my value in other places. And then once you get really good at that and you haven't done that in a couple of weeks and you still feel good about yourself, then what do you do? Boy, I am proud of myself for not needing other people to tell me I'm good. Now we're taking pride in a new thing. What Paul says is there is this part of our flesh that is going to manifest negative things in our life, pride, greed, selfishness, lust, whatever it is. And we can put parameters around those things, but they're going to leak out somewhere. You can follow whatever rules you want to follow. You can white knuckle yourself into some good discipline. I've seen some people who can keep themselves on the straight and narrow for years, but those negative traits that exist within you, those things are going to leak out somewhere else. And I know this because I've met a lot of people who can follow the rules really well, and they're jerks. It's just their flesh leaking out in other ways. So what Paul says is we cannot white knuckle our way to godliness. Discipline, self-control, more rules, more standards. Those do not get us to spiritual maturity. Those do not put us in a place where we can live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. That's not the answer. In chapter 3, thankfully, I believe that he gives us the answer. And I think it's a refreshing one. Because when we try to get to godliness by white-knuckle discipline, just I'm going to be a try-hard, I'm going to be a do-better, what happens is not good. Because if you have ever in your life decided, yeah, I'm going to be a better Christian, and I'm going to do it by taking these steps. I'm going to do it by instilling these standards in my life. I'm going to do it by my own effort and me trying hard. And maybe we pray a prayer, God, I am never going to do this again. God, I am always going to do this moving forward. God, I swear that that will never be a part of my life again. And we make these big promises and we make these big claims. And listen, we mean them. But here's what I know about you. If you've ever promised God that you will never or that you will always, then you have failed. That's what I know about you. If we ever have promised God, I will never do blank. I will always do blank, we have failed in those promises because we can't keep those commitments, because we're broken. Because of Romans 7, the things that I do not want to do, I do, because it's part of our nature to fail in that way. And because that's true, after we make up our mind enough times that God, I'm never going to, or God, I'm always going to, and then we fail, we get to a place where either we just feel like this broken, wretched Christian, and we're thinking, God, I'll never be good enough for you. I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you. Just please let me be saved. Just please let me just hang on until I get to the end of my life. Please usher me into heaven. I know I'll never be who I'm supposed to be. I know that I can't pursue those things, but please just accept me as I am. And we kind of just live this broken down, hopeless Christian life where we feel like we're limping our way to heaven. Or worse than that, we try so hard and we fail so many times that we get so tired of trying that we can't find it within ourselves to do it anymore. And then we conclude, God, your word says that I'm a new creature. Your word says that you will help me. Your word says that you will empower me. And yet I fail over and over and over again. So I can only conclude that you don't keep your word. And then we just wander away from the faith and we give up on God because righteousness is too hard because we've only ever tried it by ourself and we've never invited God in in the way that he needs to be invited in, and our white-knuckle disciplining to try to be better and more godly to pursue the faith that we want so earnestly ends up costing us our faith. So that's not the way. We find the way in Colossians 3. And I would sum it up like this. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving, by focusing on who we are rather than how we behave. And here's what I mean. In this chapter, we're going to see this idea introduced here by Paul, but introduced in plenty of other places by Paul in the New Testament, of the old and the new. The old you and the new you. The old you is who you were without Jesus. The new you is who you are with Jesus. The old you, the Bible says, was a slave to sin. I had no choice but to do things that displeased God. I had no chance at all. But the new you infused with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit does have the chance every day when you wake up to walk that day according to the life that God has called you to. We have a chance when we wake up to live today in honoring God and actually finish the day living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day. We've got a chance. There's a new us. And the new us desperately wants to please God. And so this is what Paul says about old self and new self in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says about being versus behaving. Look at Colossians chapter three, verses five through eight first. Put to death, Paul says, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idol rules. But here's what we need to do. We need to put to death these things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, anger, slander, all these things. And at first, it sounds like that's a little bit in tension with what he just said. He said, if you want to be godly, if you want to be who God created you to be, it's not about following the rules. It has an appearance of wisdom, but that's not really helping any indulgence of the flesh. And then the very next chapter over, he's saying, put to death these things, which feels like rules and standards that he's giving us, except he's not giving us behaviors. He's telling us to put things to death. Remember how I said that if you follow rules, if you're trying to break yourself of pridefulness and you put rules around your pridefulness and then it just leaks out and into another area of your life. Jesus is, Paul is acknowledging that. See, it's not about trying to follow the rules because those unhealthy things just leak into other portions of your life. It's about actually putting the pride to death. It's about actually putting greed and lust to death in your heart so that in your heart there is no place for them to dwell. And if there is no place for them to dwell, then they will not produce the behaviors that you're trying so desperately to control. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we don't need to put parameters around our old self. We need to put our old self to death. And we do this by focusing on being. How do we put those things to death? This is what Paul says in Colossians 3. I'm going to read verses 12 through 17. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, we live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? In the phrasing of Hebrews 12, verse 1, What the world do I live the life that you want me to live? I think what Jesus would say is, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Jesus, what rules should I follow in this new life that you've called me to? How do I run the race that you've set before me? Jesus says, just look at me. Just keep your eyes on Christ. This is actually in complete harmony with Romans 12 that tells us that we should run the race and that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles us by, in verse 2, focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. So how do we live the life that God calls us to live? We daily make ourselves aware of Christ's love for us. We daily make ourselves aware of what God has done for us. If we will daily reflect on the fact that Jesus in heavenly form condescended and took on flesh and lived amongst us for 33 years and put up with everything that we have to offer and continues to walk with us and continues to love us and continues to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you as an individual, leans into God's ears and says, she's good. She's with me. She loves you, Father. I died for her. If we will let that reality wash over us daily, how could we not put to death the pride that exists in us by walking in humility at the love of God that we receive? If we are struggling with anger towards other people and frustration and impatience, how is it possible to spend a portion of your day every day focusing on the reality of God's patience with you? Focusing on the reality that as many times as you've said, God, I will never, or God, I will always, and then you failed, that God has been right there to help you clean up the mess every time. How can we not grow in forgiveness of others when we constantly remind ourselves of how forgiven we are? How can we not grow in patience to others when we constantly are focused on the patience that God has to us? If we will focus on God's overwhelming grace, that he died for us while we were still sinners, that he pursues us while we run away from him, that even though we fail him over and over again, he continues to love us with a reckless love, that God loves us while we were unlovely, that God sees us fully and knows us completely and still loves us unconditionally. If we let those things wash over us every day, how could we not look at other people and be more loving and patient towards them in light of how loving and patient God is towards us? Do you understand that these things that we clothe ourself with in Colossians 12 through 17 necessarily put to death our old self that Paul tells us to rid ourself of. So if we want to get rid of malice, what do we do? We focus on Christ. If we want to get rid of pride, do we put parameters around our pride? No, we focus on Jesus and who he is and realize that we have no right to our pride. If we want to be more gracious people, what do we do? We focus on Jesus' grace to us. Say, Jesus, how in the world do I live the life that you call me to live? Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, focus on me. Focus on me. So I would tell you, if you are a Christian who lives at war with yourself, you do not have a discipline issue, you have a focus issue. If you are someone who struggles with greed, you don't have a greed issue. You have a focus issue. If we try to be more godly and more pleasing to him by focusing on the behaviors that we need to do better, we will fail over and over and over again. But if we can put our focus on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith and let his grace and goodness and mercy and love wash over us daily, then those things will necessarily put to death the very root of the behaviors that we do not like. So again, if we are struggling in our walk with God, we do not have a discipline issue. We do not have a sin issue. We have a focus issue. We need to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We need to pursue him more with more urgency. We need to let the truths of how he loves us wash over us more. And those will necessarily put to death the elements of our character that we do not like, that produce the behaviors that we do not want to do. You can think of it this way. Our old self cannot survive where our new self thrives. Our problem is we have a new self and we have an old self and we feed them both the same amount of food. We give in to them both equally. And so they both just exist in this tension and if we ever want to put to death our old self, then our new self has to thrive. And our new self thrives by clothing ourselves in the characteristics of Christ and we clothe ourselves in those characteristics by focusing him and daily letting his goodness wash over us. So it's very simple. How should we then live? How do we get to the end of a single day? Living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day? By focusing our eyes on Jesus on that day. By looking at him that day. And letting everything else fade away and take care of itself. Because it's that simple, and because that's what we need to do, I wrote a prayer for us as a church. In a few minutes, I'm going to read it and pray it over us as a church and invite you to read it along with me. If you find it helpful, I would love to invite you to put this prayer somewhere where you can see it, where this is a thing that you will pray daily. Put it on your desk, or in your car, or on your mirror. If this is helpful to you, I would encourage you to pray this every day until it's not helpful to you, until the principles of this prayer are so ingrained in you that it is part of your daily prayer. But if we want to live a life as Christians that we are called to live, then I am convinced that this needs to be a fundamental prayer that we focus on very regularly. Not necessarily the words that I've chosen here, but the ethos and the attitude and the posture that's presented in this prayer and the acknowledgments of the truths that are in this prayer that are from Colossians chapter three and other portions of scripture as we seek to live the life that God calls us to live. So I'm gonna pray this over us and invite you to pray it along with me. Father, I know I am your child and that in you I am a new creation. Though I know this, I struggle to believe it. Because I struggle to believe, I struggle to walk as you would have me walk. So Father, help me learn to walk in this new self. As I put on the new self, I ask that you would help me see others through your eyes and so clothe me in your compassion. Help me regard others as your beloved children as you clothe me in your kindness. Remind me of the way you love me when I am unlovely in order that I might humbly love others in the way I am loved. Remind me today, Father, of who I am in you. As you clothe me in these things, let them put to death in me the remnants of my old self. Let your humility drive out my impatience, my anger, and my pride. Let your compassion and kindness suffocate my jealous and selfish heart. Let the way you see me overshadow and obscure the way I see myself. Help's name, Father. Amen.