Sermons tagged with Prophets

Advent. It means coming. And with that, a longing for something greater. With a year like this one passed, we can't help but look forward with much anticipation. Kids wait impatiently for Christmas morning to arrive. But we've all experienced that ache from waiting. Waiting for the pain to go away, waiting for that next check to arrive, for the broken heart to heal, for this season to pass because it's just too hard, or for the hospice to finally call and say, hurry now, it's time to say goodbye. Hope. From a newborn king, we've heard of how he can pull us together in unity and heal us. He is the wonderful counselor, our mighty God, the Prince of Peace. But we also know that as soon as we leave here, we will step back into our bruised and broken dark world. So we burn these candles week by week and watch them burn to build anticipation, to prepare for the coming of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah warned us about this. He said, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of darkness, a light has dawned. That is our hope. So we light this hope candle because our hope lies in you, Jesus. And so we say, come Lord, we need you to come soon. Because the coming of Jesus changes everything. Just be sure you remain open, you listen, because Jesus will whisper to us, there is always hope. It doesn't matter how dark the dark is, a light can still dawn. Well, good morning, Grace Raleigh. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy football weekend. Maybe it was a shopping weekend instead. And I also say welcome to the season of overeating and stretchy pants. It has officially arrived and we are welcoming it in full all arms. I'm Erin. I am one of the pastors here and I am so excited to be with you guys this morning to kick off our Christmas season. So thank you for joining us and for being here and for sticking around when you saw Nate introduce me. I do appreciate that. It seems like 2020 has left us in a place possibly looking for the comfortable or for that which is familiar. I'm not sure where you are in that, but that's kind of how I felt. And so as a staff, we began to talk about what Christmas at Grace this year could look like. And in our conversations, we said, what would it look like if we took Christmas and kind of stripped away the noise and stripped away the excess stuff and kind of shifted our focus and found that place that was comfortable and that was familiar? And what would it be like if our focus shifted to the Christmas story? And I don't know about you, but I am a sucker for a good story. A book, a cup of tea, a blanket, a couch, and a couple of uninterrupted hours is an absolute gift to me. And I will roll around in it and envelop it like nobody's business. And so, you know, you give me a book and give me the opportunity to dive into the characters, into the richness of who they are, they become kind of one. And so I, here's an example. The entire Harry Potter series, when my kids were smaller, we went from book one to book seven together. And it was a great adventure. And we loved every minute and every time we picked up those books and jumped into Hogwarts and met up with Harry and Hermione and Ron and all of their adventures. And we got to the end of book seven and the author did a phenomenal job of wrapping it all up. And I shut the book and then I looked at the book and went, now what do I do? Like it was this place of mourning because these characters had become people, had become part of our family. And now all of a sudden, I didn't have them anymore. So now what do I do? So as you can see, a good story for me is a gift. And so as we delved into this idea of the Christmas story and coming closer to the Christmas story by looking at Advent. I was beyond excited because Advent brings this place of depth and meaning to the season and it roots us into a story that we're already connected to, the story of the arrival of Jesus. And so for the next four weeks, we get to anticipate this arrival together, and we get to jump into Jesus's story and his arrival and what he fulfills in his arrival. Things like hope and joy and peace and love. We'll also look at how we choose to accept those things during this season. We'll also get the opportunity to look at the Advent wreath. And the Advent wreath has great symbolism. And I invite you to take the opportunity to look at what that symbolism is. Go to Google. Just Google Advent wreath and see what it says. But it's going to talk all about the circles and the different colors of the candles. But I want you to focus on something else as well. Because it doesn't matter if your Advent wreath is a circle. It doesn't matter if it's a straight line. It doesn't matter if your colors of your candles are pretty purples and pinks and whites. They could be white or yellow or green or whatever you happen to have had in your cabinet. What matters is the light that we get to see each time we light one of these candles. Because that light that comes from that candle represents the light of God that crashes to this deep, dark earth in the form of a sweet little baby by the name of Jesus. And so, oh, for the next four weeks, we get to roll around in the richness of this Christmas story, and we get to find places where we can connect deeper to Jesus. And so today, we are going to start with the candle of hope. And I think first I need to make a distinction for you as to a definition of hope. Because biblically, or in the Bible, there are lots of times that the word hope is used. But it can actually have two meanings. And the first one is, I hope that you get to feeling better. Or I hope that it doesn't rain today because guess what? On our calendar, we have three soccer games that we need to go watch outside. Or it could be also this hope that your kids right now, as the TV comes on and all the commercials roll through, or the catalog that comes in the mail and they start flipping through it and it's like, oh, I hope I get that this year. I hope that's underneath my Christmas tree. That hope is a wish. There's not a whole lot of, there's no guarantee of any kind of fulfillment. It's just a wish. But the second kind of hope is a hope that gets in us and it travels with us into these places of darkness, into these places of pain, into places of longing and waiting. And it becomes for us a place, a definition given that I hooked onto and can't get rid of. This is it. This hope is a confident expectation in something good in the future. Let me repeat that one. This hope is a confident expectation that something good is going to be in the future. So here's your distinction. You have the one hope that has no guarantee of fulfillment and is basically a wish. But then you have this second hope, this hope that says I can stand confident in the expectation that something good is in my future, that a good ending is possible. This is the hope that Jesus fulfills in his arrival 2,000 years ago. So as with every story, every good story, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end. And for those of you that are writers, I understand I just simplified that to absolutely nothingness, but don't come at me. It's just the best way for me. So beginning, middle, and end, and then sometimes we need a little extra beginning. We need a little background in order to understand the beginning of the story. And so that's where we're going to start this morning as we continue this conversation of hope, is that we're going to give you a little background. And I'm going to start with the people, or God's chosen people, the Israelites. We're picking up in the back of the Old Testament. These are God's chosen people who at this point in time are living a pretty incomplete story. They have had judges around that have given them things that they need to do and ways that they can stay connected to God. And they've listened to the judges and then they've ignored the judges and they've gone about and done their own thing, and it's this cycle, and it keeps going. They keep walking further away from God, and then they'll come back, and then they walk away again. God has given them earthly king after earthly king, and then again, they're still walking away and not happy. Their kingdom is now divided, and in this I would say that the beginning of the end of the people of Israel is at hand. But this is where God begins the Christmas story. He takes this moment to actually breathe hope into the places of darkness for these weary people. And he does it through a group of people that are called the prophets. The prophet Isaiah was spoken of actually in the video earlier, and he states, the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light, and who dwell in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shone. There's that light again that we talked about, the light of God coming into the darkness. He then goes on and talks of the birth of his government and of peace Lord of hosts will do this. Oh, the words that must have rung in the ears of these weary people. It had to have been a balm to their souls. Because guess what? He just told them that their king was coming. Their true king is coming. And with him, he's bringing all of those things that they are hoping for. Things like restoration, things like peace and prosperity. He just gave them the confident expectation that something good was coming in the future. And oh, what it had to have felt like to them to have a place of hope now in their hearts, holding on to the fact that their true king, the Messiah, was coming. Now, I don't know about you, but I noticed as I read that, that Isaiah didn't mention the timeline for when this king would arrive. And I imagine he did that on purpose, but he didn't. He just said he's coming. And so the people of Israel walked into a period of waiting. And they began to wait. And wait. And wait some more. Because you see what happened is during this period, they went from being the people of Israel to divided kingdoms, to being in exile, to being scattered, and to having God go silent. And when I state that he goes silent, this isn't the kind of silent treatment that you might get when you and your spouses have had a small argument and everybody gets really quiet and you walk to your separate corners and there's no speaking in the house for maybe a couple hours or possibly a day or two. And it's just quiet, right? Well, no, no, no. This quiet, God went silent for 400 years. So that was the major silent treatment if I've ever heard of one. But just completely quiet. And so they began to continue, well, they continued to wait. But then in the middle of this waiting, God speaks again. But this time, he speaks through an angel by the name of Gabriel. And this is, in my paraphrase, how it all went about. Is that God sends the angel of Gabriel to the city of Nazareth, very specifically to a young woman by the name of Mary. And he comes to this sweet girl and says to her, you're going to have a baby. And in the process, you're going to name this baby Jesus. And he is going to be great. And he will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom. There will be no end. The words in Mary's ears at that point. Did you hear Isaiah? She heard the words of the prophet spoken to her. It was a king. It was a king the angel told her his name was to be Jesus, she knew immediately because Jesus means Jehovah saves or the Lord's salvation. This was the Messiah. This was the promise of the confident expectation of something good in the future being fulfilled. He is coming. Remember the hope that I promised you 400 years ago? I'm delivering on that promise, and it's coming in this sweet little package of a baby, and his name is Jesus. And of course, true to his word, nine months later, the angels get to take over the heavens and to sing loudly of the announcement of Jesus and the fact that Christ the Savior has been born to hold on to. That in our places of difficulty, in our places of pain and weariness and waiting, that God is going to come to us. And he's also able to come to those places where maybe, just maybe, we've stopped believing in a good ending being possible. And I think that we actually have those places where we believe that a good ending is not possible anymore because we have somehow misplaced our hope. A.W. Tozer writes of misplaced hope as this, that misplaced hope or hope that has no guarantee of fulfillment is a false friend that comforts us for a little while with all kinds of flattery, but then leaves us to our enemies. So leaves us to our enemies. Have you all ever been there? I want to invite you into a story now to kind of give you a taste of misplaced hope. Many of you know my daughter Zoe. And for those of you that don't, Zoe is funny and she is sweet and she is kind. She is very quick-witted. She's a great friend. She loves coffee. She loves Jesus, and she loves country music. So I don't think we need to describe her any further than that. She has just finished her first semester as an intended nursing major at East Carolina University. In the middle of a pandemic, she's moved a couple of times over the course of the last couple of months, but she has completed it very successfully. Now, if you had told me a couple of years ago that that statement about my daughter was true, I would have questioned your judgment. Seriously, I would have. Because you see, Zoe suffers from, or Zoe, I shouldn't say that, Zoe has anxiety. And a few years ago, her anxiety had control of her. Somewhere towards the beginning of her high school career, we began to notice in Zoe that she made excuses as to not connect with friends. Friday night football games came. She might go for a little while, but she was home very quickly. Or she'd get invited to go someplace, and if she said yes, she was there a short time and then again came home. If not, in a lot of cases, she just said no. She was not exactly happy. And so as we sat back and kind of watched all this, we're scratching our head but then saying to ourselves, oh, well, wait a second. It's just high school. She's a freshman. She's a sophomore. It's hard. It's just hard. We also began to see some of this happen in youth group as well, where she's very connected and grace students and mission trips would come along and we'd have all this buildup, and then let's just say it took an awful lot to get Zoe onto the bus in order to go wherever it was that her group was going. And mind you, her dad went every year as well as one of the student leaders. And so we just kept watching. And in this process, though, I kept justifying all of these behaviors and saying it just is because she's a teenager. I went to what I would call my Pollyanna place, thinking it was all going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. She's going to grow out of this, and it's going to be good. It is. It's going to be good. Well, as you can guess, my it's going to be good didn't change our reality at all. Zoe's path continued to go just where it was. And our situation never changed. So I decided that if the situation hasn't going to change there, that maybe I needed to do something different. And so I did. And this time, for those of you that know me, this is me in a nutshell, but I'm going to fix it. I'm going to help somehow. And we're going to make change here. And so I went into that mode of I hit Google and I hit books. I don't know what I'm going to help somehow, and we're going to make change here. And so I went into that mode of I hit Google and I hit books. I don't know what I'm looking for at this point, but I'm trying to find something that is an answer. And I started talking to people around me, and it was just what can I do? What kind of checklist do I have? How can I fix this? How can I help my daughter? And the thing is in all of this, the one really good thing that possibly came out of this moment was the fact that somebody said to us, hey, maybe Zoe should see a counselor. And so I went to her and I said, hey, girl, what do you think about this? She's like, sure. And so she goes, y'all, this was good. It was great. Because guess what? When she got to the counselor, there was a connection with their counselor. All was great. And we had a diagnosis. We knew what was going on. And guess what that means? If I know what's going on, because I can now fix it. Because I know what I'm battling against, right? So she was diagnosed with anxiety. And we started that whole process of giving her the tools that she needed in her toolbox on how to deal with her anxiety and what it looked like. And guess what? It worked. And lo and behold, she's reengaging with her friends. She's out on a Friday night. The world is great. Her smile has returned. And I sit back and I'm like, yes, we've got this and all is great. So let's now fast forward to Zoe's, the beginning of Zoe's senior year of high school. Where Zoe went to high school, one of the things that they do at the beginning of the senior year is a large trip. They take the entire senior class to New York City for four days of crazy fun with your friends, seeing New York, and doing all of the things. Now, I will tell you, one of the things that went through my head as we started into the beginning of the senior year, this is the thought. The thought was, if we can get Zoe on the bus to go to New York City, we have won. We have officially beaten the enemy, and we have wrangled anxiety, and we've won. Now, I spoke that to no one. It's just in the back of my head. And so as we walk into the preparations for New York, all is fabulous. And Zoe is excited. And we're doing the things that you have to do before a trip like this, especially if you're the parent of a girl. You know, you've got to have the right outfits for the different activities. We had to do all that. Had to get the right roommates. Had to do all of the things. And everything was so positive. She was so excited. And here we go. And so the night before the trip, Zoe's upstairs in her room packing. And I decide to go up and help because, of course, you know, I can help pack, right? So I go up the stairs. I open up the door. Zoe's in the middle of her floor, and there's clothes all around her, and a suitcase is open, and I'm like, I'm here to help, and she turns around, and she looks at me, and she has tears streaming down her face. And she says, Mama, I can't do this. I can't go tomorrow. And at that moment, my heart broke for her, for us, for this situation. And I collapsed onto the floor with her, and I grabbed hold of my girl, and I cried with her, and I told her how much I loved her, and that I had her, and that we would do this together. And at that moment, everything that I had went from, we got this, we've won, to, oh my heavens, now what? Hope to hopeless. Now what do we do? And my head's spinning and the questions are running around in my head. Even places like, is she going to be able to go to college next year? Like I can't even get her on. We can't get onto a bus to go to New York for four days. How is it that we're going to get to college next year? Like, the brain starts to spin off of the rails, basically. And then after this process, I began this process with God. We had lots of very interesting conversations. Things like, why? Why my girl? And the big question of, hey God, where are you in all of this? And you all, I'm so thankful that we serve such a loving and faithful father. Because he looked at me and he said, hey Aaron, I'm here. I've always been here. And I've been walking with you and your girl through this. But guess what? You, mama, you need to let go of your control. You, mama, need to invite me in and let me give real hope to this situation. And the real hope that Paul speaks of, he speaks of it in his letter to the Romans. And this is what it says. It says, not only that, but we rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Y'all, this real hope that is sourced and supplied by God himself, it does not put us to shame. It does not tell us that we aren't good enough. It does not tell us that we can't do it. It does not tell us that we are failures. No, no, no. It's just the opposite. And so we grabbed onto this real hope for our situation. We began believing in that good future and in that good ending for Zoe. The one thing I need to clarify here, though, is that believing in the good future and believing in the good ending wasn't saying that I was believing that she was going to be cured. What it was was for me, it was a change of posture. It was a moment that I said, no longer is it about me. It's now all about you, God. It was a moment of surrender where I said, and I knew in my heart of hearts that God loves my child more than I do, and that he had her, and he had a good future planned for her. And I needed to let go of what I felt was Zoe's story. And I needed to key into the story that God was writing in her. And so maybe this was now that ECU isn't where she's going to go. Maybe she's going to go to Wake Tech for a couple of years so she gets some security and she gets some confidence. And then she'll go off to ECU to finish her nursing degree. Or maybe she's supposed to be at Campbell where her brother is in a place that's familiar and a place that feels comfortable and secure. Or maybe, or maybe, or maybe, like all of a sudden, when I let go of what I felt her story needed to be and let God write her story, the maybes became huge possibilities that anything could happen if he writes her story. And I release control. And so through all of this story and through this place of surrender and this place of saying, hey God, you've got this. I have learned a few things. The first one is that misplaced hope trusts in me, whereas real hope trusts in God. So when my hope was misplaced, it was all about what Aaron could do to fix Zoe's situation, not what God could do. We had to trust in him and who he says he was and the promises that he's given that he was never going to forsake her, that he loves her, and that he has this confident expectation in a good ending. I also learned that misplaced hope leaves you so weary, but real hope sustains. The constant trials and guilt and sleepless nights that we had in trying to figure out what was going on and worrying about the situation left us so very tired, just exhausted, but that real hope gives us what we need to move on, to be sustained. And we know now that Zoe still has struggles, and it's okay though, because she has him to hold on to in those struggles. And lastly, I learned that misplaced hope leaves you feeling hopeless. But that true, that real hope knows the end of the story. And so with Zoe's story, yes, Zoe has anxiety, but anxiety doesn't have her. It does not define who she is. It's just there. And in August of this year, she packed up her little car and she drove to Greenville and she has not looked back. And yes, as a mama, I will tell you there are times that I kind of wish maybe she would look back and say, hey, mom, I'm coming home. But you know what? It's those moments, though, too, that I can hold on to and say, hey, God, thank you. Thank you that you provided us with this confident expectation in a good future for our girl. Thank you that she's in Greenville. Thank you that she's thriving. And so I have to also say that I am so very proud of my girl. What she's walked through has not been easy. And I'm just over the moon proud. And it is a true joy to watch where she is now and to hold on to that expectation of the cool things that she's going to do in the future. So in light of all that we as a group have been through in 2020, I know in years before we could say, you know, everybody could say they've had issues with a year here or there or otherwise. But 2020, I think, has left us all feeling a bit weary. And I look back at the Jewish people who were in their place of weariness and in their place of waiting 2,000 years ago. And I wonder if that's not us now. We're all weary. We're all waiting. Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for maybe it's something to happen good in our financial situation. Maybe it's waiting to be able to go visit loved ones again. We're waiting. We're weary. Just like the Jewish people were 2,000 years ago. And my prayer for all of us is that we get to experience the same thrill of hope that they experienced at Jesus' arrival. I want us to be that weary world that rejoices this year as we hear about the arrival of our coming King. And so, what would it take for us, Grace Raleigh, to experience that thrill of hope? What would it take for us to shift our focus and our hope from hope in us to hope in him and him alone. Will y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you. We are so beyond grateful that you loved us enough to send your son into the middle of our places of darkness and our places of weariness and our places of waiting. You love us so much that you want us to experience that thrill of hope. You want us to hold on and grab hold of this confident expectation that a good ending is possible. And we're so grateful for that. We're so, so grateful. And so, Lord, I just ask that you wrap our beautiful Grace Raleigh family in your arms and that you allow us for the next four weeks to anticipate together the arrival of your son and all that he fulfills as he comes. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your son's mighty name that we pray. Amen.

Amen. Good morning, Grace. Good morning online. Thank you, Steve. That was wonderful. It's good to see everybody. We've got some new folks venturing in this week, Braving the Elements. My name is Nate, for those of you that I haven't gotten to meet yet or for those watching online. This is the last part in our series called A Time of Kings. And as we think about questions like that, I really believe that there's one loud message that should come from the book of Kings. And I want us to see that this morning. And as I think about Kings, and remember I call it a book because originally it was written as one big long book. So as I think about the book of Kings, I really have realized as we've studied it together that this is a tragic book. This book is really sad. It's really sad because of the hope with which it starts and the devastation with which it ends. If you think back to the very beginning of the book of Kings, if you have a Bible at home, you can flip it there. If you have a Bible with you, you can look at 2 Kings 25. That's where we're going land today, and then we're going to jump to, I think, Samuel, and then Revelation, and John. So, you know, we'll be all over the place this morning. But if you think about the way that Kings begins, it's like the climax of hope. David is the king. You'll remember in the very first week of this series, if you've been watching along or listening along, that David is the king, that the nation of Israel clamored for a king, and Samuel the prophet said, you don't need one, God is your king. And they said, we really want a king. We think that a king is going to bring about all the promises that God made to us, because they are God's chosen people. They live in an awareness of the promises that they have received, that the land of Canaan, that Israel is going to be theirs, that they're going to have a multitude of descendants, and that one of their descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And so they cling to these promises. And they don't see them coming to fruition in the time of judges. It was a dark time in the nation of Israel. And they said, you know what? If we have a king, that person can lead us into prominence and be God's chosen person. And so they elected Saul. He made the most sense. He was head and shoulders above everybody else. He was really good looking. When you looked at him, you thought, that guy should be king. If you need a good picture of who Saul was, he looked a lot like me. But that didn't work out. And David is God's chosen man to be king, and he was a great king. He established Israel into international prominence. He, in him, was this man who walked closely with God, who wrote the Psalms, who led well, who conquered enemies, who won victories, and certainly this king is the king that's going to lead us in the prominence that we have been promised. And David asks the father, can I build your temple? I want to build your home. He goes to God and he says, I want to build your home where your presence can reside with us. Because all the way back in the desert, when Moses was in charge, 450 years prior, God gave him instructions about setting up a tabernacle that could move with them. That's where they put the Ark of the Covenant. That's where they had the Holy of Holies. That's where the presence of God rested among his people. And it was time to build God a permanent home. And David said, let me do this. And God says, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands, but I'm going to make you a promise. And we're going to look at that promise in a minute. He said, among those promises, your son is going to build my house. And so the book of Kings picks up with the end of the incredible reign of David that has launched Israel into international importance. This high watermark in the kingdom. And then he has assembled all the goods and materials so that as soon as his son Solomon takes over, he can build the temple. And he does. And much of the beginning of Kings is dedicated to the dedication and construction of this temple. And there's a beautiful prayer that Solomon prays for the people then and for you and I. It's really wonderful. You should go read it. It's this high watermark in the history of Israel. It's the culmination of 450 years of hope. And you have to think, man, look at us. These kings are bringing about the desired results. They're pushing us into prominence and they're bringing about the promises of God. This king thing is really working out. Hope is high. Then Solomon's son is terrible. They descend into civil war, and the northern tribes never get a good king. The southern tribe gets some that they get to hope in. And in the northern tribes, when it looks like hope is lost and they have evil kings like Ahab, they're putting their hope in kings, and it's not going to be Ahab. He's not going to bring about the future that God desires for us. But God does bring some strong prophets into the reign of Ahab. He brings Elijah, who wins the victory on Mount Carmel, against the 450 prophets of Baal. And you read that and you go, okay, now, now God's promises are going to come true. Now we're going to have the king that we are waiting for that's going to set everything right. It seems like the tide has turned and the hearts of God's people are going to be turned towards him, but they're not. And then God sends Elisha to secede Elijah, and he does twice the miracles that Elijah does. And it's this glimmer of hope that maybe the hearts of God's people will be turned to him, but they're not. And then God sends sporadically these good kings, Hezekiah, who defeated the armies of Sennacherib through prayer, by taking the threatening letter and laying it down before the Lord in the temple and saying, God, please protect your people. And God does because of Hezekiah's faithfulness. And you think, maybe this is a good king. Now, as you're reading the narrative and you're following along and it's just bad news, bad news, bad news, this is when there's going to be good news. And by the end of his life, he's no good anymore. We wait for some generations and Josiah, this glimmer of hope that we talked about last week, comes along. And he eradicates all of the idols and he turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord. But God says, you know, it's too late. My people are already turned away from me. I'm going to take the kingdom from you in four kings. And sure enough, he does. Jehoahaz and Jehoakim and Jehoachin and then Zedekiah and then it's done. Four generations. And the very end of Kings, this book that began with so much hope, a king is going to come and he's going to set everything right and the world for God's people is going to look exactly as God intended it to look. The book of Kings ends like this in chapter 25. I'm going to read you a summary of what's happening in verse 8. This is pretty much what they're looking at. That's the scene as we finish this hopeful book. We watch king after king come in. Maybe he's the one. Maybe the prophet's the one. Maybe the tide is going to turn. And we're waiting for the hero. We're waiting for the uptick. We're waiting for the climax. There's going to be a resolution to this. And at the end of the story, King Nebuchadnezzar sends in his army. They burn down God's temple, Solomon's temple that he built. They burn it down. They burn down the palace. They burn down the homes of all the prominent people in Jerusalem. And they tear down the walls. It's left in shambles. It is an ash heap of a city, and they take all the richest and wealthiest and most capable with them, only leaving behind the most impoverished and the most destitute. That's the picture of God's chosen people at the end of the book of Kings. It's utter devastation. It's utter and complete devastation. And you're reading this book and you're waiting for someone to come along. You expect to turn the page and then it's like, but then this happened and it's not. It's just somebody else telling the story, telling the same stories in Chronicles. There's no page turn here. You're expecting the hero to come. You're expecting the king to come, the right one to come along and restore everything, and it doesn't happen. As I'm studying in my office this week, I'm going, man, this really stinks that the book of Kings ends this way. Really find another story to just talk about and maybe we'll just let them discover this on their own, their own leisure. But it dawned on me that the devastation in Kings is very purposeful. This is really the point of the book. It's meant to end this way when we place our hope in earthly kings. The devastation is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. The devastation in kings is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. They kept waiting on an earthly leader. They kept waiting on someone to come and sit on the physical throne and usher them into prominence and make them a great nation, and it just wasn't going to happen, and God was letting them slowly, painfully realize the thing you're hoping in to fix your lives is not the thing that's going to do it. Boy, that's a whole sermon in and of itself, isn't there? How many slow, painful lessons have we learned putting our hope in the wrong thing? But it's meant to show his people an earthly king will never be enough. And if you're paying attention to the Old Testament, if you're paying attention to the things that God is saying to his people, even in the time of kings, when their hope is placed in an earthly king, if you're listening to what he's saying to his people, you will hear that he is telling them you are looking for the wrong kind of king. I referred earlier to 2 Samuel 7. This is where God made David a promise. It's referred to as the Davidic covenant. It's where he doubles down, he triples down, he reminds the people of his promise to them. And he promises that he's going to send a king to sit on David's throne. And these are the words of God. Look at what he says in verse 14. He says, So he's talking about Jesus here. He's going to be a son for me. He is going to pay a penalty for you. And then when he does that, he's going to sit on the throne forever. This is kingdom language. This is king language in the middle of the time of kings that they're not listening to. And then God sends prophet after prophet that we have in the major and the minor prophets in the rest of the Old Testament to tell them of their coming king, of the coming Messiah, most pointedly in the book of Isaiah. When Isaiah tells God's people, Isaiah is a prophet during the reign of Hezekiah, one of the good kings during this time. And he says that God is going to send someone and that by his stripes we will be healed and that he will be Emmanuel, God with us, and that he will be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. What God is trying to communicate to them that they can't seem to capture is that what they really need is a divine king. What they need is Jesus. What they're waiting on is the Messiah. They continue to look to an earthly king to make their problems right, to make things go away, to confirm and restore the promises of God. And what God is trying to tell them all along, through his promise to David, through the voice of his prophets, is, hey guys, you're looking for the wrong king. You're not paying attention to the right things. You don't need another earthly king. You need a divine king. You need Jesus. And this language isn't just in the Old Testament. We see king language throughout the Bible. You'll remember, if you were here in the spring of 2019, we went through the book of John for I think 12 or 14 weeks. And one of the themes we see is the people of Israel when they meet Jesus continually clamoring to make him king. He had to disappear from their midst so that they wouldn't start a revolution too early. He had to heal people and say, but don't tell anybody because he didn't want word to get out that the Messiah was here. He didn't want to foment revolution. This is why he did his ministry in the far-flung corners of northern Israel rather than coming down south to the capital of Jerusalem until later in his life because he knew that it would set into motion a series of events that he could not reverse because they were clamoring to make him king. They were clamoring so badly to make him king that at the end of his life when he was on trial with Pilate, the Roman governor, Pilate, he was accused by the people who were trying to kill him of being someone who was leading a revolution, who claimed to be the king of the Jews. And he's trying to overthrow Roman rule. And Pilate, you should care about this deeply. And so Pilate asked him, they say you're a king. Is that what you? And Jesus says, yeah, but not of this. You can have this. This is too small for me. I don't want this kingdom. I have a kingdom, but it's not here. If it were here, my angels would come and defend me, but they're not, because my kingdom is eternal. My kingdom is divine. My kingdom is universal. And with his death, he bought our citizenship into that kingdom. And then, as the narrative of the Bible continues to press forward, and we continue to wait for our king, along with the children of Israel, when is our king going to return and set things right? When is he going to restore things to the way that he intended them to be? And we fast forward to the book of Revelation, where we see more king language. In Revelation chapter 6, we have the cries of the martyrs. It's are the exact cries of the hearts of the saints in 2 Kings 25. And God's chosen people are in the middle of total devastation. Their hearts cry out, God, when will you make this right? How are you letting this happen? Why are you letting King Nebuchadnezzar do this? This is evil, God. This is not your plan. This is not your promise. Why is it going this way? Why are you allowing this devastation? It's the same cry that was in the hearts of the martyrs in Revelation 6. God, how long will you let this happen before you avenge what they've done to us? How long will you watch devastation occur in your creation? It's the same thing. It's the same cry of the hearts of the people who had to witness the terror of slavery, who had to endure the persecution of Nero, or the persecution that continues to happen in closed-off countries to this day. It's the same devastation that cries out to God in our own lives when we have a diagnosis or we have a loss or we exist in the rubble of a relationship. And we say, God, this doesn't feel right. How much longer will you let this happen? We need our king to make it right. And in Revelation 19, we get it. It's the most hopeful chapter in all the Bible when we see the king that we've always wanted, that we've always hoped for, that the nation of Israel longed for without realizing it. I love this passage. I always get emotional when I read this passage. Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. This is the appearance of Christ as king as we finish the Bible. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. and fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's Jesus. And when he comes to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, when he comes to fix the devastation, when he comes to restore his creation and claim his throne, he is no longer coming as the Lamb of God. He is coming as the Lion of Judah. And he's going to answer those cries of our heart. And he's going to respond to the devastation. And he's going to speak right to the hearts of the people in Israel, watching their loved ones be carried away as slaves. As the palace burns and the walls lay in rubble, he is going to speak directly to their hearts as he establishes his divine eternal kingdom. And so what I want us to see as we think about the book of Kings and the lessons that we learn from it is that the entire book is meant to end in devastation and allow that devastation to point God's people for their need for Jesus so that they can see that Jesus is the hope of God's people in the midst of devastation. Kings ends that way on purpose. It's not a mistake by God. It's not like God was watching history and go, well, that didn't work out as expected. I was really hoping one of these kings would be the guy. He knew that it would end bad. He told Samuel when they were clamoring for a king, he says, you give them one, but it's not going to end well. And it didn't. He knew this was going to happen, but he let it happen so that his people would see their need for a divine king, and that devastation would point them to Christ. Jesus was their hope in the midst of devastation. And in the same way, our lesson from Kings is that Jesus is our hope in the midst of our devastation too. When things aren't going right, when we identify with the martyrs crying out to God, how much longer are you going to let this happen? You've made me some promises, God. You've said that everything I pray will be yes in your name. You said that if I ask for things that you will give them to me. You've said in Romans 28 that one day everything's going to work out for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose. When's that coming, God? Because this stinks. That frustration and devastation is meant to point you to Christ and remind you that we all collectively are waiting for Revelation 19. We all collectively are waiting for the return of our King who will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, who will sit on the throne of David forever, who will restore his creation to exactly what it is meant to restore, who will bring about the reality of Revelation 20 where it says God will be with his people and his people will be with their God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things. All the things that caused devastation, all the things that caused us to cry out with the martyrs, those things have passed away because Jesus has won a victory over them. And for all of eternity, we exist in a perfect kingdom with our perfect king. Kings is designed to help us anticipate that future and cling to that hope. And when we experience devastation in our own life, that is there to point us to our need for Jesus. Sometimes it's a simple devastation of our souls. We come to the end of ourselves, and we realize that our way is not working. We realize that there is something about this life that is making me unhappy. There is something that is missing. There is something that I need. That devastation is designed to point us to our need for Christ. If you're here this morning or you're watching online and you're experiencing that devastation of your soul, you need Jesus. You don't need another earthly king. You don't need another earthly fix. You don't need to read another book or a new regimen of discipline. You need Jesus. The devastation of our relationships points us to our need for Jesus. When people disappoint us, it points us to a person who won't. When we lose someone that we love so much and we cry out and we say, God, this isn't fair. Why'd you take them? It was too early. Our King has died for us and conquered that death to assure us that we will see that person again one day. So we turn our eyes with hope to Revelation 19 when faithful and true comes out of the sky. When Jesus comes as the Lion of Judah to restore his kingdom and restore order to the way that it should be. And the devastation of finances and the devastation of just life events and the devastation of disappointment, big and little. Little disappointments are meant to turn our eyes to Jesus and say, yeah, this place isn't perfect. We need you to come make it perfect, God. We usher in, we pray for your return. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Big devastation, huge things from which we don't know if we will recover are intentionally designed to point our eyes towards Christ and say, yes, Jesus, this stinks. We are waiting for you. We are yearning for you. We are inviting you in. Come soon, Lord Jesus. The devastation in Kings is intentionally left in the Bible and is allowed intentionally to occur so that it will forever point God's people to Jesus in the midst of their devastation. If we remember nothing else from the book of Kings, remember that the whole book is designed to point us there. And remember that if you are experiencing some form of devastation or disappointment or disillusionment in your life, that the point of that, just like the point of it happening in Kings, is that you would point your eyes towards Christ and eagerly anticipate the return of your King, who is going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We are grateful for you. Jesus, we need you. Come soon to get us. God, you have watched from your throne all kinds of devastation. You have watched all sorts of divisiveness and violence. You have watched evil. And you are as fed up with it as we are. God, now in our time, it's hard to turn on the news or pick up your phone and not see something that disappoints us, something that breaks our heart, something that seems evil. God, you see it too. We need our king. Would you send him soon to rescue us? And God, while we wait, would you set our eyes on him? Would you set our gaze on you? Would you fill us with your spirit and give us the peace of hope? May we be a people who continually turn our eyes towards you. It's in our king's name that we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to be here again with you in this way. We are in now the middle of a series called The Time of Kings. We're going through the books of 1 and 2 Kings, which is probably worth saying. I don't think I've mentioned this yet. When the book was written, when the books of 1 and 2 Kings were written, they were one big long book. But for the sake of the length of scrolls back in the day, they just cut it in half and call it 1 and 2 Kings. But more accurately, we are together as a church going through some of the stories in the book of Kings. This week, we arrive at what is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I would argue this is one of the greatest stories in the Old Testament. This story has everything. I love it so much. This is the story this week of Elijah and his showdown with the 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. We see this story in 1 Kings chapter 18. So if you have a Bible there at home with you, please go ahead and open that up. I try to encourage you every week, open up your Bible, go through the story with me, interact with the text with me, look at the parts that I'm not able to cover or that I don't bring up, and get a more holistic view of the story than just the perspective that I'm giving you. In this story, we see, I think, one of the greatest figures in Scripture, the prophet Elijah. Elijah and Elisha are these tremendous prophets that we see in the book of Kings. They don't get their own book later in the Old Testament, so we don't often pay them as much attention, but they were remarkable figures. Elijah was so righteous that God didn't even want him to experience death. He sent down a chariot to pick him up and carry him to heaven before he could even die. Elijah is a remarkable figure, and this is kind of his big moment. In this moment, he's going to interact with a king named Ahab, and we need to understand who Ahab was and the background that they have at this showdown. So I hope that if you've never heard this story before, that you are delighted, that you love it, that it flings you further into Scripture and brings it to life for you. If you do know this story, I hope maybe today we'll see it in a different light than perhaps what we've looked at it in in the past. So Elijah comes on the scene in 1 Kings chapter 17. That's when we see him. He's interacting with a king named Ahab. Ahab shows up in Kings 16. And when Ahab shows up, the writer of Kings, the author of Kings, tells us a couple things about Ahab was more evil than all the kings that came before him. And that he, more than any other king, because of his faithlessness, provoked the Lord to anger. Ahab was the king of Israel, the northern tribes. We learned last week that Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, had so much pride that he refused to listen to wisdom. And because of this, the kingdom descended into civil war. And for the rest of the Old Testament, continues on that path with the northern kingdoms of Israel being led by one king and the southern kingdom of Judah being led by another. Ahab is a king of Israel, the northern kingdoms. Jeroboam, the guy that went to war with Rehoboam, built some temples to some false gods and made up his own religion for tax revenue, really, if you look at it, in the northern kingdom. And so Ahab is one of these kings in the northern kingdom. The southern kingdoms had a handful of good kings who obeyed God. We're going to learn about some of those in this series to come. The northern kingdom had no good kings. Every king was evil. Every king was apostate. They were all bad. Ahab was the worst. He provoked God to anger more than any other king because of his deeds. He married a lady named Jezebel who had her own religion of Asherah that she followed, and she had 400 prophets that she kept at her table. Ahab had 450 prophets of Baal that he kept at his table. So they are funding 850 prophets for these counterfeit religions. Because they're doing this, God speaks to his prophet Elijah, who goes to Ahab, and he tells Ahab, because of your sin, because of who you are, I'm going to bring a drought on this land, and it will not rain again until I give the word, Elijah says. Ahab, of course, is incensed. He's furious. He tries to kill Elijah. Elijah gets away, and he flees, and he wanders around in the wilderness for three years. From there, God says, Elijah, I want you to go to this place where there's a brook. So Elijah goes, and he drinks from the brook, and every day God sends ravens with bread and with meat to feed Elijah in the morning and in the evening. I think this is the first recorded place in history that we see Uber eats. So they bring him bread and meat every day, and then eventually the brook runs dry because of the drought, and he hides out with a widow and her son. The son dies. Elijah lays himself over the son and prays and brings the boy back to life. It's this remarkable, remarkable story. This whole time, Ahab is trying to hunt him down and kill him, but he can't find him. And so there's this drought happening. Everybody is mad at Ahab for allowing the drought to happen because it's happening under his rule. No one's growing any crops. The country is doing terribly. And in Ahab's view, it's Elijah's fault. Three years later, Elijah decides it's time to meet up with Ahab. So he meets up with an old prophet friend of his, a guy named Obadiah. Obadiah has a book at the end of the Old Testament in the Minor Prophets. And he tells Obadiah in this really interesting conversation, and honestly, you should go read it. It's before this. This conversation with Obadiah is in chapter 17 and then part of 18. You should read this conversation that Elijah has with Obadiah. I don't have time to jump into it this morning, but it really proves for us that when God asks us to do hard things, he's going to see us through in that difficult season. So he goes to Obadiah. He says, go tell Ahab that I want to come see him. And then eventually they meet up. And when they meet up, Ahab says, oh, you troubler of Israel, to Elijah. And Elijah says, that's not me, man. That's you. That's you. And as a matter of fact, we're going to settle this. I want you to go gather all 450 of your prophets of Baal. And I want you to gather the 400 prophets of Asherah. And I want you to meet me on Mount Carmel on this day. And we're going to assemble all of Israel. So that's the stage. They're on Mount Carmel. I had the opportunity when I went several years ago to Israel to go be on Mount Carmel and look around. In northern Israel, there is lush farmland that is a lot more green than you think it would be. And Mount Carmel, you're able to see all of that from there. And you can look across the way and see the Mount of Transfiguration for those that know your New Testament well. And it was kind of a surreal experience to be there knowing that all of these events that I'm about to tell you about took place on this small hill, really, in northern Israel. And so they assemble all of Israel. Everybody comes. The families come and they assemble on the mountain, around the mountain, at the top of the mountain. All the 450 prophets of Baal are there. Ahab is there. Elijah is there. And Elijah begins to address the crowd. And this is what Elijah says. I pick it up in verse 22. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord. So he says, I'm the only one left. I'm the only prophet standing. Now, it's important to note put no fire on it. They're in it. They are there. And he says, here's the deal. We're going to get two bulls. I'm going to give one. See how they've got 450 people and I've just got me? I'm going to give one to the 450, to the prophets of Baal, and I'm going to take one of the bulls. And then I want you guys, you go and you build an altar. You cut the bull into pieces and you put that bull on the altar. I'm going to go over here. I'm going to build my altar. I'm going to cut the bull into pieces and put it on my altar. And then here's what we're going to do. We're going to pray to our gods. I'm going to pray to God, the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the people of Israel, the God of the people who are here. And you pray to your God. You pray to Baal. And whichever one sends fire down first to light these altars on fire and burn up these bulls, that's the God. All right, that's it. And then we're done. Everybody good? And everybody says, Ahab says, the prophets say, the people say, it is well spoken. Deal. We agree. They spit in their hands. They shook them. Back when you could do that. This is the showdown. So Elijah, kind of like the cat that swallowed the canary, he's like, listen, Baal, you guys, go ahead. Just go ahead, build your altar. I'm just going to chill out over here. You just, you go over there, you pick the bull you want, you'll cut it up, put it on the altar that you make, And then you get to praying. And I'll be over here, and I'm just going to chill out for a second. I picture Elijah getting one of those camping chairs and kind of folding it out and sitting it down. And then maybe cracking something open and sitting in the camping chair and just kind of chilling out watching. Going, good luck, suckers. And they get to it, man. Those prophets of Baal, they get to it. They start weeping and wailing, and the Bible says limping around the altar. They're doing this and that. And you've kind of seen probably some clips somewhere in your life, some pagan ceremonies where there's this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and crying out and dancing and chanting and whatever it is that they do. And they did this. Can you imagine the scene of 450 prophets crying out to their God who doesn't exist, trying to get him to bring fire from heaven, what they must have been doing, the show that they must have been putting on. Meanwhile, Elijah's just sitting over there watching them, right? It says they did this until noon. They did it all morning long for hours. They're just dancing and prancing and chanting and raving and ranting and weeping and wailing, and nothing is happening. And so Elijah decides to talk a little smack. I love this. I love this line in the Bible. I love that Elijah says this. The fact that this is included in Scripture tells me that there is space in God's kingdom for sarcastic jerks. And it just, man, it warms my heart. It makes me think there might be space in God's kingdom for people like me because this is what Elijah says to them. He says in verse 27, and at noon Elijah mocked them. Okay, so the Bible, I'm not making this up, the Bible's saying he is making fun of them. He said, cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he is musing or he is relieving himself, that's my favorite one. Surely he's there. Maybe he's musing. Maybe he's just messing with you. Maybe he's just up there just kind of waiting until you do something right. Maybe, now I don't know what's going on with Baal's constitution, but maybe he's got a little tummy ache. Maybe he's in the bathroom. I don't know how long it takes him in there, but he's a god, so it could be pretty serious. I'm not really sure. Maybe, I tell you what, maybe he's on a journey. Maybe he just went out of town. Maybe he ran to Asheville real quick. He's going to be right back. Just keep it up. He is making fun of them, man, and it is great. And after he makes fun of them, it says that they began to cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed as was their custom. So now they're ranting and raving and prancing and dancing and chanting and now they're screaming out and they're cutting themselves and they're stabbing themselves with lances and the blood is flowing all to appeal to this God that does not exist. And there's this great sentence in the Bible after all this happens, it says, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. Isn't that a sobering sentence for what happens when we cry out to gods that don't exist? Isn't that a sobering response for what happens when we place our hope in a thing that doesn't deserve it? When we do that, eventually we're met with the response that no one listened, no one pays attention, no one is hearing what we are saying. And no one heard the prophets of Baal. There's no God there to hear them. They were wasting their time. They looked foolish and Elijah pointed it out. After they had done their thing, Elijah goes back over to his altar. Now the first thing he does is, he says, people of Israel, gather around. Come here. Come here. I want you to see this. Get in real tight. And he grabs 12 stones, and he makes an altar with those 12 stones. And he does that very intentionally. Whenever people from Israel see 12 stones, they are reminded of the altar that their forefather Joshua built when God in his goodness brought them across the Jordan River out of Egyptian oppression. The very first thing he did is build an altar of 12 stones as a sign and a symbol and remembrance of a God who is righteous and keeps his promise. And so Elijah, by building this altar with 12 stones, is telling them, do you remember this God? This God that brought you here? This God that gave you this land? Each stone represents a tribe of Israel, represents God's goodness. So he's doing this to make a point. Look, gather around. And he builds an altar with 12 stones. Then he takes the wood and he puts it on top of the altar so that there's something to burn. Then he takes the bull, he cuts it up, and he places the bull on top of the wood. Then he looks at the people and he says, go fill these barrels with water and come back and dump it on the altar. And he makes them do that three times until water is running down the altar, everything on it is soaked, and then there's a trench dug around the altar, and that is filled with water too. And then it's time for Elijah to cry out to his God to see if his God won't send some flames, because Baal hasn't done it yet. And rather than ranting or raving or dancing or chanting or cutting himself or making this big, huge scene. This is what Elijah Lord. Answer me that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back. I'm going to pause right there. Can you picture in your mind the juxtaposition of the two prophets, two sets of prophets, the prophets of Baal who were just carrying on and ranting and raving and causing this huge scene, 450 of them just messing around all day, just causing this huge stir and this huge scene all day, cutting themselves and being dramatic about it and just all this over-the-top flailing. And then for Elijah, when it comes time to appeal to his God, he simply gathers the people around and he prays quietly because he knows that his God can hear him. He knows his God doesn't have to shout out. He doesn't have to shout out in a certain way to get God to pay attention. He knows that he doesn't have to do a certain dance or a certain chant to get his God to pay attention. He knows that God hears all the minds of his head and his heart and his mouth. And so he starts to pray. And I don't even think he prayed to make sure that God could hear him. I think he prayed for the benefit of the people around him. And he prays that beautiful prayer. The Lord God of Israel. He appeals to him to send down fire. I love the juxtaposition of those two types of appeals. And when he finished, when he prayed God. The Lord, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the great I am from the burning bush that rescued us from Egypt, that delivered us into Israel, that gave us the ground that we're standing on, that Lord, he is God, not Baal. That's the story of the showdown between the prophet of God, Elijah, and the prophets of Baal. And I love that story. I love so much about it. Many of you know it and love it too. And as I approached it this week, I knew I was going to be preaching about it. I thought, goodness, I was kind of excited to sit down and begin to study and just kind of say, God, what are you going to show me this week? What's going to leap off the page this week? What point is going to come out of this? How would you have us apply this to our life? And as I read, I saw this verse at the beginning of the story that I intentionally skipped as I began today that suddenly reframed the entire story for me. I've read this story a dozen times, but for some reason I've never noticed this verse before. But as I noticed it this time, it reshaped the whole story for me, and I hope that it will reshape it for you. What I see here is that this story of the showdown between the prophet of God and the prophets of Baal, the story is bracketed by these two verses that are absolutely incredible. The second one, the take home, is what we just discovered, is the people going, you are the Lord. He is God. Repeating it, the Lord, he is God. Which in that moment is a confession. It's an admission. It's a repentance and an apology. Yes, the Lord is God. Baal is not. But I want you to see this verse at the beginning of the story, verse 21, that when I read it, it reshaped for me the entire way I think about this story. Now, look at what Elijah says to them. I told you that he gathered them up on the mountain. I told you that he got everyone around him and he laid out the rules of the game. But before he laid out the rules of the game, look at what he says. This is amazing to me. Verse 21, and Elijah came near to all the people and said, You say, listen, listen Israel. And this is a depiction of what a prophet is supposed to do. When we think of a prophet, we tend to think of people who tell the future and mystical in some way. But this is what a prophet does. A prophet says hard things to a hardened people. And he looked at Israel and he says, how long are you going to keep straddling the fence between God and Baal? How long are you going to embrace Baal when that works for you and embrace God when that works for you? How much longer will you insist on doing this? And you get the idea that these people of Israel kind of worshipped whatever God was going to serve them best in the moment. That around some people they feared the Lord and around some people they honored Baal. And in some places they put on these masks and these clothes and other places they put on these masks and these clothes. Neither of their following was sincere. None of their faith was authentic and deep and meaningful. They were just putting on whichever God was good for them in the moment. They weren't committed to either. And Elijah says, enough of this. How long will you continue to straddle the fence? How long will you continue to limp along between two opinions? Let's settle this today. And if Baal brings fire from heaven, then great, we're going to worship Baal. But man, if God brings fire from heaven, then knock it off with the Baal stuff and let's follow God. Do you realize that that's the reason for the whole showdown? Do you realize that the whole reason that Elijah did this, that he comes out of hiding, that he goes to Ahab, that he says, assemble your prophets, do it on Mount Carmel, that all this fanfare, that he tells the people of Israel, come and be here, that he tells them, gather around me as I pray. Do you understand that the entire exercise was done not because Elijah had something with Ahab, not for Elijah to defeat Ahab, not for Elijah to overcome the prophets, but for the Lord to win back the hearts of his people. That was the goal. And he starts off the whole day by saying, how long are you going to straddle the fence, guys? How long are you going to pretend to follow God sometimes and pretend to follow Baal other times? Let's just settle this right now. And if God proves that he is God, then let's knock it off with the Baal stuff. And then the showdown happens. And at the end, we see their wonderful response. The Lord, Yahweh, He is God. And they worship Him alone. The whole point of the showdown was for God to win back the hearts of his people. And as I read this this week, it was an absolute punch in the gut to read that sentence, how long will you go limping between two opinions? Because how many of us can relate to that? How many of us listening do that? How many of you listening? Listen, it's just you in your living room, okay? And the people around you already know if this is true of you or not. So you're the only one you're trying to fool. How many of you in your living room have a face that you put on at church and a face that you put on at work? How many of us, me included, have a face that we put on around church people and a face that we put on around comfortable friends? How many of us straddle the line between these two opinions that in work and in our profession, we go out and we kill it and we crush it and we kill and we eat and that's great. And we act a certain way with certain morals and a certain moral compass there and then when we get around church people we have a different moral compass here. How many of us straddle the line between standards that we have for ourselves and then things that we accuse other people of? A lot of us, a lot of us, we're being honest, we're going to be super critical of what so and so over here does and not have any grace for them while we forgive the same sin in ourself over and over again. How many of us, listen, I'm sorry, this is so personal, how many of us teach our children things that we don't even do? How often in your life have you said what you believe with your mouth and then shown what you really believe with your actions? This kicked me right in the teeth this week. All of us, at some point, go limping along, straddling the line between two opinions, between two versions of ourselves. And I believe that this showdown wasn't just for the people of Israel, but that it's here in 1 Kings 18 to echo through the centuries for us today so that it would get our attention and that when Elijah looks at Israel and says, how long will you go limping between two opinions? He's looking dead at you, asking you the same question. How long are you going to straddle the fence, man? How much further is this hypocrisy going to go? Because I thought about this for myself this week. These two opinions that war within our hearts, they manifest themselves in different ways, right? The standards that we have for ourselves versus for other people, the face that we put on here versus there. They're going to manifest themselves in different ways, but at the heart of it, the difference of opinion that's happening is really this war between two ideas. And I think we claim one of these ideas every day. It's what we want to claim, what we know we should claim, what the people of Israel claim, which is the Lord, He is God. And then there's what happens in our heart, which is He may be God, but I'm the Lord. Those are the two opinions. The Lord, He is God. He is good. He is the Alpha and the omega. He is the Lord of my life. I will follow him. This is the fundamental confession of salvation, is that the Lord is God and that I will follow him. I am submitted to his leadership in my life. And then the idea that wars with that, which is the Lord may be God, or he may be God, but I'm the Lord. Yeah, he's God, and I believe in him, for sure. But today, I'm doing what Nate wants. Today, Nate's calling the shots. Today, Nate decides what's good and what's not. He's God. Absolutely, he's God. I believe he's God. But today, I call the shots. These are the opinions that war in each of our hearts. The Lord, he is God. He is good. I trust him. I will follow him. I will live according to him. I will submit to him. And then, yeah, the Lord, he's God. But today I'm the Lord. Today I'm doing what I think is right. And I think that this showdown happened not just to show us that God was superior to Baal, not just to wake up the hearts of his people in Israel and ask them, when are you going to draw the line? How long will you limp between these two opinions? But I think the reason this is here is to look at us thousands of years later and have us ask the question of ourselves, how long will I straddle the line between two opinions? How many more days will I get up and will I say, yeah, he's God, but today I'm Lord? How many more times are we going to do that? I think being a Christian is to make that claim that he is the Lord, he is God. God is the Lord of my life. And every day it's a battle to reclaim that and say, yeah, he's God, but I'm the Lord. And I wanted to preach this this morning and really be forceful with it so that we might ask, in all honesty and transparency, how long will I straddle the line between these two opinions? How many more days will I wake up and say, yeah, he's God, but I'm the Lord? And so I thought I would leave you with this simple question. What are you going to need in your life to make the confession that the Israelites made and make it every day? Will this showdown be enough? Will 1 Kings 18 be enough? Will what Elijah did thousands of years ago when once and for all God is the God of gods and it's settled and it's done, stop limping between two opinions, knock it off with the Baal stuff and follow God. It was enough for the people of Israel. Will it be enough for you? Or will you require your own showdown? I can only speak for me and say that I hope it's enough for me. I have no interest in a showdown with God. I hope that for many of us listening, we will quit straddling the line. We will quit confessing that he is God, but then believing that we are Lord. And that we will walk in such a way that with both our mouth and our heart and our actions, we will declare every day, the Lord, He is God. Let's pray. Father, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are God. You are good. You sent your son so that we might call you Lord. You sent your son to invite us in. And yet so many of us in so many ways, seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, we often reclaim that lordship. I, more than anyone, limp along between two opinions. Father, would you help those of us who are limping? Those of us who are wandering, would you draw us back? God, would you let this showdown be enough so that we don't require our own? Lord, let us feel even this morning your warmth, your embrace, your love, your approval, your desire for us. Let us declare from this day forward that you are the Lord and that you are God. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. It's so good to get to be with you in this way again. You know, I was thinking, typically in the summer, attendance and engagement in church, particularly in Grace, will fall off a little bit because we're all over the place. We're going to the beach, we're going on vacation, we're visiting people, and that's great. We love that we have the opportunity to do those things, but watching sermons this way and having church this way is actually kind of a nice thing as we get into the teeth of the summer that we can all come together from wherever we are. I know that by the time we are previewing this or premiering this, Jen and I are going to be at the beach watching it. So it's fun that we can all kind of scatter but still participate together as we come back for this moment. Last week, we took a break from our series in Acts, and we addressed the issues of racial inequality and racial injustice that we believe are still existent and pervasive in our culture. I can't imagine that you're watching this sermon and participating along with us at Grace and somehow missed that one last week, but in case you did, I would appreciate it if you would watch that. It was a special thing for me to share and a direction that I felt compelled to go. This week, however, we jump back into our series going through the book of Acts together called Still the Church. And the idea is kind of twofold. It's to help us understand where we came from. It's to help us understand that these are our roots, that we stand on the shoulders of this church, that these are our origins or our genesis, that the book of Acts depicts for us and details for us in a beautifully written letter by Luke. The activities and the behaviors and the events of the early church. I kind of picture a baby deer learning to walk as we watch the machinations of the church in Acts and we see it come to fruition and become the institution that we know it as today. But also as we go through Acts, we become familiar with that story and we see our roots and our heritage as people, members of the church, the body of Christ, children of God. So we're reminded that that's our heritage, but we are also extracting from it practices and principles and philosophies that still apply today. And we're saying that the church that we see in Acts is still the church that we should emulate now. What this church looks like is what grace looks like or should look like. And so when we started, we kind of have moved through the narrative. This is one of the narrative books in the New Testament. And it starts just so we can kind of orient ourself in the story today. Jesus goes to heaven. He leaves behind the disciples. He says, wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit and then go and share the gospel in all the corners of the world. That's your job. Go and build the church. That's what he leaves them there to do. So they go into this upper room and they wait for the gift of the Spirit. While they're waiting in this upper room, thousands of people in Jerusalem are clamoring around to see what they're going to say and what they're going to do and what's going to happen next in this great movement. And they receive the gift of the Spirit like flaming tongues on the day of Pentecost. And they go out on the balcony and they preach. They preach the gospel. They tell the story of who Jesus is and who he was. And the people hear it and they're moved and they say, we want in, what do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. And we talked about that repentance being the fundamental repentance of the church. That before we can become a Christian, that the very first thing we must do is repent of whatever we thought Jesus was and accept that he was who he says he was, that he is who he says he is. That's the repentance on which the entire church is built on. And then after that, we saw that after that repentance, 3,000 were added to the church. The church is now a mega church. It's's booming in Jerusalem. It's this movement. And then in Acts 2, verses 42 through 47, we have the quintessential passage that describes the early church. And we spent two weeks in that passage pulling out what we refer to as early church distinctives. What are the things that characterized the church then that should characterize our church now? After that in the story, as Luke, the author of Acts, shares, Peter and John are called into the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is the religious ruling body of Israel. They're called in and they have to give an account for what they're doing. This movement is getting traction and they're put on trial for it. And at the conclusion of that trial, we see one of my favorite bits of advice in the Bible. This is a freebie. I can't go through Acts without bringing this up. I wanted to do a whole sermon on it, but it just didn't work out. But it's this advice from Gamaliel, one of the rabbis, one of the Pharisees, who is speaking to the Sanhedrin as they're trying to decide what to do about this movement. Do we quell it? Do we stamp it out? Or do we let it breathe? And Gamaliel says, if this is for man, then it will fade. But if it is from God, then there's nothing we can do to stop it anyways. And so they relent, and they watch, and they see this movement of the church begin to take off. And soon it's not just the disciples who are teaching, but it's others around them who are hearing and learning and who are being moved and who have the gift to teach. And so they're going out and they're doing that. And one of the people who's going out and teaching is a man named Stephen. It says that Stephen was teaching around the synagogue of the freedmen, which was a group of Hellenistic Jews. The synagogue of the freedmen, we assume, were former Roman slaves who had been freed. They were likely Greek-speaking Jews and not Hebrew-speaking Jews. And so they got together in their own synagogue and they met there, the synagogue of the freedmen. And apparently Stephen was working some signs and wonders that were having an impact on them. When we see Stephen in Acts chapter six, he's doing these things, he's performing signs and wonders, legitimate miracles that are drawing people into his ministry. And we assume based on their reaction that he's drawing people away from the synagogue of the freedmen. And so some of the leaders within that synagogue, we assume, it just says people in the synagogue, but we assume that they were the leaders, begin to get offended. They begin to get upset. They begin to get resentful of Stephen and his witness and his ministry and the power and efficacy of what he's doing. So they, we think, a lot of scholars think that they probably had a formal debate, a dressed debate where people came and attended and they argued back and forth with each other. But we know whether it was formal or informal that they debated and that the power of his words and his wisdom blew them away, that there was nothing they could do to touch Stephen. Everything they threw at him that he had an answer for. Everything he said they could not refute. He was leading this new church in this new way towards Christ away from what they were teaching at the synagogue of the freedmen. And when they couldn't defeat him in debate, they decided that what they would do is just levy false charges against him. That they would drum people up, that they would stir people up. Basically, what they did is they went to the Sanhedrin and they went and they told the principal. They told the teachers what they did. They were having a quarrel. They were having a spat with Stephen. They couldn't win. Stephen always got the better of them. And so they took their ball and they went home. They went, well, we're gonna go tattle on you. And so they went to the religious establishment and they told on Stephen. If you have a Bible with you this morning or wherever you're watching this, you can turn to Acts chapter 6. That's where we pick the story up. Acts chapter 6, I'm going to start reading in verse 12 and go all the way through 7-1. This is what the people from the synagogue and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council. And they set up false witness who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like that of an angel. And the high priest said, are these things so? So his enemies, the people who opposed him, can't beat him in debate. They can't put down his movement or the movement that he's shepherding and participating in. And so they drum up these false charges and they stir up the people and they go and they throw him in front of the Sanhedrin, in front of the ruling body. And they levy these claims against them that are so funny and I think easy for us to understand. I think one of the big issues going on in our culture right now is the lack of nuance in our discourse. We don't know what news sources to trust. We don't know what tweets to trust. We don't know what Facebook posts to trust because what we do inevitably is the opposing side puts out a message or shares a thing or there's a speech or there's a statement or there's an action or an event. And then what the opposite side will do is pull the different things out that will fire up the base of their side and say, hey, this side said these things. When it's not an accurate picture of everything that they said, it's the worst possible picture of these little things that they said. And this is exactly what the synagogue of the freedmen is doing to Stephen. They're not giving the whole picture of what he's been teaching to the Sanhedrin. They're pulling out these little things that they know will be most offensive to them and accusing him of those things. They're saying he's claiming that Jesus of Nazareth came to overthrow the laws and the customs of Moses. Now that's an audacious claim because the laws and the customs of Moses, that's our Old Testament. That's what they refer to as the law and the prophets. That's their law. That's their Bible. That's everything that they know and cling to. And so for them to accuse Stephen of teaching that Jesus came to overthrow those things and to change them, that's a bombastic claim. That's salacious. That's a difficult thing to defend if it's true. And then to say that he intends to tear down the temple. That is the most holy place in Israel. That is the seat of power. It represents the very presence of God. It is the center of Hebrew worship. And to say that Jesus intends to tear that down, it's a big deal. And they get fired up too. The Sanhedrin hear this, they're upset, they're fired up, and they look at Stephen and they say, is this true? Is that really what you're teaching? Now listen, Stephen knows what's at stake with his answer. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, he's going to die. And he knows that it's not an easy death. He knows that if he navigates this poorly, that they are going to kill him and they're going to kill him by stoning him. And just so we're all clear on what stoning is, they tie your hands around your back and push you off a cliff and drop big rocks on you until you die. It is death by blunt force trauma. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, that that's what's waiting on him. When they ask him, what do you say, Stephen? He knows that if he answers poorly, he's going to pay with his life. And so I wonder, at this moment, if we put ourselves there in Stephen's place, how would we respond? What would we expect of Stephen? I wonder how I would respond. I think that I would expect Stephen, and I'm pretty sure I would want to calm everybody down. It's happening in a whirlwind. Emotions are there. They've misrepresented my story. I would want to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, let's just take it easy. Let's just take a beat. Let's talk about this. And if you're Stephen, you can correct how they've been misled. You can say, yeah, Jesus is going to change the way that we adhere to some of the laws of Moses, but he said himself that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He's the fulfillment of those customs. Yes, Jesus did say that he's going to tear down the temple, but in a way that he makes the need for it obsolete because the temple is the very presence of God. And now in this New Testament, in this new way, since the righteous one has died for us, we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts and we are now the new temples of God. That temple is good and we should respect it and it is wonderful, but it's no longer needed. If I were Stephen, I would want to show the Sanhedrin, listen, we're on the same team. We follow the same God. The things I'm preaching are a continuation of the things that you believe and have taught. I would want for them desperately to see that all I was doing is teaching a continuation of what they've always believed. And I would want them to see that Jesus was actually the fulfillment of all the things that they hold dear. I would want to throw the temple of the freedmen under the bus and say, they're just mad because they're losing people. They're just mad because they can't beat me. They're just upset. This is just sour grapes. Let's just calm down. And if that wouldn't work, because maybe the Sanhedrin would be resistant to that defense anyways, maybe that would be blasphemous, I can make a pretty good argument. If I'm in his spot, and I've got this successful ministry going on over here, people are being added to the church day by day, people are believing me, I'm working signs and wonders, and we see this movement happening now that's spreading out of Jerusalem, and I'm a vital part of that, I can totally see the validity of the thought process of just thinking to yourself, I'm going to say whatever I have to say to survive this day. I'm going to just do whatever it is I have to do to live through this. Whatever they want to hear from me, whatever I have to admit, whatever I have to confess, I'm just going to get through today. I'm going to tell them what they need to hear, and then I'm going to continue on with this ministry because it's valuable ministry. And honestly, if that's what Stephen did, I'm not sure that I would judge him. I would understand it. He's doing good things. Shouldn't he want to preserve those things and not die right here on the spot? That's what I would expect of Stephen. That's what I would do. But for the rest of chapter seven, we see Stephen's response. He goes on for a long time, 53 verses. And Stephen's response is not what I would expect. If you look at chapter seven of Acts, it is the best summation of Genesis and Exodus that exists. It is an incredibly succinct summary of the events that unfolded that led to the nation of Israel. If you're unfamiliar with that portion of Scripture, if you've never read through Genesis or Exodus, I would highly encourage you to read the cliff notes that we find in Acts chapter seven. It's a very good read. And so in the midst of these false accusations, in the midst of the stress, in the midst of the urgency, in the midst of the anger and the Sanhedrin, pressing upon Stephen and saying, hey, is this true? Are you really teaching this? Stephen, knowing that he was facing death, tells them their own story. He tells them a story that they all know. And he starts with their father Abraham, the one from whom all Jews have descended. And then he moves through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph. And then he fast-forwards the 400 years to Moses. And he talks about different events in Moses' life where he murdered the Egyptians and he has to flee to the wilderness. And he comes back 40 years later after being moved by the burning bush, compelled by God in the burning bush. And he frees the people and they move through the wilderness and he installs the law and they get to the banks of the Jordan River and Moses passes away and Joshua leads them across and they move into the promised land where they all now, Stephen and the Sanhedrin and the synagogue of the freed men and all the people watching where they all now sit. And he tells them a story that they already know. He tells them their story. And it's a story that they could all tell. Every one of the men sitting there judging Stephen, assessing the situation, they know the story. They know their Bible. They can all tell it. And so it makes you think that Stephen's building the case to do exactly what I said I would do, to say, hey, we're on the same team. Listen, I know all your history. I share it. I'm with you. And you feel like as he's saying it that he's going to end up making the point of we're all on the same team. Listen to this clarity. But he finishes telling the story and he punctuates it like this. It's unbelievable to me the confidence and the boldness that he has in this moment. Stephen finishes telling the story and then he says these things, beginning in verse 51. Yo, he stuck his face in the wood chipper, man. He just put it right in there. He tells the story. He brings everyone along. He shows that he has an understanding and a grasp of the scriptures like they do. And then he calls them uncircumcised of heart and eyes, which flares up the whole room. Because you have to remember in this context, circumcision was a sign of the covenant. If you were a Jewish circumcised male, then you were saved. You were in. You and God were good. That was the sign that your parents had committed you to the same God that was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of their forefathers. It was the visible sign that you are in, that you are what we would refer to as a Christian or saved, that you and God are good. And Stephen says, no, forget it with your circumcision. You're uncircumcised in the heart and of the eyes. You're uncircumcised where it matters. You think you're saved. You lean on this tradition that you have, but that's not it at all because you don't mean any of the things that you teach. You've missed the point. You've gotten it wrong. You're not even a Christian. You're not even a believer. You don't even preach. You don't even live out the stuff that you preach. He's calling them hypocrites and false teachers. And then he associates them with the people who killed the prophets. The very prophets that they uphold, the very prophets that they teach, they consider the prophets their fathers. And Stephen says, no, no, no, no, no. You're not descendant from the prophets. You're descendant from the ones who killed the prophets. And then he goes to the last prophet, John the Baptist. You even killed him when he came and was preparing the way for the righteous one, for Jesus. And when he showed up, when God finally sent his son, the promised Messiah that you're supposed to have been looking for, you know what you did? You murdered him. He says, you've received the word of God from angels and you did not uphold it. Stephen, with boldness and audacity and faith, blasts the Sanhedrin. He spoke truth defiantly and righteously to power. And they respond exactly how you think they would. They rush him, they yell. It says that some of them covered their ears, a bunch of drama queens the Sanhedrin were, and they run at Stephen and they seize him and they carry him outside the city and they stone him. They bind up his arms, they bind up his legs, they drop him off of a smaller cliff so he's incapacitated and then they drop big rocks on him until he dies. And it says that in that moment Stephen looked up and he saw the Son of God at the right hand of the Father and that he prayed for them because they didn't understand what they were doing. I've read this story a few times in preparation for this week. And every time I read it, I've had to just kind of put my Bible down and sit there for a minute and marvel at the boldness of Stephen. Marvel at how brave he was. And note that what Stephen did in that moment was Stephen chose the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. He chose the consequences of action. He knew that what he was going to do, he was inviting it. He stuck his chin out. He said, let's go. I know what's going to happen, but you need to know the truth. He invited it in. He chose action and invited the consequences of those actions rather than sit in comfort and inactivity. He could have placated. He could have lived to fight another day. He could have chosen comfort. But he stepped away from comfort and into fear. And it is a profound story. I'm honestly tempted to just leave it here because that's in some ways what Luke does. He just tells the story, sits it in the middle of the narrative. We don't come back to Stephen. I'm not entirely sure why he shared it with us, except to let us be moved by the boldness of Stephen, except to allow us to be inspired by the faith of someone who was facing certain brutal death. And part of me wonders why he did it. Why didn't he try to convince the Sanhedrin that he was right? Why didn't he try to convert the Sanhedrin? Why wasn't he more gentle with them? And I think that the answer is because when Stephen said those things, when he called them uncircumcised of heart and he said that their fathers were the ones that killed the prophets, that they murdered the Son of God, that they received the Word of God and that they did not hold it up. When he says those things, he's looking at the leaders, but he's not talking to them. I think he's talking to all the people who can hear him. I think he wants to inspire all the listeners, all the other young pastors who are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment, all the people that he preached about the goodness of God to that are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment. He's not talking to the Sanhedrin. He's talking to everyone around him. He's talking to the crowds because they needed to hear the truth. I think he knew that the truth was going to land on deaf ears when the Sanhedrin heard it, but he also knew that what they need, that what the crowds need, because it matters, is to hear the truth. And the truth to the crowd is that your leaders have let you down. They are false teachers, and Jesus was not. And so he chose boldness for their sakes. And I think all of this presses a question upon us. What is worth our boldness? What's worth our boldness? What in life is worth choosing the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction? What in life is worth stepping into that fear of the unknown, of giving up our comfort and our safety and security and saying, no, this is actually a place I'm willing to plant my flag and I will not be pushed off of this. Hopefully we all have things in our life that push us to boldness. Hopefully we all have things in our life where the comfort of inactivity is just simply no longer attractive enough to not choose the consequences of action. But as I thought about this question, we have different answers. But one answer that we can and should share in common is that if it matters to God, it is worthy of our boldness. If it matters to God, it's worthy of our boldness. If God says, hey, this matters to me, then it should matter to us. If God says this matters to me, then we should be willing to run from the comfort of inactivity towards the consequences of action. That's why last week I felt like I had no choice but to be bold. I would have much rather preferred to just stay comfortable. Not risk ruffling feathers, not risk being divisive in a church that I love so much. But I meant what I said when I said that oppression and injustice matters to God, that it breaks his heart, and it should break our heart too. So we step forward as a church in boldness, choosing the consequences of action. What matters to God is worth our boldness. And what matters to God more than anything else is the souls of men. What matters to God is that people would become his children. So your neighbor, the one that you've been getting closer to in quarantine, the one that you've had more conversations with in the last three months than you have in however many years you've lived there prior? Jesus died for that person. He was so bold that he faced death for them. They matter to God. They're worth your boldness. Have the uncomfortable conversation. I know it feels weird to start talking to people about faith. I know it feels weird to ask them what they believe. I know it's uncouth. I know it's uncomfortable. I know we have to leave the comfort of inactivity to do that. I know that we have to choose some consequences that might scare us, but I'm telling you, be inspired by Stephen. It's worth it. Be bold for the sake of your neighbor. Be bold for the sake of your children. Fight for them. Don't let things slide. Impress upon them the good news and the love of God. Be bold for the sake of your Christian brothers and sisters. Do you know somebody who might be sliding into sin? Do you know somebody who might be making choices that are leading them on a path that doesn't have a good ending? Do you know somebody who's dropped their guard a little bit? And you're seeing some things begin to leak out of their life that aren't good, God loves them. God wants that person near to them. They're worth your boldness. Have the conversation. Invite them to coffee. Invite them to the back porch. Talk to them. They're worth your boldness. Your marriage is worth your boldness. Your marriage matters very much to God. God designed marriage to be a picture, to be a manifestation that people should be able to look at and say, that's the way that God loves the church. And that's the way that Jesus loves us. That's why our marriage should be a picture of the gospel. And if it's sliding, and if it's unhealthy, if it's rocky, if it's murky, if it just feels distant, be bold for your marriage. Say the hard thing, have the hard conversation, Choose the consequence of action. And be bold for your marriage. The things that matter to God are worthy of our boldness. Listen, I mean this. Write the book. Start the ministry. Have the conversation. Send the email. Say the prayer. Open yourself up. Let us be inspired by the boldness of Stephen who in the face of certain death told the defiant and righteous truth. And let us, like Stephen, in the places where it matters most and the things that matter to God, choose consistently the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you so much for your servant, Stephen, and for his story here. Thank you for moving Luke to share it with us so that we could see it and revisit it and marvel at his sacrifice. Thank you for his boldness, for wiring him in such a way that he did not lilt or fade away from that moment, but that he leaned into it. Give us a little bit of that fire, God. Give us the strength to lean into things. Give us the faith to know when we ought to do it. Give us the courage to face consequences of necessary action. Make us a church full of Stevens. In Jesus' name, amen.

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