Sermons tagged with Romans

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

Christmas is coming. The Advent candles mark this season of waiting. They help us pay attention to our longing for a Savior, for Jesus, the reason for our Christmas celebration. He gave us our first gift, our greatest gift, His love, which is perfect because we live in a world starving for love. We live lives starving for love. We're lonely, longing for a place to belong. We crave affirmation because we wonder if we really even matter. We long to be known and understood and accepted, don't we? Our whole selves, our real selves. In the midst of our shame and feelings of unworthiness, we desperately want, no, we need to be loved as we are. We long for Jesus because he loves like that. We read it over and over again in the Bible. We love because He first loved us. God is love, so you can't know Him if you don't love. And this is how God showed His love for us. God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they have done to our relationship with God. Friends, if God loved us like this, why can't we love each other? God's great miracle at Christmas was to love us up close, personally. Emmanuel, it means God is with us. So today we light this second candle of Advent as a reminder of God's love because the God who loves us knows we need his love. So he came to earth to be with us. Jesus coming means that we have that love. You are loved. Receive it. Welcome him into your home, into your brokenness, into your hurt and your shame and your sadness. Welcome him into your heart, into your places of joy and celebration and thanksgiving. Ask Jesus to fill you with the light of his love so that you can be light in a dark world. Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to get to be back with you up here preaching. Last week, Erin kicked off Advent for us. Erin is our wonderful children's pastor, and she did a phenomenal job kicking off Advent at Grace. If you didn't get to watch it, I would very much encourage you to go and do that. If it gets boring while I'm preaching, just jump over to our messages page and watch that one instead if you missed it. I wouldn't blame you. She did a great job of framing up Advent in that it's a season of expected waiting. It's a season where we as believers prepare ourselves for the coming of the Messiah and all that it means. And so every week we focus on a different thing that Jesus brought. Last week was hope. This week is joy, or this week is love. Next week is joy. The week after that is peace. And then on Christmas Eve, we get to focus on Jesus. So this week, as we settle into this idea of love, I wanted to take you back a couple of years ago. It's a Saturday night, Sunday morning, about 2 a.m., 2.30 a.m., something like that. And Jen and I are awoken by our dog, Ruby, barking. I have a golden retriever named Ruby. If you know me, you know I would like to not have a golden retriever named Ruby or any dog by any name, but Jen loves her, and so we keep her, and Ruby is about as good of a dog as you can have. I have a friend that has a dog named Rocco, and Ruby is way better than Rocco, but at about 2 o'clock, 2.30 in the morning, we were awoken by her barking, and she never barks inside. And so we were both a little bit startled, and I go scrambling down the stairs, but I fully expect I'm going to get down the stairs, Ruby's going to have her nose pressed up against the window, and there's going to be a rabbit or a deer or another dog or something in our yard. It won't be that big of a deal, but as I'm going down the stairs, Ruby's going to have her nose pressed up against the window and there's going to be a rabbit or a deer or another dog or something in our yard. It won't be that big of a deal. But as I'm going down the stairs at our old house, we moved back in April. At our old house, as you're going down the stairs, you can see the front door and then you can see like the window pane next to the front door and then the stairs going down our front porch to the sidewalk. And as I'm going down the stairs at 2.30 in the morning with no shirt on, I'm looking out that window and I see two men start to walk up my porch stairs. It's two dudes in their 20s. And I was instantly terrified. What are these guys doing here in the middle of the night? And what I should have done in the moment is stopped, turned around, gone back into my room, grabbed a gun and a phone and called 911. That's what I should have done. Instead, what I did was leap down the last eight stairs into my small foyer and press myself up against the glass panel right as they came to the stairs. And when I saw them, it was two guys and one of them was carrying a beer bottle, but he wasn't carrying it like he was drinking it. He was carrying it like he was about to swing it. And I thought, oh, it's about to go down. It's happening right now. So I thought maybe they are just trying to like sneak in and steal a couple things. So I press myself against the glass and I bang it as hard as I can. And I say, get off, get off my porch, get out of my house, get off my property. And they start to argue with me. At one point, I'm trying to get them to get off my porch. At one point, he holds a phone up against the glass and he says, is this your address? And I say, yeah, but that doesn't matter. Get off my property. By this point, Jen's at the top of the stairs. Lily's two years old at the time. She's crying in her room. I'm flipping out. I am waiting for my door handle to start jiggling. And when it does, my plan is to go to the kitchen and get a knife and come back and meet them. Like, I'm ready. But then I keep telling them to get off my property, and they go, they treat me like I was a crazy person. They walk back off the stairs. I go upstairs. I get my gun and a phone, and I told Jen, look out the window and tell me what you see. And she says, there's four men standing at the end of our driveway. And I'm like, I only got five shots, you know, so let's make sure that I'm careful. And so I call 911. They send somebody out. The guys start to walk down the street. Long story short, they were just out probably partying, got an Uber to a place they thought they were supposed to go, put the wrong address into the Uber and ended up at my house and ruined my night. Now, here's why I bring that up. I sat in Lily's playroom staring out the window until 4.30 in the morning, like not moving a muscle in case they came back. But I bring that up because I want to ask the question, what is it about us? What is it about me that when I saw a threat to my family, I jumped down the stairs and bang on the glass and have a plan to go get a kitchen knife and fight two dudes who are trying to break into a house? Like, listen, I don't want any of you to take advantage of this. I've never been in a fistfight. I don't know how valuable I would be. I know that I would fight dirty, and I know that you'd really have to hurt me to get me to stop. Other than that, I'm pretty sure I'd be terrible at it. If I started fighting these two dudes, I was going down. But that didn't even occur to me. I just instantly threw myself in harm's way because two people that I loved were upstairs. And I ask what is it that would make me do that because I am certain that any of you who love anybody would have done the same thing. Any dads who are listening would have not have hesitated to do and react in the exact same way that I did more or less. Any mamas listening would do whatever they had to do to protect their kids. We would do anything for the people that we love. And I think the reason that we do that is because we do genuinely and deeply love them. I love my wife, Jen, and I love my daughter, Lily, and I would do anything for them. Of course I would do anything for Jen. Do you realize that my wife Jen and I have been together nearly 18 years? We've been married 14 years. She puts up with me daily and weekly. You understand that? Like I'm a gross human. I have terrible manners when there's nobody around. She puts up with that. I'm a pain in the rear. She puts up with that, and she loves me, and she supports me. Of course, I'll do anything that she needs. I loved Lily when she was born, but I love her even more now. Just this last week, she's in the back seat singing along to a Wren Collective song, and I turn around. She's in a big girl booster seat now, and I start crying like a moron because I just can't believe that I get to love this girl. Like, I just love her so much. And you would do the same for your families and for the people that you love because love is this compelling thing because typically when we love people, they've done something to warrant that love, right? That's how it goes. They've showed up for us. They've listened to us. They've hugged us. They've cried with us. They've laughed with us. They've seen us at our worst. They hope for our best. Like the people that we have in our life who we love, who if you think about, if they picked up the phone and they called you and they said, hey, I need this, you would do anything to be able to provide that for them. Those people have typically reciprocated the love that you offer them. That's kind of how love works. It builds and we reciprocate it. That's what makes God's love for us so miraculous, because he didn't do that. He didn't wait for us to earn it. He didn't watch you live your life and then decide to love you. He didn't wait for you to reciprocate his love and then say, yeah, now my affection is growing for you. As a matter of fact, this is how Paul writes about God's love in Romans chapter five. I'll pick it up to deserve it. He loved us before we did anything at all to deserve it. We had never even existed. We weren't even a figment in our parents' or grandparents' imagination. God just decided that he loved us and he sent his son, his only son, whom he loved and whom he was well pleased. Jesus came down and he died for us even before we deserved it. And make no mistake about it, this was a huge sacrifice. Jesus came down and the night that he was arrested to be crucified and to die for you and I, out of his deep and abiding love for us, he prayed in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he begged God, stressed to the point of sweating blood, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please don't make me walk this path of crucifixion. I'm scared. I don't want to. And then he did because he loves us. He loves us when we've never done a single thing to deserve it. The only approximation I think we have of this love in our human experience, the type of love that God lavishes on us, is when we hold our brand new baby. If you're a parent or an aunt or an uncle, you know what it is to hold this child that is hours old and know in your soul you would do anything for this kid. For your heart to be so full of love that you can't stand it. We know what that love is. But God's love is even bigger than that because not only have we never done anything to deserve it, but he knows everything we're going to do. Imagine holding this child and knowing all the worst things that this person is ever going to do or be capable of and then trying to have that type of love well up within you. There'd be mixed emotions there, right? This is why I think God's love for us that he gives to us without ever earning it is miraculous. But the bigger miracle is that he continues to love us without borders. The bigger miracle of God's love, it's a miracle that he loves us before we deserve it, without deserving it at all, but he loves us knowing that we're never going to. He loves us without borders. This is why I know that's true. Because in Romans 8, Steve brought it up as a devotion a few weeks ago, and it rings so true this morning. Romans 8, to me, is the greatest chapter in the Bible. We did eight weeks in Romans 8 a few summers ago, and it finishes this way in what I think is the crescendo of hope. For it says, We cannot be separated from that love. And I phrased it that way, love without borders. God loves us without borders. This is a concept that I actually picked up from my counselor. And he was talking about human relationships and the borders that our love has in human relationships. And to me, it really makes a lot of sense that we love people in our life, but we love them within certain parameters, right? We love people within certain parameters. Kyle Tolbert's here this morning, Christmas Kyle, you may remember him earlier in the service. And I love Kyle. But if I'm honest, I love Kyle with some parameters. There's some borders around his behavior and around his actions. And if he ventures outside of those borders, it's going to impact my affection for him. This is how we love everybody. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a reality of life. If you think of me as your pastor, hopefully we have some sort of mutual affection for one another and you have an affection for your pastor. But you have parameters around me. You love me with borders. You give me affection with some boundaries. And if I were to go outside of those boundaries, then your affection for me would change. Just would. And it works the same way for our great partners. If I'm being honest, I love the great partners. But if I'm being honest, I love you within some boundaries. There's some things, there's some parameters around your behavior that if you were to do this thing or that thing, it would change my affection for you. And now some of these borders are necessary for our own self-protection, right? Like husbands and wives love each other, but even in those, the most intimate of relationships, there's borders around that love. Jen loves me very much, and she's offered me very generous borders for the continuation of that love, but if I begin to act in a way that's harmful to her or to Lily, well, now I'm acting outside the bounds of the love that she's offered me. So sometimes as people, we need these boundaries and these borders to protect ourselves. That's why I think God's love is phenomenal. That's why I think that's the biggest miracle of God's love. Because he loves us without borders. He puts no stipulations on our behavior. He has no expectations on us. He just says, hey, I love you. I love you so much that I've given you my son. I've given you everything. I've made a path so that I can spend forever with you. That's how much I love you. And if you really think about it, this is so powerful because we know that we love with borders. We know that other people love us in some ways contingent upon our behavior or the parts of ourselves that we allow them to see. And so very few of us, very few of us in life are fully known and fully loved. We reveal bits and pieces to ourselves. When you have an acquaintance, someone that you meet, whatever your public persona is, whatever that is, you present that to them. And the more they get to know you, the more the layers begin to peel back. And you're like, will you accept this layer? If I show you this side of myself, will you continue to love me for who I am or is that going to cause a fissure between us and now you can't love me like that anymore? And so we're very careful about who we let in and how vulnerable we become to people because we don't want to do anything to disturb the relationship that we have. And even in our most intimate of relationships, very few of us are fully known by our parents or our spouse or our close friends. There's always portions and pockets that we hide. Are these people over here who get this version and these people over here who get this version? And there's not a Venn diagram in our life of where somebody who fully knows us would intersect and know all the parts of us. And it's a sad thing to not be fully loved. It's a sad thing to pine, to be known and to be seen and to be vulnerable and yet to be accepted anyways. And it's an incredible gift that God gives us to love us without borders. Because none of those expectations are there. None of those parameters are there. Every time we realize our vulnerability to God, we are met with the warmth of his love. And so, God loving us without borders, what that means is this means that we are fully known, fully seen, fully vulnerable, and yet completely and limitlessly loved. We are fully known, we are fully seen, we are fully vulnerable, we are completely exposed to God the Father. All the things that we've done that would bring us shame. Some of the things that we have sworn to ourselves we are going to take to our graves. God knows about those things. The moments in our past that when we think of them they're painful because we don't like that version of ourself or what we did that night or that season or whatever it was. Jesus was with us in those moments and he was loving us anyways. The things in our future, the things that we're capable of, the thoughts that we have, the critical things that we think, the awful attitudes that we espouse and we continue to foster, Jesus is with us in that ugliness. And he loves us anyways. In our vulnerabilities, when life is heavy, when everyone in the world expects us to be strong and inside all we say is, God, I need you. I'm not strong enough for this. I can't do it. I can't be who they want me to be. God says, I know. I love you. I'll make you who you need to be. The miracle of God's love is not just that he loved us before we'd done anything to deserve it, but that that love perseveres regardless of what we do. And in him we are fully known, we are fully vulnerable, and yet fully accepted. And this is the thing that we all pine for. This is what we want. More than anything, that's what we want. If you think about your actions, think about your actions as an adolescent. Think about yourself in high school and then in college. Everything you did screamed, will you accept me now? Am I good enough now? Have I earned the world's affection and acceptance now? And the older we get, it doesn't change. That desire doesn't change. Am I good enough now? Am I enough now? We just learn more nuanced ways to pine for it. And I think what happens is, even though as Christians we know we are loved deeply and fully and completely and without hesitation, I think we tend to forget that. We go throughout our years, we go throughout our days, and we know that we have the affection of the Father, but for some reason we pine for it in other places, and we look to it from other people, and we put on other facades because maybe they will tell me that I'm enough. And I was trying to think about what this would be like, and I remembered one night this summer when I went over to Greg and Laura Taylor's house, and I was in their backyard. And now they have maybe the greatest backyard setup I've ever seen in my life. I was over there with a bunch of guys and we all made a pact to never show our wives this backyard because we don't want to do near the amount of work that Greg has placed into it. At the end of his yard, you go out, there's a deck and then there's like a water feature and there's like sidewalk and a garden, and there's probably like live dancing gnomes there. They just were off that night, and they were walking to the end of the yard. At the end of the yard, there's a fire pit, and the fire pit is level on the ground that you're walking on, but it's on a slope, so the end of it is about four feet high. So it's stacked up from the ground. It's stone that Greg hand laid. He probably hand hew it too out of his own rock. And he just laid it there. And then in the middle, there is a pit. It's like two feet deep. It looks like a big stone donut. And there's chairs all around it. And there's wood, like endless amounts of wood for fire. I have no doubt in my mind that Greg researched the best possible firewood and then chopped it down by hand and then brought it to his house on a burrow. And there it is. It's ready. We're waiting for the fire. And so I want you to imagine being invited over to the Taylor's house, which, lucky you, and sitting around this fire. You've got all the wood you could want. It's the perfect fire. It's the perfect environment right there on the edge of the yard and the woods. It's really peaceful. And it's cold out. And he's got drinks and he's got s'more setups. And you're sitting in there at that fire. And you get up. And you start to wander through the woods. And you're gone for a few minutes, long enough for Greg to go, hey, what are you doing? And you go, I'm just grabbing some wood. And he's like, you don't have to, man. I got all this. I brought it in last week. You're like, no, no, no. I'm going to make my own fire. He says, what? Why? I have a perfectly good fire over here. And you go, no, no, no, I'm just getting a little chilly. Just thought I'd make my own. And you just go wandering through the woods, picking up like wet twigs and a couple of leaves, and you wander out of the woods, and you've got this bundle, and you set it down, and we think, okay, they're going to get it together and come sit with us and warm themselves on this good fire. And then you start to walk back in the woods, and we go, you still going to build your fire? And you're like, yep, yep, just one second. And you just keep going back and you try to make this fire and it's never gonna be as good as the one that's in the pit. His wood's way better than yours. His fire's gonna be infinitely better than yours ever could be. And you don't even have s'mores. Like, what are you thinking? I think sometimes we forget that God loves us fully and completely, and we go pining for it in other places. I think we tend to forget, and we build our own fires. We tend to forget that God loves us, and so we wander into the woods, and we get these cruddy sticks and twigs, and we assemble our own little sad fire over here with God's got the one raging over there, and he says, just come on. I've got everything you need. Just warm yourself. It's here. Come in. He invites us into his love. And we go, no thanks, God. Actually, I do want the warmth that that fire provides, I'm just going to make my own really cruddy version of it over here. And I think that this is why we need Christmas. And this is what the Advent season does for us. Because Christmas is our yearly divine reminder that God loves us without hesitation, without borders, and without end. It's this time once a year as we observe Advent. And Advent is a time of expectant waiting where we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Messiah because so often we just flippantly say, yeah, Jesus is the reason for the season. Or we post something ridiculous. I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but it's ridiculous. Santa kneeling at the crib of Jesus as if to say like in this house, Jesus is a bigger deal than Santa. Yeah, no kidding. We do all these little things to kind of give this token appreciation of Christ. And sometimes we forget to just slow down and let the weight of the gift that he is sit on our shoulders. We say that God is love. We sing that God loves us. But how often do we sit in the reality of this love? How often do we sit and let it wash over us that God loved me before I did anything to deserve it, knowing I would never do anything to warrant it. And he loves me. He is the only being in the universe to pick up our own things and to build our own fires as a replacement for the love that God offers us. And so Christmas exists as this time once a year where God beckons us back to his love to warm ourselves at his fire and to remind us of who we are and how much he loves us. So as Christmas approaches, let's not observe it for another year, flippantly regarding giving passive intellectual assent to the love of God, but let's sit in the majesty and the miracle of it and be together grateful for it as Christmas approaches. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you so much. We love you, as your word says, because you first loved us. God, without that, we know that we never could. We could never have the slightest inclination to love you. Father, if there is anybody listening who doesn't know your love, who has not received your love, if we are out in the woods collecting our own wood, trying to make our own fire, trying to fabricate what it is that you've already created for us, God, I pray that we would drop all that junk right now and rush to you. Lord, if there's anybody who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. For those of us who, like me, move through this season with so much urgency and so much purpose and this feeling of busyness that can sometimes produce in us a flippancy as we consider your love, may we slow down and be hit with the weight of it this morning. Father, as sincerely as we can say it, we say thank you for your love and thank you for your son. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

All right, well, like I said, good morning. It's good to be here, and I'm excited that you're here on this October Sunday. We've got a team down in Mexico now. We're gonna have a chance to catch up with them a little bit. Connor's gonna tell us a little bit more about what they're doing after the service, but I'm excited about that team. I'm gonna fly down there and join them on Tuesday of this week. But right now, we're gonna focus on the sixth part of our series called Feast. We did it. We made it. We've gone through the other five festivals in the Old Testament. We've arrived at the final one. This one is called the Feast of Weeks, or it's also known as Pentecost. It's the end of the first fruits celebration. Now, the trick here is you're thinking to yourself, why in the world do I care about the Feast of Weeks? This is the first time I've ever shown up for a sermon at a church, and they said, good news, everyone, we're talking about the Feast of Weeks from the Old Testament. So here's the thing. I think that if we learn what's happening here in the Feast of Weeks, if we learn what they're celebrating, then it can impact our life right away. It can impact the way that we understand that God loves us. It can impact the way we go about our days, and it can impact the way that we understand the Bible. If you've spent any time at Grace, you've heard me say that one of the most, not one of the most, the most important habit that anyone can ever develop is to spend time every day in God's Word and to spend time in prayer. The most important habit we can ever develop, eating well, exercising, being mindful, sleeping well, reading, whatever it is, any other habit, I would put this up against that one and say, this is the best one that any person could ever adopt is to spend time in God's Word and time in prayer every day. So if we're going to do that, it's incumbent upon us to understand the Bible. And what we're talking about today, I think, breathes fresh and essential life into our understanding of scriptures. And if we get it, will unlock for us a lot of the meaning of the New Testament. I would argue that the New Testament is not possible to be understood without the principles that we're talking about today. That's why I think the Feast of Weeks is so very important. Now, the Feast of Weeks, we see in Deuteronomy that it originally commemorated, it was a time to remember being in bondage or being in captivity. Over time, they looked at the timing of it and it became a celebration of something else because the Feast of Weeks is locked into the other spring festivals. The other spring festivals, for those who don't know, just so we catch up, is first Passover, and then that's on the Sabbath Friday, and then it starts on Friday night, and then that Sunday is the Feast of First Fruits. There's a timing thing there. It's two, three days after, and then you count 50 days from that period, from that time, and you arrive at the last holiday in the spring calendar, the Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost. It's 50 days and counting. Penta means 50, and so in the Old Testament, it was known as Pentecost. Now, some of you know your Bible well enough that you're jumping to Pentecost in the New Testament. You know what that is, and Acts, we're not there yet. We'll get there. You're smart. But we're not there yet, okay? This is where we are. And what they realized after some years is that there wasn't a significant event that happened to be timed up perfectly with the Feast of Weeks and Pentecost. And that was the receiving of the law. And so traditionally, the Feast of Weeks has celebrated the reception of the law. You've got notes there in front of you. We handed those out. Obviously, we're not going to put those up this week. We didn't need one more thing to try to not mess up. But I'm going to say enough things that you can fill in your notes if you need to. So Feast of Weeks celebrates the reception of the law. And that timeline that you have at the top of your notes is really important. Now, why was it such a big deal to receive the law? Why did the Jewish people celebrate this every year? Well, one rabbi said that the law is so essential that it's what makes Jews Jewish, that following the law is what makes Jews Jewish. In it, it's their essence. It's who they are. Tradition says that the law was given in all 70 known languages, but the Jewish people were the only people that decided to take on the mantle of the law and begin to try to follow it. So first, the law gave them their identity. That's why it's a big deal. Another reason it's a big deal, I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I spend time with the Bible and try to think about stuff like this because I kind of get paid to do it. But have you ever thought what it would be like to be a believer in God before the law, before the scripture, before the Bible? To just be in Egypt and to know that there is a God. I'm pretty sure there's a God. He seems to be pretty tight with Moses. When Moses says stuff that usually comes from God, he encountered a bush one time. And so now he's telling us what to do. And I feel like that's authoritative. But have you ever thought what it would be like to be a believer before the law, before the Bible, before websites had statements of faith, right? Like if you're new to Grace or if you've checked out a church recently, one of the first things other church people do before they go to a church is they go to the website and then they click on statement of faith and they go, do these people agree with most of the things that I think, right? So that when they go to church, they kind of know what they're stepping into. Can you imagine just visiting someplace blindly? Can you imagine going to a church and the pastor's preaching and he doesn't have the Bible? There's no authority. There's nothing to check him on. I'm just telling you what I think is a good idea, what I heard from this guru in the mountains this one time, and now I'm telling you that this is the gospel truth. Can you imagine how murky and how confusing and how difficult that might be to try to follow and please a God that you know exists, but you're not sure how? I think it would feel like I felt at my old job, Greystone Church, one time. When I was at Greystone, I was the small groups pastor, and I was in charge of student ministry. I was in no way talented at graphic design or content creation. Yet, that's what I got assigned to do this one time. My boss, the lead pastor, Jonathan, he came to me and said, Nate, I want you to design a booklet that has all the information that somebody would need to know about Greystone Church. I want you to just put it together, do pictures, summaries, do a picture of Sunday morning worship, tell them what that's about, give them the mission of the church, student ministry, children's ministry. I want you to put this together and make it look nice. We're going to put it on the information table, and then when somebody new visits the church, we'll just be able to hand it to them, and they can know everything need to know about Greystone. And I'm like, all right, great. You got the right man for the job. I'm gonna knock this out of the park. So for the next two weeks, I actually worked and I tried hard at this. And I had my friend come in and they took pictures and I assembled the document. I figured out how to make it the right size, how to make it like a square, I think, is the shape that I went with. And there was pictures, and there was captions, and there was someone dynamically leading worship, and then a paragraph underneath about what worship means to us, and a verse to go along with it, and then the preaching, and then the small groups, and why we do that, and here's our vision for small groups. And it was excellent. And then I had to go print it out. And I realized, I don't know, I don't know if you guys have ever encountered this. I don't know how to make the printer do the thing I need it to do. Like, I don't know. I need it to print out in a square book that's folded. That's what I need. And what it's giving me is eight and a half by 11 that's not folded and not square. I don't know what to do. So we did like 200 of these things all day on the Saturday before because I didn't want to mess it up. It was due Sunday morning. I didn't want to let anybody down. And so I fear failure. That is my main driver. So like if you'll do this, it'd be great. I'll never do it. But if you don't do this, you will fail. I will stay up 48 hours to get it done. So I'm hand stapling each one of these things. I'm measuring them out and hand cutting to eight and a half by 11 and the borders around the whole thing and then folding them myself, like nice and neat. I get it done. I array them on the information table. Look at what Nate did. And then we get there Sunday morning, very proud of what I've just done. And Jonathan gets there. And I go, hey, dude, I finished these. Did you see them? And he takes a look at it. He's like, oh, yeah, that's good. Good job, man. Thanks. And he sets that down. About five minutes later, I look over, and the volunteers that day have been instructed to just sweep those into the trash can. Just throw them all away. These are garbage. And listen, you think that's mean. That was the right choice. Those things were terrible. They were, I knew as I was cutting them, I can't believe this. This looks like an eighth grade art project with someone with no talent. Like this is awful. And I knew it was awful. And really, I was grateful because in the decision to throw those away, he saved me the shame that was going to come from everyone discovering that, oh, isn't that sweet that Nate did these? Like, I didn't need that in my life. So it sounds mean, but he actually did me a favor, right? And then he put Kyle on it. Like three weeks later, there's this, not that Kyle. Kyle's not good at that stuff. Another guy named Kyle who is good at that stuff. Kyle's the student pastor here. He used to work with me at Greystone. But we had a worship pastor there named Kyle, and he was good at that stuff. He put it all together, and it was this nice glossy color pamphlet that unfolded and had minimal words and maximum pictures and looked way better. And Jonathan was like, great job, Kyle. And I think they still have that sitting over there, okay? Here's the thing. I didn't have the direction or the competence to do what I needed to do. I was groping in the dark to try to do a good job at this assignment, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I didn't know what he had in mind and I was ill-equipped to get it done. I did not have the talent to make it happen. I think that's how it would feel to try to follow God without the law. I think that's how it would feel to try to follow God without the Bible. Just this loose idea that we're supposed to obey him, we're supposed to love. I think we should probably love our neighbors. I think we should probably not steal things. This all seems good. But then in the nuances of the day-to-day, how do I please this God? I am ill-equipped and the mission is undefined. I don't know. And so the law brings clarity to a place that was unclear. The law says, okay, you want to be right with me? You want to know what it takes to please me? Here are the rules. There's 10 of them. The law communicates. Now, this is not what God communicated, but this is what they heard. And over time, this is what the law came to communicate. And this is actually in your notes if you want to write it down. The law came to communicate, if you obey me, I will love you. You want some clarity? You want to know what you need to do to please the God that talks to Moses? You want to know what you need to do day in and day out? Then here's the law. Here's what you need to do. If you do this, I will love you. And then the Jewish tradition, the rabbis, what they would do is the law is here. The line is here. Do not cross this line. So what they would do to make extra sure that they never crossed the line and faltered in the law is that they would draw their own line back here. And then somebody else would go, oh, that's not far enough. And then they would keep backing up and keep backing up and keep backing up so that they would stay away from this. And so God continued to add more laws like the fine print undergirding the other laws, like honor your father and mother. Here's the 38 laws that will help you do that. Honor the Sabbath. Here's the 150 laws about the Sabbath. And so over the course of history and in the book of Leviticus, we have over 630 laws that they accrued, and they lived according to the law. And so they celebrated this each year when they celebrated the Feast of Weeks at the conclusion of Pentecost, 50 days after the Feast of Firstfruits, because it gave them clarity. It gave them their heritage. It made Jews Jewish. It showed that God loved them and was communicating with them, and it gave them a clear path to be right with their Creator. The problem with the law is really twofold. It engenders exhaustion and it engenders frustration. Legalism. It engenders exhaustion and it engenders legalism. It engenders legalism because now our spirituality is defined by how well we follow the rules. Some of us have been in environments like this. I can remember growing up in the 90s in evangelical world in high school. For me, I don't know how it was in your high schools, but for me in the context that I grew up in Atlanta, if you're in high school and you don't do things you shouldn't do with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, and you don't cuss, and you don't drink, and you don't smoke weed, you don't do those four things, and you do go to church, you're an excellent human. You're the best possible version of Christianity. That was it. And if you did one of those things, then you're kind of okay, but you probably can't be a leader in your youth group. You probably wouldn't be an elder or a deacon one day in your church. That was the rules. I grew up in that legalism. If you don't cuss, you don't do inappropriate things with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, and you don't do drugs and you don't drink, then you are a phenomenal Christian. Never mind that you have all these bad habits going on in private. Never mind that you're pompous and you're filled up because you think you're better than everybody who does those things. Never mind all that. That's what the law does. It engenders legalism. And gray area. And then we start asking questions like, is it a sin if I do this? I know that this is wrong, but can I get away with this? Right? More dangerously, it engenders frustration and I think exhaustion. Because the law says, if you want to be right with me, here are the rules. Here's what you have to do. And so you set yourself about doing that, and you fail, usually within a couple of hours. You feel bad about your failure. You go to God in sorrow. You perform a sacrifice. You're forgiven. You're good with God again because the law has made that provision, and now you start over. And you try really hard this time. I'm really gonna honor God. I'm really gonna have the right attitude. I'm really not gonna do that thing. I'm not gonna mess up anymore. And then you mess up. You feel bad. You perform a sacrifice. You start over. Try hard, fail, start over. Try hard, fail, start over. It's the whole cycle of the Old Testament. And we've seen this in our life. We've seen this in our life. And what happens eventually when you try hard and you fail, eventually instead of starting over, you just quit. Instead of starting over, you just go, I'll never be able to do it. I can never be who God wants me to be. I can never be right with him. I can never follow the law well enough. I can never follow all the rules right enough. I can never be the person that I see in my church. I can't be those people. So I'm out. I'm done. And we walk away. I think this is what happens with a lot of kids who grow up in church and then they fall away in college. We know this story. it's very prevalent. It happened with a lot of us. A big part of that is we grew up in some version of faith where we were legalistic and we were told that God accepts us based on our behavior. And then we get off and we have a little bit of freedom and honestly, we're tired of trying. So we just stop. We know this frustration. And if we don't, if we still think one day I can be good enough, one day I can still, it's possible for me to behave in such a way that I will honor God with my behavior day in and day out. I would introduce you to what I call the torment of motives. There's this actually philosophical question. It's been, I mean, the debate's been going on for centuries. Is it possible to do anything that is truly good? Some of you guys may have thought about this before. And basically it states that there's no truly unselfish act. That when you do something good, and you're nice to somebody, you hold the door for someone, and you go, that's a good act, that's positive. And you go, yeah, that's great, why'd you do that? Well, I just want to be courteous. Why do you want to be courteous? Keep asking those questions, you know what you'll get to? I want other people to like me. That's selfish. You didn't hold that door for them, you did it for you. That's tough. There's actually a Friends episode about this. Joey and Phoebe debate this, like through the course of the show. If you don't know Friends, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna give you the context for Friends, but if you do, great. There's two people on a TV show and they're debating back and forth. And finally, Phoebe feels like she thinks of the one thing, the one altruistic act that she can do that's truly good. And so she goes to the park, and she lets a bee sting her. She said, look, I did it. This caused me pain. I got nothing out of this. It was good. And Joey says, well, the bee died, man. That's murder. Even if we think we're good, even if we have a good behavior week, if you get down to the heart of the matter and what motivated that behavior, that's still nasty. It's still muddy. It's still selfish. It's still self-centered. And so when the law says, if you obey me, I will love you, what we find out is that that leads to frustration and it leads to legalism and we end up exhausted. And it's in the middle of that exhaustion. That's not just for us, but the Hebrew people too. They lived that generation after generation. It's in the middle of that exhaustion that the second Pentecost shows up. Second Pentecost we find in Acts chapters one and two. What's going on here is that Jesus has come and he's lived his life. He's died on the cross. And then he ascends into heaven. The disciples gather in an upper room. And then they receive second Pentecost in the book of Acts. It's the you're supposed to do it when you get the gift. So they're just sitting there. The Holy Spirit appears in the form of flaming tongues. They go out on the balcony of this upper room and begin to preach. And gathered all around them are the citizenry of Jerusalem as other people from the surrounding areas in all kinds of languages and all different tongues. And they begin to speak. And these people hear the gospel in their language because they're still in Jerusalem. Because what just happened is 50 days ago, we murdered a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. We put him on the cross and we crucified him. But when he died, the sky turned black and the veil tore in two and some pretty seismic things happened. And then three days later, he wasn't in his tomb anymore. And we got to know what in the world is going on with this Jesus guy and what in the world is happening with these disciples. What did we just do? And so at Pentecost, Peter goes out and he tells them what they did. He said, that man that you crucified, that was the Messiah. And he shows how all the scriptures pointed to Jesus and prepared them for Jesus. And even the festivals prepared them for Jesus. And he helps them see what we've been seeing for the past six weeks. Everything points to Jesus. God's been prepping us for the Messiah. And he was the one and you killed him. And they go, what do we do? You're right. We believe you. What do we do? Peter says at the end of chapter two, repent and be baptized. Repent. Repent of who you thought Jesus was. You thought he was just a man. You thought he was just a teacher. You thought he was just a prophet, and because of that, you killed him. But he is the son of the living God. So repent of who you thought he was. Admit that he is Lord. Put your faith in him and be baptized. And it says that day that 3,000 were added to their number. Do you know what that is? That's the birth of the church. That's where we came from. It worked. We're on another continent 2,000 years later. It's pretty good. I've been on the southern tip of Africa in Cape Town in Masapumaleli, standing outside of a church, looking up at the clouds, listening to them praise God in a language that I don't understand and going, God, your plan worked. Pentecost worked. While I was there, there was a team there from Australia, from the other end of the globe. It worked. That's the birth of the church. And then we get the seminal passage in chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, that defines the early church. They gathered in their homes. Two days later, first fruits, Sunday. Then you count 50 days, and it's Pentecost, the receiving of the law. The Holy Spirit speaks, and he gives them the law. After Jesus dies and goes to heaven, on the day of first fruits, they count 50 days later, and what happens? Second Pentecost. You see? Passover. Jesus was celebrating Passover with the disciples. He's arrested and crucified. That's Friday. Two days later on Sunday, he raises from the dead. That's Easter. That's the feast of first fruits. He goes to God. He offers himself as the first fruits of the rest of the harvest that's about to come, that he's just one with his death and his resurrection. He counts 50 days. 50 days later, the disciples are holed up. They're supposed to be celebrating the feast of weeks, but they don't know what to do. They're waiting for a gift. The Holy Spirit speaks to them in the form, comes to them in the form of tongues, and they present the gospel instead of the law. Thousands of years ago, the law was delivered. The Holy Spirit spoke on the day of Pentecost and he delivered to them the law. And the law engenders frustration and exhaustion and legalism. And in the middle of that frustration and exhaustion, God delivers Jesus and it follows the same timeline. And on the feast of weeks at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit speaks again, except this time he speaks with the gospel. And if the law says, if you obey me, I will love you, then the gospel says, I love you, obey me. Totally different. The gospel says, I love you. I don't care what you do. I don't care what you're going to do. I don't care if you don't have your quiet time for the next 50 days. I don't care if you have it for the next 50 days. I love you. There's nothing that you can do to make me love you more. I don't care if you tithe 50% of your income in 2020. I will not love you more at the end of that year than if you tithe nothing. I don't care if you join eight small groups or if you join no small groups. I love you the same. You can go have the best week possible this week and be walking with the Lord and check all the boxes and do all the things you're supposed to do. And guess what? When you get to the end of this week, God will not love you any more than he does right this second because it's impossible because he loves you as much as he possibly can right now. And if you do nothing this week, if your life spirals out of control and all the things in the shadow are thrust into the light and you're a wreck, God will love you just as much at the end of this week as he did at the beginning. The gospel says, I love you. Obey me. I love you. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to perform. I'll clean you up. I'll get you right. Obey me. Do you know what else this does? This purifies our motives. Because now I'm obeying out of the sense of God loves me so much, I'm blown away by his love. I can't believe that he loves me in this way. I just want to go do what he asked me to do. I want other people to know this love. Can I tell you where I see this show up in my life? It's very few places, if I'm honest. But I see this show up in my sermons. When I'm not in a good spot, which is more regularly than you know, I'm not joking. It just is. There's all kinds of mixed motives laced into when I preach. I want you to think I'm good at it. I want you to tell your friends. I want my friends from back home to listen and miss me. I want it to be good. I want all the same ego crud wrapped up in what I do that some of you do. Some of you are pure of heart and you can't relate to this in any way. Jen, my wife Jen's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never done that in my life. But when I'm not totally healthy, my prep is laced with the desire to do good. But when I am healthy, when I'm overwhelmed by how much the Lord loves me in spite of myself, I care less about doing good. When it's really pure, there is this thing in the Bible that you guys have got to know. And I'm going to get up and I'm going to tell you. And I don't care if you think it's good or not. I don't care if I think it's good. I just want you to know this. Those are the good ones. I want to live my life like that. I want you to live your life like that. When someone says, why'd you do that thing? Why'd you give those people that money? Why'd you wait? Why didn't you yell at that person? Why don't you fight more with your children? What's going on? I want your sincere answer to be, God loves me, so I love them. How pure would our lives be? We wouldn't have to try to obey anymore. We would never ask the question, is this sin? Never. We would just walk in this reality that God loves us. Then we don't have to do anything. Do you know the whole point of the law was to get us to a place where we realized our need for that? That's what Paul says in Romans 8. Romans 8 starts out and he says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Okay, so that means that there's no blame. Everybody who's in Christ Jesus, everybody who has faith is right with God. They don't need to perform anymore or try anymore. They're good. He said, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, was unable to do. Which means that the law, the point of the law was trying to show us how to be pure and earn our way into heaven. But because we are human, we can't do that. The law, weakened by the flesh, was unable to do. So God sent his son in the likeness of sin and in flesh, who condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Jesus met the standards for the law so that you didn't have to. He broke the cycle of frustration and exhaustion so that you didn't have to. And he freed you up to walk in this freedom of simply being overwhelmed by the fact that God loves you and then loving other people. That's why he says this new command I give you. All 630 laws, this new command I give you. Just go love people as I loved you. Love others as I have loved you, is what Jesus says. That's the whole point of Second Pentecost. And here's the problem with this. We have a constant, nagging drift to the First Pentecost. We are a people of the Second Pentecost. We are a people who are not judged by how we act. We're judged by where we place our faith. We are a people who are not encumbered with required obedience. We get to obey out of love. We are a people of the second Pentecost. The problem is we're more comfortable with the first Pentecost. We're more comfortable drifting back towards law. And this is the tension in the entire Old Testament. I said this tension would help you understand your Bible better. This is the tension, excuse me, in the entire New Testament is the desire for the Hebrew people to go back to being first Pentecost people, to go back to following the law rather than living under grace. All of Acts is about the tension of, wait, wait, wait, wait, we know we have Jesus, but how many of the rules do we have to follow? Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Corinthians, the book of Hebrews, laced throughout all those books is a desire of the audience to go back and be first Pentecost people when the writers of the Bible are trying to go, no, no, no, forget about that. You're second Pentecost people. Walk in love. Walk in forgiveness. Walk in acceptance. Do that. We're people of the second Pentecost, not the first. God doesn't say to us, obey me and I love you. He says, hey, I love you. I love you so much that I sent my son for you. Now walk in obedience. We're people of the second Pentecost. And God didn't lay these over one another by mistake. Let's try to walk this week and not forget that. Let's try to do some pure things this week. And when we do the good that we do, and someone were to say, hey, why'd you do that? Let's let the sincere answer be, because God loves me. Let's pray. Father, we love you too. We are not worthy of it. We do not deserve it. We cannot earn it. God, I pray that we would be overwhelmed by it. Thank you for making us people of the second Pentecost. Thank you for seeing us in our frustration and telling us that your yoke is easy and that your burden is light. May we please live in light of the fact that we are loved by you, no matter what. And because of that, go and love other people for you. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.