Sermons tagged with Victory

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been coming in July and never before that, and I'm new to you, they gave me the month off, and they were very, very kind to do that. So again, as I iterated in the Grace Vine this week, thank you so much for being the kind of church that allows me to take a month off and be with my family and be present with my kids. When I came back to work this week and I said bye to the kids, my daughter Lily was actually disappointed, which I feel is probably a good thing. I guess that means the month went well. It would probably be bad news if she was like, praise the Lord, he's leaving again. That may be how Jen felt, but Lily was sad. And just to set the expectations for this morning, I heard comments and things as I was wrapping up the month of June to take sabbatical and then some stuff during the month and even some stuff this morning about like, oh man, this is going to be a good sermon. You had six weeks to get this one ready. Like you used to come back and light our faces on fire. No, no. I didn't think about this sermon for one single second in the month of July. Not a single one. I didn't even know that I was preaching. This is the book of Acts this morning. I didn't even know I was preaching on the book of Acts until Tuesday when I decided that it would be the book of Acts. And then some stuff happened in my week. I ended up having to go back out of town. I wrote this sermon on my parents' dinner table at 10 o'clock on Thursday night. I'm essentially winging this, and I'm rusty. So let's just tamp down expectations of good and hope for brief, and then later I'll be good. If you really want to hear the sermon that I've been thinking about all month, then you should come on September the 10th. On September the 10th, we're going to roll out the plans that we have for the church. We're almost done. We're ready to show you. We're very excited. We're going to launch the campaign in earnest. It's going to be an update, and I've been really thinking a lot about what I want to share with you guys that Sunday morning about the future of grace and what we hope for. So that's the one that I hope is really good. This is going to be fine. With that being said, you can open your Bibles not to the book of Acts, but to John chapter 16. We will get there in a second. As I think about the book of Acts and what I want you to do with Acts, so we're going to be focused on just kind of an overview of Acts. What is it? How do we use it? Why is it there? What can it teach us? One of the things to know contextually about Acts is that it's essentially the second half of the book of Luke. Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and then he wrote the Acts of the Spirit or the Acts of the Apostles, depending on which strand of the church you come from. But they're both written to a guy named Theophilus. So they're basically part one and part two of the accounts of Christ and then the accounts of the Spirit. And when I think of the book of Acts, I think of it this way as it fits into the New Testament. From a narrative perspective, the book of Acts is an atlas. I think we have that in your notes. Yes, in a narrative sense, Acts serves as an atlas. Now, here's what I mean. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, to know what this is. I see you don't know. You know lots of it. You have no clue. You never touched this in your life. Then here's what you don't know. If you're too young to know what this is, I have been entrusted with a church, the leadership of a church, with children, young lives to mold, a marriage, various stations of responsibility throughout my life. I have never felt a deeper sense of responsibility than when I was in the back seat of our 1985 Maxima with automatic seat belts and my dad would tell me to open up the Atlas and tell me where I need to turn next. That is fully locked in. I've never felt a greater sense of responsibility because you can't just let any of the kids do that. You let my sister do it, we're going to be in Kansas. It's going to be a disaster. I have to do it. And the family is relying on me. So atlases hold a great place in my heart. And when you look at an atlas, when I open this to North Carolina, the way that an atlas works, I know you guys can't see it, but you can see enough for this to work. When you look at North Carolina, it's just the whole state, right? It's an overview of the whole state. And then what you get is you get these little windows where different cities are blown up. So like Charlotte is there. Charlotte's there. But then this is Charlotte for when you get in the city, you need more detail. And then Raleigh gets its own on the next page there. This is back before 540. I was actually looking at it this morning. Yeah, this is 1995. I had to email some people who are not in the millennial demographic to get my hands on one of these. But that's how atlases work, right? There's an overview of the whole state, and then where more detail is required, there's these little windows, these little blow-ups that accompany it to give you more detail for certain parts of the map. And that's how I think about the book of Acts and how it interacts with the New Testament. When you think about the story, the narrative arc of the New Testament, from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel telling the story of Christ, to the end of the book, Revelation, and you think about chronologically, how does that flow? Acts is, from a narrative perspective, the atlas. It gives the overview. It's the state overview of the New Testament. And then the letters that we see subsequent to Acts, the Pauline epistles, Paul's letters, Romans and Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians, and all down through Philemon, those serve to me as windows into the goings on in the book of Acts. When you read through Acts, you'll see Paul go to Philippi and Thessalonica and Corinth and all the places. And then you can turn to those letters and you can get a greater detail about what's going on in those churches. And the same with the general epistles. They're kind of tucked into the narrative story of Acts. So as we approach the Bible and we think about the New Testament, the composition of it, the book of Acts serves as kind of the atlas of the roadmap that gives you the narrative arc from the Gospels to Revelation. And that's helpful for me as I think about the structure of my Bible. But far more importantly than what Acts does for the Bible in a narrative sense is what the book of Acts does in an ecclesiastical sense, in a sense that pertains to the church and to the theology of the church. So in an ecclesiastical sense, Acts serves as a telling of the great work of the Holy Spirit that links the two great works of Jesus. So an ecclesiastical church, as it pertains to the church, as it pertains to church life, as it pertains to theology and how we understand God moving and acting and working in his church, the book of Acts serves to tell the story of the great work of the Spirit, of the age of the Spirit, as that work links the two great works of Christ. Now, admittedly, theologically, for those of you who think about these things, I struggled with that sentence because Christ, according to John 1, was involved in creation. That's a great work. Christ is still at work right now as our high priest interceding on our behalf. Christ will rule forever. So I don't mean to reduce the life of Christ and the works of Christ to the death and resurrection and then his return. Those are just what I'm calling the two great works of Christ. And so in the church age that we are in, in the age of the spirit in which we find ourselves, we constantly look back to Christ on the cross, that great work, and we anticipate the next great work, the return of Christ. And the book of Acts serves as a descriptor of the age of the Holy Spirit, whose work links the two great works of Christ as the Spirit grows the church. So that's how we think about the book of Acts, and that's what it sets out to describe for us, is the work of the Spirit, the age of the Spirit and of the church, the thing that Jesus came to build. So if we want to know, okay, it's the age of the Spirit. Acts details the acts of the Spirit in this church age. Then what is the Holy Spirit supposed to do? What is its job? What can we expect of it? What are we looking for as we look at the works of the Spirit? The best answer to this question actually comes in John chapter 16. I know it might feel weird that the highlighted verse on a sermon on the book of Acts is from the Gospel of John, but I think after we read it together, it will make more sense to you. This verse, this passage, is Jesus talking. John 15, 16, and 17 is this long discourse from Jesus just to the disciples. It's some good, intimate, revelatory teaching. It's capped off at the end of it by the high priestly prayer when Jesus, it's the longest recorded prayer of Christ where he prays for them and the church to come. And he prays for you and for me if we have placed our faith in Jesus. And in the midst of that discourse, Jesus tells them, I know you're sad that I'm leaving, but it's actually better that I am. And here's what he says in John chapter 16, verses 6 through 11. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. It's a threefold purpose. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So Jesus outlines to his disciples and to us this threefold purpose of the Holy Spirit. And what I want you to see this morning is what that means. What does it mean to convict the world of sin, to convict the world of righteousness, to convict the world of judgment? And then how does that show up in the book of Acts? And then not only in the book of Acts, but in our lives as well. So if we look at the first one, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. And then he gives detail of this down in verse 8. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Verse 9, concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. This is the apex sin, to not believe in Christ. It's the one that can't be fixed. It's the thing that we have to do. And so when we ask what it means for the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, I think it means this. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin by helping people believe in Jesus. And I know I already taught you ecclesiastical. Now I'm throwing in salvific. That just means something that has the power to save. And so this repentance of who Jesus is, repenting of who you thought he was and accepting who he says he is, is the fundamental repentance to enter Christendom. It is the foundational repentance for anyone who would seek to become a Christian. It's why I articulate as often as I can that to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus was who he says he was, he did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. The fundamental repentance to become a Christian is to repent of who you thought Jesus was and accept who he says he is. And I believe this to be true because of how the Holy Spirit works in the book of Acts to bring this repentance about in the crowds of the people of Jerusalem. If you look in your Bible in Acts chapter 2, what you'll see is that Jesus has died, he's resurrected, he's milled about for 40 days interacting with people and freaking people out, and then he ascends into heaven. And when he ascends into heaven, he tells the disciples to wait until the appointed time and they'll know what to do. So the disciples are assembled in this upper room and they don't know what to do. They're just looking at each other going, what do we do now? I don't know. He just said, wait. Wait on what? I don't know. We'll know when it happens. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is abuzz. They're trying to figure out what's going on with this guy and what these guys are doing in this upper room. So they're all milling around outside, thousands of people just waiting to see what the disciples are going to do. And one day at Pentecost, the flaming tongues descend down from heaven and light on the disciples and they are given the gift of tongues and they go out onto the balcony, onto the portico, and they preach to the crowds that are gathered there. Peter preaches in his own language and each person hears it in their language. That's the gift of tongues that we see in Acts. And they're all convicted and they all want to be saved. Peter goes out and he preaches the gospel. He tells them who Jesus is. And their response is, we believe, what do we do? And Peter's response, my Bible scholars already know, repent and be baptized. And this is something that I've chewed on for years. But repent of what? We're tempted to say, we often say, repent of your sins. Sure. All of them? Perfectly? This is the line of delineation for salvation? I should repent of everything I've ever done and am doing and I should repent perfectly and if I can't do that then I cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? Certainly perfect repentance of all the things isn't the line because there would be no one saved but Christ. Because of that I am convinced more and more that what Peter is telling them to do is repent of who you thought he was before you killed him and when you killed him. This crowd is the same crowd that was surrounding the courts of Pilate when Pilate was going, we don't need to kill this guy. He hasn't done anything. Why don't you just let me release him and kill Barabbas? And the crowd said, no, give us Barabbas and kill Jesus. And Pilate says, well, this isn't on me. And the crowd says, well, his blood is on our hands and on the hands of our children. It's that same crowd. I don't know if it's one for one, but a majority of them are in the same place. It's that same ethic, that same group of people. And so Peter is telling them, repent of who you thought Jesus was, that guy that you killed, and confess that he is the Lord, that he is who he says he is, and then be baptized. It is salvific repentance. It is foundational repentance for all people for all time. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of the sin of not seeing Jesus and accepting him for who he says he is. And he is still doing this work today. If you have a friend that you are trying to love towards the kingdom of heaven and share the gospel with, it is we work, we say words, we pray, we do. It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict and to open up eyes to see Jesus for who he says he is. And often, in our culture, in this day and age, in a nation that is very close to post-Christian, where everyone has heard the name of Jesus, and if they're not following Jesus, they probably have a reason, and here's the thing, it's probably a good one. In our culture now, the Holy Spirit has to do a lot of the same work that he had to do back in the church age, back in the age of Christ. What did he have to do to help them see that Jesus was who he says he was? He had to knock off the scales of religiosity and tradition and poor teaching and well-meaning teachers who were slightly askew and led them to an expectation of Christ that he never set for himself. And so the Holy Spirit is doing that same work today in our hearts and in our lives. I read a stat this week that over the last 20 years or 25 years, over 40 million Americans have stopped going to church. Why is that the case? Why are we living in this deconstructed culture? Well, part of it is on them. Part of it is they had great pastors and great teachers and great people in their life, and they just weren't listening. And that's part of the deal. But a larger part is because we've done church really badly, because we've depicted Jesus as who he isn't, because we put expectations on him that he didn't ask for. And so people are growing up in the church blind to who Jesus really is because the teaching in the church has been so bad. And the Holy Spirit has to convict us in our adulthood and help us knock the scales off of the Jesus that we were taught and help us see the Jesus that presents himself in scripture and in the hearts of people who love us well. So the Holy Spirit is still doing that work. And I'm not so ignorant as to believe that he's not doing that work for some of us in here today who have our doubts. I would just posit to you that maybe your doubts about who Jesus is aren't because of who he said he was, but because of what someone else told you that he was. And maybe the Holy Spirit can help open your eyes to see past those things. Then Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness. What does it mean to convict of righteousness? I think of it like this. Jesus says that he convicts of righteousness because he is going to be with the Father, and that's a little bit mysterious. And so for this one, I did, I did my research, which I know, I know it's a surprise for everyone, but I did my research and I think it's easiest to understand it like this. The Holy Spirit convicts those who believe to grow in Christ likeness. So once, once he's convicted you to believe and you see Jesus for who he is, then he convicts you to grow in Christ-likeness, to grow in your own righteousness. This is the process that the Bible and theologians call sanctification. The sanctification process is to become more like Christ in character. I grew up thinking of salvation as this moment, as this point of inflection in time where you were saved or you were not, and that is still partially true. But now as an adult, I think of salvation as a process from the moment God opens our eyes in faith to the moment he claims us in eternity and secures us in his kingdom forever. That is a process as we live the rest of our lives as Christians. And in that process, in our time of living, God sanctifies us. He convicts us of places where we're not righteous, where we're not Christ-like. And he shows us where we need to be more righteous and more like Christ. The Holy Spirit convicts. Now that we have opened our eyes and we believe in him, then the Holy Spirit says, good, that's step one. Now step two, I'm going to convict you of where you're not righteous so that you can become more righteous and more like Christ in character. We see him doing this to Peter in the book of Acts. We see the Holy Spirit acting this way in Acts. In Acts chapter 10, there's a conversation between Peter and Cornelius, and Peter receives a vision. Peter was a good Jew. He was a Jew's Jew. And in this time, there was several dietary restrictions that had religious connotations to the Jew. There was things he could and could not eat and people he could and could not eat with. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in a dream, gives him a vision, and basically says, hey, you can leave those rules behind. Knock it off with that. Eat with Cornelius. And Paul has to end up getting on to him. You eat with Gentiles when no one else is around, but when Jews are around, you won't do it because you're a hypocrite and you're scared of other people and you need to knock it off and quit being a sissy. It's this moment of conviction for Peter. And what I love about that moment of conviction, and it's so important for us in our moments of conviction, I think conviction can sometimes have a negative or judgmental connotation. That we feel that when we're convicted of a sin, that that's somehow God telling us, hey, you're not pleasing me right now. That's the spirit in your ear saying, you should stop that behavior because it's not pleasing to the Lord. It displeases God for you to do that. Over sabbatical, I got the fresh conviction of get off your phone and engage with your children, right? Well, the conviction doesn't come from the spirit because me being on my phone and reading the New York Times or my Kindle app or whatever it is, is sinful. And God wants me to stop doing that because it displeases him. And the holy watchdog is disappointed in me. He's convicted me of that because he's saying, hey, by doing that, you're not loving your kids as well as you could be. So love your kids. And this all makes sense when you consider the new commandment that Christ gave us. Christ left the disciples with one commandment. Go and love others as I have loved you. That's the new commandment I give to you. That's the commandment for all Christians and all of Christendom. Go love others as Christ has loved us. And so the conviction of the Holy Spirit towards Christ's likeness and righteousness isn't a conviction of displeasure before God. It's a conviction of, hey, when you do that, you're not loving other people well. When you engage in that behavior, you're not obeying the command to love others as I have loved you. Look at Peter. He says, stop, knock it off with the dietary restrictions. Why? Because those restrictions are prohibiting you from loving Cornelius in a way that he needs to be loved. He thinks he's unacceptable to God because you won't eat with him. So stop it, man. You can't love Cornelius well. This is what convicts me. This is an unconvincing statement. I know. I need to be healthier. I have young kids. I'm old. I did the math the other day. I'm 42. When my grandma was 42, I was two. I was John's age. My son, that's nuts. I'm going to be 70 when he has a career and meets someone. I would like to meet his kids. So I got to knock it off with the red meat. I got to knock it off with filet of fish, which is going to be a tough battle. Those are good. That's the Holy Spirit's conviction. Not because those things are displeasing before the Lord, but because if I want to love my children and the next generation well and be present for them in old age, then I need to do what I need to do now to be ready for that. Now, I don't know what the Lord's timing is, and I don't know what's going to happen between now and then, but I am convicted that I need to do my part to be healthy for my family, and I think that's a good conviction for us to have. Not because what we consume is displeasing before the Lord, but because what we consume doesn't enable us to love the people in our lives the way he's asked us to do that. So when we're convicted to righteousness, what we are convicted towards is Christ's likeness and loving people better. All sin that you have in your life, all unholiness that you have in your life. It's so abhorrent to God because it does displease him, because it does disqualify us, but more than that, it disables you from doing what he's asked you to do, which is to love other people well. So when he convicts towards righteousness, he's convicting us towards love. But the other important part of this is coming to grips with the abhorrence of our sin. And not just the abhorrence of it, but the weight of it, the volume of it. It's right and good for the Holy Spirit to hold up a mirror before us and for us to be crushed underneath the weight of our sin because of the place it brings us to. I came across this as I was doing a little bit of research this week. This is from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was the pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle in London in the late 1800s. He's called by many the prince of preachers. He may have been the greatest preacher that ever lived. He comes to remind them not only of God's loveliness, but of their own unloveliness, of their own enmity and hatred to this God of love, and consequently of their terrible sin and thus ill-using one so infinitely kind. Listen, the Holy Ghost does he want to convict us towards greater love for one another, he does want us to feel the weight of our sin and our utter inability to fight the battle against it alone. When the Holy Spirit has done his job and we have invited him into our hearts to do his work, he will so overwhelm us with the weight of our iniquity that we will cry out to the Father, I am helpless. It will be the cry of Paul in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? If you are here and you think you can just leave this room determined to be more righteous, then you will not be more righteous. And if by some miracle you succeed in breaking the chains of one sin in your life, you will usher in the new chain of pride at having done it on your own. Congratulations. The Holy Spirit pushes us towards love of others and helps us feel the weight of our sins that we might be reliant on him and his work rather than ourselves. That's how he convicts of righteousness. Now, how does he convict of judgment? What does it mean to convict us of judgment? Because the time of the evil one is coming. Let's sum it up like this. The Holy Spirit convicts concerning judgment by reminding us that good will triumph over evil. When Paul, we see this in Acts, when Paul goes to the Greek Areopagus, Mars Hill, he interacts with the philosophers there who like to talk about ideas. And a lot of you guys know the story. They say you have monuments to all the gods. I see here you have a monument to an unknown God. I know who that God is. That's actually Jesus. And he goes on to share the gospel with them. And then the end of that passage in Acts chapter 10, it says that they were convicted by the Spirit about who Jesus was and an assurance of the judgment to come. An assurance of where they would go when they died. We see the Holy Spirit doing that work in Acts. And the Holy Spirit does that work now. When we say that his job is to convict us of judgment, it means his job is to remind us that there is a time coming when that judgment will happen. And if you are not a believer, that judgment is terrifying and wrathful and awful, and you ought to be terrified of it. But when you are a Christian, we can look forward to that judgment with hopeful anticipation. That moment that I preach about often when Jesus comes crashing down out of the clouds in Revelation 19 and on his leg is righteous and true and he comes back to restore creation and to redeem us and to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. As Christians we cling to the hope of that moment. It's what gets us through death. It's what gets us through trials. It's what gets us through hard times is the belief in the arctic hope and the assurance that one day Jesus will do what he says he's going to do as the Holy Spirit seeks to link the great works of Christ, not just from his death and resurrection, but links the church age to the return of Christ when it's all said and done to tell us die for, when he comes back to get us. So the Holy Spirit is constantly, constantly, constantly pointing you to Christ. In sin, he points us to who Christ is to believe in him. In righteousness, he points us to the character of Christ to become more like him. And in judgment, he points us to the future of Christ in hope that we might cling to these things in life. That's the role of the Holy Spirit, to point you to Jesus, past, present, and future. To assure you, while you watch someone you know fade away, that you will see them again in glory and they will not look like this. To assure you, when you watch your children struggling through something you can't fix, that there's more to the story than this, it ends better. To assure you that the people you know that have been degenerated by illness or mental issues or whatever, that one day you will get to meet a healthy, loving version of them. The Holy Spirit points us back to the victory on the cross, to the victory of Easter, where all the crud that you deal with was broken and defeated. If only we can place our faith there. So that's the role of the book of Acts. That's the role of the Spirit in the book of Acts and now. And what's wonderful about Acts is it's the only book in the Bible that ends with an ellipsis. Acts isn't finished, and neither is the Spirit. The book of Acts isn't done being written. We're still in the book of Acts. Now, I'm not getting crazy. I'm not saying we're adding stuff to the Bible. All right, relax. But we're still into the church age that was ushered in at the ascension of Christ that awaits the return of Christ. We are still writing the story of the church and the Holy Spirit is still moving in the writing of that story. And he's still moving in you to convict you of your belief in Christ, of your Christ-like character and of your hope in what he will do one day. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the church and the gift that it is to us. Thank you for all the expressions of the church happening all over our community and all over the world today. God, I pray that each person in this service and the service next door and the service across the country and across the globe, that each person is somehow convicted by your spirit today, is somehow warmed by the hope of your spirit, by the promises of your spirit, is somehow moved closer to love through the spirit opening their eyes. God, I pray that the people who sit in the services today who don't yet believe you because they don't see you for who you are would have their eyes opened even just a little bit more today. We thank you for the church and what it is. We thank you for the church age. We thank you for your spirit, for your helper, who points us constantly to your son. And it's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

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

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. Thank you for being here on Palm Sunday as we catapult into Easter. Easter is just about here. It feels like this year is going by so very quickly. And I love Easter. This Palm Sunday is part five of our series, The Table, and we're going to be looking at the Last Supper, the most famous of Jesus's meals at the table. And then next week we get to Easter. For me, Easter is my favorite holiday. Easter is victory holiday. Easter is when Jesus wins and death loses its sting. Easter, to me, for a Christian, is the best. It's the greatest holiday. I know Thanksgiving is great, and I know that Christmas is fantastic, but for me, from a spiritual perspective, Easter is the one that I most enjoy celebrating. Although Christmas is tough because Christmas is pretty good, and one of the things I really like about Christmas and the celebration of Christmas is how understated it is, how understated the arrival of Christ is. I know that's funny, but when it's understated in the Bible, not understated in our culture. Okay, sorry about that. That's less than clear. That also should have been read as a joke. But no, no, no. The arrival of Jesus is incredibly understated. And as a people, I think we are drawn to humble, understated things. When you consider it, the entire Old Testament points to this coming Messiah. God sends his son to earth to reconcile us to him. We're going to talk about that more in a little bit. And Jesus shows up. And when he shows up, when this great Messiah shows up from heaven, we would expect him, I think, to show up like he does in Revelation 19 with just armies of angels behind him and trumpets sounding. And in he thunders to the world. And that's not how he arrives. He arrives as a helpless baby to a nondescript mom in a nondescript town in a nondescript country. And it's just like, ta-da, he's here. And I think that's a really neat part of the Christmas story, and it's a really neat part of how our God works. Our God is remarkably understated, leaving us often to find the impact and the largesse of the things that he does. Similarly, I believe that the Last Supper is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. This is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday launches us into Holy Week. Palm Sunday signifies the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem. If you've read your Gospels carefully or closely or paid attention over the course of your life as you've interacted with the stories of Jesus, you'll find this peculiar thing that Jesus does whenever he performs a miracle. It feels like he's always like, okay, I'm going to heal your leprosy, but don't tell anybody. Okay, I'm going to heal your mom, but don't tell anybody I did it. And you're like, why is he doing this? This is weird. Isn't the point to tell other people about Jesus? Because Jesus knows that if too much fanfare gets out, that certain things are going to be set in motion that cannot be undone that will lead to his crucifixion. So when he goes into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he is knowingly setting in motion the wheels of events that will lead to his crucifixion. That's what Holy Week is. On Friday is the crucifixion of Jesus. It's called Good Friday. We're going to have a service here, and we're going to reflect on that. But I wanted to take some time this morning to reflect on what the Last Supper was and why it is so very significant. Because I think the Last Supper, this last Passover meal, the institution of communion together, again, is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. And I want to tell you why I think this, and I want that to allow us to kind of reflect on the significance of what the Last Supper represents. So before I continue, let me just read you the account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of Luke. It's in all four Gospels, but we've been going through the book of Luke, so I'm going to read from the Gospel of Luke in chapter 22, verses 15 through 20. He said, And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant of my blood. We'll stop right there. It's easy to just be reading this story, to read the Gospels, get to chapter 22, read this part. They're having dinner. They break bread. He says, this is a symbol of my crucifixion. If you continue to read the story, by the way, one of you is going to betray me, and then move on. But I want us to understand what's happening here. Because, again, the Passover, the Last Supper, immortalized by Da Vinci, is one of the most significant, impactful nights in all of the Bible, what he's talking about here. Do you understand that the whole Bible points to this night, to this weekend, to this death, and to this resurrection? Do you understand that the whole Bible points to the illustration of bread and wine that Jesus is using here? Even the night on which he chose to do it, they're celebrating Passover. Passover is a Hebrew celebration that is a celebration and reminder of the grace that God gave them when they were in Egypt to set them free from slavery. If you turn to the very beginning of your Bible in the book of Exodus, what you find is that God's chosen people are slaves to the Egyptians. And that God raises up a man named Moses, and he gives him the instruction, go to Pharaoh and set my people free. Pharaoh does not like this idea. God sends 10 plagues to change Pharaoh's mind. And the last one that he sends to break his will and to change his mind once and for all is the death of the firstborn son by the angel of death passing over Egypt. And the plague is this one night, the angel of death is going to pass over the nation of Egypt. And if you do not have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on your doorpost, on your doorframe, then that angel of death claims your firstborn son. If you do have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on the frame of your door of your house, then that blood is sufficient for the death and your firstborn son is not claimed. That is a very clear picture of the death of Jesus on the cross. I'm not going to go through the whole thing and make you work with me, but if you were to be a Hebrew person at that time and you heard that you needed to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on your doorpost, you would paint it in the top center and you would paint it at about the height of your shoulder on the two frames. And that would form the shape of a cross on your door, the blood of a spotless lamb. What was Jesus called years later? Behold, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. We just sang about the lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb of God who was sacrificed, who died a death so that we don't have to. And even though they didn't realize what they were doing when they were painting the blood on the doorframe, they were painting a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. They, without knowing it, were pointing you to this and pointing all of history to the cross. They were painting a picture of what Jesus is depicting in the Last Supper, and then they go into the desert. And in the desert, some scholars say they could have been about 500,000 strong. However many it was, it was too many to feed off of what they could find to eat in the desert. So what did God do? You know. He sent manna. He sent the daily bread. He sent the daily sustenance for what they needed. He sent them enough for that day. We hear echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer. When the disciples look at Jesus and they're like, you pray different than anybody we've ever heard. Will you teach us how to pray? Jesus prays in part. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us our manna. Give us what we need for today. Give us the Jesus that we need to get through today. Give us the grace and the peace and the mercy and the love and the kindness and the persistence to get through today. What happened in the desert, in between Egypt and Israel, every day is God providing enough for that day. It is a picture of his provision of Jesus later. Manna is most closely associated with bread. It is the picture of the bread that Jesus would break at the Passover meal. It's a picture of who Jesus was. In the book of John, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. When you eat of me, you will hunger no more. He says, on the living water, when you drink of me, you will thirst no more. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am all that you need. And then as I was thinking about this and just, and there's more to do, I just don't have time to tie together all the symbolism in scripture that points us to the Passover meal and what that symbolizes. But even as I was thinking about last week's sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, there was five loaves of bread. And Jesus took them and he began to break them. And he began to feed everyone who was there, maybe about 20,000 people. And I wonder if there is a point, like bread number one. This one's good for about 3,500 folks. Oh, that one's done. And then he goes to the next one. I doubt that. This is just a guess. Okay, this is just a hunch. This is not in the Bible. This is just Nate talking to you. I wonder if he didn't take the first bread and break it, put it in the basket and the second one and break it and put it in the basket and the third and then the fourth and then he got to the fifth. And I wonder if that was the one that just kept breaking. I wonder if that was the one that had enough. And I wonder if the first four loaves weren't a picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the temporary sacrifices that we make. They only work for a little bit and then they run out. And then if that last piece of bread wasn't a picture of Christ being broken over and over and over and over and over again for all the people there so that they had more than what they needed. Even if it didn't go that way. And he dispersed the breaking equally over the five. It's bread being broken over and over and over and over again for all who were there so that all could have their fill. It is a picture of the crucifixion. Of Jesus. The bread of life being broken for us to give to all who have need. So much so that there is plenty of Jesus left over to go around for everyone. All of the Bible points to this night that is a picture of what happens in the hours to come. What I want us to understand is that what's symbolized here at the Passover meal, at the Last Supper, our entire history points to this singular act. Our entire history, the entire history of the world culminates and points to this singular act. What happens, what Jesus is depicting there in Luke 22 when he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Speaking of his body hanging on the cross. This is my blood that's poured out for you. Speaking of his blood that is spilt from the cross. All of history points to that singular act. It is the denouement of human history, what we see happen on Good Friday and then subsequently on Easter Sunday. And this Passover meal is a picture of it. Not only that, but all of our human history and all of our present traditions point back to what happened on the cross. So all of human history points to the singular act. And then everything that happens from then continually points us back to what happens on the cross. We're going to celebrate baptisms next week. Those are made possible by the cross. We're going to celebrate communion this week. That's made possible by the cross. Everything, everything, everything in history points to the crucifixion of Christ. Which begs the question, and it's really what this morning needs to be about, why is the crucifixion worth all of history's focus? Why is this one singular act worth all of the organization and the pointing and the pictures and the imagery that we find in the Old Testament pointing us to the crucifixion? Why does all of history reflect back on and reliant upon the crucifixion? Now, I know that we're in a Bible-believing church, so this seems like an obvious question. Why is the crucifixion such a big deal? And many of you know the answers. But I did think it was worth taking a Sunday as we barrel into Easter to reflect and to consider what is won for us at the death of Christ? What exactly happened on the cross? I think for many of us, if not all of us, we go to this place in our mind, well, that's how we're saved. And that's fine. That's a good start. But I would encourage us to reflect much more deeply on what is actually happening in the death of the Son of God on the cross. I'm not sure that you can make an exhaustive list of all the things that the crucifixion does, of all the things that it wins, of all the things that it stands for, of all the things that it symbolizes. I'm not sure that you can exhaust that list, so I'm not going to attempt to do that. But I do have for you this morning three things that I think that the crucifixion does for us. The first is the crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. The crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. Now, this is not something we talk about a lot. It's not polite dinner conversation, God's wrath. How have you experienced God's wrath in your life lately? That's not something that we do. And we don't really like to reflect upon it. Matter of fact, I have some people in different Bible studies and just in different conversations that I'm in, in and around church, who almost have a problem with God's wrath. Where we'll see passages in Scripture that indicate that God's angry with sinners, that God does have wrath for us, and they'll kind of ask a question, which is it? Do we serve a God of love or do we serve a God of wrath? And you just kind of have to go, yeah. No, you take 40 years and figure it out. But let's talk just a little bit about the wrath of God so that we can see that it is an earned wrath. I happen to believe that the Bible is true and that we can trust what it says. And if we will accept that the Bible is true, then what it tells us is that there is a perfect creator God. And that that perfect creator God, out of His goodness, created us so that we might experience Him. He literally said, what we've got going on here, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is so good that I'm going to create a whole race of people so that they can share in this. And so he created the earth. And at the very, very beginning of the Bible, we see that he created the Garden of Eden, and he put Adam and Eve there. And when he was done with creation, he looked at it and he says, it is good. It is very good. It is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. And we learn later that in that perfect utopian world that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That in this perfect place, all that God wanted was to be with us and all we wanted was to be with him. And it was everything that God had intended. And God was perfectly happy to live, to exist in this way with us for all of eternity. The only rule was from God, I get to be God and you don't. That's it. I get to be God, you don't get to be God. As long as you're good with that, we can exist like this. And Adam and Eve said, yeah, it's not going to work. We need to be equal partners here. And when we sin, that's what we say. You realize that's what all sin is? Any sin you've ever committed, all you're doing is saying, for now, you're a wise, trusted advisor, or you're a father figure I resent, whatever you want to pick. But you are not God. I am. I'm going to make my own choices. That's all sin is. So we collectively, at different times in our life, look at the creator of the universe who placed us here to experience a relationship with him, and we said, nah, I'm like you. I'm as good as you are. I'm going to follow my own rules. I don't trust your rules for my life. And when that happened in the garden, everything broke. They corrupted God's perfect creation. When sin entered the world, creation broke down. Things entered into creation that God did not intend for his creation. Things like cancer and abuse and hurt people who hurt other people and on and on and on the list goes. That was not in the Garden of Eden. That was not what God intended. When we sinned, when we declared that we were God too, we broke it. And we broke that relationship with him. The one thing that God wanted for us to be with him, we broke that. And God looked at us in love and he knew that we cannot fix this. We are powerless to repair that relationship. So what does he do to repair that relationship? Genesis chapter 12. He enacts this grand plan through the line of Abraham to bring us a Messiah who will die a perfect death on the cross so that we don't have to. He will be the blood of the Lamb on our doorframe so that we do not have to die. So that we might be reconciled back to Him. He says, I created a perfect world. I made it just for you. I made it so that you could experience relationship with me. You messed it up. You can't fix it. I'm going to fix it at great cost to myself. And then we do one of two things. Either we never at all accept that gift. I heard a quote from Ted Turner years ago. This is a very loose paraphrase because I don't remember it wholly and it wasn't worth looking up because I can get the point across to you. He basically said, why did Jesus die for me? I never asked him to do that. I don't need it. When we in our life do not become Christians, do not at any point express a faith in Christ and a gratitude for his death on the cross for us and a repentance of the sins that necessitated that death. We are essentially saying what Ted Turner said. Who's this Jesus guy? Why did he die on the cross for me? I didn't need that anyways. Now tell me that an all-powerful, perfect God who created us to exist in relationship with Him, who built a bridge back to Him at great cost to Himself, you explain to me why He shouldn't be rightly offended at that disgusting attitude. And then for the Christians who have accepted the love of Christ, who have accepted His sacrifice, understanding that it covers over our sins, what do we do to inflame and deserve the wrath of our God? We cheapen Christ's blood by presuming upon God's grace. With every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every determined break from God's will and choosing our will, with every knowing sin that we commit, we cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm a sinful person. God has forgiven me. I'm good. I've prayed the prayer. I've repented. I go to church. I believe in Jesus. I know I shouldn't do this thing, but also I know that I'm good. God's got it. As if we're at some corporate dinner and we opt for another glass of cheap wine because we know that God is footing the bill. Every time we willfully sin and act discordantly with God's will in our life, we cheapen the blood of Christ that he spilled on the cross because we presume upon the grace that it signifies. And you tell me, if you're in heaven watching us trample the blood of your son with our willful sin, would you not be just a little ticked? Would you not be just a little annoyed? So yes, we serve a wrathful God. But yes, that wrath is earned. But, this is the beautiful part. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and he utters, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is in that moment that our earned wrath is poured out on his son on our behalf so that we don't have to experience that. God's wrath is exhausted in that moment on his own son so that we live life exempt from God's wrath, only experiencing God's love. This is why it's so puzzling, I think, for Christians when we encounter the wrath of God in scripture to be told that it exists because we don't experience that God. We experience a loving God without acknowledging that the wrath that he has for us was already poured out on his son so that we don't have to experience it. So what does the crucifixion do? It saves you. Sure, fine, use that language. But what it really does is it exhausts the wrath of God for you so that all that's left for you from the God of heaven is love. So we can sing our songs and so we can live in peace and so that we can be reconciled back to him. That's what's won on the cross is we don't experience God's wrath. People who never come to faith do and it's terrible. But lest we make the cross, as we often do, about our personal salvation project, which is not its intent, let us also acknowledge what else the crucifixion does. Because the crucifixion reconciles all of creation. It reconciles all of creation back to God. I love Romans 8, and I quote it often when it says that all of creation groans together for the reconciliation of us back to our God, for our adoption as sons, for the forgiveness of sins. All of creation groans to be reconciled back to the perfect utopia that God intended. When we get the call that someone is very sick, that someone found a lump or a mass somewhere, and the results of the scan come back and it is not good. That is creation groaning for a return back to Eden, for the return of the King. That is creation groaning for Jesus to come make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. When a marriage breaks down and children are left being shuttled back and forth, that is creation groaning for the way things are supposed to be. When a husband is abusive and a wife feels that shame, creation is groaning. When the leaves fall off the trees and die, and winter is barren, and the days are short, creation is groaning. When COVID sweeps through and shuts us down, creation is groaning. It is telling us, this is not right. This does not feel right. When tragedy strikes and we're sitting in the middle of it, creation is groaning with you for the reconciliation of God's children to himself, for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of Eden. Creation is groaning for the promises in Revelation. And those groanings are only fulfilled through the cross. Through Jesus reconciling not just us back to our God, but creation back to its creator. On the cross, we are promised that those things will not always be true, which begs us to discuss the last thing I want to say about what the crucifixion does, which is the crucifixion gives us hope for the future. We're told in Romans 5 that we have a hope that will not be put to shame. And if you have lived life for any amount of time, you know that everything you hope in eventually puts you to shame. Everything that you've ever placed your hope in has hurt you. Everything that you have ever placed your hope in has let you down. Except God. There are times, I will admit, when He feels like He has let you down. But what we have in the crucifixion is the promise that ultimately he did not. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent resurrection, that all there is is careening through life from tragedy to tragedy? Do you understand that if there's no crucifixion, then all we have is Ecclesiastes, where the wisest man in the world at the time wrote, with much wisdom comes much vexation. The smarter I get, the sadder things are. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion, that all there is, it's just eat, sleep, and be merry for tomorrow we die. If today happens to be a good day, well then bucko, buddy. Good job, because tomorrow's going to stink. If there's no crucifixion, then when we lose a loved one, it's just goodbye. That's it. Death is final. It wins. It will claim us all. And we live with that cloud over our head for our whole lives. And the best we can do is stave it off. But because of the crucifixion, when we lose a loved one who knows Jesus, it's simply goodbye for now. And frankly, I don't know how a hurt world, how a lost world makes sense of tragedy without the crucifixion and the hope that one day these sad things will be made right and untrue. How do you cope with what happened in Nashville without the crucifixion? How do you watch your dreams crumble around you in the marriage that you thought that was going to work and hasn't without the crucifixion? How do you deal with miscarriage and loss and illness without the crucifixion? How do you find any hope that anything gets any better without the crucifixion? Without the promise that one day our God will be with his people and his people will be with our God and there will be no more sin and no more crying and no more death anymore for the former things have passed away. How do you have hope for that without the crucifixion? That's what's won there. That's what the crucifixion means. It's not just our personal salvation project. It exhausts the wrath of God. It reconciles all of creation back to Him. And it gives us a hope that this world can't touch. We asked earlier why our entire history looks to this moment and it's simply this. Our entire history points to this singular act because our entire future relies upon it. Everything in human history is marshaled to focus us on the cross because all of the hope of the future of humanity rests on the cross. So when we celebrate communion, that's what we celebrate. In just a little bit, I'm going to pray, and then the elders will come forward, and we'll move into a time of communion together. And when we do that, remember these things. Remember that as you break that bread, that it symbolizes Christ's body breaking for you on the cross. As you dip it in the wine, that symbolizes his blood poured out for you on the cross. And that on that cross that day, the wrath of God, the earned wrath of God was exhausted on your Savior so that you might experience the love of a good God. And that on that day, there is a promise made that one day He will reconcile all of creation back to Himself exactly the way He intended. And that on that day, the pain that you feel right now, the hard things that you are walking through right now will be anathema. They will be no more. It is done. There is a hope that you can cling to. So I'm going to pray, and as I do, I would like for you to pray too. Pray with me or pray on your own. But allow God to prepare your heart to take communion. Carry to that communion table whatever it is you need to carry. Carry to that communion table whatever brokenness it was that you walked in here with this morning. If you walked in here in a good space, if life is good, if you're in a sweet season, then praise God for that sweet season as you break the bread that earned you that season. If you're in a time that makes you need hope, then break that bread for hope. That God sees you, that God knows you, that God loves you, and that God has made promises to you and that you can hope in those promises and that they will not be put to shame. As I pray, spend time preparing your heart for communion, and then I'll give you some instructions as the band comes up. and over again in my life. I know that the chances are high that I will presume upon your grace this week. And the week after that. Thank you for loving me anyways. For pursuing me anyways. Thank you for loving us despite our willful disobedience. Thank you for exhausting your wrath on your son on our behalf so that we might experience your love. I pray that we would walk faithfully and gratefully in that love. And God, to those who need it most, for those who are hurting, I pray that communion this morning can be a symbol and a reminder of hope. That not all days will be like today. It's simply creation groaning for you. And that in your perfect time, in your perfect way, you'll send your son back to get us and make all these wrong things right and make all these sad things untrue. Thank you for everything that was won on the cross. Give us a fresh gratitude for it that we might walk in that. In Jesus' name, amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. This week, Gideon. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. And if I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. Right now, while I'm preaching, probably wouldn't be an appropriate time, but after that would be great. As a pastor, I often find myself in conversations where questions like this are asked. Questions like, hey, people talk about being able to hear from God. I'm not sure that I can hear from God. How do I hear God's voice in my life? How do I know his direction? How do I know what God wants me to do? Sometimes that manifests itself in questions like, hey, I've got this job opportunity. We have this opportunity to move. We're trying to make a big decision about this or that or what to do with our children. How do I know what God wants me to do? Sometimes this conversation will take on the shape of, hey, I've been a Christian for a while, and I just feel like I'm in a rut, and I don't really know how to get it back. What do I need to do? How come I'm not grown further in my walk yet than I have already? Why is it that I feel behind? Or sometimes it's conversations with people who are new to the faith or relatively new to the faith. And they just kind of feel like they're not getting traction. It's not taken off for them. What is it that I need to do so that I can grow in my faith? And I think that to be a Christian for any amount of time is to, at some point, to have asked those questions or questions like them, or at the very least, to feel this sense of, gosh, I thought I would have grown past this by now. I thought I would, I see other people talking about this rich, deep faith, and they seem to hear from God, and they seem to have this courageous faith that other people would seek to emulate, but no one would seek to emulate me, and I don't know how to get from where I am to where they are, but I know that I'm not content here. If that's you, and if you've ever had a thought like that, then Gideon's your guy. Gideon may be the most relatable story in all the Bible. Gideon, I find to be a character that resonates with me and with us as I tend to go through it very, very much. Because in Gideon, what we see is we see typical Bible hero stuff. By the end of the story, he's threatening kings and he's conquering armies and he's sitting on, he wasn't on the throne, but on the magistrate seat, I guess, as the judge of Israel. And he judges Israel for 40 years and he's the unquestioned leader of the country right underneath God. And so that's typical Old Testament hero stuff and none of us can relate to that. You're not about to rule over the United States for 40 years, although it may go better if some of you did it. I don't know. But we're not about to do that, right? But the beginning of Gideon's story, he's timid and he's fearful and he's characterized by doubtful hesitancy. The beginning of Gideon's story, we can relate to very much. And so as we go through this story, there is this overarching question that becomes very important to us if we feel like we can relate to Gideon in any way, in his fear and in his timidity and in our uncertainty of how to live out our faith. The overarching question, I think, over the narrative of Gideon is simply, how does Gideon move from doubtful hesitancy to confident clarity. How does Gideon begin with this rickety, secondhand, doubtful, timid faith and move to a place where he is the judge of Israel for 40 years, moving and acting with confident clarity? Because the guy at the end of the story barely resembles the guy at the beginning of the story. So the question becomes, how does that happen to Gideon? To discover this, we should look at the story of Gideon. I love the story of Gideon. I know that I say I love all the stories that I tell you, and it's true. I do. But this one in particular is special to me because I had the chance to go to Israel in 2013. And I've always loved the story very much. And in the story, they go to a brook and some soldiers drink from a brook. And when I went to Israel, they take you to that brook and they say, this is the stream of Gideon and this is the field of Gideon. And in the crease of my Bible, I have grass from the field of Gideon that I'm not going to pull out because I'm afraid I'll break it, but I'll show it to you after the service. But I've got grass in here from Gideon's field next to the brook that shows up in the story. So when I get to tell the story of Gideon, I get excited because you could say that I get giddy about Gideon. That one just occurred to me. Where's Kyle Tolbert? Is he in this room? That was just for you, pal. That was it. I don't care if anybody else laughed, buddy. That's great. You guys don't know this, but after I preach or after Kyle preaches, we have about 30 minutes where we talk about each other's jokes and how they were like, we'll always make one joke just for the other person. Just so you guys know, it's a little inside baseball. Probably shouldn't do it. I don't know why I'm talking about it right now, but we do and it's great. So I'm excited to tell you the story of Gideon. When we pick up the story, we're in Judges chapter 6, and we find Gideon in a wine press milling out grain. And you might wonder, why is Gideon in a wine press using it for something that it was not intended for, hiding out from whomever? Well, that's because in the verses preceding it, we learn that the Israelites, God's people, were being oppressed by the Midianites. And that oppression didn't look like just coming in and taking all the way over. That oppression looked like just waiting for the farmers to till their land and produce their crop, and then just going in and taking whatever they wanted, taking all the wealth and all the fruit and all the vegetables and all the livestock back to their cities to use as they saw fit. So they had subjugated the Israelite people. And Gideon, he is experiencing this subjugation. And this is in the period of the judges. I explained this last week, so I won't belabor it this morning, but in the period of the judges, God himself was the king of Israel. He ruled over Israel, and they followed God, and they obeyed him, and they followed his laws, and they acknowledged him. And God would appoint a judge to serve as a judge, a magistrate, kind of a one-person supreme court, and rule over the different disputes that would come up in the land between families and between tribes and individuals. But occasionally, Israel would forget that God got them there, would forget that God was their God, and they would start to live by their own rules and do their own thing and not really care about who God was and what he thought. And they would say, God, your hand over us is kind of annoying. Would you please remove it so that we could just do whatever we would like to do? And God would say, okay, I will, but you're going to have to experience the consequences of your actions. And because he moved his hand of protection from the Israelites, because their actions and their attitudes and their devotion basically said, we're not really interested in your rules or your hand of blessing over us. So if you could get out of our way, that would be great. God said, okay, I'll get out of your way. And then sure enough, the Amorites and the Midianites and the Amalekites and the various ites from surrounding cities and towns would come in and they would oppress Israel until Israel would cry out and be like, God, we forgot about you. We're so sorry. These people are really bumming us out. Could you come in and save us? And God would appoint a judge and raise them up and they would overthrow the oppressors and they would live in peace again until they forgot about God. And so the cycle continues. Judges, before it gets really, really bad, that we meet Gideon. And we see him in the wine press in chapter 6. And an angel of the Lord appears to him, and it's pretty clear that Gideon's not yet sure that this is an angel of the Lord. It appears to him, and he says, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, the Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. Which is a really interesting comment. Because as far as we know, Gideon was neither mighty nor did he possess any valor. He's just a dude, tread and grain in a wine press. But the angel says, The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. This guy and an oppressed people who's never fought a battle in his life and is by no means mighty and does not seem to display any courage in any way. And so it's like, what are you doing, angel? Like, are you making fun of Gideon? Are you being sarcastic here? Because if you are, that's a good one. But I think what's happening here is that the angel knew because God had told him. The angel knew who Gideon was going to become. The angel knew who Gideon was. The angel knew the path that Gideon was about to walk and what he would be as a result of walking it. So he called him what he knew he wasn't yet, but knew he would be, O mighty man of valor. And Gideon's response to me is one of the funnier responses in the Bible. Now the Bible's not really known for its jokes, so when I read it, you're not going to fall over laughing at this, but the honesty of it is interesting. Chapter 6, verse 13. So the angel comes to Gideon and he says, the Lord is with you, almighty man of valor. And Gideon says, are you sure? Because I'm down here. I'm treading this grain in this wine press. You sure about that? Because if God's with us, like our fathers say he is, then why are we oppressed by the Midianites? If God's with us, then what am I doing? And why has the God who's promised us that he's going to protect us, why has he forsaken us? Which I think it's interesting as an aside to see Gideon blaming God for decisions that he and his people made. Gideon, brother, God didn't forsake you. You forsook him. God didn't take his hand off of you. God didn't take his hand of protection off of you. God didn't take his blessing off of you because he just got tired of you. You didn't want it there. So he removed it. And now you're living in the consequences of your actions. And I think it's a good lesson for us. It's not the point, but I do want to make it. Sometimes in life, we walk through hard times because broken things happen in a broken world. People get sick. We lose people too soon. Tragedy strikes. It's not fair and it will never make sense on this side of eternity. And sometimes those things simply happen because this world is broken. But a lot of times things happen because we did them. A lot of times things happen because we kind of said, God, your hand on my life is uncomfortable. Your control and sovereignty over my life is uncomfortable. I don't like it. I'd like to be able to do whatever it is I want to do. So if you could kind of leave me alone for a little while, I'm just going to do my thing. And God says, okay. And then we get to the end of the consequences of those choices. And like Gideon, we're like, God, why have you forsaken me? And like Gideon, he didn't forsake us. We forsook him. So I thought it was worth it to pause. I have a note in my Bible from years ago when I first encountered this story in this Bible. It's interesting how Gideon shifts the blame there to God for something that Israel had done. But to his better point, if God's with us, why am I here? If God's actually good and he actually promised us this stuff, then what am I doing in this spot right here? Why am I down here? And I think that's a question that all of us can relate to at some point in our life. If God's so good and if he's so loving, then why am I down here? Whatever down here is. And so the angel responds to him. And the angel says, the Lord is with you. I promise he's with you. You can go in confidence. And so Gideon says this in verse 15. Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said to him, But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man. And he said to him, If I have now found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. There's a lot going on there in those verses. But the first thing we see I think is very interesting. The angel doubles down and says, no, no, no, you're the one that God is going to use to save Israel. And Gideon says, but why me? My father's tribe, clan, is the smallest in all of Manasseh, and I am the youngest of all the brothers. You couldn't have picked a less significant person to lead your charge than me. No one's going to follow me. No one's going to believe me. I am not a mighty man of valor. I've never done any of this stuff before. You've got the wrong guy. But the angel doubles down and says, no, no, no, you are the one. God has chosen you. And so now Gideon realizes he's hearing from God. He's being told to walk in a direction, but he does so timidly. And he says, okay, I need to make sure that you're an angel from the Lord. I need to make sure that I think I'm hearing, that I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing. Will you stay here? I'm going to go make us dinner. And I need to see a sign. I need something so I know that this is the direction I need to move in. And so he goes back to his house. He leaves the angel under the tree. He makes some dinner. There's some hotcakes or something involved. And he serves dinner to the angel. And the angel takes his staff and taps the dinner. And the dinner catches on fire. It was baked Alaska, and he didn't know about it. And so he's like, man, this is amazing. I can't believe this. That's a neat trick and a pretty clear sign from God. Okay, I believe you, and I trust you. I'm in. What would the Father have me do? And the angel says, do you know? Now, this, the following dialogue is a loose paraphrase of scripture. It's in Judges 6, you read it. The angel says, you know those gods that the Midianites erected in the middle of town to kind of snub their nose at everyone and say like, hey, we're the boss now. Like those idols mean that, that's from that Tom Hanks movie. I'm the captain now. That's what those idols mean. Like we're in charge here now. Don't mess with us. We got you. And Gideon's like, yeah, I know the ones. And he goes, listen, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your dad's bull, the biggest one. And then I want you to take a young bull from your dad. And I want you to go and tear down the idol in the middle of town and then I want you to sacrifice the bull to our God. And Gideon's like, now what now? Because that, friends, is poking the bear. That is walking into the middle of town, these idols that the Midianites constructed in the middle of town to make everybody know we are the boss now. It is not you. Our God is superior to your God. We've got a handle on the situation. Go and tear it down. What do you think is going to happen when Gideon tears it down and the Midianites wake up and they see that it's been torn down? Do you think they're going to show up in the middle of Gideonon City and be like, all right, guys, now come on. Who did this stuff? Fix that idol for us. You guys are the best. That's hilarious. That's not going to happen. They're going to be mad. They're coming for blood. And Gideon's tribe knows that. So they wake up in the morning and word starts to spread. Oh my goodness, somebody tore down the idol. Who was stupid enough to do this? What in the world? We got to figure this out. And so they figured out it was Gideon. They go to Gideon's house. And they're there with their pitchforks, man. They're crying out to Gideon's father. Give us your son Gideon so that we can kill him so that we might mitigate the anger of the Midianites when they come crashing down the hill to come make us answer for this stuff. We've got to be able to show them that we did our part. Please don't hurt us. They're terrified of the Midianites. And Gideon's dad gives this impassioned speech about who they are and they're the chosen people of God and that they need to band together and that they can defeat the Midianites. It probably was a really cool speech. I'd love to see it in like an HBO or Netflix series, this big climatic moment where the tide turns, it shifts. And the people who came to kill Gideon by the end of the exchange are now ready to follow him into battle. Yeah, let's get them. No more. It's Braveheart crying freedom, right? So then word goes out throughout all of Israel. We have a leader now. His name is Gideon and he's going to face off against the Midianites. Send all your fighting men. And as that cry, as that call is going out to the nation of Israel to send Gideon your fighting men in Manasseh where there's going to be a face-off, Gideon gets nervous and he goes to God in prayer. And this is part of the story that you guys may know. It's the most famous part of the story. He goes to God in prayer and he says, God, if you really want me to do what I think you want me to do, if I'm meant to lead these men after a lifetime of never leading a single fighting man in my life, we see no evidence in the text that Gideon had even fought, besides the fact that he had brothers, so he probably got into a couple scraps. But we see no evidence that he was a soldier of any kind. And so he says, God, if you really want this guy who's not a soldier, who's the youngest of all the brothers in the smallest tribe and one of the smallest clan in the smallest tribe, if you want me to lead the people of Israel, I need to know that I know that I know. So please, can you do something for me? I'm going to put my fleece out when I sleep. I'm going to put this lambskin out in front of my tent when I sleep. And if I wake up in the morning and the ground around the fleece is bone dry, but the fleece has dew on it and is wet, I'll take that as a sign from you that I'm supposed to lead these men into battle in your name and that you will give us the victory. So Gideon goes to sleep, wakes up the next day, pokes his head out of his tent, feels the ground around the fleece and it's bone dry. He feels the fleece and it's soaking wet. He's got a sign. God showed him. Ride into battle, mighty man of valor. But that's not what Gideon does. Gideon does this. In Judges 6, verses 39, Then Gideon said to God, Let not your anger burn against know why you picked me either. I'm a total drag. But if you could just do that do trick again, but this time the old switcheroo, then I would certainly know that this is what you want me to do. And so it happens. The fleece is dry, the ground is wet, and Gideon knows that this is what he needs to do. And so he goes and he leads. And it's worth noting at this point in the story that Gideon, he's frightened out of his mind. He's scared senseless. He is timid. He is doubtful. He is hesitant. He does not want to step forward and do this. He needs assurance from God at every turn. And he is right and good to be terrified. He would have been terrified to pull down the idols and have to face off with his townsmen and know that he's going to have to go to battle. And now a call has gone out to make him the general of all the armies of Israel. And he's never led a single person before. He knows he's wildly inadequate for this task and he is scared. But he steps. And it's worth noting that terrified obedience still counts. Terrified obedience? God, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know what's on the other side of obedience. You're asking me to jump over this fence. I don't know what's on the other side of it, but I know that this is what you want me to do, and I'm scared senseless, God, that I could take this step of obedience, and it could cost me this friendship. It could cost me this relationship. It could cost me money. It could cost me experience. It could cause animosity between me and my wife or me and my husband. It could cause me to take the wrong step with my children that there's going to be ramifications for for decades to come. God, I'm terrified of taking this step. And yet terrified obedience still counts. I would say it's probably the most forming kind of obedience. Some obedience is easy. You get lunch with your friend and you say, I really, I've got this decision to make. I really don't know what the Lord wants me to do. I'm trying to just discern. I feel like God wants me to move in this direction, but I just want to be sure. It's this new job. I get a lucrative signing bonus, better hours, more flexibility, 40% more money, and I get stock options. I just don't, does God want me to take this step? Yes, yes, he. Take the step. Take the step. And then you take us out to dinner. Alright, take the step. That's easy obedience. Some obedience is hard. Some obedience terrifies us. Moving six and a half hours away, taking your one year old away from their new grandparents with a wife who's not sure about whether or not to go. That's scary. That's scary obedience. But scary obedience is some of the most formative obedience. And so it still counts. And we're all called to it at some point. So Gideon decides to obey. He's going to be the general of the Lord's armies. And 32,000 men show up from all over Israel. It's like an act. We don't know. I searched the text. We don't know how many men the Midianites had. And by this point, they had partnered up with the Amalekites because they see that there's a revolt going on in Israel and they're trying to thwart it. So 32,000 fighting men show up and God looks at that and he tells Gideon, listen, that's too many men. If you guys go into battle and you win and people hear about it, they're going to think that you did it, man. And they need to know that I did it and that you had nothing to do with this. That's too many guys. Go to them and tell them that if anybody's scared, then they can go home. So Gideon goes back to them and he says, if any of you are afraid, if you're trembling, if you've been forced to be here against your will, if you don't want to go, if you don't want to fight, then you go home. No harm done. No one's going to hold it against you. Go home. It'll be fine. 22,000 men leave, leaving 10,000 behind. Which, if I'm one of those 10,000 men, and let's be honest, I would not have been. I'd have been like, all right, we'll see you later on the first chance. But if I'm one of those 10,000 men, I'm going, I made the wrong choice. But we're stuck here now. Let's rush to death together, boys. And God looks at those 10,000 men and he goes, yeah, Gideon, I'm sorry, buddy. That's too many. We need less than that so that people know I'm the one who brings victory. So he says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your men down to this brook to get a drink of water. There's going to be two kinds. There's going to be lappers who put their face in the water and lap it up like a dog. They just hoover it right in like some animals. And then there's going to be scoopers who keep their eyes on the horizon and scoop the water and drink from their hands. All right? I want you to keep the scoopers and send the lappers home. The lappers are weird. We don't need them anyways. The scoopers have their eyes on the horizon. They're good soldiers. Let's keep them. So that's what Gideon does. And when he's done with this winnowing process, there's 300 men left, 300 scoopers. And he's like, okay, God, what's the plan? God says, here's what I want you to do. Arm all 300 men with a clay pot and a torch. And I want you at night to go to the camp and surround the Midianites and the Amalekites. And when you give the signal, everyone's to shatter their pots and scream a sword for the Lord and a sword for Gideon. And then you're going to win. There's at least 30,000 men in this camp. But this is the plan. And God in his goodness to Gideon says, if you need a sign, because I know you're that kind of guy, if you need a sign, you don't have to ask for me this time. Take Pura, your servant, and sneak down the hill and listen at the camp of the Midianites and I'll give you a sign. So that's what Gideon does. He says, he could have gone right then, but he takes the sign from God, and he goes down, and he sits next to a tent, and at that tent, he hears some Midianite soldiers talking to one another, and one of them says, I just had a vision, and the soldier says, what was your vision? And he says, there's a man named Gideon. He's an Israelite, and he's going to come down, and he's going to kill us all. And upon hearing this vision, Gideon does this in Judges chapter 7 verse 15, as soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, arise for the Lord has given the host of Midian into your hand. There's so much to learn from that response. We can make the whole sermon that response. What was Gideon's response to the good news from God? He worshiped. What should be our response when we get good news from God? We should worship. What should be our response when we struggle to know what to do? We should worship. What should be our response when we're sad and we're down and we're low? We should worship. What's our response when we're at peace? We should worship. He turns and he worships God. And then he goes to the men and he says, let's go. God's given the Midianites into our hands. So they go down and they surround the Midianites and the Amalekites and all 300 of them and at Gideon's signal, they light their torches and they bash the clay pots and there's this great clamor and they yell a sword for the Lord and a sword for Gideon in unison. And the Amalekites and the Midianites wake up, they come out of their tents and they look. And as far as they know, in total darkness, they're surrounded by 300 torches. And on the other side of those 300 torches are the 32,000 fighting Israelite men who have come to destroy them. And so they wake up and they just start fighting whoever they can see. They start to fight each other because they can't recognize who's in their army and who's not. All they know is that there's an invading force trying to kill them in the middle of the night and they start killing each other. And listen, I know that might sound crazy, but even though I have never been a part of hand-to-hand combat, which I know is surprising news, but I've never been a part of hand-to-hand combat, but I have watched a lot of Viking and medieval shows, okay? And I've seen this happen a bunch of times. So I can tell you from pretty good second-hand knowledge, based on the way that the director chose to depict it, that these are incredibly chaotic scenes. And often I watch them and I wonder, they don't have uniforms. They're not wearing flags. How do they know who belongs to who and who's fighting for who? So they rushed out of their tents and all they know is that guy has a sword and I don't know him and I'm going to defend my life. And if anybody tries to escape, we presume that Gideon's army just kind of steps over. It's like, no, no, I don't think so. And then they kill that person. They just kind of wait until they defeat both armies at once. The Midianite king escapes, gets out with a small contingent, and Gideon goes to chase him. The Midianite king goes, and he goes through intentionally territories that are favorable to him, that are going to let him pass through their land without hassling them. But when Gideon tries to go through their land, the kings of those lands are like, hey, buddy, you can't bring your army through here, all right? We don't want to have to support you and your whole crew, so you've got to find another way around. And Gideon, without missing a beat, without waiting on a sign from God, says, hey, listen, listen, listen, listen. We're going to go, listen to me, we're going to go and we're going to kill him. And if you don't let us stay here, when we get done killing him, we're going to come back and kill you. So what do you want to do? And the kings go, we're sorry, Mr. Gideon, you just please use all the land you need. And he goes and he kills the Midianite king and he overthrows the oppressors. And scripture tells us that he faithfully judges Israel for 40 years. And the question to me is how did he go from this fearful timidity in the wine press to this confident courage on the field of battle? Because those are two totally different dudes, man. Those are two totally different guys. The guy in the wine press that talks to the angel, oh yeah, if God is with us, then where is he? Because I don't see him and I'm down here hiding out from everyone because I'm scared. The guy who needs a sign from the angel, who needs two signs from God, who needs to feel good about attacking, like the guy who's needed God's pushing all along the way and can barely hear him and barely obey him. By the end of the story is threatening kings and moving decisively and with confident clarity at hearing the voice of God and acting on the instructions? What changed for Gideon? He experienced God. He experienced God. At the beginning of the story, we get some insight into who Gideon was. He says, if God is here, if he's up there, then why am I down here? And then, I don't know if you saw in the text, he calls him the God of our fathers. If the God of our fathers is real, he didn't call him my God, the God of my fathers. See, at this point in Gideon's life, I would surmise he had only heard about God. Other people had only told him about who his God was and what he did. God was an experience of other people, of the people who came before him. God was not someone that he had personally experienced. He was still their God, the God that he had heard about. And I think this is so important because for so many of us, for so many years, God is the God that other people talk about. God is the God that Nate gets up and preaches about. Jesus is the Savior that other people sing to, that other people experience, that other people cry out to. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that guides other people, that speaks to other people, that convicts other people. But we haven't personally experienced those things, and we kind of wonder when it's going to be our turn. And I think so many of us can relate to Gideon because to Gideon, God was someone that other people talked about. And to so many of us, so often, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are things and gods and people that other folks seem to experience and talk about. But we haven't experienced them. And so we talk about them like I talk about Viking battles, secondhand from what I see. And so I think what changed with Gideon is that he experienced God. He walked in terrified obedience. God shows up and says, hey, I want you to go tear down those idols, but I can't, I'm gonna get killed. Just trust me, do it. Okay, can I please get a sign? Yeah, I'm gonna burn your dinner. Okay, I'm gonna go do it. And he does it. And he does it in the middle of the night because he's fearful of the ramifications. But God's faithful to him. And instead of having him be killed by the mob, the mob now wants to follow him. And then all of Israel is coming to follow him and Gideon says, God, are you sure I'm the guy? Are you sure I can do this? And he gets a sign and then another sign and with timidity and fear he steps out and he says, okay. And then God widows down his army to 300 men. And he says, are you sure, God, I need to do this? Yeah, I'm sure. And those 300 men conquer 30,000. And then we see him walking with confidence. Do you see this transition that happens in Gideon? This man who hasn't experienced God and doesn't recognize the voice of God and isn't sure if he can trust this voice of God becomes a man who, without blinking, recognizes God's voice and walks in confidence that God will do what he said he was going to do. So what happened to Gideon, what moves him from this doubtful, timid hesitancy in his faith to courageous clarity in his faith is nothing that he did. It's not following the rules better. It's simply walking in obedience to God. And in taking those steps of faith and walking the path that God called him to walk, he experienced the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God and the reality that God is one who keeps his promises. And Gideon learned the lesson that as long as I step in the path that God has laid out for me, nothing can happen to me that God doesn't want to have happen to me. He will keep his word. He will be faithful to his promises. And the same invitation is extended to us. Quite simply, if we want to experience God and grow in our faith, we need to obey. We need to take a step of obedience. In a few weeks, I'm going to do a whole sermon on the fact that at Grace, we define discipleship and spiritual growth as taking the next step of obedience. So I won't belabor that point now except to say that we believe that everyone has a next step of obedience that's been placed in front of them. And I would contend that if we feel weak in our faith, if we feel timid in our faith, if we feel like our faith hasn't progressed to where it should, if we feel like God is someone that other people talk about, but that we haven't experienced that maybe, maybe, maybe it's because we haven't been taking those steps of obedience, the easy ones or the fearful ones, to watch God come through for us. So we train our spiritual ear to hear the voice of God, to see him in circumstances, and know that's the way that he wants us to walk. And so for all of us, in light of the story of Gideon, as we move from timidity to courage, as we sing, I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God. As we sing in a few minutes and we say over and over again that God makes us brave. Let's understand he makes us brave by our obeying him, even when we don't know what's on the other side of obedience and trusting that when we get there, God will take care of us. So God, even though I'm scared and even though I don't know how it's going to work out and even though this is a really difficult step for me to take, I'm going to take it and I'm going to trust that you're going to be there for me when I get there. And I'm telling you, the more you do that, the easier the step gets the next time. Not because you've got it figured out and you're great and you're awesome, but because you know that you can trust your God to come through when he says he's going to come through. And so we become brave as Gideon became brave. I don't know what your step is. I have no doubt in my mind that with this many folks in a room, some of you, your step is right here. You know good and well what God would have you do. It may be terrifying. Terrified obedience still counts. Maybe it's to have a conversation that you've been putting off and dreading and avoiding. Maybe it's to mend some fences and offer forgiveness in a place where you're not quite ready to do that yet. Maybe your simple step of obedience is to actually set the alarm 30 minutes early and get up and spend time in God's word and time in prayer like we talk about all the time. Maybe your next step of obedience is to actually turn around and invest in your spouse and invest in your marriage and double down on it instead of finding small ways to escape it whenever you can and see what goodness comes from God in that. Maybe it's to be present for your kids and not try to avoid them so much. Maybe it's to take a step and begin to trust God with your finances and give generously. Maybe it's to deprioritize some things that are getting too much of your time. I don't know what your next step is, but I know that you have one. And I know that if you take it, as happened to Gideon, you will experience God in the taking of that step. You will experience him come through for you. You will walk with bravery as you take step after step, and you will become the person who God has created you to be. So, grace, go from here, mighty men and women of valor. Go from here, wise men and women of grace and patience, kind men and women of goodness and mercy, and obey God and let him make you brave in that step. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being the one constant that we have, the one thing that we can count on, the one constant in our life that will absolutely never, ever let us down. Lord, I pray that you would make clear for those who can hear me what our next step of obedience is. God, what would you press on us that we need to do? What step would you press on us that we need to take, God, and give us the courage to take it? Let us embrace the fact that terrified obedience still counts. You'll take it, and it is sometimes the most formative obedience. God, as a church, make us brave. As a church, give us the faith to take the step of obedience that you lay out in front of us. Let us move as one as you seek to impact corners of the community of the city of Raleigh and Wake Forest and the surrounding towns. Make us brave as individuals so that we might be brave as a church and so walk in your might and in your truth and in your identity and serve you well as we go. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.