Sermons tagged with Authority

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. This morning we finish up our series called Faithful where we've been looking at stories of faithful women in the Bible and we are wrapping up with a who, she was just a bad joker, man. Like, I really, really liked getting into the story of her this week. She's a woman named Deborah, and Deborah was a judge and a prophetess. I think she is this underrated hero of the Bible. I think that her name kind of echoes down. She is one of these great women that did incredible things and that it's very much worth taking a weekend and focusing on her because her story, even though we really only see it in Judges 4 and 5, we see the story in Judges 4 and then her song in 5 that basically retells the story in poem form. But that's where we find her. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, you can go ahead and turn to Judges 4. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But that's where we're going to be today. And whenever I kind of recount a story for you guys, I like for you all to be interacting with Scripture too so you know that I'm not making this stuff up. There's something in particular that I'm excited to share with you that I'm going to just read because it's so outlandish that I want you to know that I'm not making it up. But Deborah, Deborah, she was a cool lady, man. She was a judge. And just so we're clear on this, before we kind of jump into the story, I want us to understand what a judge was in Israel, because I think that's something that we hear in church. Maybe you've even heard it referred to as the time of the judges or the period of the judges. And that's something that I think church people kind of nod along with sometimes without really knowing what that means. And so the period of the judges in Israel is the period of time between when Joshua conquered the nation of Israel and all the 12 tribes set up camp. And now they're claiming the nation of Israel as their own. And then years later, they got their first king in King Saul. And so the period between that is known as the time of the judges. And during the time of the judges, when the government was actually set up as God intended it to be set up in Israel, God was the king. He was their eternal heavenly king sitting on the throne. And eventually, the people of Israel were like middle school girls, and they wanted to have what everybody else around them had. And so they stomped their foot until their face turned blue, and they demanded a king. And And they gave him, and he gave him a king and Saul. And he said, and these bad things are going to happen when I do this. And they did. But that time before that is the period of the judges. And a judge was somebody who was a military ruler who also presided over legal matters. So what was going on in the period of the judges is the Israelites were God's chosen people. He gave them some rules that he wanted to follow, the Ten Commandments, and he wanted them to honor him. And at times they would throw off that rule. They would dishonor God. They would forget about him for a generation. And when that happened, God would allow a foreign oppressor to come in and subjugate them until they cried uncle and said, God, we're sorry. We realize we've ignored you. Please save us. We're going to follow you again. And God would say, okay. And he would appoint a judge to rise up from among them and be a military leader that would overthrow the oppressing surrounding nation. Okay. But they would also settle disputes, settle legal matters. You owe them money, they owe you money, or however it would go. So that was the role of the judge in the Old Testament. And Deborah was a judge and a prophetess. Deborah was awesome. And listen, this is just an aside, okay? You can't look at the story of Deborah in the Old Testament and see that God entrusted her to be a judge and a prophetess and lead his people and think that women are incapable of leading the local church, okay? We can't look at the story of Deborah and say, God here trusted a woman to lead all of his people, but now in 2021, we can't trust a woman to be an elder. It's just an aside. But we look at Deborah, and Deborah has a tree. She's got a tree named after her. It's the palm of Deborah, and she sits under it, and she just makes rulings all day. She's like ancient Israel's Judge Judy, okay? That's who she is. Whenever they have a dispute, they're like, well, let's go talk to Deborah about it. Like, I lent you my ox. You gave it back to me. It has a limp. It doesn't plow as quickly anymore. You owe me an ox. The heck I do. I'm not buying you an ox. All right, we're going to talk to Deb. All right, that's what they would do. So they would go and they would talk to Deborah under the tree that was named after her. So she had been doing this for a while. And it's under this tree that she summons a general named Barak. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. I want to read to you what's going on in Judges chapter 4, because we get from these two verses, I think the biggest mom energy in the Old Testament. We don't see mom energy quite like this until we get to John chapter 4 when Mary tells Jesus to turn the water into wine. When she's like, do the thing that you do when you do the miracle stuff. Like, go ahead. When Mary starts ordering around the Savior of the world, the Messiah incarnate, that's the next time we see energy on the level of what Deborah does here in this passage. Listen to what she does in Judges chapter 4, picking up in verse 6. So here's what's going on. Deborah is a judge, and judges are appointed when there's a foreign oppressor. In this case, the foreign oppressors are the Canaanites. And the general of the Canaanite army is a guy named Sisera. And we're told over and over again in the chapter that Sisera had 900 chariots of iron. I have no idea or perspective about how big of a deal that was. I don't know what that means. I just know that whoever wrote this chapter of Judges thinks it was a big enough deal to mention a bunch of times. So the Israelites are pretty scared of these 900 chariots of iron. And Deborah somehow knows that God has told Barak, the general of the Israelite armies, to gather 10,000 men from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun and go out and face Sisera and his chariots. She knows this. I don't know how she knows this. She was clearly close with God. I don't know if God gave her a message and said, hey, you know, I told Barak to go do this. He's dragging his feet. If you could kind of get after him for me, that would be great. I don't know if some messengers told her. I don't know how she knew, but she knew. And she knew that this is what Barak was supposed to do. So she summons him. And let's not miss that. She's a lady in the hill country in northern Israel. And she sent word, presumably to Jerusalem, for the general of the armies to come see her. Now listen. In the ancient world, there's no badder dude than the general. Especially in a nation without a king. He's the man. You do not tell the general what to do. But when Deborah summoned Barak, he was like, well, I guess we got to go. He went. Like, that's some big-time mom energy. She summons the general. We got it. We got it. I don't have a choice. Deborah called me to the tree of her name. I've got to go. And so he goes, and when he gets there, she moms him. And she says, didn't God tell you to get 10,000 troops and go fight Sisera? What are you doing, man? Like, didn't God tell you to do this? Why aren't you doing, why aren't you being obedient to God? He gave you clear instruction. You're not doing it. What gives? And I think that it's easy to read the Bible and see details like that and then just keep on reading without pausing to think about what's going on in this conversation. Do you realize the amount of faith that it takes from Barak to go do this? He's got to go to these tribes. He's got to look mamas and daddies in the eye, and he's got to say, I need your son. He's got to say, I need your husband. We've got to go fight Sisera, the dude with 900 chariots. Yeah, we're going to go fight him. You know that we're not strong enough to beat him, right? Yeah, I know, but God said that he was with us, so we're going to go and we're going to kill him. And it's the type of fighting that we both put sharp objects in our hands and we swing at each other until one of us dies. That's really hard fighting. But I need your son. Let's go. And then he's got to go out there and he's got to risk his own life as he leads these men into battle. So when he gets this direction from God, take these 10,000 people and go fight Sisera, it's pretty natural to be like, you sure? Maybe we should just wait. And so Deborah calls him. He's like, dude, what are you doing? God told you to go fight, go fight. And I like Barak's response and I like Deborah's response to him even better. We pick it back up in verse 8. Barak said to her, if you go with me, I'll go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Again, let's look at that. She calls him up to her palm tree and says, didn't God tell you to amass an army and go fight Sisera? And his response is, yeah. Easy for you to say, Deb. You're up here at your tree. You're deciding who owes who an ox, all right? You want me to go recruit young men and go watch them march to their death, potentially die while I do it. Easy for you to say, pal. So then he says, I'll tell you what, he did say that. And listen, if you come with me, I'll go. If you put your money where your mouth is, big talker, we'll go do this thing together. And I don't know this for sure, okay? There's not enough in the text to tell us positively. It's just my opinion. If I get to heaven and I find out I'm wrong about this and many other things, I'm comfortable with this error. But I think that Barak responds this way because he thinks it's going to shut her up. Because he thinks that's going to stop the conversation. Yeah, he told me to. You want to come too? You want to put your money where your mouth is, big dog, then we can go together. And I think that he thinks she's going to be like, well, no, I mean, this is for armies. I got, you know, I got, I got all these people. I got to settle these disputes here. I can't go. And instead, Deborah doubles down, right? Deborah's like, all right, where can I ride? Is that horse good? Is he taken? Let's go. I will surely go with you, she says. She didn't care. She doesn't miss a beat. All right, I'll go watch the slaughter. Let's roll. And you got to know the Barak's like, oh, shoot. Okay, well, I guess we're doing this thing. So they go, and I love that she says that you're not going to get the glory for this either, just so you know. Like, this is kind of a woman's story, so you're an auxiliary character in this Barak. And sure enough, they go, and they have the battle, and God is with the armies of Israel, and he delivers victory into their hands. They rout the army of the Canaanites, and Sisera is left fleeing. The army is in disarray, and Barak is hot on his trail. He wants to kill this guy, or capture him. He wants to get the glory. And while Sisera is running away, and I'm just telling you this part of the story just for gratuity, because I think it's great. I'm not going to make a spiritual point from this point on. I'm telling you this part of the story because it's awesome. While he's running away, there's a woman named Jael, and she's married to a guy who's friendly with his king. And somehow it seems like she knows that the army's been routed, everyone's trying to get away. So Jael goes and she sees Sisera fleeing. And she's like, Sisera, come stay in our tent. I'll hide you in here until, you know, the heat is off a little bit. And he's like, okay, thank you. And he comes into the tent and he lays down and it says that she covers him with a rug and that he was exceedingly tired. He's exhausted from battle and from fleeing, and he's just tired out of his mind, right? And so he says, will you get me some warm water? I'm thirsty. And she goes, and instead of water, she gets him warm milk because she wanted him to be good and tired. And he tells her, when Barack comes by with the armies, you tell him that I went that way. And she's like, got it. You sleeping good? And so when he goes to sleep and he's good in the sleep, this is what happens. And I'm reading you this from the Bible verbatim because it's not going to be up there. So you're just going to have to listen because I want you to know that I'm not making this up and how great it is. Verse 21, but JL, the wife of Heber took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him. Apparently, you don't survive tent peg impalement. That's not a thing. And she didn't just get it in there. She drove the peg into the ground. She was mad for some reason. And she gets the glory. And here we are, thousands of years later, telling the story of JL. I shared that story because I've always just, I love that little detail. I love that little nuance in the Bible. I love knowing the story of Jael. And listen, these kinds of things are tucked away in all sorts of places, particularly in the Old Testament. And sometimes I want to do little more than on a Sunday, make the Bible come alive for you a little bit so that you get curious about it and you want to start finding this stuff for yourself. Go home and Google Dinah and her brothers, D-I-N-A-H and her brothers and see if you don't get a laugh out of that story. There's so many good ones in the Old Testament. Sometimes I just want to make it come alive for you a little bit so that you go home with some curiosity and read it on your own because there's really some great stuff in there. But the reason we're covering this story this morning is to talk about Deborah and what we learned from her. Because I think there's a lot of lessons that we can pull out from Deborah, but the one that I see the most, the one that I'm floored with and impressed with the most, is this. When you are certain of the Lord's direction, you can walk with confidence. When you are certain of the Lord's direction, of the clarity that he is giving you, then you can walk with absolute confidence. Deborah somehow, and I don't know how, Deborah knew with clarity that God had given that instruction to Barak. She knew it. And so she had the confidence to summon him and say, didn't God tell you to do the thing? And then when he said, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and come with me, she didn't miss a beat. She didn't hesitate. She wasn't a warrior. She didn't know how to do this. She was a judge. She was a prophetess. She didn't go out on the battlefield, but she didn't hesitate to go with Barak because she was so certain of God's direction that she was able to walk with confidence and follow that direction. She was able to walk in obedience because she was so sure of God's direction and of his providence and sovereignty to see her through that direction. And so in our lives, when we're clear about what God wants us to do, about the step of obedience that we are supposed to take, we can walk with confidence. And I think about it this way. First of all, I believe that every one of us here has the next step of obedience that God is placing in front of us. I think that's what discipleship and spiritual growth is, is simply taking the next step of obedience. Sometimes it's a relatively small one. I want you to develop a habit of a devotional life. I want you to develop a habit of getting up every day and spending time in God's word and time in prayer. Maybe that's yours. Maybe it's a bigger one. Maybe it's beginning to tithe or give or be generous. Maybe it's to have this conversation. Maybe it's to reconcile this relationship. Maybe it's to finally shed some light on some of the dark places in your life, to bring those out into the light and share those with some trusted friends and say, I need help with these. Maybe it's time to actually get some help for some other thing. Maybe it's time to lean on other people. Maybe it's time to offer forgiveness. Maybe it's time to ask for forgiveness. Whatever it is, maybe it's time to watch your mouth and stop looking at stuff you don't need to look at. Whatever it is, I believe that God has for each of us the next step of obedience that he wants us to take. And then when we take that one, he's got another one waiting on us and it's going to be lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of our lives. So we better get used to it. And sometimes I feel like that when God asks us to take a step of obedience, that there's like a fence between us and where he wants us to be. That we're in this yard, we're in this area and there's a fence and it's a walled fence. We can't see on the other side of it. And he says, hey, I want you to jump it. And part of our hesitation is, I want to, but I don't know what's over there. I don't know if I'm going to be met with forgiveness. I don't know if I, I feel like you want me to take this job, but if I do, I don't know what's going to be in that city. I don't know what's going to be at that move. I don't know what kind of co-workers I'm going to be with. I want you to go full in on this relationship, but I don't know what's going to be in that city. I don't know what's going to be at that move. I don't know what kind of coworkers I'm going to be with. I want you to go full in on this relationship, but I don't know what's going to happen when I get there. That's the thing with obedience. There's a fence between us and the step, and we don't always get to see how it's going to go. There's a pretty big fence here for Deborah. I want you to amass an army and go defeat another army that you have no business defeating. She doesn't know how that's going to go when the swords get unsheathed. But when we know with certainty God's direction, we can jump that fence with confidence every time. Now this actually brings us to the question I want to spend time answering today. This is a question that I think every Christian ever has wondered. This is a question that as a pastor, I get asked this with a great deal of frequency. This is a question that I think Christians wonder no matter how long they've been walking with the Lord, no matter how fresh their faith is, no matter the depth of their faith, no matter the breadth of experience of their faith. I think that this is something that all Christians wonder about. And so I wanted to take the rest of our time today and do my best to answer this question, which is, okay, listen, Nate, I understand. When I have certainty of God's direction, I can go to the next thing. When I'm certain about it, I know that I can go with confidence, but how do I know when I've clearly heard from God? How do I know? How do I know with the level of confidence that Deborah had to go risk people's lives that I can jump that fence? How do I know that I know that I've actually heard from God? I think that's a really tough question to answer. And so I wanted to offer you a couple suggestions this morning as to how we can be clear that we've heard from God, that we have clarity on his direction. The first thing I would mention is actually not in your notes. It's probably the most important one. When I was making the notes up, I should have included this one. I thought it was kind of a given, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was important to mention here. God's direction will never be in opposition to his word. Okay, God's direction in prayer and in counsel is always going to be in harmony with scripture. You're never going to pray away a teaching in scripture. You're never going to pray enough to make theft okay, right? Like the Super Bowl is coming up. You're having some kids over. They're in the youth group or they're in the kids ministry. And you're having some families over from the church and you want it to go really well. And your TV is kind of cruddy. So you go to Best Buy and you buy a big, nice one. And you know that you're going to return it on Tuesday, but you were doing this for Jesus. Like I'm doing this for the church. It's for the children, right? We prayed about it. This is what God wants me to do. No, that's theft, man. You're stealing a portion of the use of that object and you're returning it at Best Buy and now they have to give you your full money back and they have to sell it as an open box item and you've stolen from them. And they're a big, huge corporation and they deserve for us to steal from them. Maybe, all right, but that's not what we're talking about. The Bible doesn't make space for those exceptions. That's theft. You're not going to pray that away. You're not going to pray away loving your neighbor as yourself. There's no situation where you can say, I really feel like I should be able to treat this person like a jerk because they're a jerk for me. So this is what I'm going to do. You can't pray that away. You can't pray yourself into an affair. You can't pray yourself into something that runs contrary to Scripture. So the first thing about hearing God's voice is when you think you've heard it, it will never run contrary to this. If it does, you need to fix your ears. Okay, the other reasons. And this, I think, is the biggest one. It's the toughest one to swallow, but it's the most important one. How do I know when I've clearly heard from God? You learn his voice over time. You learn his voice over time. Jesus says that my sheep know me and they know my voice. We recognize when the Father calls to us. We recognize when Jesus is speaking to us. And what this means is the more times I wake up in the morning and I spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer, and I've talked to you guys before about listening prayer, about prayer not just being where we spout off things to God and then we go, okay, amen, and we walk away, but where we try to sit quietly and listen with our soul. And if that sounds mysterious and weird and wispy, it is. I can't explain it to you better than that. You just need to start doing it and trying. But we listen to God. We listen to him speak to us in scripture. We listen to the spiritual leaders in our life. The people that we trust and we hear from them and we start to learn more and more what the voice of God sounds like and when the voice of God is showing up, we start to learn things. Sometimes I'm in a conversation and I'll just hear this little whisper. Lean into this. Put down your phone and listen. Be present here. And it's like, oh, oh, this is a God conversation. God's using this person to speak to me right now. I need to hear this. The more we listen for God, the better we get at hearing him. I always think of it like when I was a kid, my dad had a whistle, just a classic dad whistle. Just, hey, get over here. And I will recognize, I could be in a park and 25 dads could whistle in unison. And I would know which one was my dad's and where he was. Like, I remember being in the church parking lot. I hear the whistle. I go to the car. Like, I just know I'm out playing in the neighborhood. I hear the whistle. I know that's my dad's whistle. Oh, I heard that whistle. That was your dad's whistle. Sorry, sucker. I'm still playing. But when I heard my dad's whistle, I knew you'd go. I just heard it so many times that it just resonates with me, right? That's how the voice of God works. So often, people will come to me frustrated because they're praying about a thing and they don't feel like they have any clear direction. Or it seems like God speaks to other people, but God doesn't speak to me. And it's a hard question to ask, but it's the best one to ask, which is, well, how long have you been trying to listen? How many years have you invested in trying to learn his voice? This is the thing that over time and through dedication, we begin to learn the voice of God. We begin to learn the voice of God so much that we get stories like Elisha. I've mentioned this before, but Elisha in the Old Testament, the book of 1 and 2 Kings, he's somewhere off on a mountainside and someone comes to him and they said, hey, the son of so-and-so just died. They're calling for you. And his response is to look at God and go, this is how you're letting me find out about this? You didn't want to tell me yourself? Like, when has something happened and you've seen it on your Facebook feed and you've gone like, God, you didn't want to mention this to me? Like, who of us are that close that we hear his voice that regularly that he speaks to us with such clarity that we would turn to him and we would say, this terrible thing has happened to someone in my life and you didn't tell me. Why didn't you tell me? I would never do that because I would just assume that I missed it if you tried to tell me. The only way we get that close to God and know his voice that well is by a consistent pursuit of him. So if we're frustrated that we're not hearing the voice of God, we don't have clarity about something, I would ask you, how long have you been trying to listen? The next thing I would say is this. How do we know that we've heard clarity from God? The voices in your life will speak in stereo. The voices that God has placed in your life will speak in stereo. It's awkward for me to say this, but if you go to grace, he's given you a pastor. He's given you other things to compensate for his lack of wisdom in your life, but he's also given you a pastor. He's given you parents, kids. He's given you parents. And if you have parents who love you and love God, they have been placed, you are lucky, and they have been placed in your life for you to listen to. When they speak, we need to hear God speaking to us. And that doesn't go away when we move away. They're still our counsel. They're still placed in our life to shepherd us. Our small group leaders, our small group people, our friends, the people that we look up to, God has placed people in our life who love us and love Jesus, and they are there to be his voice when we need it. And I have always found that these voices speak in stereo. They speak together. They speak in one accord. We go around and we ask people, what do you think about this? I think God wants me to take this step. What do you think about it? What do you think about it? What do you think about it? They're going to speak together in unison. It's going to harmonize with scripture. And when all these trusted voices in our life agree that this is what we're hearing and this is what we need to do, that's a sure sign that that's a step that we can take. I think the mistake that some of us make sometimes is we have a thing that we want to do and we're praying to God and asking permission for it. I think this is what God wants me to do. And we're going around and we're asking all of our friends and all of our trusted friends say, no, that's a bad idea. Gosh, I'm not sure I would do that right now. I don't know. They seem a little bit crazy. You might not want to get into that. And then you find the one person that's like, do it, dog. Go. That's what God wants. And you're like, see, they told me. And we ignore everyone else. And we follow the one piece of advice that we wanted to hear. God's voice often speaks to us in stereo through a multiplicity of counsel. Proverbs tells us that where there is much counsel, there is much wisdom. So if we want clarity in hearing the voice of God, ask people who we know, listen. And this is important too. Maybe you have somebody that you know who prays constantly. I think of Miss Ginger, Miss Ginger Gentry. She is a prayer warrior. She prays all the time. She was our Grace Raleigh Partner of the Year last year. No big deal. We started handing out that award. That's a huge deal. That was the most weird, tepid applause. I hope you heard that, Ginger. If I really needed to know some direction, you know what I would do? I would go to Ms. Ginger, who I know is a prayer warrior, and I would say, hey, I'm thinking about this thing. Will you please pray about this and tell me how you feel God's directing you? Use those voices in your life. The people that are a little bit further down the path, the people who have listened for longer than you, who you trust to hear the voice of God, go to them and say, will you pray about this for me and tell me what you think God is directing you to do? Listen to the voices that God's given us in stereo. The last thing that I would tell you to do if you want clarity on God's direction in your life, and this isn't the best or first option, but it is often a clarifying one, is to ask for a sign. Ask for clear direction. We see this happen in the story of Gideon and the judges. Just a couple of chapters later, God says, hey, I want you to go do this crazy thing. I want you to take 300 men and go fight this big, huge army with it. And Gideon's like, are you sure? And God says, yeah. And Gideon goes, if you're really sure, I'm going to put a doormat out in front of my tent. When I wake up, I want that to be wet and the rest of the ground to be dry. And God says, all right. So Gideon wakes up and the doormat is wet and the rest of the ground is dry. And he's like, I guess I really need to do the thing. But one more time, God, this time I want to wake up tomorrow. I want the ground to be wet and my mat to be dry. And he wakes up the next day and the ground's wet, the mat's dry. And he's like, all right, I guess we're going to do the thing. It's okay to ask for signs. I've actually done this twice in my life. It was such a big decision that I just felt like, God, I need something from you so that I know I can grab onto this if things get hard. And in February of 2016, Jen and I were outside of Atlanta, and we made the decision together that it was time for me to start looking for a job as a senior pastor. That seemed like the next thing to do. And so at the onset of the search, I was outside one night. I was letting the dog out. I went outside, and whenever I go outside, I always look up at the stars. I've always loved the stars. I've always loved the sky. And so I was just looking up at the stars, and I was praying. And I remember my prayer that night was, God, I know that this is going to be tough, and I'm not going to know what to do, and I'm going to have to make a hard decision. So can you just, when I find the right place, can you just make it clear? Can you put Jen and I on the same page on this? I don't want to take her to a place where she doesn't want to go. I don't want to go to a place where I'm not supposed to go. Will you please just make this clear? This is a big choice. And as I was praying that, I looked up, and I saw a constellation that I'd never seen before. And I thought, huh, must be a message from God. I wonder what that is. So I pull out my phone, I download this constellation app and I look at it and it turns out it was a constellation of Taurus. And so I'm reading about the description of the constellation of Taurus, like it's these three systems and they're combining this one thing. Okay, three and one, God, I'll be looking for that. And I'm trying to like piece together what are the tea leaves of this constellation that I need to be paying attention for in the search? And finally, I just gave up. And I put it down. I said, all right, God, I got you loud and clear. I'll keep that in the back of my mind. That'll make sense to me when it needs to make sense to me. And then we get to looking, right? And I got to tell you, you're 36 years old with no senior pastor experience. It takes a church that is pretty dumb or desperate to be willing to give you the keys to the place. That's what I learned in that search. I interviewed a bunch of places. I finished second a lot of times. There was a lot of doubt in there. I began to wonder, is this ever really going to happen for me? I don't have any experience. Everybody says they want somebody without experience. And then they hire the guy that's been doing it for 15 years. So do they really? and is this ever really going to happen? God, do I need to start looking for different things? It was hard, but I felt like I needed to hang in there, right? And then in December of 16, I came across Grace and had my first interview on December the 8th. And then that process kind of went into the next year. And at the end of February, early March, I had come up here on a weekend visit. And when I came up here for a visit and I got to spend time with the people, and I don't know how this happened because, I mean, look at this place. I fell in love with it, okay? I don't know how. I mean, polling all, I was like, I'm all in on this place. I fell in love with it and I really felt like this is where I wanted to be. I felt like it fit. I felt like it was good, and this is where I wanted to be, and I felt like Raleigh was going to be a good place to raise a family. But I also knew after my visit that there was another guy coming up the following weekend, and he probably thought the same thing. God's probably giving him the same direction because you never quite know how that works. And then I knew that after his visit, they were going to have an elder meeting. And then in the elder meeting, they were going to decide who they were going to offer and they were going to give somebody a call. And so it came that night. It was a Tuesday night, I think. And I knew, I think, that they were going to meet at like 6 or 6.30 and that they were going to decide who they wanted to offer and then they were going to make a call. And so, you know, I'm trying to hang in there. I'm trying to not be stressed. 7 o'clock rolls around. I'm like, you know, it's just been 30 minutes. I've got to get into the process a little bit. Then it's 7.30 and I'm like, well, what in the world is taking them so long? Little did I know they had marathon elder meetings back then so they would probably all laugh at that. 8 o'clock hits, 8.30, and I'm like, oh no, this is taking too long. I'm so clearly better than the other guy. How can there be this much debate? And then nine o'clock happens, and I'm like, well, shoot. They offered it to the other dude, and now they're going to call me tomorrow and offer me condolences, or they're waiting to see if he takes it, and maybe I'll be plan B when I'm not above that. And then I just kind of start to spiral. I kind of start to just get anxious and think this isn't going to happen and I'm going back to the place of this is never going to work out. This is never going to happen. I'm going to be a small groups pastor for the rest of my life. That takes work like four a year. And then I'm just bored. I didn't want to do that. And so to try to lower my anxiety, I just went outside to pray. And I go outside to pray. And y'all, I had totally forgotten about Taurus. I hadn't thought about it. I hadn't looked for it. I hadn't read about it. It was not in my mind. And I looked up. And for the second time in my life, I saw that constellation. And I thought, okay, I hear you. We're good. And I stopped praying. And I went inside and I told Jen, everything's going to be fine. She goes, what? And I was like, yeah, I saw some stars. It's going to be good. A few minutes later, Bert called me and they offered me a job. And, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I feel like it's been a pretty good fit. I feel like what was on the other side of that fence has been pretty good. And so sometimes we're not quite sure, but we need a little bit of assurance. It's okay to ask for a sign. It's okay to say, God, I need some clarity here. I need some direction here. But if we want to have the clarity of Deborah so that we can walk with the confidence of Deborah, we need to start learning to listen to God, start giving him opportunities to speak into our life. We need to learn to tune our spiritual ear to his voice so that when he whistles, we hear it, so that when we're in a conversation and he's speaking to us, we slow down and we engage. We need to learn that God speaks in stereo through the voices that he has placed in our life. And we need to learn that sometimes the proper spirit, if we ask for a sign, God and his goodness will give us one. And then we can walk with clarity and confidence into the step of obedience that I know he's asking all of us to take. So let's have the confidence and clarity of Deborah as we go into our week this week. Let's pray. Father, you're just so good to us. God, I pray that we would be better at hearing your voice. We know you're speaking. We know you're guiding. We know you're directing. We know that you're influencing. We know that you're there. We know that you're calling to us even now. That even now you're speaking to our hearts. Even now you're showing us the next thing. Would you please give us ears to hear? Would you please give us eyes to see? Would you please give us the clarity of Deborah? The remarkable knowledge of your voice that Elisha had. Help us to know when you're speaking. Help us to hear when your voice is in our life. Surround us with good counsel. And God, for those this morning who need a sign, I just pray that you would give it to them. Whatever step of obedience that we might be facing, Father, would you give us confidence that whatever's waiting on the other side of that fence is better than where we are now. Give us the courage to take it. It's in your son's name we ask for these things. Amen.

Amen. Boy, Steve, I don't know if you can hear it from up here, but that was the best singing I've heard in like a year and a half. That was amazing. Great job, everyone. One of my greatest joys as a pastor, truly, is to sit in the front and just sometimes I stop singing and I just listen to the body that I get to be a part of praise our God together. And it's just a really sweet and special thing. Thank you for being here this morning. Thank you for joining us online or listening throughout the week. If that's your habit, we are grateful for all of that. This is the third part in our series in the book of Hebrews called Greater. When we're moving through the book of Hebrews, we're looking at the comparisons that the author makes between Jesus and some of the figures and facets of the Jewish faith. You'll remember that he writes this letter to Hellenistic Jews, which are Jewish people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek-dominated culture, probably grew up as practicing Jews, and then converted to Christianity somewhere as adults subsequent to the death and resurrection of Christ and are now trying to work out their new faith. Not only are they trying to work out their new faith, but they're being oppressed by the Roman government violently and physically, and then they're being rejected by their culture. So they're being persecuted from without and from within. And so the author writes this letter to compel them to persevere in their faith, to hang in there in the face of persecution, to hang in there in the face of isolation and stay true to Jesus, their Savior. And again, he does this by making different comparisons over the course of the letter. And so this morning, we arrive at the comparison of Jesus to a high priest, and he makes the point that Jesus is our great high priest. And as I broach the subject of high priest, and we think about Jesus being our high priest, we may feel about that news a little bit like I felt in December of 2008. December of 2008, it was the first year of our marriage. We got married in that July, and Jen's family decided it was high time that we go to Rome, Italy. They had been planning this trip for a while. Now I've married into the family, so my poor father-in-law has to pay my way to Rome as well, and I get to go and schlub all the bags all over Italy, all over the place, wherever we're going. That was my role. While we're there, we're staying in, we rented an apartment, I guess, like it was Airbnb Rome, I guess. And we're staying in this apartment, and it's a couple blocks away from the Vatican City, from St. Peter's Basilica, St. Peter's Square, and all that stuff. And we happened to be there on Christmas Day. And I knew that on Christmas Day, the Pope was going to come out, who was Pope Benedict at the time, and give a papal address. And so I thought it would be a really fun experience. When am I going to be in Rome on Christmas again, a couple blocks away from the Vatican? So I get up that morning, get dressed, and go to St. Peter's Square for the papal address. And it is packed with, I think it was a couple hundred thousand people. It was amazing to see flags from different countries all over the place. I worm my way up towards the front, and Pope Benedict comes out, and he gives his address. And I remember being incredibly impressed with him because he gave the address seven or eight different times in seven or eight languages. And he did it flawlessly. And I don't think he was reading off of anything. It was a really, really impressive thing. And for me, I didn't grow up Catholic. I have no Catholic background. I knew less about Catholicism then than I do now. And I only know a little bit more now than I did then. So it was all just kind of a new experience for me. And I remember at the end of the address, somehow or another, I learned this. I don't know if I heard him say it. I don't know if I read it on the screen where it was giving us the closed captioning of it, but at the end of his address, he offered all of those in attendance. He gave us, I got to see if I can get this right, a verbal plenary indulgence for non-mortal sins in 2008 for that year, which is great news. I was thrilled to have this. Now, I don't want to be disrespectful to Catholicism because for some people that was very meaningful. And what an indulgence is, it basically meant that the Pope forgave me of all of my non-mortal sins in 2008. I don't know what the difference is between mortal and non-mortal sins. It seems like we should try to invest our sinning in the non-mortal kind. I really don't know. But for those sins, I do not have to pay my penance in purgatory. I'm not going to be punished for those in purgatory. And as I received that news, I thought, well, that's great. But I don't really believe in purgatory. And I don't want to be disrespectful to the Pope, but I don't need your forgiveness for my sins. Jesus offers me that. So like I'm all squared away here on the verbal plenary indulgences for non-moral sins. But thank you. I'm good. And I think that that's a little bit how we as 21st century Christians receive the news that we have a great high priest. Oh, I have a high priest. Well, that's great, but like I'm a Christian, I'm all squared away here. I have direct access to God. I don't need an intercessor. Because we might understand a priest to be someone that we go to the priest, and then the priest goes to God on our behalf. And you might be enough of a biblical scholar to kind of start to piece this together from the Jewish perspective, where the Jewish people, they grew up with a high priest. You would go to your priest, and your priest would go to the high priest, and the high priest would make sacrifices on your account. You didn't go directly to God. You went to the high priest, and was your conduit to God, right? And then we know because we're Christians, we act like we have direct access to God. We can pray. We can go to God whenever we want to. I can go into the very throne room of God. I don't need a high priest. I can go directly to God myself. So that's cool that Jesus is the great high priest. It's neat that it's explained like that, but that's probably more for the Hebrew audience than it is for me, because as a Christian, I know I can go directly to God. Except for here's the thing. No, you can't. You cannot go directly to God. I'm going to tell you why in a little bit. But what I want us to understand as we begin this discussion of Jesus as our high priest is that we absolutely need a high priest. We need a high priest. We need someone to go to God on our behalf because we cannot go into the perfect throne room and the perfect presence of Creator God Almighty on our own. We cannot do that. We would be consumed by His glory in an instant. So we have to have a high priest. We need one of those. Before I tell you why we need a high priest, why we need someone to intercede to God for us. I want to tell you about your high priest, because there's some things unpacked in Hebrews. Really, the end of chapter 4 to the end of chapter 7, so close to three and a half chapters, the author invests in this comparison of Jesus as a high priest and explaining to us just the very nature and importance and grandeur of our high priest. And he introduces this idea to us in this way. If you have a Bible, turn to Hebrews. We're going to be in chapter 4, and then we're going to be in chapter, I think, 5, and then we're going to spend the rest of the time in chapter 7, and there's lots to read along with today. But if you have a Bible, turn to Hebrews chapter 4. This is how the author introduces to us the idea of our high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who, in every respect, has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. There's a couple ideas there, and it's important that we understand them. There's the idea of because of Jesus, we can draw near the throne of God with boldness. We can go to God with boldness. This idea that we've inherited as Christians that we go directly to God, he says that we can do this. So we go directly to God with boldness, and we're going to talk about how we do that in a little bit. So to kind of put a pin in that idea, and we're going to circle back to it later. But he also says that we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with us. It's important that we remember that Jesus walked this earth, that Jesus was human, that Jesus faced the same temptations that we do. We see him in Matthew in the desert after fasting for 40 days being tempted by Satan himself. He's tempted with his desires, with his appetite for bread. He's tempted with the desire for authority. He's tempted with his ego. And we see that Jesus was tempted as he moved through life in much the same way as we are all tempted as we move through life. And so as a result, we understand that there's no temptation that we face that Jesus has not dealt with. It's not as if Jesus didn't have to manage and master his own propensity to lust in his own heart. It's not that Jesus didn't have to manage and master his own ego, his own greed, his own selfishness. When we feel fatigued and people need more and more and more from us, moms, moms, I think, are chief among this. Moms, they never get to go through their day without somebody needing something, right? Jesus felt that fatigue. He knew what it was to perform miracles, to serve and serve and serve and give, and then to go off to a quiet place, the bathroom, and have someone knock on the door, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Yes, what? He knew what it was not to lose his mind with that, right? He knew what it was to be tempted by his ego. He knew what it was to have people say things to him and have it within him to crush that person. Have it within them to verbally spar with this person in such a way that they would never speak again. And he bit his tongue. He knew what that was. There is no temptation that we face that Jesus did not walk through himself. Because of that, we have a high priest that empathizes and sympathizes with us. I think we tend to think of Jesus on the throne judging us, looking down on us, being disappointed in the things that we do, and that's not it at all. Jesus sympathizes with us. He looks at us and he says, I've been there. I understand why you made that choice. Don't make it again. It's not good for you. He offers us his sympathy. That's a really, really powerful thing. But this isn't all that the author says about Jesus as our high priest. He actually compares telling you, is the most mysterious, fascinating figure in the Bible to me. I have my whole life since I encountered him, since I read this verse, I was probably in high school and I encountered this verse and my first thought is, the order of Melchizedek, who is that? Because here's the thing, there's an order of priests in the Old Testament, the descendants of Aaron. When God sent Moses to Egypt and said, free my people, he sent him with his brother Aaron. And Moses was the civil authority and Aaron was the spiritual authority. And through the tribe of the Levites that follow from, that come from the line of Aaron are named all the priests and high priests throughout the ages. So you would expect for Jesus to be named high priest in the order of Aaron, because that's the order of priests that have moved throughout the Old Testament. But that's not what the author says. He says he is the high priest, not in the order of Aaron, and we're going to see why in a minute, but in the order of Melchizedek. And if you're paying attention, you're saying, no, what now? Why? Well, let me tell you why. Hebrews chapter 7, verses 1 through 3, we're told a little bit more about this figure. He writes this, for this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him. And to him, Abraham apportioned a 10th part of everything. He is first by translation of his name, king of righteousness. And then he is having neither beginning of days nor end of life. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. And then he is also king of Salem. That is king of peace. He is without father or mother no genealogy? He has no father or mother? He resembles Christ. He continues as priest forever. Who is this dude? And why don't we know more about him? He only shows up three places in the Bible. We see him in Genesis 14. This is what he's referring to. And I love how flippant the Bible is. Like that's an unimportant detail. Abraham was returning from the slaughter of the king. So don't worry about that or the slaughter or anything, but let's pay attention to this. I just love the Bible. It's not much for detail sometimes. But in Genesis 14, Abraham has a nephew named Lot who's dumb and gets himself in trouble. And Abraham goes to rescue him. And on the way back, he encounters this king named Melchizedek. His name literally means king of righteousness. He is the king of a city called Salem that would later become Jerusalem, the first king of Jerusalem that we see in Scripture. And when Abraham encounters him, he gives him a tenth of everything that he owns. All his riches, all his wealth, all his livestock, everything that he owns, he gives Melchizedek a tenth of it. This, incidentally, is where we get the idea of the tithe. That's where the tithe started. Tithe just means tenth. And in the New Testament, people disagree on whether or not we're supposed to tithe, but no one disagrees on whether or not we're supposed to be generous. And generally, we take that 10% rule as this is the starting point. And as God grows your heart for generosity and your ability to be generous, we do all that we can. But we trace the tithe back to this incredible interaction that Abraham has with Melchizedek in Genesis chapter 14. And it's incredibly interesting that Abraham felt compelled to tithe to Melchizedek and acknowledge him as a priest. Because to this point in Scripture, all we know of is that God revealed himself to Abraham. We don't know that God has been revealing himself to other people, but clearly, somehow Melchizedek knew who God was, served God, and was this king and priest. And to the Jewish mind, for Abraham to be subservient to him, you would expect Melchizedek to tithe to Abraham to the Jewish mind. But instead, Abraham tithes to Melchizedek, acknowledging a superiority there, which would have shocked the Jewish audience. And in Melchizedek, we see, this is fascinating to me, the unification of civic and spiritual authority. In Melchizedek, we see this man who is a king. He is a civil authority. He is in charge of the military. He is governing over a group of people, and yet he is also the spiritual authority over this people. And this is not a unification that we see again in the Old Testament. From Melchizedek, we see Moses take the civil authority, and we see Aaron take the spiritual authority, and we watch those threads run through, we see those streams run through the Old Testament. But we do not see in God's Israel a reunification of the civil and spiritual authority. Actually, from here, he's only mentioned one more time in the Old Testament. David mentions him. We don't see him again. He shows up in Genesis chapter 14. Abraham pays him a tithe. He offers Abraham a blessing. Off he goes. It's this mysterious king of righteousness who's a unification of civil and spiritual authority. And then we don't see him again. And then out of nowhere in Psalm 110, David refers to him again. It's a messianic prophecy, which means David is talking about the Messiah that is to come, who we know as Jesus. And he says in this prophecy that he will be priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. And you're going, what? Why don't we know more about this guy? Why haven't they written more about him? Why didn't God include him more? And to those questions, we have no answers. But here's what's fascinating to me, and it's amazing to me that God allows David to be a part of Melchizedek's story. Because what we have in the Old Testament, if we're paying attention, and this week as I was researching this is the first time I realized it, and I thought I loved it. In the Old Testament, we see this stream of the civil authority of kingship. We see this stream of this reign of who would become David. And in 2 Samuel chapter 7, God promises David that his throne will go on for all of eternity, that his reign will persist through eternity. And we know that Jesus is the continuation of David's reign, that when he returns to earth, he's going to sit on the throne of David. And so Jesus is the continuance of David's reign for all eternity. But what we may not know is that another stream running through the Old Testament is the stream of the priesthood of Melchizedek that is also going to continue for all of eternity. But it's running parallel to this stream of Aaronic priests, priests through the line of Aaron. And it seems like Jesus is going to come back and fulfill that priesthood, and he's not. This is what I want you to know about your high priest, because I think it's amazing. Your high priest, Jesus, is the continuance of the reign of David and of the priesthood of Melchizedek and the reunification of civic and spiritual authority for all eternity. That's big, so I'm going to say it again. Your high priest, Jesus, who intercedes on your behalf, is the continuance of the reign of David and the priesthood of Melchizedek and the reunification of civic and spiritual authority for all eternity. Do you understand that there's these two streams running through the Old Testament that seem like they're parallel, that seem like they don't have anything to do with each other, the reign of David and the priesthood of Melchizedek. And then in the person of Christ, those streams converge and they conclude and they are completed that the whole Old Testament is these streams running and pointing to Christ and culminating in him, that that's your high priest, the one to whom the entire Old Testament points to and culminates in. He is the completion of these two things. He is the continuance of the reign of David and the priesthood of Melchizedek. For all of eternity, they were just simply foreshadowing for Jesus, who came to die on the cross for you and to be your high priest for your sins. And he is the reunification of the civil and spiritual authority. And in Revelation, in the new heaven and the new earth, when God sits on his throne, he sits on the throne of David and continues as our king and our priest forevermore. Melchizedek is a setup for that. And Jesus is the completion of it. When I sit in that truth, I cannot help but be awed at my Savior. He is so much more than a man who came to die on a cross. He is so much more than simply the Son of God. He is the convergence and the completion of all of the Old Testament, and the promise and the hope of the New Testament, and then the completion of everything at the end of time. Jesus is a pretty big deal, and that's your high priest. And not only is he the continuation of the reign of David and the reunification of civic and spiritual authority and the continuation of the priesthood of Melchizedek, but your high priest is the perfection and completion of the earthly priesthood. He is the perfection and the completion of the Aaronic line of priests that they had in the Old Testament. And we see that in these verses here. I've grouped some together, Hebrews chapter 7, verses 11, 18, and 19. I'll kind of jump around, but this is what the author writes. Now, if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law made nothing perfect. But on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God. I know that's a little confusing, so here's what's going on in that passage. The Hebrews followed the priesthood of Aaron, and the descendants of him were priests. And these priests were messed up dudes. They were human just like me and you. They were pastors. And the best that a pastor can do is be human. I mean, your pastor may or may not have snapped at his sweet daughter on a road trip this weekend when she asked one too many times if we were in a new state yet. I mean, that could have happened. We are fallible, gross humans. And the author of Hebrews points out, that's who your high priests were. They were men who sinned and first had to offer a sacrifice for themselves before they could even get to your business. And now we have a high priest that doesn't need to sacrifice for himself. They were men who lived and then they died. This high priest does not do that. The priesthood of Aaron, the Aaronic priesthood existed much like the law did to simply show you your inability to earn your way into heaven. And it said, why would we need another priesthood unless the one that you acknowledge, the line of Aaron, was fallible and ultimately showed you that it couldn't bring you to salvation. We actually needed a priest in the order of Melchizedek to be perfect and to be complete, which is what Jesus was. So he's the perfection and the completion of the priesthood that already existed. So that's who your high priest is. He is the one on whom the entire Old Testament converges and is personified in. He is the completion of the line of priests that we see run through the Old Testament. Both streams. He's a pretty big deal. But I said at the beginning that we actually need this high priest. It's not just nice that we have them. We're not just awed at the majesty of Jesus and who he is. We actually, we need him. And we're told why in chapter 7, verse 25. Verse 25 starts out consequently, is the first word there. And it starts out consequently, which means because of everything that I just said, because of everything I just said from starting in chapter 4, verse 14, moving through chapter 5, 6, through all of 7, now as a conclusion to by dying on the cross and by raising from the dead. And that in that, in what we celebrate here in a few weeks at Easter, Jesus' death on the cross on Good Friday and then his subsequent resurrection from the dead, that Jesus conquered death, he conquered sin, he conquered the grave, he conquered hell, and on our behalf, now we are saved if we simply place our faith in him on the cross. And that is true. However, Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25 tells us that unless he goes to God and intercedes on our behalf, unless he goes to God and sits at the right hand of the throne and prays for you in your salvation, that that work of salvation is not complete. So what we understand is your very salvation relies on the prayers of your high priest. Your very eternity, your spot in heaven. We sang a few minutes ago, I'm a child of God. I'm free indeed. In my father's house, there's a place for me. That is all true. But it's not true if Jesus doesn't go to the throne of God and intercede for us. The salvific work of Christ was not completed on the cross or rising out of the grave. It is completed as he goes to God and sits at his right hand and says, I got them. When they talk to you, I covered them in my righteousness. I love them. I died for them. God, they're good. At your worst moment, Jesus looks at you and he prays for you and he says, Father, they're good. Forgive them. They know not what they do. And if our faith just rests in what Jesus did on the cross and that he rose from the grave and we don't acknowledge that we have a high priest in heaven who's praying to God on our behalf, who is interceding for us, that our understanding of what's working for our salvation falls short. Our very eternity relies on the prayers of our high priest. How arrogant and ignorant is it of us to say that I don't need a high priest, I can go directly to God. No, you can't. You get to go to God because your high priest, Jesus Christ, sits at the right hand of him and allows you to do so. That's why in chapter 4, verses 14 through 16, he says it's because of our high priest that we go boldly into the throne room of God. Because if he's not there going, he's good, she's good, let her in, let her speak. Then we are dashed in the glory, we are consumed in the glory of God. We cannot hope to stand in the throne room of God. And maybe I'm just speaking about myself here, but sometimes we just arrogantly think or claim or feel that I don't need any of that, I don't need a high priest, I can go directly to God. Yes, you do, you need a high priest more than anyone. But your high priest is Jesus. He died for you. Hebrews says he was perfected in that suffering. He conquered death by raising from the grave for you. And then he goes to Father to complete your work of salvation, and he intercedes on your behalf once you place your faith in him. That's your high priest. That's what he does for you. Do you understand that that's why we pray in Jesus' name? That when you pray and you end your prayer because you heard your parents or some other person as you were growing up in their prayers in Jesus' name or the Bible study that you went to, they said in Jesus' name, and so you just started saying in Jesus' name. Do you understand that this is why we do it? Because if we pray in our name, then God's not hearing our prayers. If we pray in our name, in the name of Nate, I pray. Shut up. No. In Jesus' name, we pray. It's an acknowledgement. Whether you understand it or not, it's acknowledgement at the end of your prayers. God, I'm asking for these blessings. I'm thanking you for these things. I'm confessing my sins. I'm asking for intercession here. I'm presenting all of my prayers and petitions to you in the name of my high priest who died for me and sits at your right hand and prays for me. In Jesus' name we pray. Because of his completed work of salvation by sitting at the right hand of the Father and praying for us. Now I don't know about you, but as this washed over me this week, I couldn't help but be awed at my high priest, at pulling these threads from the Bible and seeing how they all work to converge on the person of Christ, and be humbled by my arrogance in the past to think that I get to go directly to God without acknowledging my utter need for a high priest in Christ. But I do hope wherever you were in that spectrum that we will never again go to God without acknowledging that it is because of the death and resurrection and prayers of our high priest that we are able to do that. I hope that this sermon in particular this week helps us paint a more full and rich picture of the person of Jesus in our life whom we come to and whom we worship and who we submit ourselves to. I hope it enlargens our hearts with gratitude and even with awe as we consider Jesus our high priest in the order of Melchizedek. And because we can pray in Jesus's name, I want to invite us to do that now and then we're going to participate in communion. Well, there's one more thing about Jesus and Melchizedek that I'm excited to share with you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for hearing our prayers in the name of your Son, Jesus. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for interceding for us. I pray that you would enlarge our hearts with gratitude and faith as we revel in all that you are. Jesus, we can't wait to see your face, to see you sit on the throne of David as our king and our high priest. May we have a fresh gratitude for our salvation, God. May anyone who is listening to me now, who doesn't know you, who has not received the gift of salvation, would they please by faith receive the gift of their high priest, Jesus, whom they so desperately need? Would you please make us daily aware of our need for him? Thank you for your servant Melchizedek and how you used him. Enlarge and enliven our hearts to you, Father. And it's in Jesus' name, our high priest, that we pray. Amen. Right now, we're going to take a minute and observe communion together. So if you're watching at home and you're able to grab some of the elements, we hope that you will do that. Here we have these packets just by way of review. The very top flimsy layer reveals a stale wafer, and then under that is the juice. Again, this is the COVID-friendly version of communion. Nobody likes it, but it is nice to be able to share in it together. This represents the bread and the wine from the last supper that Jesus had with the disciples. Jesus is about to be arrested, and he starts this tradition with his disciples, and he offers them bread, and he says, whenever this is my body that is broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. And then he pours the wine, and he said, this is my blood that is spilled for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so it became a tradition with the followers of Christ that when they would gather to consume this bread and wine and to do it in remembrance of Jesus and this tradition that he started. And we see in Acts chapter 2 that this was a defining trait of the early church. They would gather in one another's homes and they would break bread and they would share wine and they would pray together and they would remember their Savior. And the reason that we're doing it this week is back in Genesis 14, when Abraham offers a tenth of all that he owns to this king of Salem, Melchizedek. Melchizedek, in return, offers Abraham a blessing. Do you know what that blessing was? It was a blessing of bread and wine. Just another way that the life of Melchizedek tips its cap and points an arrow to Jesus. Another way that our Savior is foreshadowed in the Bible. So as we focus on this mystery of Melchizedek, let us acknowledge together that he offered Abraham the peace and blessing of communion thousands of years before Jesus came to define it so that when we participate in communion today, we don't just go back to Jesus and the disciples, we go back to the very foundations of our faith with Abraham and Melchizedek and participate in this millennia-old tradition as we focus on our Savior together. So I'm going to be quiet for a minute and pray on my own. As I do that, I would invite you to pray too. Go into the throne room of God, ushered there by your high priest. Ask God to unveil in your heart anything that is there that shouldn't be there. Ask him to create in you a renewed sense of gratitude for him. And be awed by the fact that you are participating in a tradition that goes far back beyond Christ, all the way back to the very beginnings of our faith. Let's pray for a minute. I'll say amen and then we'll take the elements together. Amen. Jesus took the bread and he broke it for the disciples. And he said, this is my body that's broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And he poured the wine. And he said, this is my blood. This is poured out for you. Whenever you drink of this wine, do it in remembrance of me.

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

Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in this way. I am excited for the fifth part in our series called Things You Should Know, where we're looking through things in Scripture or that come up in church or in Christendom that we are familiar with, we've heard of before, but maybe we don't know how to explain or maybe it hasn't been discussed or maybe we're just too far down the rabbit hole of faith to raise our hand and ask about these things to get some clarity. And so what we wanted to do, so that you didn't have to ask those embarrassing questions in small groups, is take five weeks here at the beginning of the year and talk through some of these topics that we may have questions about, because we don't really discuss them all the time. This morning, I wanted us to look at grace and mercy. Grace and mercy are two things that we see come up in Scripture a lot. We're going to look at Scripture in a little bit to see how replete it is with references to God's grace and God's mercy. And we sing songs about them. We certainly know about them. We've heard about them. The name of the church is Grace, for crying out loud. But I wonder how many of us would be confident in whatever your working definition of grace is. I wonder how many of us would be confident understanding mercy or explaining it to our kids if they heard those words and said, hey, what does that mean? How many of you would feel comfortable going, I got this, I'm going to knock this out of the park? If I asked those of us listening and watching, hey, could you explain grace and mercy to the church? Could I get you to come in one Sunday morning, I'm just going to bring you up on stage, and you tell the good people of grace what the name of the church really means. Now, I have no doubt in our church, we would do a good job. There would be, I think, a myriad answers across a wide range of definitions using a lot of unnecessary words that would be mostly right. But I think it's worth it as a church to take some time and define these words in a simple way and understand what grace and mercy really are. Because when we understand God's grace and God's mercy towards us, I think that we can't help but want to respond in exuberant praise. I think when we really understand what's going on with grace and mercy, when we really properly understand those two characteristics of God, that it inspires within us a response of gratitude, and that gratitude manifests joy, and it ought to make us want to leap out of our skin and praise our good God. Which is why we've positioned the sermon at the beginning of the service this week, and we're going to transition right into worship as I wrap up the sermon. Because I wanted to give you guys a chance to respond to the reality of God's grace and mercy. So with that in mind, and I would also say, for those of you who are listening to this or me, not on Sunday morning, if you're catching up later in the day, if you're listening on a podcast in the car or on a walk or something like that, as you listen to my voice right now, I would encourage you, plan to listen to some praise and worship music on your own at the end of this sermon. Just go ahead and budget some time in your head to listen to two or three songs or just have it playing in the car and allow yourself to respond to what's shared here this morning. But with that preamble, I wanted to jump right in to defining these words for us so we have a working definition here at Grace. So mercy, the way I understand it, is simply when we do not get what we deserve. Mercy is when we do not get something that we deserve. When our actions or our attitude or our behavior warrants punishment, something punitive, or just some natural consequences, and we don't receive those consequences, we don't receive the punishment that we deserve, when we've earned some trouble and we don't get into that trouble, that's mercy. So mercy is simply when we don't get something that we do deserve. Think of it this way. Pretend you've got a 16-year-old son. He's just got a new car. He's got the keys. And part of the deal with having the freedom to drive is that there's a curfew. And his very first time out, he goes out with his buddies and he breaks a curfew. And he understands that you guys have set up these rules that if you go and you break curfew, when you come back, we're going to take your car keys for a week. That's the deal. All right? So he gets back, he's broken curfew, and what he deserves is for you to take his car keys. And instead you say, you know what? I hope that you remember this. I want to forgive you. I'm not going to hold this against you. Go into bed. I'm not going to take your car keys. Right? That's mercy. He does not get a punishment that he does deserve. He doesn't get the consequences that his behaviors warrant. You just showed your son mercy. That's what that is. So mercy is when we do not get something that we do deserve. Grace, conversely, is when we do get something that we don't deserve. Grace is when we get a special favor or a blessing that we did not earn, that our behavior does not warrant. So we go back to the 16-year-old kid. You've forgiven him and you've sent him to his room, go to bed. I'm not going to take your keys. You can continue to have that freedom. You deserve that punishment, but I'm not going to give it to you. But grace is this. Maybe part of the agreement with your son is if he's going to have the freedom of driving, then he has to be responsible and earn his own gas money, which is a pretty fair driving arrangement across, I think, all families. That's a pretty typical arrangement. You're going to have a car, you've got to pay for your gas money. And because you love him, and because you want him to be blessed, and because it seems like he felt particularly bad about breaking curfew, not only do you send him to bed without taking his keys, but then after he's gone, you take his car and you sneak over to the gas station and you fill that thing all the way up for him. And you leave it there as a surprise the next morning. That's grace. Grace is the full gas tank that he doesn't deserve. He just broke the rules, man. He doesn't deserve that at all. He doesn't deserve any special favors. But because you love him, because you're a good parent, you fill up his gas tank. That's grace, right? And it's important that we understand these concepts because they are all over Scripture. Scripture shows us over and over again that God shows us mercy and that God shows us grace. I went through this week and just kind of looked at some of the passages, and I wanted you to see a few of them. So I'm going to read them kind of machine gun style real quick here. There's going to be three in a row for mercy, and then we're going to talk about these. But just look what Scripture has to say about mercy. I love this one in James. This is just a snippet of the verse, but it's a simple phrase. James writes that mercy triumphs over judgment. And then on in Lamentations, back in the Old Testament, the scriptures say, And then finally, Paul writes in Ephesians, What we see in those verses very clearly is that God's mercy is the forgiveness of our sins. God's mercy to us is forgiving our sins, is not giving us the just punishment that we deserve for our sins. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but when we sin, it is offensive to Creator God. When we sin, we take up arms in a violent insurrection against God's domain in the universe. Last week, we talked about Satan, and we talked about his fundamental sin that is all of our fundamental sins, which is to look at God and to say, you're supposed to be up there. You're supposed to be the authority figure, but I don't want that to be true in my life, so I'm going to be my own authority figure. When we sin, when we choose something that is outside of God's will, what we're saying to God is, I don't accept your authority in my life. You're not the boss of me. I'm the boss of me. You don't make my decisions. I make my decisions. You see, when we sin, it is an active rebellion against the way that God created us. God is the creator. We are the created. I'm firmly convinced, and I've said it before, that that's why Genesis starts the way it does. The very first words in the Bible are, in the beginning, God created. It establishes that relationship, creator, creation. In charge, subservient. And when we sin, we go, I don't like that you're in charge. I want to be in charge. And we rebel against God. And God sent his son in light of that rebellion to make a path back to him so that we could spend eternity with him. And God says, when we sin, listen, you can't spend eternity with me anymore. You can't do it. You're imperfect. You've offended me. You violated the terms of the agreement. I am taking your keys. And then God sends his son to make a way for us to go to heaven anyways, for us to spend eternity with him anyways. And what do we do? We trample on that. We sin again. We demand forgiveness again. And I'm not sure that we stop and realize the miracle of God's mercy, the miracle of his forgiveness. When we do, that phrase in James, mercy triumphs over judgment, becomes really amazing. We deserve judgment. We broke the rules. He should take our keys. But he doesn't because our God chooses mercy and mercy triumphs over judgment. Jesus tells Peter, when Peter says, how many times should you forgive someone when they wrong you? Jesus says, 70 times seven. As many times as they wrong you, show them mercy. It's in his very nature to do this. Even though we are involved in a rebellious insurrection against Creator God, He looks at us in all of our offense. And for many of us, we're not talking about ignorant sin here. We're not talking about this thing that we did and now we realize, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be doing that. Now that I'm acquainted with Scripture, I know better. I'm talking about the willful sin that you and I commit every week, every day. Who am I kidding? That's offensive to Creator God. And yet he shows us mercy because lamentation says his mercies are new every morning. Every day requires more of God's forgiveness. Every day we break curfew and every day he gives us mercy for that. He withholds the punishment from us that we do deserve. He withholds the separation from us that we do deserve, the damnation from us that we do deserve. That's God's mercy. But it gets better because I think God's grace adds another layer on top of that that's even more remarkable. Look at what Scripture says about God's grace, just two verses really quickly. In Ephesians, Paul writes, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. And then on in Romans he writes, and we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So mercy forgives us. God's mercy forgives us, but God's grace restores us. You see? God's mercy says, you're forgiven. I know you messed up. I know you broke curfew. You're forgiven. But then God's grace says, and I've made a way for you to be in my family. He fills up the tank. God's mercy says, I no longer hold your sins against you. God's grace says, because of that, I sent my son to die for you, and now you have a seat at my table etern, Do you understand? God's mercy says we messed up, we've offended Creator God, we've willfully sinned, and we've offended Him, and we deserve punishment, and He says, I'm not going to punish you. And He could stop there. He could say, I'm not going to punish you, I'm not going to punish you this one time for breaking curfew, but don't mess up anymore. And then if we mess up again, then we're done. We're toast. That's it. But in his grace and in his goodness, he doesn't stop at forgiveness. He stops at restoration. Not only are you forgiven, but now here, have a seat at my table. Not only are you forgiven, but now you are an adopted son or daughter of the king. You are an heir to the universal throne. Not only am I not going to hold it against you, not only am I going to clothe you in the righteousness ofal son. For those of you who are not familiar with it, I'm about to give you the quickest, worst rendition of it ever. All right. I've preached about this before. I can do a better job than this, but for the sake of time, we're going to look at some essential details. The parable of the prodigal son goes like this. There's a father who's wealthy and he has two sons. And one of those sons, the younger one, looks at the dad and he says, you know what? I really just want your stuff. I don't want you. Can you just go ahead and give me my inheritance? I'd rather you be dead anyway. Just give me my money so that I can live how I want. And that father, in his goodness, for reasons I don't understand, says, okay, fine, and gives him the money. And the son goes off into the city and he spends it on living in ways that just feed his appetites and his lusts. And he runs out of money. He spends it in totally dishonorable ways. He comes to the end of it. Everybody leaves him. He can't find a job. He ends up eating slop on a pig farm. And one day the Bible says he comes to his senses in this really poignant moment and he decides, I'm going to go back to my dad's house. But he works out this speech in his head where he's going to go back and he's going to say, I'm going to go back and I'm going to tell him, can you just please forgive me and let me be your servant? I don't deserve to be your son anymore. What I've done is too offensive. Will you please just let me be your servant? Because they live better than I do right now. And so he heads home with this speech in mind, which, by the way, it's a pretty fair speech, right? Dude took his dad's money, went off and spent it however he wanted to, wasted it on debaucherous things, and then comes back with his hat in his hand. Yeah, you're darn right he doesn't deserve to be a son anymore. He should live as a servant, at least for a few years, right? But he goes back, and the father sees him from a long way off and runs out to greet him. And the son starts in with his speech, dad, I'm so sorry, I don't deserve, yada, yada, yada. And the dad shuts him up right away, flings his arms around him and hugs him. And in that moment, the son knows that he's forgiven, that his father's not going to hold those things against him. That's mercy. But he doesn't stop there. He takes the ring, the signet of the family, and he puts it on his son's finger. And he takes the robe and he takes the slippers and he puts those on the son. And then he goes and he kills the fattened calf, the really good stuff. And he throws a big, huge party. And he says, my son is back, and he welcomes him right back into the family, which he didn't have to do, and his behavior didn't warrant. It's the perfect picture of the mercy and the grace that God offers us. We're the prodigals. We run away and make willful decisions to offend our God, to throw off his authority in our life and be our own authority. And then at some point or another, we come back, hat in hand, apologetic, I'm so sorry. And he forgives us. But he doesn't just forgive us. He restores us. He doesn't just say, hey, I'm not mad at you. Come here. You would expect that he would say, you're forgiven. Get away from me. I need a minute. That's not what he does. He says, you're forgiven. And then he hugs us. And then he sends his son, his only son, whom he loves, who was perfect, who never offended him, to die for you and for me. He gave us that gift. Do you understand? We don't deserve the grace of Jesus. We don't deserve that. We didn't earn it. Our behavior doesn't warrant it. Nowhere in the scripture is there a contract that says when we break the law and offend Almighty God that he owes us the death of his son? That's not the deal. But he does it anyways. That's grace. And in light of that, the mercy of forgiveness and the grace of restoration, we should want to exuberantly praise our God. But I'm also aware of the fact that many of us, as we listen to this, if you look at the ends of the spectrum of, Nick, you better shut up so I can start praising God right now. I'm about to jump out of my skin. And then, oh, okay, that's cool. I think I understand grace and mercy a little bit better now. A lot of us are closer to this end. A lot of us have responded in our heads and in our hearts to what I just said in that way. Oh, okay, yeah, I get it. I understand that better. That's good. Thank you. And it makes me wonder, me included, why we're on that end of the spectrum. And as I thought about that this week, I could only include that it's probably because we're all entitled brats. We're probably on that end of the spectrum because there's a very good chance that the two to three hundred adults I'm talking to right now are really just entitled brats. Here's what I mean. I just want to give you a picture of my daughter's life. I have a daughter named Lily. She just recently turned five. This is her last six weeks. Before you get offended at me calling you an entitled brat, which I did just do, just hear me out. Lily's last six weeks have been unbelievable. She is, through no fault of her own, incredibly entitled now. I ran this by Jen. She's not happy I'm saying this, but we've accepted that it's true. Here's what's happened with her. In December, we as a family spent basically the month down in Athens, Georgia with Jen's family as her dad transitioned into eternity. And in doing that, with Christmas coming up, there are people here in Raleigh who love us and who love Lily and wanted to make sure that Lily got a gift. So a couple times I would come back to Raleigh to take care of some church stuff, and there would be packages waiting on me at the house. I had, I literally, the first time I came back, this is embarrassing, we had some neighbors collecting our mail for us. I had to get a wheelbarrow and go down to their house and fill it up with all the stuff that was waiting on us. And then they pulled a wagon and we unloaded it at my house. That was Christmas arriving at the Rector's. That's us. And other people had like dropped things off at the door. So now I go home, I'm getting these gifts. I take them back to Lily, who is now opening these gifts like, hey, all these people got you these things. Okay, great, thank you. So she's opening them. We're trying to do the video with excitement. She's trying to fan excitement, but she's four at the time. She's not really good at this yet. She doesn't know that's part of the deal when you get gifts. So she's already getting gifts in early December. I made another trip back. There's more stuff waiting. I bring that back. I go ahead and give that to her because we know that there's Christmas coming. We don't want to mute those things. Then at Jen's house, because of things going on, we did early Christmas with her dad. So all the grandkids go in and she's now opening three or four other gifts from her grandparents. Thank you for these and these and these. Then Christmas Eve, we have real Christmas with Jen's family and she gets more gifts. Then the next day we go to my family's house and she gets more gifts, right, on Christmas. And so now the situation in a state that we don't even live in is at my parents' house, there's a pile of gifts that's too big to carry back to Jen's parents' house. So we just have to leave it there for a second. At Jen's parents' house, she has gifts strewn across three stories of a home, including inside a princess room that her grandfather made for her while he still could that she gets to sleep in, complete with lit teepee, okay? This is her life. There's a mess of toys there. There's some on the main floor. There's a basement that she's adopted as a playroom. And then there's toys in the playroom that my parents have for her. And then she comes back. We don't get back until early January, right? When we get back, there's more gifts waiting on her because people at the church love her and are so good to us. And then her birthday's on January 15th. So on January 15th, prior to that, more gifts are showing up at the house. She's opening them up. She lives in a, in a, like a dang gift parade. It's a totally normal thing for her to come home and open up to like, hey, these two things came for you today. And she just opens it up like they're nothing. Then on her birthday, the neighborhood kids come over and give her stuff she doesn't need in exchange for cake that they don't need. And then the next day we have church drive by where the families come through and they hand her more stuff that she doesn't need. And we wave at them in the freezing cold, and we just have so much junk all over our house. And to this child, it's totally normal. She has no idea that she lives inside of a gift parade. They just show up every day. And what Jen and I have realized is she's entitled. Now, I will say this. She is not a brat. She's not that. That word was for dramatic effect only. She's sweet and kind and loving, but she has no capacity to show the proper gratitude for all the gifts that she's been getting because to her it's a totally normal thing. It's embarrassing to me how much people love us and love her. And I don't know what I'm going to do as a dad. I've literally tried to talk Jen into when somebody gives us a gift, let's put it in a room somewhere. And then as she is good, if she has a good week, then we'll give her one of the gifts from the gift room, right? To try to help her earn it. I don't know exactly how to solve this. I would imagine that we're not on an island with this issue. But the reality of my daughter's life is she's entitled. And she doesn't know it. We're going to try to correct it. But what I understand is that that entitlement blinds her to what generosity really is. That entitlement works to mute her joy because she sees everything through the lens of this is normal. I deserve this. If I ask for a thing, I get the thing. This is how life goes. And she has no reason to believe that that's not how life goes. She's only barely five, and she's loved. See, here's the thing. I think it's great. I'm happy for her. I'm floored by the love that our family experiences. I'm grateful that she gets to live a life like that. But she has no perspective on how grateful she should really be. Because again, her entitlement blinds her to the generosity around her and serves to mute her joy that she should have when she receives a gift. I bring that up because I believe that you and I live in a stinking gift parade and we just don't know it. We live in parades of God's goodness and we don't see it. All of our life, if we grew up in church, as soon as you're involved in church, at some point or another, you're going to hear, you've sinned and you've offended Almighty God. And then as soon as that is said to help us feel better, as a capstone to it, you've sinned and offended Almighty God, but God offers us mercy, so you're good. Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so you're fine. You've sinned, you don't get to spend eternity with heaven, but God offers us mercy and sends his son to die for us, so you're forgiven. So we never have to sit in the reality of what our sin really warrants. We never have to sit under the weight of, I have sinned, I have chosen my authority over God's authority, and that has earned me eternal separation from him. We don't have to sit in that for more than 30 seconds before the pastor comes back and says, but God died for you, so we have mercy. We never stop to think that we don't deserve mercy. We never stop to consider that these gifts don't have to keep showing up at my house. We've never done the math to understand that God doesn't owe you forgiveness. Do you understand? He doesn't owe it to you. He created you. He set you on the planet. He said, these are the rules. This is how you can please me. And we've all at different points in our life said, you know, I'm not really that interested in pleasing you. He doesn't owe us forgiveness for that. We walk around like we're entitled to it. We walk around like we deserve it. We walk around like, listen, the deal should be, God, I'm going to mess up a couple times. If you could let some people kill your son, that seems pretty fair. Grace, we are not owed mercy. That's nowhere in the contract. You say, yeah, but God is love. God forgives. He is love. He does forgive. He's also just. And what we deserve is separation from the God that we've offended. But because mercy triumphs over judgment, and because His mercies are new every morning, he withholds that judgment from us and he offers us forgiveness. He offers us a mercy that we are not owed and that we do not deserve. Yet we are so familiar with it and we sing songs about it so often and we count on it and take it for granted so regularly that sometimes we treat mercy like another doll that someone handed us out the window that, yeah, of course I get this. It's my birthday. This is what we do. And our entitlement blinds us to the grandeur and the majesty of God's mercy. Not to mention the graces that we don't see. Grace is a goodness that we get that we have not earned. Grace is God's favor on our life that doesn't warrant it. We just walked through the really, and we're in the middle of the really difficult season of losing Jen's dad. His name was John. Towards the end of John's life, we found out we were pregnant with a boy that we're going to name John. What grace from God. What grace from God that he says, listen, everybody has to go. As appointed to man wants to die. Everyone's going to have to walk this path. And now it's John's turn to walk this path. But because I love you and because you're good and because you're my child, you're good because I made you good. Here's another John for you to love. That's grace. We don't deserve that. We didn't warrant that. Do you understand that the goodness in your life is grace? It's God's goodness in your life that when you get the new car and you drive it down the road and it smells nice and it looks nice and you're real proud of yourself and it makes us feel like we arrived, that happiness, that moment, that's God's grace. When we sit in our living room and our kids are back from college and we watch our grandkids scurry around or we see their joy and a gift that we were able to buy them, like that's God's grace. When we sit around with our friends and we laugh and we have a good night and we go home and we feel warm, that's God's grace. Your gifts and talents that got you where you are, those are gifts from God that are his grace. His grace is all over our lives. And if we would just stop and look around and acknowledge that we're in a dang gift parade, I think we would be blown away by God's goodness. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses in John, where he simply writes, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, out of the goodness of his heart, we have all received grace upon grace. He just lavishes them upon us because he's a good father and he likes to see you happy. He likes it when you cry tears of joy. He likes the moments that you share with your husband or your wife or your friend or your parents or your kids. He likes those sweet moments. He designs those for you. He doesn't just forgive you. He doesn't just say, hey, I'm not going to hold your sins against you, but he fills up your tank with gas every day over and over from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. He doesn't just forgive you. He sends his son to die for you and he restores you and he welcomes you into his house to sit at his table. And these little snippets of grace are just glimpses into eternity where it's nothing but grace and nothing but goodness and nothing but joy that's waiting for us, that he won for us, that he gifts to us that we didn't earn. And so I just wonder what God's grace and mercy will look like when we no longer see them through the lens of entitlement. I wonder what God's grace and mercy will look like when we no longer see those things through the lens of entitlement. When we can just stop for a second and acknowledge, yeah, I don't deserve mercy. That's not part of the deal. God chooses to show me mercy because he loves me. What will it look like if we take for a second? In a few minutes we're going to sing that song that has the line, I see the evidence of your goodness all around me. What would happen if we would look around at all the goodness in our life that's a gift from God and acknowledge that, man, we live inside of a gift parade. God has given us countless goodness and countless grace. He lavishes it upon us. His mercies are new every morning because we require them every morning. Let's this morning be grateful for God's grace and for God's mercy. Let's see them fresh and new, not through the lens of entitlement that blinds us to the grandeur of his generosity, but through the lens of humility that helps us see his grace and mercy for what they are. And let's be humbly blown away by those things. So sing along as we sing or sit and listen as we sing. But in light of God's grace and mercy, let's praise him together this morning.

It's good to get to be back with you in the saddle preaching live. I've been excited for this morning and I'm excited for this series. This series, Things You Should Know, I think that's what we're calling it. Yeah, it's right there on the screen next to me. Things You Should Know. I forgot what we named it back in the beginning of December, but I haven't forgotten what it's about. And it's based on this idea that there's things that we should all know as Christians, or that we at least nod along with as Christians, that we pretend that we know, that we may not actually know, right? Like there's a kind of a Christianese and another language that's spoken around churches. And I think sometimes we just kind of nod along with that because we don't want to look or feel dumb. And I know how it goes. I mean, you join a small group for the first time. You haven't really been involved in church in a while or just kind of cursory involvement. And then you show up in a small group and people start talking about stuff. And you might not know what they're talking about, but you don't want to feel dumb or silly or uninformed or make yourself look bad. So you don't say anything. And then you've been there so long that now I have to be one of the people that knows these things too. And so we just kind of nod along when people talk about grace and mercy or throw out Bible words like sanctification, and we just kind of act like we know what they're talking about when sometimes we really don't. And one of the things that I want you to know is that it's okay not to know stuff. It's actually really great to ask questions. One of my favorite things to do is to have my men's Bible study and have people in that study who are not very familiar with the text that we're covering because the questions that they ask are the best, but you have to be brave to ask questions because when you ask a question, you're admitting that I don't know this thing. And there's some stuff in the church that I think we nod along with, that we act like we know, when maybe we don't. And we want to be brave for you this month and ask those questions for you this month. And so this morning, the title of the sermon is simply the Bible. Questions that we might have about the Bible. I'm going to look at three questions that I think everybody has about Scripture that we might not know the answers to, but that I think every Christian should know. And now I'll warn you up front, this is not a normal sermon. This is far more informative. It's informational, this sermon is. The things that I'm going to share with you this morning are things that I wasn't exposed to until I was in Bible college, taking theology classes, or in grad school, in seminary, taking more theology classes. And there's a lot more to it than what we're going to cover this morning, but I wanted to take a morning, one Sunday, and address with you some common questions about the Bible, because again, I think every believer should know the answers to these questions. So I'll say up front, for some of you, you're going to love this. You're going to love it. Your notebook is out. You're ready. You're going to write these things down, and if you're a note taker, there's going to be a lot to write down. So get ready. Get your best possible pen. Some of you might not love this. This might not be your thing. And just to know, just for you to know, when I was praying before the sermon, my final words to God were, Father, make this helpful. And if it's not helpful, make it quick. Okay, so I'm with you. There's a lot of information, but I think you need to know this stuff, and I hope that you'll be interested in it. And actually, I want to know what you learned this morning. If I tell you something that you didn't know before, email me and tell me what you learned and tell me what you enjoyed. If there's other questions that you've always wanted to ask, email me and ask those questions. You can even tell me that I heard my friend ask this, so you don't even have to throw yourself under the bus. But get those questions to me. Get your responses to me. I want us to interact with the things we're talking about in this series. But I said I was going to give you three questions about the Bible that I think we should all be able to answer. And the first one is this. Why is the Bible a big deal? Why is the Bible such a big deal? Why do we make such a fuss about it? And it may seem like I'm going too simple on this, but I think it's an important question. Think about it. Think about where we place the Bible in our lives. I tell you guys all the time that there's no greater habit that anyone in their life could have than to read the Bible every day, than to spend time with God through prayer and in His Word every day. So we make a big deal out of the Bible. We hold the Bible up as the foremost authority in our lives. We believe and we teach at Grace that if you're walking with God, that you won't allow anything into your life until it's filtered through Scripture. That the biggest authority in your life of whether something is right or wrong or good or bad or from God or not is to go to Scripture and see what does it say. The entire church is built around the teachings of the Bible. Wars have been fought over it. People have died to preserve it. So it's worth asking the question, why is the Bible such a big deal? Well, the short answer is this. The Bible is a big deal because it's God's special revelation to us. We make such a fuss out of the Bible. The Bible is a big deal because it is God's special revelation to us. Now, here's what I mean. That word revelation, we're already getting into some technical Christian terms. That's not really a Christian term. That just means something that's revealed. It's the same root word there. It just means to reveal something. And so what we understand about ourselves and what you understand about you, whether you've ever thought about this or not, is that people can only know about you what you choose to reveal to them, right? If you meet somebody at a dinner party, you know you're never going to talk to them again. You can make up a totally false identity. They'll never know. You can tell them that you used to be a professional ball player. They won't know the difference. They'll Google you later. You won't exist, and it's fine. You'll never have that interaction again. But they only know about you what you choose to reveal about yourself. So when you meet someone in passing, it's just a cursory glance. They only know you by the way that you dress, by what you reveal, by how you present yourself to the world. The more someone is around you, the more they see you react and interact and respond, the more they learn about you and what's there. But again, people can only know about you what you choose to reveal to them about yourself, right? Well, the same is true of God. We can only know about God what he chooses to reveal about himself. And with him, it's in particular no more and no less. So with God, if we understand revelation to be what God chooses to reveal to us about himself, that we would get to know God the same way we would get to know anybody in our life, the same way other people would get to know us, then we have to understand that with God, there's two kinds of revelation. There's general revelation and special revelation. The way that I think about those is this. General revelation makes us aware of the presence of God, and special revelation gives us the details of that presence. General revelation is stuff that everybody can see. And Romans 1 actually sums up general revelation like this. This is what Paul says in Romans 1, looking at verse 19. He says, So he says, listen, God wrote himself in nature. Anybody who looks outward at nature, at the trees, at the seasons, at the rhythms of nature, the way the earth rotates around the sun, at how huge the universe is, at how small it can be, at the miracle of birth, at just the essence of life. As you look at nature, it points to a creator God. And as you look inward on what is written in your nature, it points to a creator God. Our moral compass, the fact that every civilization ever has prized bravery and bemoaned cowardice, has said that telling the truth is good and that being deceptive is bad. That moral code was written on our hearts by God. On our hearts, we have a longing for our Creator. So whether we look without or within, when we look at nature, God has written himself in nature. That is his general revelation, making all of us aware of his existence. But his special revelation, where he gives us the details of that existence, that's in the Bible. And here's what's incredible about that. What if we didn't have the Bible? What if we didn't know the details of this God that exists? Then he would just be to us this being that existed distant and cold, who had the authority to punish us, to start our life and to take our life, to manipulate circumstances to make us joyful or to make us miserable. It would be a God that we would hope to try to appease, but we wouldn't really know who he was. It would be a God that would inevitably incur fear and myth. But in God's goodness, he gave us the Bible. And it gives us the details of his existence. It's in his words that we find out, oh goodness, this God that created me loves me. This God that created me actually only created me so that I could spend eternity with him. That's how much he wants to be with me. This God who created me sent his son to die for me. This God who created me is love. He is goodness. He is gracious. He is merciful. This book tells us all we need to know about the God who created us. It is God's special revelation of himself to us. This is why we hold it in such high esteem. Because we believe that in these pages are the very words of God. And that this is, he could have chosen to reveal himself any way he wanted to, but what he chose to do is to reveal himself in the pages of Scripture. And in here we find him and who he is. It's an invitation to know our God better. That's why we make such a big deal out of the Bible. Now, the next question. And this one is important. I hope that some of you guys have asked this. I hope that some of you know some of the answers to this. But I think it's an important question. How did we even get the Bible? How did we get the Bible? How is it that I can go to the store and buy this, and these are the books that God wants in here, and these are the words that God wants in here, and these are the things that were written down however many years ago. How do we even get this? Because I don't know if you know this about the Bible, but the Bible is composed of an Old Testament and a New Testament. It totals 66 books. There's 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. And you may or may not know, I mean, you probably know that there's been a lot of people who have contributed to writing the Bible, but there's actually over 40 authors that contribute to the Bible. Did you know that the Bible was written over the span of about 1,400 years across three different continents, Africa and Asia and Europe? And that it was written actually in three different languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. And through all of that time, through the span of 1,400 years, through the minds of over 40 authors on three continents and however many different cultures that was, and in three different languages, God inspired this written word. So how did it get to us? It's a fair question. When we talk about how it got to us, we can really talk about it in the Old and the New Testament. The Old Testament is pretty easy. In ancient Israel, there was a ruling body called the Sanhedrin. That was a lot like our Senate. It was made up of different parties. The two most famous parties in the Sanhedrin were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We've probably heard of those before, at least the Pharisees, I would think. And then there was other little parties that weren't as influential, but were there, the Essenes and the Zealots. You can think of those as like the modern day libertarians. I know that my friend Tom Sartorius will appreciate that very much. But the Sanhedrin was made up of different parties, and those parties ruled Israel. It was a religious rule, not too different from what we see in Muslim countries today. And the Sanhedrin got together somewhere around 250 BC, or maybe a little bit after, and one of the things that they affirmed was that the holy scriptures they had were the Holy Scriptures that would serve as the Old Testament. To them, it was 24 books that they called the Tanakh. To us, it's 39 books that we call the Old Testament, but they're the exact same. They grouped up a bunch of different books that we have separated out together, like Kings and Chronicles was one book, and now it's four. So they would group things together like that, but it's the same. Our 39 books are the same 24 books that they affirmed in 250 BC. And the Sanhedrin looked around and voted and they said, this is it. These are the Holy Scriptures. This is the Tanakh, the law and the prophets. In the New Testament, when we hear Jesus or one of the other writers refer to the law and the prophets, he's referring to the Old Testament, to the Tanakh. And that Old Testament has not been changed since 250 BC when they affirmed it. And the last book was Malachi, and it was written around 400 BC. So it had already existed as one big volume of works for at least 150 years before they ever addressed it. It hasn't changed since 400 BC, and it's not going to change in the future. The Old Testament is done, and that's how we got it. Now, the New Testament is interesting too, because at the time of Christ, there was a lot of writings. There's a lot of people writing a lot of different things. And after Christ left the scene, there was one universal church. We call it the Catholic Church. And the Catholic Church was structured. They say that there was a pope in the line of succession of Peter, that there was the next guy who was in charge of the church, and the next guy after that. And then there's bishops all that fan out depending on where the church is based on geography. And every now and again, they would have what was called councils. And all the leaders from all the different churches and parishes, I suppose, and all the different areas would get together in this one city and they would debate theological ideas. And they would decide, this is something that the whole church believes. This is something that we are going to cast aside. An example of this is the Council of Nicaea, where they decided without a doubt that Christ is God. Before that, there was some disagreement in the church. Some people thought that Christ was simply a man, that he was a prophet, like the Islam religion claims that he is. Other people say, no, he is deity. He is God incarnate in the flesh. So they got together, they talked about it, they voted on it, and they decided moving forward, the Christian church believes that Jesus is the Son of God. It's a really pivotal council, and we still affirm that. But what we find is that towards about 393 and 398, there was two councils, the Council of Hippo and the Council of Carthage, where those people got together and they voted on what books were going to be included in the New Testament. This is called the canonization of Scripture, the complete, done, codified work. And they voted on which books would be included. And what's important to point out here is it wasn't like they all brought 60 books to the table and then they slowly whittled it down to these 27. They voted on the 27 books that we commonly accept as Scripture that were commonly accepted then. All they did is agree on what was essentially already agreed upon. If you don't believe me, I actually have a quote this morning. I don't do this a lot, okay? I don't belabor things like this a lot because I think they're boring and no one cares. But I think this morning it's important. I've got a quote for you by a guy named F.F. Bruce. You know he's important because he doesn't use a name. It's just his initials. And in the church world, that means you're super smart and also pretentious. Get over yourself, F.F. But F.F. Bruce said this about the councils, and I think it's great. Read with me here. That's a big, long, fancy way of saying they didn't introduce any new ideas. All they did is put a rubber stamp on, yep, these are the books that we hold as Holy Scripture. And it's the same 27 books that we have today. They affirmed 27 books in the New Testament. We have those same 27 books now. So that's how we got the Old Testament and the New Testament. You may want to know, another question you should ask is, how did they determine which books were allowed in? What was the criteria? Well, for a book to be included in the canon, it had to be apostolic, harmonious, accepted, and inspired. Again, for a book to be included in the New Testament, it had to meet these requirements. It had to be apostolic, had to be harmonious, had to be commonly accepted, and it had to be inspired. And when I say apostolic, what I mean is this. An apostle is someone who has an eyewitness account of Christ. So for a book to be apostolic, it has to be written by someone who has seen Jesus in the flesh, which is a really easy way to say that the canon is closed. Can God appear to somebody and speak to someone and ask them to write something down on his behalf? Sure he could if he wanted to, but he doesn't do that anymore in a way that's going to be included in Scripture. We're not going to add to the Bible because one of the ways to get included in the New Testament is to be someone who's an eyewitness of Christ. And since all those people are dead, we're not accepting any more entries in the Bible. It has to be harmonious, meaning it has to agree with other books that are accepted in Scripture. It can't disagree with the Tanakh. It can't disagree with the teachings in the Old Testament. It can't disagree with the teachings and the quotes of Jesus. The Gospels were the first New Testament books written, so it can't disagree with any of those. It has to be in harmony with the rest of the books included. It's got to be accepted, meaning there's no surprises at these councils. Nobody brought this thing that was written down by somebody else and said, hey, would you consider this? The books that were agreed upon in Hippo and in Carthage were books that everybody was already familiar with, that those guys had taught their congregations out of many, many times. They were commonly accepted books. And then they had to be inspired. And really, the first three things are ways to determine if they felt like it was inspired by God. And this is an important word. We talk about the Bible being inspired. But I don't know how often we talk about what that means. Did God take over the minds of these men and these women and they wrote it down verbatim as the Holy Spirit spoke it to them? Was God basically dictating to them what the Bible was supposed to say? The way that we think about inspiration and how it works, and I hold this with a loose hand because it's hard to be certain how inspiration works. The only people who can explain it to us are people who never wrote the Bible. So it's just guesses. But the fancy word for it, if you're interested in such a thing, is verbal plenary inspiration. And basically what it means is the Holy Spirit guides your thoughts and your ideas and then your personality and your intellect takes over and expresses those things. So the Holy Spirit's gonna present an idea to Paul and he's gonna write it out and it's gonna look a lot different than when James writes something out or when David writes something out or when Solomon writes something out. It's almost like if you were to go to the field next to the church. Now, a lot of you haven't been here in so long that you've forgotten that there's a field over there, but there is. It'd be like going to that field and telling you to take a lap once in an SUV and once in a sports car. The journey is going to be the same. The lap's going to be the same, but the experience in that lap is going to be different based, and that lap is going to be different based on the car that you took. It's going to feel different in the SUV. It's going to get done in a different amount of time. It's going to feel different in the sports car. It's the same way with translation and or with inspiration. God speaks to one person, and the way that that person writes it down is going to be different than the way that this person writes it down. But the path and the impact and the point are the same. So in that way, God breathed Scripture into these authors by directing their thoughts and directing their hearts and their heads to the ideas that he wanted them to write down. So it's not unless a book is inspired, is harmonious, is accepted, and is apostolic do we include it in the New Testament. That's how we got our Bible. And the last question I want to address today is how do we know we can trust it? And this is an important question. How do we know that this book that I hold in my hands is the same book, that these 39 books are the exact same as they were when they got approved by the Sanhedrin in 250 BC? How do I know that when I quote Genesis, it's the same Genesis that Jesus is quoting? How do I know that when I read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 2,000 years later, that those are the actual words that Jesus spoke? How do I know that the letter that Paul wrote to Romans has been preserved enough over the years so that when I open up Romans 1, 19 through 20 and read to you what Paul said, that it's the same thing the church in the first century was hearing? How do we know that we can trust this book? It's an important question. I would think that there's really three main factors that help us understand how we can trust the Bible. The three biggest reasons we can trust the Bible we hold in our hands are preservation, consistency, and evidence. The three biggest reasons that I know we can trust this are preservation, consistency, and evidence. Here's what I mean. You guys may not know this. I find this fascinating. If you don't find this fascinating, I'm sorry. We're talking about Sabbath next week, and I'm real excited for it. But the preservation of Scripture, to me, is so crucial and interesting and vital that it's worth understanding how it happened. You may remember from reading the New Testament that sometimes there's these two groups of people that are put together, the scribes and the Pharisees. What you may not know is that to be a scribe was actually a full-on religious profession. It was a whole profession to be a scribe. And the whole job of a scribe is not necessarily to write new things, but to simply copy things that existed. The only way to get more copies of the book of Genesis is for someone to sit down and painstakingly copy by hand the book of Genesis, right? Gutenberg hadn't been around yet. We didn't have copiers, so we had to write things down by hand. And the process of doing this was excruciatingly detailed. And again, these are men, it was just men in that day, who have dedicated their entire lives to copying Scripture. And they had very strict rules around how they did it. The foremost rule that I've always appreciated is if they made a single mistake at all, no scratching out and moving on and writing a little note about what you meant, any mistake in the manuscript, you destroyed the whole thing. You burned the whole thing. Now listen, we might think, oh gosh, that sounds tedious at first, but I don't think you understand how tedious. Think about if I asked you, if it was your job in 2021 to hand copy the book of Genesis to perfection. Take the book of Genesis. It's about 50 chapters. I want you to write it out word for word. I want you to look at it in your Bible and I want you to write it down. You have to write it down in such a way that it's going to be legible and easy to read in a hundred years. There can't be anybody a hundred years from now that can't tell if that's a G or a C or an E or an F. It needs to be clear and legible. And if there's a single mistake at all, if you put a comma in the wrong part, if you put the quotations outside the period and they should be inside the period, whatever you do, if there's any mistakes, you have to destroy it and start over. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to nail 43 chapters and in the 44th chapter you write a T instead of an S and you have to destroy the whole thing? That's what they would do. That's how serious they were about this work. Whenever they would approach the word Yahweh, they would stop and get up from their desk and put their pen down and go and wash their hands and pray a prayer and make sure they were ceremonially clean before they would write it down. When they would finish a document to check it, they knew exactly how many words were in the book. If we're using Genesis, they knew exactly how many words were in Genesis. So they'd finish it. It's perfect. It's two years of effort. And then they would start the counting. And they knew how many words had to be in their manuscript and how many words were in the original one. They knew that. And if it was wrong, if the count was off by one word, no matter what, you destroy those years of effort and you start over. They knew the middle word. If there's 50,000 words, they knew the 25,000th word. And they would count to it. And then in the new manuscript, they would count back to it. And if the middle word didn't match up, they would destroy the copy as imperfect. And it seems tedious, and maybe it seems over the top, but here's the thing. It worked. And we get affirmations every so often of just how well it worked. I won't chase this rabbit hole too much because it gets into the weeds, but suffice it to say that in terms of manuscripts, the older ones you can find, the better off you are. The older you can find it, the closer to the original it is, right? If you find some manuscripts that are 1,000 years old, that means that things were written 1,000 years before that. They're a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, right? But if you can find something that's 1,800 years old, so the original was only written 200 years before that, well, now it's a copy of a copy. So the older it is, the more accurate it is. And there have been multiple times in the Christian world where we have translated our Bibles based on the oldest manuscripts that we could find and translated them all out and had them and they've been published and on the shelves for us to pick up and read. And then something will happen, like what happened with the Dead Sea Scrolls, I believe in the 1930s. And they'll find these scrolls that predate the ones that we've already found. They're actually older than the oldest ones that we have. And so then they frantically check, oh my gosh, these ones that we have, are they accurate to the older ones? And what they found out is that within 99.9%, they're accurate. That the newer ones we have are accurate to the old ones that we find every couple of years. Which means that this preservation, over time, it worked. It's accurate. The words that we read here are the very ones that were written by Paul, are the very things that were said by Jesus, are the very words of David that were quoted by Matthew. The words that we read are the ones that are written. This has been proven over and over again. We can also trust the Bible because of its consistency, because of how unified its message is. I've told you already that it was written by over 40 authors over the span of 1,400 years, over three continents, with three languages. And yet, there is not a single irreconcilable difference between any of the books or any of the words. And yet, it is entirely consistent with itself. It was written over that great span of time, yet not a single one of those authors introduced an idea that can't be supported by another author or that goes against what one of the other authors said. How can this be possible unless there is one author overseeing the writing of all of it? How can it be possible that all these men over all these cultures with all these languages and all these years can come together and produce one sound document that has no inconsistencies unless there's been one person orchestrating the writing of it all. And there are people who have dedicated their lives to tearing this book down. There are people who have dedicated their adult lives to finding imperfections in the text, to finding contradictions here that don't exist. There are emperors who have tried to burn it. There are societies who have tried to get rid of it. But the Bible stands the test of time. It's still here. It's still trustworthy. It's still the things that Jesus said back when he said them. And because of its consistency, we know that we can trust it. Finally, there's evidence. I won't get too far in the weeds on this, but do you know that the Bible, hundreds of years before it ever existed, I think Daniel is the one who primarily does this. Do you know the Bible predicts Alexander the Great and the Grecian Empire? And that the Bible predicts the Roman Empire? You know, we find artifacts all the time that show us that the stories in the Bible are true. I've been over to Israel and they take you from Jerusalem down this road through the valley of the shadow of death to get to this little town called Jericho. And if you know your old Bible, your old Bible, your Old Testament well, you'll know that Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho seven times and then the walls fell. And if you go to Jericho today and you look at where they've excavated the wall and you can see the layers of it all the way down to the very bottom, that when you get close to the bottom down there, that there is a layer about this thick of ash and char. I've seen it with my own eyes from the time Jericho was burned to the ground, just like it says in the book of Joshua. In the 60s, a mathematician put this experiment together, and I've always found it to be really interesting. It's not an experiment, it's just an illustration of the prophecies in the Old Testament. If you take all the prophecies in the Old Testament that are about the Messiah, that by his stripes he will be healed, that he will be born of a virgin, that he'll be from both Nazareth and Bethlehem, that he'll be from the line of David. If you take all of the prophecies that are made about Jesus in the Old Testament, that are made about this messianic figure in the Old Testament, and you try to have one life that could possibly fulfill all of those prophecies, that the statistical probability of that, of one person fulfilling all of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, is the same as covering the state of Texas a foot deep, it's either a foot deep or three feet deep, in silver dollars. You paint one of those silver dollars red and you just drop it in there with the rest of them. Then you get on a plane, you fly over Texas, you parachute down, you land on the coins, you bend down and you pick up the red one. There's the same chances of you doing that as there is of anyone ever living a life that fulfills all the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. And yet, he lived it. Jesus bears out the truth of Scripture. We see in Jesus' life enough evidence to know that everything around that is true. So I think, and I've come to a place where I believe we can trust Scripture because we can trust the preservation of it, we can trust the consistency of it, and we can trust the evidence that bears out from it. Now, I'll tell you this, for the extra nerdy ones, I actually have a whole class that I developed that I did a lifetime ago in apologetics, and I have about 12 pages of notes. I only shared with you guys like four pages of notes this morning. If you want more on this stuff, if you want to go more in depth, let me know and I'll email that to you. If you have other questions, let me know and I will respond to those. But it feels appropriate to close out this sermon by offering you a little challenge. We've looked at the Bible. We've asked the questions. How can we trust it? Why is it such a big deal? It's the inspired word of God. It's a special revelation to us. We got it through a trustworthy series of events that have rendered it whole, and now we can trust it because of all the reasons that I just went through. And so it seems appropriate to issue this challenge to you in 2021. You may already be a couple days behind and that's all right, but here's the thing. Here's your challenge. I want to challenge you guys to read more of the Bible this year than you ever have before. That's the challenge. That's the challenge for us at Grace. I'm going to engage in that. I want to challenge you to read more of the Bible this year than you ever have before in a single year. That's going to mean different things for different people. You may be thinking to yourself, well, that's great. I've never read the Bible before. All right, well, then it's a low bar for you. Enjoy your success. I hope that it would continue. Set the bar higher for future years, but take a step. A lot of us are the kind of people who have sat down a bunch of times determined to read the Bible. Let this be the time that it sticks. Find a good pace that you can go at, a good rhythm for yourself. Let the Bible read itself to you. On the Bible app, you can have it read itself to you in your car or on your walk. I'm going to read through the Bible this year. I started last year and then I fell off the wagon. I'm going to make it my goal to read through the Bible this year. I'm just going to listen to the Bible this year in addition to what I'm reading on a regular basis. And it's worth stating that the Bible was actually written to be read aloud. So listening to it is a really good way to consume Scripture. If you're one who reads the Bible regularly, step it up. Let's let 2021 be the year that we read more of the Bible than we ever have. That's my challenge to you. All right, next week I'm going to come back and we're going to talk about this idea of Sabbath. What is it and why is it so important? But for now, I'm going to pray and we're going to close out the service with one more song. Pray with me. Father, we love you. Thank you so much for your word. Thank you that we can trust it. Thank you that we can build our lives on it. Thank you that it will never let us down. Thank you that it has stood the test of time and is trustworthy. Father, if we have any other questions about your word, give us the courage and the tenacity to seek those out. Give us the humility to accept what is true. Give us the clarity to reject what isn't. God, I pray once again that as we go throughout our weeks this week, that we would be people and instruments of peace for you in this country and a time when we need it so badly. God, thank you for your word. Make us students of it. Develop in us a hunger for it. In Jesus' name, amen.