Sermons tagged with Believers

My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. Thanks for being here on this Sunday, the last Sunday in our series called Best Practices. The idea behind this series is that I believe that there are some habits or some practices, some disciplines that we can develop in our life that are really the best disciplines or the best practices that anybody can develop ever. That if we'll develop these, if we will make these a part of our life, they will make us better wives and better mothers, better husbands and better fathers, better children, better employees and employers, better friends and better neighbors. They will make us better people. More importantly than that, if we will instill these disciplines in our life, we will know God better. We will know him more deeply. We will experience the joy and the peace that we believe God offers. So here's what I'm doing as we move through this together. I'm assuming that if you're here in June, that you care at least a little bit about your relationship with God, okay? I don't you know this in church parlance, in the church business, or whatever you want to call it, but summertime is not like high visitor attendance time. Summertime is people who mean it come to church. So if you're here, I'm assuming that you do care to some degree or another about your relationship with God. If you're here because you are checking it out and you're not sure yet and you wouldn't even say yet that I do have a relationship with God, then I hope that this is a way for you to just assess some things and analyze some things and kind of look at and get a peek at Christianity. But as we've been going through the series, we looked at some practices that are really best for us, like reading the Bible on a regular basis. We kind of looked at how to do that and what keeps us from doing that and how we can make that a part of our life. We looked at worship in the second week. Last week, we looked at prayer and this idea of reducing ourselves to the need to pray. Don't wait for life to do that to us, but go ahead and every day admit that there's things that we need God for and spend time in prayer. And in that way, we can move further to being obedient to that command to pray without ceasing, which is a really challenging instruction in Thessalonians. This morning, what I want to do is kind of clean up the series and mention a couple best practices, a couple spiritual disciplines that maybe are a little bit less heralded, a little bit less known, a little bit more forgotten. These all probably deserve their own week, but I'm excited about our next series. I wanted to get to it. This one's a tight four-week series, so we're going to kind of hit three different things this week. So my hope for you is maybe all three of these things are great for you and you can instill all of them. Maybe you're already doing one or two, but I hope that everybody today can take home something that they want to begin to instill in their life or a discipline that they want to renew in their life. So that's my goal for you. So as we look at these three practices that we're going to cover today, one of the less heralded spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines that I wanted to talk about is the practice of giving, the practice of being generous, the practice of giving of our finances. Now, as I say that, if you're thinking along with me, okay, if you're anything like me, then your thought process might go something like this, okay? We're doing a sermon on spiritual disciplines. First thing out of the gate is that I need to give to the church. It's pretty self-serving, dude. Like, you're going to get up there, you're going to tell me these are things God really wants me to do, and then the very first one is, bam, you should give to the church. Okay, listen, I don't blame you for thinking that. I would be thinking that if I were you, but a couple of things to clarify. First of all, when I talk about giving, it's only the second time I've talked about it since I became the pastor here two and a half years ago. But every time I do talk about it, I want to be sure that we cover this thing biblically. And I want to make some points. There's some ways that we talk about giving that just aren't true. The New Testament, which it doesn't mean the Old Testament isn't valuable, but the New Testament is our authority as we look for ways to live our life. The New Testament doesn't tell us to give 10%, and it doesn't tell us that we have to give to the local church. So when I say that we should give, that we should instill the spiritual discipline of giving, I'm not telling you that you should give 10% of your income to grace. That's not what I'm telling you. So in that way, it's not self-serving. What I'm telling you is the New Testament says that we should be a people who are generous, that we should be a people who give. Jesus talks about giving in such a way that he assumes that you will do it when you give. So it's to happen, when you give, give in such a way that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. We see a story about a widow that gave out of her poverty, and Jesus says that's a better, that's a bigger gift, a more meaningful gift than the wealthy person who gives out of their wealth, because her gift required faith, right? We see these instructions about giving, and we know that to give is a good thing. We know that that's something that the Bible talks about. But again, we're to give to God, give to things that are building God's kingdom. So it doesn't necessarily mean the local church. Paul does talk about this idea that if somebody is ministering to you and you're benefiting from that, that we should make it possible for them to continue to do that, that we should support them. But that's as close as we come to me being able to leverage the Bible to say that you have to give your money to grace. So that's really not what I'm talking about. Now, if grace is doing things that you believe in, that you want to support, then support it. Like Mikey, the guy that did the announcements, which is so well, I mean, he knocked those out of the park. When Mikey did those announcements, he told you guys that we were in Mexico right now, that we had two, that we had a team of students down in Mexico and that we're building two homes. I'll just tell you, those homes are $6,000 a piece. The missions committee that we have here, in their generosity, said, we want to go ahead and pay for you guys to build two houses so that two families who live on a dollar a day or less can have a home that they so desperately need just across the border in Mexico. They were able to do that because 10% of everything that's given to Grace goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. So if you've ever given, then you are a part of that. If you'd like to be a part of that moving forward, then you can give and you will be. Or if you'd like to be a part of other things moving forward, give to Addis Jamari, a great ministry going on in Ethiopia where they are cutting off sex trafficking at the front. They're nipping it in the bud before it even starts. They take girls that age out of an orphanage and they put them in a home and they disciple them and they teach them skills because there's a very high likelihood that they would end up in some sort of trafficking industry if they did not. And now they're going to the families that have to put up kids for adoption because they simply can't afford the children that they're having, and they're giving them training and investing money in them so that on the front end, those kids don't even have to go to an orphanage. So be a part of something like that. Be a part of faith ministry where our kids are now building homes for families that desperately need them. The instruction in the New Testament is that we should give and that we should be generous, that we should be conduits of God's generosity. And you may think, how is this a spiritual discipline? I know that that's something that we're supposed to do. I get it that that's instructed in the New Testament, but how are we supposed to do that? Why is that a spiritual discipline? And I would just submit that maybe we don't think about giving as a spiritual discipline because we've heard it taught poorly, or we've thought about it in incorrect ways. I've sat in services and listened to sermons before where people talk about giving as if it's some sort of investment scheme. They'll quote a verse in Micah, and they'll say, if you bring your tithe into the storehouse, then God's going to bless you and fill your barns. And it's almost this idea that if you'll give to the church, God's going to give you even more money. That's dumb. That's not how that works. Charitable giving isn't some sort of divine investment scheme, okay, where God just makes you rich because you give to other people. That's how jerks take advantage of ignorant people. That's how that works. So that's not true. It's not some investment scheme. Will you get blessed when you give? Absolutely. Is it going to be by more money in your account? Probably not. So that's not how that works. The other thing is we get guilted into it, right? God's done so much for you, the least you could do is give a little bit for him. And then it feels like this thing that we have to do out of obligation when really that's not what giving is. The reason I think that giving is a spiritual discipline is because giving builds your faith while we participate in God's goodness. Giving builds our faith while we participate in the goodness of God. I'll tell you why I think this. This was, and I have to preface this story. Jen is against me sharing this story because in this story, we stumbled into some obedience. I feel obligated to remind you that I'm an egotistical jerk and that I don't always do good things. But in this story, I'm going to do something good, okay? But now I feel like everything's balanced and that we're fine. About four years ago, I guess it was, it was December. Lily was due in January. Our only child was due in January. And we had managed to save up some money to have the kid and take the hit of Jen not being in work. Jen worked part-time. I worked at a church. I was a student pastor, a small groups pastor. And believe it or not, I did not make a ton of money. So for us to have money set aside was a big deal. We had about $5,000 set aside. And I'll just be transparent with you. we had not had that much money set aside in our marriage ever. So we were pretty thrilled that we had this amount set aside to be able to have Lillian be responsible for us to miss because she worked part-time as an office manager and she wasn't going to get those hours and we're going to have medical bills and you know how it goes. So we're feeling good about that. Well, then in late November, her car stopped working. So I had it towed to a guy that went to the church, a guy named Kelly McCart. And Kelly was looking at the car. He calls me one day. I was on the golf course. I mean, it's hard. We didn't have any money. By the way, I was golfing during work hours. I was on the golf course. He calls me. I said, hey, dude, how you doing? He says, I'm doing better than you will be. And I went, oh, no. I said, what's up? He goes, it's the engine. I said, ugh. He said, it needs to be replaced. And I'm like, what do I do? Do you think I should do it, or do you think I should just trash it and buy a new car? He goes, I think you should replace it. It's a good car. It's a Toyota 4Runner. I said, all right, how much is it going to cost? He said, $5,000. Son of a gun. So I had to go home, and I think I waited a day or two to tell Jen. You know, like, how's the car? Eh, it's fine. You know, I didn't, I just didn't, she's a very pregnant lady and I didn't want her to have to deal with the stress that I was dealing with. Because it's like, my goodness, how, how are we going to pay our bills in January? Like, how are we even going to make it? I don't want to do the humiliating thing of going to my parents and be like, we're, we're screw ups. Can you please give us money? Like, I didn't want to do that. So I was just really stressed. In the midst of this, it was time to give the Christmas offering at the church that we went to. Jen and I had prayed about it, and we had conferred, and we had each agreed that we, that year, wanted to give $500. But then this thing happened, and now we don't have any money. But it's time for the Christmas offering to happen. And I prayed about it, and I just kind of felt, you know, if I can trust him with $500 when we feel secure about our finances, then I ought to be able to trust him when I don't. And I feel like this is what God has asked us to do. So we said, all right, we'll do it. And we gave the $500. Two days later, friends of ours from the church, our age, not like grandparents or something, peers come up to us, come up to me after a service, and they said, hey, we don't know why, but the Lord just kind of put you on our heart this week. So we just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and they handed me an envelope. I take the envelope home, and inside is a check for $500. Yo. So I kind of start crying a little bit. I show it to Jen. And to me, that was God's way of saying, I'm going to take care of you. I have 1,000 sheep on 1,000 hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I have a thousand sheep on a thousand hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I wish I could chronicle for you the ways that God showed up in January and February so that we didn't have any need. The way that he just took care of all the things that we were concerned about. I think because we were able to stumble into obedience in that situation. But the reason I'm sharing that story is because do you not think that after we decided to give that money and then saw God deliver us in that way, do you not think that built my faith a little bit? Do you not think that helped me trust God even more? And then the cool part is the family that did it, a family called, named the Calders, they had no idea what was going on in our life. And then after they gave it, I shared with them our story. Do you not think that built their faith a little bit? Of them just sitting there going, I feel a prompting that we should try to take care of Jen and Nate. You don't think that built their faith to do that? I think that when we give, we create opportunities for God to show up and show us that he's going to take care of us. When we give, we create opportunities to be on the other end of stories like that, to know that what we gave was used for something far better than whatever we were going to spend it on to begin with. And when we do that, not only does it build our faith, but it allows us to experience the goodness of God as we are conduits of his generosity. That's why I think that giving is a spiritual discipline. Because I think it's something that builds our faith. So if that's not a part of your life, I know, I know that's a tough thing. That's a hard thing. Just practically, it's a hard thing. And there's questions around giving. Do I give 10%? I think that's the tithe. Listen, the New Testament doesn't really tell you a percentage. I think 10% is a good baseline. But I would tell you to just try to get into the habit of regularly giving anything to any ministry that's building God's kingdom. And let God show up. Let that build your faith. Get some experience in participating in the goodness of God in that way. If that's not a part of your life and you want to know God and you want to follow these steps and you want to instill these practices in your life, just find a way that feels right to you. Pray about it. Father, what would you have me do? And give in that way and watch God show up. So that's the first thing that I would encourage you in today is the practice of giving. The second thing is the practice, and you guys are going to be like, what in the world is he talking about? The practice of content consumption. The practice of content consumption. Here's the idea. I'm not going to spend long on this. I don't think I need to make a whole bunch of flowery points around it. I think that you guys can understand this, okay? There's a verse that I love in Philippians. It's one of my favorite verses. It's in chapter 4, Philippians 4, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Now that's a challenging voice. That's a challenging verse. If you think about the things that you allow into your life, the things that you watch, the things that... This steps on my toes, too. The things that you're not even sensitive to on Netflix anymore. Right? The shows that you watch. You're like, but that show has all that stuff in it. Yeah, it doesn't really bother me. Should it? Think about the stuff that you allow into your life. And if it's obedient to this, whatsoever things are just, pure, lovely, commendable, honorable, excellent, there's anything worthy of praise or praiseworthy. Think about these things. How good are we doing at that? And so I just kind of think, if this is something that I want to do, if I want my mind focused on things that are obedient to Philippians 4.8, that are praiseworthy and honorable, and all of those things, that's what I want. How do I do that? How do I organize my life around those things? I think part of it is the content that we consume. And I would ask you, for in your life, besides Sunday morning, besides whatever comes out of my mouth on Sundays, which, that's a low bar, what spiritually nourishing things are you getting in your life? What else is spiritually nourishing you? Outside of random conversations you might have with your friends that you do find encouraging or conversations that you might have with your spouse that you find encouraging, what is in your life that is there to spiritually nourish you, to build you up spiritually? For years and years and years, for centuries, the only option has been to read. And if you're not a reader, if you don't like doing that, which I totally understand, then it's really difficult to consume any spiritual content during the week that's spiritually nourishing in any way, because reading was the option. If you are a reader, I would encourage you, make books that are spiritually encouraging a regular part of your discipline. In my personal quiet time, when I'm really doing it well, when I'm really walking in consistency, I'll read the Bible. I'll let that push me into a time of prayer. And then when I'm done praying, I'll read a spiritually formative book until Lily wakes up. That's kind of how it goes. So if you're a reader, then choose books that nourish you spiritually. But if you're not, I just want to, on a practical level, let you know that there are some really great options out there for you. And I want to talk to you about this idea of harnessing the dead spaces in our schedules because we're all very busy. But there's these things called podcasts that you should really listen to. They're phenomenal. If you don't know what podcasts are, ask someone around you after the service. We will give you a one-day moratorium of not making fun of you or even calling you names for that. Just ask somebody around you, what's a podcast? How do I find them? How do I assess them on my phone. All of you have phones and you can get podcasts on all of them, okay? These podcasts are great because all of the sudden I can listen to sermons from all over the world. I can listen to people have discussions about things that are spiritually formative from all over the world. I can listen to all kinds of people. Do you understand that for centuries and centuries and centuries, the only spiritually building, nourishing thing that people got was whatever their pastor said on Sunday. And that's a bummer. Now you have access to the best pastors in the world who are preaching every week and you can listen to their sermons every week. So I want to encourage you to look for the dead spaces in your schedule. If you have a commute over 10 minutes, use that to listen to something that's spiritually formative. If you go on a walk with your dog, put in some headphones, listen to something that nourishes you spiritually. When you're at the gym, can we just all agree that almost everybody in this room is old enough to no longer need pump-up music? Nothing that you're doing requires you to be pumped up, okay? Nothing. Nobody in this room, I'm looking at you right now, nobody in this room, except for maybe Mikey, is lifting any amount of weight that requires you to be jacked. So just listen to something. Listen to something that's helpful. Listen to something that informs you, that nourishes you, that encourages you, that's spiritually formative. I have a buddy, he goes to the church, I'll tell on him. He's not here this week, and we'll see if he mentions anything to me because he listened to the sermon. But Shane Smith, and he has Smith, he has to drive to Durham every day for work, and he started listening to sermons on his drives. That dude texts me questions a couple times a week. He's asking me stuff. He's wanting to understand Scripture. He's saying, hey, I heard this taught to me. What do you think of this? He is chewing on it. He's considering it. He shows up to my 6 a.m. Bible study. I have watched his life change over the past several months. And one of the biggest things is because he takes time in his day, he looks at that drive not as a burden but as an opportunity to consume some content that's going to nourish him spiritually. And it's changed him and his family. Look for those opportunities in your life and find things that we can listen to. On your bulletin there, I emailed some people in the church who I know listen to podcasts, and I compiled some there for you. So there's recommendations there if you need some. The other thing I would say on this point is there's an app called Audible. And that you can subscribe for like 14 bucks a month and download books. You get one book a month and then they read it to you. You can listen to it. So if you're not a reader, but you're jealous of all the people you know who do read and seem to have things to contribute at parties and at like Bible study and stuff, and you'd like to be one of those people, you can game the system and have somebody else read it to you while you cut the grass. That's really great. So you can subscribe to Audible and you can get these books going in your headphones. So I just want to impress upon you this idea of consuming content that can help you. I think it's a discipline that we should all have and be careful with. The last one I want to talk about today is the practice of fasting. The practice of fasting. Now, fasting's an interesting thing. Fasting shows up in the Bible a lot. And fasting, if you spend any time around church, is something that we've heard of. If you grew up in a Catholic environment or an environment that observed Lent, then you know the idea of fasting for 40 days from certain things. And so we all kind of understand what fasting is. But as I thought about it this week, to put it in front of you, there's a couple things that I thought were interesting. First of all, we can fast for a bunch of different reasons. In 1 Samuel, we see David fast because he's mourning. He's lost his son. He's mourning the loss of his son. And so he fasts and he's brokenhearted before the Lord. We also see David fast in repentance. He's done something that he very much regrets. He made a moral misstep. He sinned before the Lord. And as a form of repentance, he pursues God by fasting. And maybe that's what some of us need to do. Maybe some of us have something in our life that's just eating our lunch that we'd love to not be a part of our life, but it just persists and it just pervades and it's just always there. Have we ever fasted over it and said, God, please take this from me? There's this really interesting passage in the New Testament in Matthew where Jesus says that this type of demon is only cast out through fasting and prayer. Like it somehow intensifies our prayer. We can fast when we're seeking guidance. In Acts chapter 13, it says that the church was getting together, and after a season of prayer and fasting, that they set aside Paul and Barnabas to go on their missionary journeys. We can, when we don't know what to do, when we don't know what's next, we can set aside some time to fast and pursue God in that. But I think maybe the most interesting thing that I saw about fasting is that Jesus just assumes that you do it. See, I think that when we hear fasting, there's a part of us that goes, okay, that's for like, that's for the ninja Christians, right? That's for the Navy SEAL Christians. Like, I'm just regular, just getting by, trying to not do dumb stuff Christian. That's for like super intense, big time Christian. Okay. Do you know in the New Testament, there's no delineation. There's no stages of Christians. You don't get to be like a white belt while that dude's a black belt. You don't get to do that. We're all on the same path moving towards the same goal of walking with God and being disciples of God. And part of that path is this assumption by Jesus that we would fast. Because he tells us in Matthew, he says, when you fast, don't do it like the religious hypocrites do it. Don't walk around with a sunken in face and all sad and be like, what's wrong with you? Be like, I'm fasting because I'm super spiritual. Don't do that. Splash water on your face. Fake it. Try to sneak it by people. Don't let anybody know what you're doing. But the interesting thing to me is this assumption by Jesus that it's a part of your life. And I know that for me, I'm not speaking for you. I'm sure that I'm behind the bell curve on this and you guys are all way ahead of me. But for me, until recent years, that was not a regular part of my life. I still, I fast with the elders from time to time, and I'm still bad at it. Honestly, half the time I fast with the elders, I have to email them the day before and be like, guys, I'm so sorry. I made a lunch appointment tomorrow, and I'm definitely going to eat tacos. So I kind of ruin that for us. It's true. The elders are nodding their heads at me right now, like, yeah, we know. And they're secretly grateful for it, so don't let them talk bad about me after this. They like it when I do that. But it's not really a part of our lives. We don't do it as a regular thing. I bet most of us in here can't remember the last time we did it. But see, Jesus assumes that we fast. And he doesn't assume that it's for, the super intense believers. It's for all of us. And the more I looked into it and thought about what it meant and what it was and why would Jesus assume that we did this, the more apparent it became that it's this picture of something. There's a book by a girl named Margaret Feinberg. I think that's her last name. Is that her last name? Yeah. And it's called Taste and See. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, told me about it, and I started reading it. It's really good. It's gotten me firing on a bunch of different things. I'm really considering doing a whole series on food. I feel like I'm an expert on this. I could bring a lot to the table. See what I did there? Yeah. Okay, I feel like I could do a lot with that, and I want to expound more on this later. But fundamental to this book is this idea that God could have created us any way he wanted to. He could have had us nourish ourselves any way he wanted to. We could have gotten our energy from the sun. We could have worked on photosynthesis like plants. He didn't have to make people who had to eat. He didn't have to make people who had to eat so often, but he did. And it's interesting to think that maybe he did that as a constant daily reminder of our spiritual need for him. As a constant daily reminder that our appetite for food, our body's appetite for food should be the same as our spirit's appetite for God. And in that way, fasting is a physical reminder of a spiritual need. The more I started thinking about this, the more I realized that food is a picture. Every time we sit down at a table and we eat because we need it, that's a physical picture of what our spiritual body needs. And so when we fast, it's an acute reminder of that. It's an intense reminder of that. It forces us to focus on this picture that exists with us every day of our life. And every time we feel the hunger pangs in a fast, that's why some people say, well, you can fast from different things. You can fast from alcohol, or you can fast from social media, or I'm going to put down my phone, or I'm not going to do this, or I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fast from TV. And those are fine. But there's nothing quite like fasting from food. Because it's a physical reminder of a spiritual need. And as we feel those pangs of hunger, gosh, I wish I could eat right now. That's a reminder. This is how your spirit longs for God. I've even gotten to the habit of, on the occasion when I'm actually good at fasting, I'll get a little headachy. And it's really tempting because I still have a lot to do in my day. I'm usually still about to go to an elder meeting. I have other things that I have to accomplish. I'm trying to get a sermon done, whatever it is. And it's tempting to eat something because I've got to stave off this headache because I can't really do my job if I'm not feeling well. So I need to take care of myself. And I'll start to go down that road. But it's a reminder. The way that your body begins to ache because you haven't had food is the way that your spiritual body begins to ache when you're not locked into God. We don't feel it as acutely, and we don't feel it as immediately. And I think that's why God gives us this physical reminder all the time. When we don't eat, we know it. And when food is good, and the meal is good, and we're around other people, and we're around our friends, it's one of the best experiences in life. And I just think it's this one-for-one picture of our need for God. So fasting serves as an acute reminder of our spiritual need. And if nothing else, it brings to the forefront of our mind our spiritual need for God. And so if fasting isn't a regular part of your life, I would encourage you to try it. Try it and let that drive you into prayer. Try it and let that take you into a place where you admit and acknowledge your spiritual need for God. I had a friend who, he's got three boys. This is the worship pastor I used to work with in another church. For all three boys, the week they were born, he fasted for a week and prayed for them. Because those were his boys, and he wants them to grow up to be godly men, and so he pursued the Lord after them. If you've got a big decision coming up and you don't know what to do, have you fasted about it? If there's a sin in your life that's just kicking your tail and you'd love to be done with it, have you fasted about it? If you'd like to get into these spiritual disciplines more but can't seem to find that in yourself, have you fasted about that? I want to encourage you to consider the spiritual discipline of fasting. Now, as we wrap up the series, to me, there's this key question, the answer to which dictates all of our actions after being asked the question. So as we wrap up the series in light of all of these practices, the practice of reading scripture, the practice of worshiping God, the practice of prayer, of giving, of consuming the right content, of fasting, all these different things that we can instill in our life so that we could pursue God better, I think that there is a key question. And when I say key question, what I mean is the answer to this question really determines all of your actions after you answer it. And I get this idea from a book that Jen and I have recently been given. A lot of you know that cancer has become part of our reality and our family in 2019. And so when that became a part of our reality, people started giving us different things and somebody gave us a book. It's called Chris Beats Cancer. And at the beginning of this book, there's a question. And the question is, do you want to live? And it may seem like a simple enough question, but it's really profound in how you answer it. Do you want to live? Because what's about to follow in that book, what he's about to tell you to do, is for most people a radical change in your lifestyle and your diet and your habits. So he sets it up with, do you want to live? The implication is, if the answer is yes, then you'll be willing to do whatever it takes to live. If the answer is no, that's a different conversation. And for those battling that disease, that's a more tricky question than you would think. So I think it's this key question. Do you want to live? If you do, then you will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. And I think that there's a key question for us as we consider our relationship with God, and it's this. Do you want to know God? Do

Well, good morning. Happy Easter to you. My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. It's great to see everybody in their bright Easter colors. My wife picked this shirt out for me. She told me that she was going to get the dry cleaning done because there was that pretty Easter colored shirt in the dry cleaning to be done. And I said, oh, which one was that? And she described it by saying, oh, it's the nice one that you got a couple of years ago. It was too big for you then. I think it'll fit you now. And as I buttoned it up this morning, I thought, dang it, if she's not right. So here I am. Listen, this is the 11th part of our series in John. We've been moving through John together. We've been timing it up to arrive at this sermon on this Sunday because this is Easter, man. This is the best day of the year. It really is. This is my favorite day of the year. This is the day where Jesus wins everything for all of eternity. This is the day when the disciples find an empty tomb, and what it means is that Jesus conquered death, and what it means is that we have a way to be reconciled with our Creator God for all of eternity. It is the victory of victories. It is absolutely, as Christians, what we claim, what we stake our hope on, and what we hold fast to no matter what. And Easter celebrates that day. So it is like the Super Bowl of Sundays to be able to preach to you on Easter. This is my third Easter that I've gotten to spend with you at Grace. And back in the fall, I knew that we were going to be going through John in the spring. And so I was reading through John in part in preparation for this series. And I arrived at a story in John chapter 20 about doubting Thomas. Some of you probably know the story. Thomas was a disciple of Jesus who, when he heard that Jesus had resurrected from the dead, he said, I don't really believe that. And then Jesus appears to him and he gives Thomas the proof that he needs to show him that he's actually Jesus and that he's actually risen from the dead. And I thought, man, what a great thing to be able to share on Easter how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts. And so that's what we prepared for, and that's what I prepared for, and that's what I had in mind as we approached Easter, and we mapped out the series, and I knew what all 12 weeks were going to be. And a couple of weeks ago, we made a video, and we showed it in here, and we said, hey, on Easter Sunday, Nate's going to preach about Doubting Thomas and how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts, and it's going to be great, and you should invite people. And that's been the plan. We even, we put it on Facebook and then Steve told me, Steve's our worship pastor, who they did great. Steve told me, hey, we boosted it on Facebook. I don't even know what that is. But I've been boosted on Facebook. I'm kind of a big deal now. I mean, some of you may even be here because we boosted it. And if you did, you're going to be bummed out because I'm not preaching what I told you I was going to preach. Last night at about 10.30, I'm not making this up, I saw a tweet of all things, and I knew that I had to do a different message. My wife is out of town. She's at home with her family, and you'll find out why in a second. And I was going to bed. I grabbed Ruby, Jen's dog that I don't like, and I went to take Ruby outside as just the final hassle of the day to let her go to the bathroom. And while I'm outside, I grab my phone. And my buddy, who I used to work with, a guy named Heath, had tweeted this out. And I saw it in the morning, but I really just kind of passed over it. But for some reason, it was at the top of my Twitter feed, and I saw it. And this is what it says. It says, Holy Saturday, silence, sadness, sorrow. At some point in our lives, we all go through a season of this day. Darkness surrounds us. Nothing is happening. Hope seems lost. Today is the best reminder that the silence of God does not equal the absence of God. Sunday's coming. And as I read that and reflected on what's going on in my own life, I knew that I could not trot out here this morning and preach to you about how Jesus responds to our doubts. Which is a shame because I had a nice alliterated point at the end. It was very pastory. It said, in the face of our doubts, Jesus responds with patience, pursuit, and provision. And I was really happy about that. Isn't that fancy? But I knew as I read that, I can't, on Easter, that because my life feels like a Saturday right now. At Grace, we're real. We're authentic. We're honest. I feel like it's part of our secret sauce. I feel like it's what makes us us. And as a pastor, it's what makes me me, that we tell the truth and we go from our gut. And I felt like to preach what I had planned to preach would be dishonest with you this morning because my life feels a little bit like a Saturday and I need Easter this year. I don't know if you've ever thought about the disciples' perspective on Saturday, but we've been going through Holy Week. And in Holy Week, Jesus on Palm Sunday enters into Jerusalem and sets in motion some mechanisms that are going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. And he knows to his resurrection the following Sunday. And each day during that week over history has been given a name like Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. And Saturday is called Holy Saturday. And I don't know if you've ever thought about Saturday from the perspective of the disciples. But the disciples were men who had walked with Jesus every day. They woke up every morning with him. They listened to him. They followed him. They loved him. They left their jobs for him. They left their lives for him. They put everything on hold for Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus says that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. So they followed Jesus even though they were basically couch surfing for three years because they believed so much in what he was doing. And over the course of those three years, they came to love that man and respect that man and want to mimic and emulate that man. And they had high hopes for that man. And on Friday, it all came crashing down. On Friday, they watched that man put up on the cross and get crucified. And we talked about that last week. They watched their hopes and dreams die on that cross. And I imagine on Friday, though there was sadness, there was also shock, not really knowing what to do, trying to process what had happened. But on Saturday, the disciples are sitting in a room with the door locked because they're fearful of the authorities that they're going to come in and get them and arrest them. And so they're sitting there with the door locked in sorrow and in silence, not knowing what to do. And it feels very much like their God let them down. It feels very much like God is not present. We had hoped in him, we had believed in him, and now he's dead and we don't know what to do. And they look to each other for hope and there was none there. And what the disciples don't know is what we know is that the next day they're going to find an empty tomb and that Sunday is coming. But on Saturday, they didn't know that there was hope for Sunday. On Saturday, it's just death. And on Saturday, death wins. And on Saturday, evil wins and despair wins and sorrow wins on Saturday. Because that's where they are. And that's what they know. And Saturday is sorrowful. It's solemn. And it's silent. And as I thought about that, and thought about how much my life feels like Saturday right now, and thought about how much I need Easter right now, I thought I can in good conscience roll out there and talk about doubts tomorrow morning. My life feels like Saturday right now because three weeks ago, they found a mass on my father-in-law's pancreas. My father-in-law is a man named John. I love John a lot. I have a deep and abiding respect for John. I've said this to some people and I mean it. He has, to me, character that looks more similar to Jesus than anybody I've ever met. There are times in my life when I don't know what to do, and I think, I wonder what John would do. And I try to emulate that. Jen loves her daddy very much. They're very close. Lily calls him Papa. That's what I called my Papa. And so it's been a tough three weeks. Three weeks ago, they found a mass, and then it's just a series of appointments and different things, and you don't get the answers that you want. If you've walked through it before, you know it's painfully slow. And then yesterday, on Saturday, we find out that it's stage three. The Internet doesn't have a lot of good things to say about people with stage three pancreatic cancer. And so it's sad, and it's hard, and we're hopeful. On Monday morning, he meets with one of the best pancreatic surgeons in the world who has devoted his whole life to eradicating cancer from the pancreas. If anybody can help him, it's this guy. And so we hope in that, and we're happy about that. And I was on the phone with his wife, Terry, yesterday, telling her, listen, we don't know anything for sure yet, so we cling to hope. But it's hard. And I'm texting with Jen yesterday because she's down there with her family. How you doing? How's it going? And she just says, it's really hard. My daddy's really hurt. He's not really himself. He doesn't have any energy. And for three weeks, we've been doing a lot of praying, but we don't feel a lot of answers. And so my life feels like a Saturday. God, where are you on this one? He's a good man. It doesn't feel like it's the time. And here's the thing. You have your Saturdays too. You've walked through some Saturdays, haven't you? You've walked through some times in your life that were hard, where it felt dark, where you looked around and you said, where's Jesus here? And you didn't know where the hope was going to come from. You've sat in some Saturdays. Some of you are in them right now. And Saturdays don't all look like loss. I know since I've been here for two years, I've walked with some people. I've watched some people in the church walk through Saturdays. We've walked through the stories of miscarriages together. That's a Saturday. That Saturday's happened in my life before. There are people here who have lost spouses far too soon and walked through that Saturday. One of our very special partners lost his 58-year-old brother a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere. That's a Saturday. Our old pastor lost his son this year. That's a Saturday. Those are Saturdays. And they come in other ways too. I had breakfast with somebody on Monday of this week. And he said, man, my life has just been really hard since about December. I really need to hear from God and I can't. I don't know where he is and I don't know what's going on and I don't know how this is going to get better. It's kind of hard to cling to hope right now. And I wish that I'd had my mind wrapped around this sermon when I met with him because I could have just said, dude, it's Saturday. It's Saturday. And sometimes it's sin that brings it on, right? I was prepared. Sometimes it's not just things that happen around us. Sometimes we bring on our own Saturday, if we're honest. Sometimes our life feels so dark because of the things that we've allowed into it, because of the addictions that we walk with, because of the private shames that we hold close to us, because of the things in our life that are in the dark corners of our life that we don't want to shed light on, that feel like they're owning us and feel like they're eating our lunch. And what we really feel like is we're hopeless in this situation. And I see the freedom that other people walk in, but I don't think I'll ever walk in that. I don't think I'll ever be a whole person. I don't think I'll ever experience the happiness and the freedom that the Bible talks about because I don't believe if you were to ask me, can I overcome this sin, you would say, I don't think so. That's a Saturday. And so last night, at about 1045, I realized, I got to talk about Saturdays, man. Because here's the thing. The disciples had a Saturday too. And they got up on Sunday and they went to the tomb. Actually, it was Mary. And she was expecting to go in and find the corpse and dress the corpse of Jesus with some perfumes and some oil and maybe pray over it. And she found an empty tomb there. Jesus wasn't there. But there was an angel there who looks at her and says one of the greatest lines in the Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen. What are you doing here, Mary? Jesus isn't here. He's alive. And she rushes back and she finds the disciples locked in that room in sorrow and silence. And she tells them and they run to the tomb to see it for themselves. Peter and John run out there. And in John's account, he makes sure to tell you, we started out neck and neck, but I dusted that old man. I beat him to the tomb. I had plenty of time to look around and get my bearings. And when they get there, they find that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has conquered death. And that's Sunday. And they realized for all of eternity, Jesus has taken the sting out of death. Jesus has given us eternal life. Jesus has beaten all the things that would seek to take us down. It's why Paul can write in Corinthians, why he can quote the Old Testament and say, oh death, where is your sting? Where are your shackles? You have no power over us anymore, death, because Jesus rose on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the tomb was empty. Because Jesus overcame it and gave us victory and gave us hope. A hope that we can cling to. A hope that Paul says in Romans 5 will not put us to shame. Jesus won eternal victory on Sunday. And the sadness that was Saturday became the joy of Sunday because Jesus has conquered the grave and conquered hell and conquered sin and death and he's delivered that victory to you for all of eternity. All you have to do is believe that he did it. And then death can't touch us anymore. And then sorrow can't touch us anymore. And I knew that I had to preach about this and I knew that I had to tell you this story and I knew that I had to tell you about Saturday going into Sunday because here's what Sunday means. You understand? Here's what Easter means. Easter reminds us every year that Jesus always comes through. He always comes through. Without Easter, the internet tells me and my family that we have a 12% chance at happiness. Easter says, I've already beaten it. You've got 100% chance of joy. Without Easter, there's no hope. But Easter tells us that Jesus always comes through, that he never fails and that he never lets us down. And here's what I know. Because of Easter, because that tomb was empty, and because Jesus conquered death and delivered eternal life to all of us, including John, here's what I know, that because of Easter, he's going to come through for John too. It may be in the form of giving him some more years. He may get to watch Lily grow up a little bit longer. It may be in the form of taking him to heaven where he will wait, but make no mistake about it, John's going to hold Lily some more. And he's going to hug Terry some more. That's the victory of Easter. That's what today means. And if you're on a Saturday, today is a reminder that Jesus always comes through. Jesus always wins. And even if you can't see how he's going to come through, I will just tell you that he will. Either in this life or the next, he's going to come through. Either now or in eternity, you place your faith in him and he's going to come through. And now I don't have a 12% chance of happiness. I have a 100% chance at joy. And so does Jen, and so does Terry, and so does her sister Lauren. Because 2,000 years ago, Jesus beat cancer. And he beat sadness, and he beat tragedy, and he beat heartache, and he beat your Saturday too. That's what Easter is. Last night, when I decided I was going to be the least prepared pastor on Easter Sunday in America, I made a pot of coffee because I was tired. And I went outside and was just thinking and drinking the coffee. And I looked up and it was cloudy, but on the other side of some clouds I could tell the moon was there. And I knew that on the other side of those clouds was the light of the moon. And I kept my eye on it, and wouldn't you know it, in a couple of minutes the clouds parted, and it was a full moon, and it was bright. And it was like this little reminder from God. It's Saturday now, and it's dark, But that's my sun shining on that moon. And in the morning, it's going to be bright. Because in the morning, it's Easter. In the morning, it's Sunday. And on Sunday, we're reminded that I always win. And it may feel like night in our lives sometimes. We may feel the darkness of Saturday in our lives sometimes. If you do, look to that moon that's reflecting the light that God created and know that whether we know it or not, whether we understand it or not, in a way that we might not be able to predict, that Sunday is coming and the sun will shine again. And 2,000 years ago, Jesus won a victory for us over all the things that would seek to darken our days. And that's what we celebrate on Easter. Pope John Paul said, we do not give way to despair. We are the Easter people. And hallelujah is our song. So no matter how dark it gets, Christians, we sing because we know that Sunday is coming. No matter how silent God seems, Christians, we listen because we know that God will speak. No matter how sad we are on Saturday, Christians, we know that Sunday is coming and Jesus always comes through. And that's why Easter is the greatest day of the year, because it reminds us that Jesus has come through for us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. So I'm gonna pray for you. And my prayer is that you have a good Easter. And my prayer is that if you're in a Saturday, that you will know that because of Easter, you can know that Sunday is coming and Jesus is gonna come through for you too. Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good to us. More than we deserve, more generously than we deserve, you love us in ways that we don't deserve. You are good. We thank you so much for Easter. We thank you for what it means and for what it represents, for the hope that you won when you conquered sin and death, when you came roaring like a lion out of there, giving us hope for all of eternity. Father, I pray that those of us who feel like we are in a Saturday would take solace in Easter, that we would cling to the hope of Sunday, that we would cling to the hope of you. Let us believe, God, that you've won this victory already, that it's yours. Let us celebrate Easter in the hope that it brings well. Let us reflect on you as we do it. Be with those who are sorrowful, God. Let them hold on just a little longer until your light shines. We thank you for Easter. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for being here. This is the seventh part in our series going through the book of John. We're going to continue this series through the week after Easter. So I'm thrilled to see all of you here. Hopefully, as I've been encouraging you every week, you've been reading along with us. I think it's hugely important for you guys to be reading the Gospel of John on your own as you process it and we go through it as a church so that my perspective isn't the only perspective that you're getting on this book. That's why it's such a bummer that I realized yesterday I forgot to update the reading plan and the one that we have out there is not current. So I'm real sorry about that. I had a wedding to do yesterday and then basketball, so I didn't get a chance to do the reading plan. But we'll have that done for you tomorrow. We'll get it out online and we'll have a physical copy for you next week when you get here. If you are following along in the reading plan, just read the next two chapters. We've been going at two chapters a week and you'll be good, okay? But as we've been going through this week, I had a sermon planned out of John 11, looking at the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, John 11, 35. And I had been looking forward to that sermon. But as I got done last week and looked at the chapters that we had to cover this week, there's a portion, there's something happening in John chapter 13 that I just, I didn't feel right about doing a series in John where we don't cover this. There's been a ton that we've skipped over in the book of John. We didn't even stop on the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16. We haven't talked about that, which again is why we should be going through this on our own. But I just didn't feel like it was right to go through a series in John without focusing on what Jesus says in John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's a seat back in front of you. And then later when I read the passage, it will be up on the screen. And I think we have it in your bulletin. There's really no reason, unless you're illiterate, to not read John chapter 13, 34, and 35 with us, okay? So in this verse, Jesus gives a summation of all of his teaching for the disciples. He's left with just the 11 faithful disciples that are with him, and we'll get to this in a minute, but he's giving them a summation of everything that he's ever taught them. And I find summaries like that to be the most helpful teaching or the most helpful advice, right? We know that good advice summarizes all the other advice and makes it a little bit more memorable. I think something that we can all relate to is many of us in this room have had kids. And we know that when you're about to have a kid, this is the time when you are receiving the most unsolicited advice you have ever received in your life. The only other thing I've ever experienced like it was when I was about to become a pastor. I had been named the senior pastor, and so I had kind of a month to get my affairs in order and then get up here and take over, at the time, Grace Community Church. And so everybody was giving me advice on how to be a senior pastor, including my atheistic uncle, who hadn't been in a church in like 35 or 40 years. I'm literally, I'm golfing with the guy. It's the last time I'm going to hang out with Uncle Dick. And he's in the fairway practicing, and then he like steps off the ball and he goes, Nathan, you know, I've been thinking about you becoming a pastor. And I'm like, what in the world is going on here? He goes, I just had something I wanted to tell you. And I'm thinking like, just like everybody else, come on, let's go. You haven't been in church in 40 years. Let's see what you got. It was okay advice, but I just thought it was hilarious that an atheist cared about advising me on being a senior pastor, right? And when you're a parent, you get all this parenting advice. It doesn't matter if they've had kids before. It just matters that they've read a book or seen something on Facebook. They will tell you what they saw. And sometimes this advice is even contradictory in nature, right? You got the camp over here saying you should use cloth diapers. And I'm like, you're crazy. And then you got this camp saying you should use regular disposable diapers. I'm like, these are my people, right? You got the camp that says when you get home, you do not let that child sleep in the bed with you. You put them in their room on night one or they are going to develop dependency issues. And you're like, holy crud, that sounds really hard. And then you have other people that are like, you let that child sleep in your bed until they are eight if they need to. They are your precious angel, you know? And Jen's reading books the whole time. Jen's my wife, not just some lady who reads books for me. So she's reading books the whole time. And she's getting all this advice. And it's contrary. This book says this thing, and this book says this thing. You're like, well, which person knows more about this? Who knows? Can I speak to their adult children to see if this worked out? You just don't know, and you're getting so much all the time. But one guy, this was super helpful, Kyle Hale, the worship pastor at the church that I was at at the time, I was on staff with him. He came up to me one day. He had three boys under five. So he had earned his dad's stripes, right? And he comes up to me and he goes, hey man, listen, a lot of people telling you a lot of stuff. And I'm like, yep, and here comes your thing. And he goes, listen, just for the first three months, just keep the kid healthy and stay sane. Whatever you have to do. Don't worry about what you're going to do to them. You're not going to do any permanent damage. Just keep the child healthy and stay sane. Try not to yell at Jen. That's it. Just do that. And I thought, this is good advice. I can do this. I don't know about all the other stuff. I don't know about the five S's and all the things, but I can do this. I can just try to take care of them, and I can try to not yell at Jen. This is good. This is actually how I still parent. Just make sure she's good and try not to get mad at Jen. That was good advice. It was a summation of all the other advice, right? It was memorable and easy and executable. And this is what Jesus does for the disciples in John chapter 13. Here's what's happening in John 13. I actually, I feel a little bit badly about the way that we've done this series in that we haven't done a lot to follow the chronology of Jesus through his ministry and through his life. We've dropped in on snippets of what he's taught and things that he did, but we haven't done a good job of following the chronology of Jesus. So here's what's happening in John chapter 13. Jesus has moved through his life. About the age of 30, he goes public with his ministry and begins calling disciples to him. And then they do ministry together through Israel. Israel is a relatively small country. It's really a small country by any measure. And so all over Israel, they're doing ministry and they're following Jesus around and he's teaching them how to do what he does. He's preparing them to hand them the keys to the kingdom. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but why didn't Jesus just come to earth, live perfectly, become an adult, and die for our sins? Why did he dabble for three years with this public ministry? Why was it essential for him to do this in order to die on the cross for our sins? And I think the answer is Jesus knew he was going to have to leave behind his kingdom in the form of the church. And he knew he was going to have to entrust that to people. And so he wanted to invest three years of his life into some young men so that he can hand the church off to them as passing them the keys to the kingdom. So I'm convinced that he spent an extra three years here on planet Earth with us for the main purpose of training the disciples to get them to a place where they were ready to take over his kingdom called the church and propel it into the future, which they absolutely did, or you guys wouldn't be sitting here in a different continent 2,000 years later, right? So that's what Jesus is doing with the disciples. So about age 30, he goes public, he calls the disciples to them, he trains them for three years, and then at the age of 33, he's crucified. And that week leading into the crucifixion is called Holy Week. And we're in the period of Lent that's leading up to Holy Week now. So Palm Sunday, which this year we're going to celebrate on April the 14th, is the day that Jesus goes into Jerusalem. It's called the triumphal entry. He enters as a king. But this sets in motion a series of events that by Friday has him crucified. We call that Good Friday. And then Easter is when he resurrects on Sunday. So he is in the middle of Holy Week here. It is the end of his life. He's sitting around one night with the disciples. If you were here the first week, we know, you know, that Jesus has just looked at Judas who had betrayed him and said, the thing that you are about to do, go and do it quickly. So Judas has left. He's at the end of his ministry with the 11 faithful disciples who he will hand the keys to the kingdom to and entrust them with the church. And he looks at them and he says, I have a new commandment for you, which is an interesting thing. Because the Bible says that Jesus had that all authority on heaven and on earth had been given to him. He had come down from heaven as God. He was God in the flesh. He could have added all the rules that he wanted to. He could have been given out commandments left and right. He could have done anything that he wanted. He could have made any rules that he wanted. And he waits three years to do it. And right before, like a couple of days before he's going to go be arrested and die for us, he says, oh, by the way, I have a new commandment for you, in verse 33, he calls them little children. Come to me, little children. Jesus doesn't play the little children card a lot. That's like maximum God card, right? Because they're peers. He's a dude, they're dudes. But in this one, he says, little children, listen to me. So this is like, hey, pay attention. Jesus is playing the God card here. He doesn't do this a lot. What's he about to teach? He says, I have a new commandment for you. So we should be leaning in. This is the one rule that Jesus makes. He could have made any rule his whole life. He's made one, and it's going to be this, and it's going to be a summation of all his teachings. So Christians, church, we should lean into this. If you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you should be very interested in this new commandment that sums up everything that Jesus ever taught and did and said. Non-believers, if you're here and you're considering faith, you should be very interested in this because in this one commandment is the whole of the faith that you are considering. This is a hugely important, crucial passage. And this is what Jesus says to them that night before he prepares to go to heaven. He says this in verse 34. He leans in and he says, little children, disciples, church, for the rest of time, I'm going to give you, I have a new commandment for you. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. This is how the whole world will identify you from this moment on. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. Now, if you've been paying attention in the book of John, you should have some questions. How is this a summation of everything that Jesus teaches, and how is it different than things that he's taught in the past? Because at the beginning of the Gospels, in the beginning of Matthew, and at different places in John, he tells us that we are to, what, love our neighbor as ourselves, right? We know this commandment. This isn't new. This doesn't feel different. We know that we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, it was commonly known then. Then there's a story where Jesus is talking to a lawyer, a young man who's been studying the law, which incidentally is the Bible, and he asked the lawyer, what do you think are the greatest commandments? And the lawyer says, love your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, amen, and love your neighbor as yourself. This was a commonly accepted teaching. So how is this different than this commonly accepted teaching? There's another theme that runs through John of what Jesus teaches. Over and over again, he continues to come back to this idea that it's our job to believe in him. We looked a couple weeks ago when people asked him, what do we do to inherit eternal life? How do we labor for eternity? He says, believe in the one that the Father has sent. When he prays, after he resurrects Lazarus, Lazarus is a friend of his who dies. Jesus shows up at the grave. He brings him back to life, and he prays, and he says, Father, I knew you were going to do this. I did this so that they would believe that I am who I say I am, so that they would believe in the one that you have sent. So over and over, we see this theme in John that Jesus admonishes us to believe in him as the Son of God. And if we see those themes, it's already commonly accepted practice and commonly accepted teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourself, and we know that we should love God as well, and that it's our job to believe in God. How is this a summation of those things that Jesus has taught us? Well, we start when we understand this. When you look at the command to love your neighbor as yourself, do you understand that you are the standard of love in that scenario? That when the admonishment, when the instruction is, love your neighbor like you love yourself. And to love somebody for all intents and purposes is simply to want what's best for them and to act in a way that would bring that about. We love somebody, so we want what's best for them, and we act in a way that would bring that about in their life. That's what we do. And so when we love somebody as we love ourselves, then we are the standard of love in their life. So however we love ourselves is how we ought to love other people. And that's a problem because we are imperfect and we love ourselves imperfectly. There have been seasons of my life where I did not do a good job at loving myself. And if I were to love you like I love myself, then I would probably owe you an apology, right? There are seasons of your life where you love yourself imperfectly. You're not taking care of yourself very well. You're not making the best decisions for yourself. You're not bringing about the best things in your life. And so if you started to love other people like you loved yourself, if we're honest, that's a pretty low bar. When we say that we should love our neighbor as we love ourself, that sets the bar at us. And you'll notice that Jesus says this at the beginning of his ministry, before the disciples have watched him relentlessly love everyone around him. But at the end of his ministry, when they've watched him for three years, graciously and patiently and givingly and sacrificially love everyone around him all the time, Jesus raises the bar on this command. And he says, it's no longer good enough for you to love other people as you love yourself. No, no, you need to love them as I have loved you. You need to go and love other people as you've seen me love them. And when that's the commandment, do you understand that Jesus is now the bar on that love? Before we set the standard, go love others as you love yourself. That's our standard. And he says, no, no, no. I want you to raise it to my standard. Go and love other people as I have loved you. He says this to the disciples who have watched him over the years. Bring sight back to the blind. Make people who can't walk be able to walk again. Love on people who are found in the middle of sin. Restore people who the world would condemn. Argue with the Pharisees. Teach the multitudes. Perform countless miracles. Sit patiently with them. They've watched all of this. And Jesus says, as you have seen me love on you and minister to you, I want you to love one another that way. He sets the bar at himself, not us. But the question then becomes, if I am to love other people as Jesus loved me, how is it that Jesus loves me? And how does that fulfill the instruction that we should believe in Jesus and love God? How can this possibly be a summation of everything that he's taught? And to answer that question, we need to look at the way that Jesus loves. Now, I'm going to give you kind of three categories or ways that Jesus loves us. I would encourage you in your small groups this week as you discuss this, you guys can probably think of more ways or more categories of ways that Jesus loves us. But here are my three this morning. There are three ways, main ways, I think that Jesus loves us. I think Jesus loves us sacrificially, he loves us restoratively, and he loves us recklessly. Sacrificially, restoratively, and recklessly, I think, are ways that Jesus loves us. Sacrificially is obvious, right? If you were to ask anybody, believer, non-believer, anybody who has a cursory knowledge of Scripture at all, how does Jesus love us? One of the answers would be sacrificially. He died for us, so he sacrificed, he gave of himself for us. But it's not just that he died on the cross for us. That's the biggest of sacrifices. But we see him time and again in the gospels give of his time and give of his energy and give of his attention and give of his patience. We see him constantly choosing other people over himself. He even chose homelessness. He has foxes have holds and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He just wandered around loving on other people, not being concerned with himself. So if we're going to love like Jesus, we need to love sacrificially, which means that we need to give of our time and our effort and our energy and our resources in his name and for him. And this happens a lot. We have people over there who are watching kids so that young families can sit in here and go to church in peace. And some of these families just need to sleep right now. I'm not even mad at them for not paying attention because they just need rest because it's hard to be a parent sometimes, right? So we have people who are giving of their time on a Sunday morning and loving on them so that they can be in here. We have people who are teaching the kids in there, loving on them, giving of their time. We have servants all over the church who are loving well through sacrificing. I see that happening a lot in Grace. Once a month, we do this incredible thing when we go to Pender County that was impacted by the floods. And Florence came in, the hurricane came in, there was floods, and we're good, and everything's settled, everybody's got power. Except out there, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of homes that have been impacted by the floods that are unlivable. Insurance can't help them out, and these people have no options. And so Grace actually sends a team of people down once a month to go and help restore these people and restore their lives and fix their homes. And so the men and women who do that on a monthly basis are going and loving sacrificially. They are giving up a Saturday to be down there, which is a big deal, particularly in NCAA tournament time, to give up these Saturdays. Incidentally, the trip this month got canceled and got moved to this upcoming Saturday. So if that's a way you'd like to love sacrificially, you can sign up for that online or indicate it on your communication card, and that's fine. And so there are all these ways to go out and to love others outside of our homes and to kind of step into the lives of others and love sacrificially, show up for the food drive and love the people, the kids who might not be able to eat over spring break. That's good. But to me, the surest test to know if we're really loving others sacrificially is whether or not we're doing that in our home. It's easy to go out in fits and starts and to kind of drop in and make an appearance and love here and then retreat back to those who know us best and be selfish and need our space and our time and our TV and all the stuff, right? That's easy to do. It's easy to step out and love for a couple of hours and then step back into our shell. I learned this lesson when I was in high school. I was 17 or 18 years old and I had just gone off to summer camp, right? A place called Look Up Lodge in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. And it made a huge impact on me. I had grown up in the church, grown up, I think, as a Christian. But this was the time, this was the week where I really, really got it. Something switched for me, and I understood Christianity in a way that I never had. And so I'm on fire for Jesus, right? I'm like the classic mountaintop experience kid coming back from camp. Like I am, I am so fired up. I'm ready to charge hell with a water pistol. And it doesn't have to be one of those pump kinds. It can just be like the single action. Like I'm still in, bring it on Satan. I'm coming for you. Like I am ready. And I'm, my hair is on fire for Jesus Jesus. I come back and I'm telling my parents who raised me in the church and who love God and who love me, are super involved with the church. I'm telling them all the things that I'm going to do. I've made all these commitments. I'm going to do all the things. I'm going to start all the Bible studies. I'm going to lead all the things. I'm going to teach the little kids. You've never seen a Christian like me, Dad. I'm going to change the world. Dad says, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I'm like, man, you really cut the legs out from under a guy. And at the time, I thought he was kind of a jerk for saying that. Maybe he still is. But the point that he made is right. That's great. That's wonderful that you've had this mountaintop experience. That's wonderful that you love Jesus. Be nice to your mom and love your sister. It's easy to run out and fake it and sacrifice for others. It's hardest with the people that we know best. That's why we're meanest to the people that we love the most. That's why we have the shortest fuse with them. That's why we sometimes fail to offer the grace to others, the grace inside our home that we offer outside our home. If we want to love sacrificially, then it looks like, for me, this is something that I struggle with, when I come home sometimes, I know we make jokes about pastors and our job, and it is stressful looking at Facebook and golfing a lot, but there are times when I do come home and I am stressed. I've had a lot of meetings and a lot of things, and we've made decisions, and I've had to work hard, and the last thing in the world I want to do is sit on a chair that is too small for me and make Play-Doh donuts. I don't want to do that. I want to sit on a couch that is too big for me and eat donuts. That's what I want to do. But if I love Lily and I love Jen, then I'll come home and I'll sit down and I'll play. And I'll give Jen the space she needs to do the things she needs to do because she hasn't had that space all day and I'll engage with my daughter. If we love our family, we'll come home and we'll sacrifice for them. If we love the people around us, then we will consider their needs before they have to consider their own. I think sacrificial love shows up first in the people that we know best. Jesus also loves us restoratively. He seeks to restore us. There are so many examples of this. A couple weeks ago, Kyle did a great job preaching about the woman at the well, who at that time had had five husbands and was living with the sixth man who she was not yet married to, which by any account throughout all of history is generally referred to as scandalous, right? And Jesus doesn't bring it up. He just mentioned it as if it's true, but he doesn't seek to condemn her about it. He's far more concerned about restoring her and letting her know about who he is and the promises that he makes and her need for him. In the book of John, there's a story that some versions include where there's a woman who's brought to him in adultery in the city streets. And the Pharisees, the religious leaders say, should we stone her? And he has this impossible question to answer. And he does this thing where he makes everybody, he convinces everybody to go away by riding in the dirt. And once everyone is gone, he looks at the woman and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, and neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. He's not there to condemn her. He's not there to convince her, hey, you know adultery is wrong and you really shouldn't do it. You know that the thing that you were doing was shameful and that I don't like it. And that when you do that, you trample on my love. Like I'm here to die for you because you do stuff like that. Could you maybe knock it off? He doesn't say that. He says, neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. We've extended this series a week so that I can preach to you about the restoration of Peter after he messes up. Peter messes up big time. And Jesus comes to him and he has every right to get onto him and condemn him and he doesn't. He simply restores him. What we see in the ministry of Jesus over and over and over again is that he is far more concerned with restoring you than condemning you. And in the church, when we look at other people, it gets so easy to identify that as sin. Is that person sinning? Is that person doing something that's wrong? Look at what they're doing in their life. Doesn't that count as sin? And Jesus says, yeah, maybe, but how about we love them first? He doesn't let them off the hook. He says, go and sin no more. Go and don't do this thing anymore. But first, he says, neither do I condemn you. He's always, always, always more interested in restoring than condemning, in restoration than condemnation. And if we are going to love other people like Jesus loves us, then when we approach others, we should always be primarily concerned with their restoration to spiritual health, not condemning them and defining what they're doing. We restore people. We do not condemn. That's the Lord's job. And Jesus loves us recklessly. Now, I like this one because we're going to sing a song after the sermon called Reckless Love. I think it's called Reckless Love. I never know song titles. It should be called Reckless Love. And it's about the reckless love of God. And it was a popular song in Christian circles. But we had some debates and some discussions about it as a staff because part of the concern was that it was erroneous to call God's love reckless because reckless kind of infers that there's mistakes made, that it's just like reckless abandon, that there might be some mess up or some error to his love or some misjudgments within his love, but it's good and it's fine and we like God's love and so that's okay. So that maybe it was almost theologically inaccurate. But after we talked about it some more, we decided to go ahead and sing the song. And I'll confess to you that the first time I ever even looked at the lyrics of the song was when we were singing it on Sunday morning because I'm really bad about keeping current with worship songs. We do a playlist on Spotify with the songs that Grace Raleigh does, and that's my worship. That's what I listen to. And if it's not on there, I don't listen to it. So I had not heard this song before. And as we're going through it on Sunday and I'm looking at the lyrics and it talks about how he leaves the 99 and he comes after us and he always chases us and he always pursues us and there's no wall that he won't kick down and there's no mountain that he won't climb to come after us. What I realize about the recklessness of God is that it's talking about this emotional recklessness where he has no regard for how much we hurt him. He is always going to pursue us. That's the recklessness of God. It doesn't matter how many times someone rejects him. It doesn't matter how many times someone makes him a promise and says, God, I'm never going to do the thing again. And then they turn around and they do the thing. It doesn't matter how many times we betray God or we walk away from him or we break his heart or we break his rules or we hurt his spirit, he is always going to forgive us and he is always going to pursue us. It doesn't matter how many times he extends a hand to us and we knock the hand away and we say, I'm not interested. He is still going to extend the hand again. He recklessly pursues us. This is the picture that he lays out in the Old Testament when he has a prophet named Hosea marry a prostitute named Gomer. He says, I want you to go and I want you to take Gomer as your wife. She doesn't deserve you. I want you to go marry her anyway. So Hosea, in obedience, does it, marries her. Inevitably, she cheats on him, goes back to her old life, and God speaks to Hosea again and he says, go back and get her and marry her again, regardless of the toll that it takes on you. That's the reckless love of God. Because there is something very human and very natural to this idea that once our heart has been broken, once someone's turned us down enough times, once someone has disappointed us enough times, once someone has required our forgiveness more than a few times, there's a very natural human thing to do to recoil and to withdraw our love from them and to not pursue them as hard and to not go after them as hard because it's hurt us so many times in the past. And so we recoil out of this sense of self-protection and we build up walls and we don't let other people in because we've been hurt so many times, and we've been damaged so many times that we don't want to experience that again, so we learn to protect ourselves from the possibility of other people hurting us. And God's reckless love says, I don't care how many times you hurt me, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna pursue you. That's the recklessness of God. And if we want to love like Jesus, then we love recklessly. This is how Jesus is able to tell Peter how many times to forgive people, right? Peter goes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, how many times should I forgive someone when they wronged me? When someone wrongs me, when they disappoint me, when they let me down, when they break my heart, when I thought I could count on them and they show me that I can't and it really, really hurts, how many times should I forgive them? Up to seven times seven. As many times as it takes, you forgive them until they do it right. You forgive them as many times as you have to. You recklessly pursue them with your love. That's what it means to love like Jesus loved. We love sacrificially, we love restoratively, and we love recklessly. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about how to love in that way, what becomes very apparent is we are not able to do that. We are not able in and of ourselves to love in those ways, to love perfectly sacrificially, to always empathize and love with restoration in mind. We are not able to love recklessly. We do not possess the ability to do that. And this is how it fulfills Jesus' teaching that we ought also to believe in him. Because what we understand is it is impossible to love others like Jesus loved us without Jesus's possession of and power in our hearts. You see, unless we believe in Jesus and he has taken up residency in our heart and has possession of our heart and his power is working in our hearts to change our ways and our desires to his and our ability to love to His. Unless He's doing that, unless we've loved God enough to believe Him and place our faith in Christ, there is no possible way we can be obedient to the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. So in this, we come full circle in seeing that it is really a summation of everything that Jesus has taught. It raises the bar on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. It fulfills the commandment to love God and fulfills the commandment to believe in the one that he has sent because it's impossible to do it without believing in Jesus. And in that way, it's a summation of everything that Jesus ever taught. Simply go and love. Andy Stanley says it this way. He's a pastor in Atlanta. He says, when you don't know what to say or do, just love others as God through Christ loves you. That's what we do. We love other people sacrificially. We love them restoratively. We love them recklessly. And then Jesus says, this is how the world will know that you are my disciples. This is how I want the world to look at you and know that you belong to me. This is what I want to be your defining and distinguishing characteristic. This should be the way the world identifies you to look at the way you love one another and you love others. That's what I want to define you. And this is something that I think the church gets messed up sometimes. He does not say that the world will know that you are my disciples by what you stand against, by how you define sin, by who you choose to condemn, by what you stand up and rally against in Washington. That's not how we are going to be defined. We're not going to be defined and identified by the world by our good doctrine or dogma or theology. We aren't made known to the world by winning a Bible knowledge trivia contest. We're not made known. The world will not know that we are his disciples by how well we know this book. Now, all of that flows out of our love for him, but it is not our definitive thing. It is not our distinguishing characteristic. Our distinguishing characteristic is who and how well we love. That's what Jesus wants to define us. All the other things are important, but if we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we believe. If we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we're against. If we fail to love others first, then nobody cares how well we serve. We are first to love others sacrificially, distortively, and recklessly. And this is how we will be defined. This is how the world will know that we are his disciples. What would it look like for you to be known in that way? What would it look like for the people around you to say whatever it is they want to say about you, but at the end of the day, that person loves people well? What would it look like to love people so different and in a way that was so other that when people saw you doing it, they were drawn to your God because there must be something else going on here. Nobody could possibly love others that well. Nobody could possibly sacrifice that much. Nobody could possibly mean it. You know how when you meet somebody who's super nice and super gracious and they're very kind to everyone, you think to yourself, they're faking it. You think to yourself, what do they look like when they're down? What if you never were? What if you weren't faking it? Because that love was fueled by Jesus and you loved everybody just as hard as he did. What if this was the distinguishing and defining characteristics of our homes? What if when someone entered into your home and spent some time with you and your family, when they left and they got in the car and whatever else they said about your home, I really like her napkins or those curtains or that's what cozy farmhouse looks like and that's what I want to do. Like whatever else they said about your home, the one thing that they took away was, man, those people love each other well. Man, I felt loved in that house. What if your kids growing up in your house, the one thing they'll say about mom and dad is, listen, they did some crazy stuff and there's some crazy, I got to knock off of me here in adulthood, but man, they love me well. And when I brought friends over, they loved them too. What if that's what was said about your house? That they showed the love of Christ there? What if that's what's said about the church? That when people come to Grace Raleigh, they walk away, and whatever else they experienced here, sermon was okay, music was great, announcements were outstanding. Whatever else they experienced here, they walk away and they go, those people love well. Those people loved me. And I'll brag on you a little bit because I don't think we're too terribly bad at this. Last week we had a guy here, we're getting our website redone. He's our web developer, a guy named Hugh. And Hugh is here. I invited him to just see the church and kind of learn more about us. And so he came in, and he came in after the first service, stayed in the lobby, came to the second service, and then I talked to him afterwards. And I just said, hey, you know, thanks for coming, whatever. And he said, dude, I love this place. I said, really? He says, yeah, these are the friendliest people I've ever met in my life. And he wasn't kidding. He said, they were so nice. He lives on the other side of Cary, like 40 minutes away. He said, if I lived closer, my family would start coming here next week. This place is incredible. So good on you if you were a part of that. I think this is one of the things we do well, but I think we can do it better. What if we were a church where no matter what other people experienced, they walked away and they said, those are some of the friendliest people I've ever met. What if that were everyone's experience? What if when you brought a visitor here, you brought friends or family here, they walked away and they said, that place loves well. It starts in the individual, it goes into the home, and then it comes here. And if we could be a church that loves other people well, that's what we become known for, that's the kind of church I want to be a part of. And you're here, I know, because that's the kind of church you want to be a part of too. But it begins with us. It begins with us pursuing Jesus and asking him and praying, help me to love other people as you have loved me. And what I love about this teaching is Jesus knows he's about to leave the disciples on earth. He's been a physical presence there. He has been the representative of the Godhead there. But he is about to leave and they're going to be the ones who carry the torch. And what better way as the torchbearers of Christ to represent him to the rest of the world than to go and be the embodiment of love to them as Jesus was. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. We love you imperfectly. We love you inconsistently. We love you often half-heartedly. Often, God, we love you forgetfully. God, please continue to work in our hearts to draw us near you that we may love you more. And that out of that love, we might love other people more. Give us the grace and the patience to love sacrificially, God. Give us the sympathy and empathy and insight to love restoratively and give us the strength and the faith to love recklessly. God, may we, may our homes, may this place be known and identified for how well we offer your love to others. It's in your son's name I pray. Amen.

It's good to see you guys. My name is Nate. I'm the pastor here, believe it or not. And I'm so excited about 2019. I feel like 2018 was such a wonderful year for grace, was such a wonderful year for the church. And we've enumerated all the things that God did for us last year. But I feel like, gosh, we are just poised to do really good things this year. We have a solid staff team, a good, great folks around us, and we are really ready to push this year. So I'm excited to see what the Lord does in the church this year. And I've already been praying for you a little bit, been praying for you as you enter into 2019. And my prayer for all of us, me included, is that when we leave this year, we will leave it closer to God than we are right now. My prayer for you is that 2019 will be a year of marked spiritual change and health in your life, and Jesus will draw you closer to him. That's my prayer and my hope. So we're launching with this series, Thoughts from the Gym, because we kind of felt like it fit into the beginning of the year, New Year's resolutions, and things like that. And a lot of us, like I did this week, are having day one in the gym again, right? The genesis of this series is we moved here in April of 2007. And so entering into the summer, we didn't know anybody. And so Jen said, well, Jen is my wife and we have a little girl named Lily. And so we wanted to join a pool so they could have something to do during the day because they make me work office hours here. It's ridiculous. So they wanted something to do during the day when I wasn't around. And so we ended up joining a pool and we joined a pool at a gym. And I thought, well, as long as I'm paying for this thing, I should try to go, right? And so I went, and it was pretty fun, and as I would go and watch other people work out, I was thinking about things, and there's some thoughts that occurred to me like, man, there's so many parallels here that apply to church and spiritual health, and I just kind of filed them away, and then one day, and I didn't know what I was going to do with them. And then one day I shared them with staff and they said, well, that should be a series. You should do that in January. So here we are. And the first one that we're going to do is called day one. And it's the first thing that occurred to me. That day, whenever it was, when I got ready to go to the gym, I put on whatever ratty clothes I had, and I go there, and I'm going to work out. I'm going to do the thing, right? Like you guys have had day ones, right? And I'm going to do the thing. And I don't like admitting this, okay, because I like to think of myself as mentally tough. I don't get easily intimidated, or at least maybe my unearned confidence has told me that. But I don't think I get intimidated a lot, but I was intimidated going to the gym. I don't like to admit that, but I was. Because, you know, if you've been there and you look like me, like there was a season, I got real consistent in the gym. There was a season where I would even be bold enough as to call myself in shape. But due to my affinity for baked goods and sitting, I'm back in like normal shape. All right. So I've got a long road to glory ahead of me this year. But I go and as I'm going, like I walk in and everybody's got on the matching clothes. All the dudes are wearing tight shirts by choice. I'm wearing tight shirts like not by choice. You know, they look good in theirs. I want to look better in mine. I get up on the treadmill and there's all these buttons and, and three of them say start. I'm like, what are you doing to me, Lifetime? I don't know what to do or which buttons to push. I'm pretty sure everyone around me is staring at me going, look at this clown. I'm starting to sweat. I haven't even done anything yet because I'm just nervous that everybody's judging me. Then I go over. I don't even know what. I literally, I'm just there. I have just like, I'm just, I don't, I have no workout plan. I'm just going to pick up some heavy things. Then I'm going to go home and I'm sweaty. And so I like curls, I know how to do curls. So I go over there and I grab a, you know, a barbell and a dumbbell and I, and I'm like looking at the other dudes to make sure that my form is good. And I'm hoping that they don't catch me looking at them and think I'm creepy or weird or something. And it's just the whole thing, I was just nerve wracked the whole time. And that's really not in my character to do that. I just was intimidated. And I realized I was intimidated because I felt like I was an outsider. I don't belong here. All the other people who are like gym people that nobody likes, they are, and I'm just playing around, but the people who are in good shape that we're jealous of, like they are going to look at me and they're going to know, oh man, this guy doesn't belong here. He won't last till February, you know? And so, like, I felt like I was an imposter. And at some point or another, everybody around me was going to know he doesn't belong. And what I realized is, man, this must be the way that people feel when they come back to church for the first time or go to church for the first time. This must be the way they feel. And I was actually glad to have that experience where I kind of felt insecure, even though I feel like I'm a pretty reasonably secure guy. I didn't like the way that felt. And so I was glad I had the experience as, oh my gosh, this must be what it feels like to come to church for the first time after a while. Because if I'm honest with you, I don't have that experience. I have no memory in my life of ever not being in church. I grew up in church. I could go to any church and feel pretty comfortable. And people who are in really good shape, they can go to any gym and they'll feel pretty good. They won't feel like I did on that first day. But if you haven't been to church in a while or you haven't ever been to church that you can remember, when you go that first day, it has to feel a lot like I felt at the gym that day. And I just remember thinking, man, if someone, as I thought about that and ruminated on it more, I thought, man, if one of the trainers or somebody who looks like they know what they're doing could come up to me and put their arm around me and just kind of give me some pointers like, hey, bro, let me show you how to set this treadmill up, you know? Let me show you how to do some of these exercises. Like these are the machines you want to do so you don't wander around looking like a dummy. Like just go to these things and you'll fit in. And I wish they could put their arm around me and just been like, dude, we've all had a day one. Like it's all right. It's good for you that you're here. And so what I wanted to do this morning, the first Sunday in January, is acknowledge that there's a lot of people here who your New Year's resolution is spiritual in nature. And maybe you're here on the very first Sunday in January because you decided, you know what, I'm going to church this year. I'm going to take my walk with God seriously. I've been meaning to prioritize my faith. This is the year I'm going to do that. I'm all in. I'm going to church this year. That's what I'm going to do. Somebody between services says you guys are resolutioners. If you're the resolutioners that are here and you said, I want to be back in church, then this is what you're doing. And what I want to do is take the first Sunday and address you and say, hey, listen, if this is your first Sunday back in church in a long time, there's five things that I want you to know. Now, this sermon is going to look a little bit different than all my other sermons. I'm really kind of anti-listy sermons. I don't like it when pastors make lists because this is just kind of like a behind the scenes thing a little bit. Lists tend to be lazy. It's super easy to be like, what are five things that are true about that verse? These five things. Okay, I'm just going to talk about them for a while. That's easy. To me, it's harder to make one point. And so that's what I try to do because I think it's best to ruminate on one scripture and move through it. But I thought this topic was so important and there's so many messages that I want to share with those of you who are coming back to church for the first time that I wanted to make a list of those things this morning. Now, here's the thing. A lot of the people in the room, y'all are grace people. You're church people. You're comfortable here. This isn't your first day. This is your first day this year. And you're kind of thinking like, well, this isn't for me. Wrong, pal. It is. Because if I'm saying that this is the message that we want to deliver to people who come to grace for the first time. Who is it that delivers this message? It's you. So these are the things that we want to say to folks who are coming into the fold for the first time or for the first time in a while. So if you're new, these are directly for you. If you are not new, then consider these your marching orders. These are the messages I want you to communicate with your actions and with your words, okay? So the first thing that I would love to say to you on your first visit back to church and in the midst of your intimidation is simply this. We know those feels, man. We know those feels. Now listen, some of y'all don't know what that means. You hired a young, attractive, hip senior pastor from Atlanta, okay? And I know the lingo. This is probably like eight years old. I'm so outdated in my lingo. There's people here who actually know the lingo going, no, you don't. But feels, I know those feels is the way that millennials tell you that they have empathy for you, okay? That's the word that you recognize. It's, I understand that feeling. I've been there before. I have empathy for that. I empathize with you. We've all had day ones and they're hard. It takes a lot of courage to come to church for the first time. As a matter of fact, on your bulletin, if you got one, when you came in on the front of it, there's a note from me. And the first thing I do is welcome people who are new and acknowledge that it was a difficult thing for you to do to get here. Okay. A lot of you have never seen that before because you've been here forever, and no one who goes to church consistently reads the note from the pastor on the bulletin. So that's not even for you. That's for them. We acknowledge that it is difficult. As a matter of fact, I had an interesting conversation with somebody just this last year, a guy who is a longtime partner here, been going to the church for forever. I love and respect this guy mostly because of the free golf he offers me, but I really do like him as a person. And one day we were golfing and he shared with me that he's one of the leaders of our men's Monday night Bible study. And he was telling me about the first time he went. And he said the first time he went, he was intimidated and scared. He kind of had been around church. He was a successful guy, sharp guy, smart guy. But he was going to Bible study for the first time and he was intimidated because he felt like they were going to ask him a question that he couldn't answer or that they were going to start talking about like insider stuff that he didn't know what it was. He felt like the knowledge gap was so wide that he was going to be exposed like he didn't belong there. But he knew in his heart that this was something that he needed to do. It was a step that he needed to take for his own health, and so he did it. And gradually, he was assimilated into the group. He didn't need to be near as intimidated as he was, and now he's a leader of the group. And so I want you to know that we've been there before. We understand how you feel. And to those of us who have been here for a while, understanding what it is to come to a new place for the first time, I would like for you guys to begin to run new people through a grid. Okay, so when you bring friends to church for the first time, when you have friends that bring friends to church for the first time, or when you see somebody here that maybe you don't recognize, I want you to have a grid or a question that you ask them, okay? And this question comes from the biblical imperative to be hospitable. This isn't just a thing that we do to be nice. Did you know that hospitality is actually one of the spiritual gifts? See, Christians believe, the Bible teaches that once you become a Christian, that the Holy Spirit, part of God, gives you a gift or a propensity in a certain area that you may not have had before or heightens it in you. And one of those gifts is the gift of hospitality. And you can tell who has the gift of hospitality because when you go to their house for something that's not even a big deal, they have like all the trays and all the platters set out. They're the ones that own the cupcake towers. They usually have the folded piece of paper in front of everything. Like you haven't seen cupcakes before. Like these are the chocolate ones. And you think to yourself, I'm never inviting them to my house because they're going to know what a degenerate I am, that I only have plates, right? Like those people are wonderful and I love them and they have the gift of hospitality. It's a gift. It's a thing. And if we as a church, as God instructs us to do in scripture, are going to express that gift of hospitality to folks who are with us for the first time, then I think the question that hospitality asks is, what can I do to make this person as comfortable as possible? Right? Isn't that the question? And listen, when you bring your friends or your loved ones to church and you say, I like it so far. It's pretty good. Worship's great. Sermons are all right. You should come and check it out. And you bring them, and you're hoping that there's a good experience for them, right? Don't you want everybody around you to be thinking, what can I do to make this experience as comfortable as possible? Which, by the way, I don't know if you realize this, that's our only growth strategy, all right? We don't do mailers. We don't send things out. We don't fleece the community with invite cards. We thought about over Christmas getting a bunch of, a big stack of invite cards and going to the apartment complexes right down the road and handing them out, going door to door and just giving them to people and putting a banner out in front of the church and inviting everybody in. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, that's not us. The point is not to get rear ends and seats. The point is not to fill up rooms. It's to bring people closer to Jesus. And the best chance we have at bringing people closer to Jesus is to bring in people who have relationships with you. So our entire growth strategy is to do things on Sunday morning that add value to your life and excite you so that you bring your friends to come see it too. That's it. And then we want to take good care of them once they get here. So when you bring those people, I want the filter that we view them through to be, what can I do to make this person as comfortable as possible here? And that looks like different things for different people, right? We've got to be savvy about this. Sometimes an extrovert visits and they want to meet everybody, right? Like last service, a new guy came. His name was Stuart. And I got introduced to Stuart. And Stuart chatted me up and he clearly wanted to meet everybody else. And so what Stuart wanted is for everybody to get to meet him. And that's great. But sometimes people aren't like him. Sometimes they're like me. I haven't had to visit a new church in a while, but if I did visit a new church, here's the experience I would want. I would want to go there and have one person acknowledge my existence and then leave me alone, right? Let me sit in the back. Let me take it in. I have to decide if y'all are crazy. Don't talk to me, right? And so when people come here for the first time, true story, they're coming in and they're going, are these people weird? Are these people normal? Do they make me laugh? I don't know about that video. That guy's a weirdo. Right? They're kicking the tires and sometimes they just want to sit in the back and take it in. And the thing we can do to be most hospitable is to give them their space to be introverted and assess. And that's what we need to have the wisdom to do. Sometimes it means showing them where the coffee is. Sometimes it means showing them where the restrooms are since we tuck them away in the kids' hallway by choice. And then sometimes we show them how to check in their children, right? Or we tell the kids to get out of the way so we have a room for everybody to sit down. That's the kinds of things we have to do. So I want us this year to begin to think as we see people that we don't recognize at church, what can I do to make them as comfortable as possible? That's what hospitality asks. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is this. This is important. If you're here, if you're here and you have resolved, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to take my walk more seriously, whatever your New Year's resolution is, I hope that you've made a spiritual New Year's resolution. If you haven't, I would highly encourage you to do that. You can just call it like a January 15th resolution or something like that. It would be great. But listen, if you made a resolution, particularly spiritually, I just want you to hear me say this, okay? You're going to mess up, and that's okay. You're going to spit the bit, man. You're going to blow it, and that's all right. If you made a New Year's resolution to come to church more often, three Sundays, four Sundays a month, whatever it is, you're going to do something on a Saturday that makes you feel like maybe I shouldn't go to church on Sunday. It's going to happen. You're going to wake up late. You're going to have a reason to not prioritize it. You're going to miss a couple of weeks in a row, and then you're going to feel like, man, I fell off the wagon. That's going to happen. If you made a New Year's resolution to watch your mouth, like, you're going to cuss in traffic. Like, eventually, that's going to happen. Try not to flip anybody off when it does. Make sure your windows are up. Like, it'll happen. We are going to mess up our New Year's resolutions. Like, we're going to fail. And that's okay because I can make a long list for you of people in the Bible who were heroes of the faith but failed miserably. Moses is a hero of the faith. He led the people out of Egypt. He's the dude that carried the Ten Commandments down the hill. He's a big deal. He messed up so badly late in life that God didn't even allow him to enter into the promised land that he led God's people to. Abraham, the man to whom we trace all of our spiritual lineage, he committed a sin so bad when he slept with another woman that was not his wife and had a child that we still feel the ramifications of that sin today. David, the greatest king Israel ever had, the one from whom Jesus came, the throne that Jesus will sit on, messed up so bad that he became a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer and God took his child as a result of his sin. Samson messed up so bad that many theologians don't even know if he ever even really knew the Lord. Peter in the New Testament, the leader of the disciples, messed up so badly that he denied even knowing Jesus three times in one night. If they messed up, you will too. And so will I. But here's the thing I want you to know. Spiritual progress is brought about by perseverance, not perfection. You hear me? Spiritual progress, spiritual success is not brought about by perfection. It's brought about by perseverance. The difference between spiritually healthy people and spiritually distant people is not some sort of moral fiber where one exceeds the other. It's simply perseverance. It's the willingness to, when I mess up, to get myself to stand back up, to dust myself off, and make the next decision of faith that I said I was going to make. It's to get up, refuse to listen to the voices in your head that tell you, here you go again, you've messed it up again. It's a refusal to listen to those and to get back on the horse and to make the next decision of faith in front of you. This is such a biblical idea. Perseverance is so important in the Christian life that many of the New Testament authors wrote about it. Paul wrote two-thirds in the New Testament. He was one of the most influential Christians to ever live. And over and over and over again in his letters that he wrote to the churches that we now read that make up our Bible, he encourages perseverance. He says to run the race, run to win the race. He says at the end of his life, he says, I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith. I have finished the race. And he says that as an example for us, he says that we should be poured out like a drink offering, okay? He encourages us to persevere in our faith. James, the brother of Jesus, holds perseverance so high in his economy that he says that we should consider suffering pure joy because it rots within us perseverance. It brings about within us perseverance and the ability to stick to things and to be steadfast. Peter, the leader of the disciples, values it so highly that in one of my favorite passages in the first chapter of 2 Peter, he makes a list of the attributes that Christians should seek out in their life. And in the middle of that list, he puts perseverance there. And it's a building list. And what Peter says is, perseverance is so important that you cannot experience brotherly kindness or godliness or love until you learn perseverance. It's a building block to the rest of the faith. Perseverance is the key to progress in spiritual health, not perfection. If you allow yourself to be discouraged and quit the first time you mess up, it's going to be really hard to see any progress. But if you will acknowledge that this happens to everybody, even heroes in the Bible, and you give yourself the grace to get back up and take the next step of faith in your life, regardless of what you did yesterday, that's perseverance. And that will bring about a spiritual progress. So you're going to mess up, and that's all right, as long as you get back up. Number three, the third thing I want you to know on your visit back to church, we love your questions. We love your questions. They're great. And I say that because we get intimidated about asking questions, right? We get in our own head. We don't want to ask questions. Questions show vulnerability and they admit that I don't know something and that you might be better than me at it and I don't want to feel dumb. So we don't ask questions and we just continue being dumb, right? That's what we do. I was at the gym and I'm working out. I'm doing, I think I was doing some tricep thing. And there's a dude like there, he's just a couple of feet away from me and he is just a bear of a man. He's just, he's been working out for 12 hours a day for the past 10 years of his life. Like he's just, he's just huge and intimidating. And he's got his, he's got his hat on backwards and he's got his, he's got his earphones on and the whole, the whole deal. And he's just going and he's like, he's lifting like three of me as he does the thing that he's doing. And I, but he was doing an exercise that I did not recognize. Like I've never seen this before. I don't know what that is. And my curiosity got the best of my good sense, as it often does. And so I decided I'm going to ask him what he's doing. And so I go to him, and I'm like, excuse me, sir. You know, scrawny white guy, excuse me, sir. And he pulls his headphones on, and he looks at me and goes, what? And I'm like, oh, I wanted to be like, my bad, nothing. I'll talk to you later. And I said, you want me to spot you? No, I said, I said, dude, I don't mean to be weird, but I've never seen anybody do that exercise before. And I'm just curious, like, what muscle is that working? And he kind of laughed and he pulled his headphones off and he goes, here, man, let me show you. And it was, he said, it's this, like, you got to do this. It's working. I don't know what that's called. The lat, we'll call it. I don't know what it is. And he says, do this, you know? And he kind of like, he showed me, he's like, can you feel it back there? I'm like, yeah. And like, we like joked around, we exchanged names. We grabbed coffee later and I was just messing around about that. But like, we were kind of buddies. And like, now I see him. I'm like, hey man, how you doing? And we'll do the little fist pound every now and again. I'll ask him a question or whatever. But like, that question broke down that wall. And I didn't know. And I would have never known. But I asked the question. And if you're new to the faith, you should ask your questions. If you're old to the faith, you should ask your questions. Do you know that before I was a senior pastor, if you can't already tell, I worked with youth for a long time. And I got to sit in a bunch of rooms with students, and I still love hanging out with students. And one of the big reasons I love hanging out with students is they haven't developed the fear that you have about asking questions. So they'll ask whatever they want. But now when I do adult Bible studies, sometimes people lean forward and they ask me questions about scripture and what it says and yada, yada, yada. Can I tell you that adults ask the same questions that students do? They don't get any better or smarter. The only difference is you sat on yours for 30 years and they just had the guts to go ahead and ask it. I was in a men's Bible study. I do a men's Bible study on Wednesday mornings at 6 o'clock. That keeps out the riffraff. People don't come kick the tires at 6 a.m. You've got to want it. Everybody's welcome. You've just got to be there on time. I'll lock the door and wave at you. So they come in. They come in, they sit down, and we're going to the book of John. And in the book of John, there's two Johns. There's John the Baptist and the Apostle John. And one of them says, hey, there's some Johns in the Bible. Are they the same or is that two different dudes? And that's a hard question to ask because if you've been around church for any time at all, you feel like you should know that question, right? Except like three or four other dudes in the circle, their eyebrows go up and they're like, yo, like what's the answer to this? Because they didn't know either. But because that one guy had the guts to ask a perfectly reasonable question, why in the world would you be expected to know that there's two Johns in the book of John if you haven't spent your life looking at it? Why in the world would you be expected to know that? Because he had the guts to ask the question, everybody got to learn, right? And listen, I don't want you to feel remotely intimidated about not knowing anything about the Bible. If you don't, that's great. If I tell you one Sunday, hey guys, listen, we're going to be in the book of Mark. You can go ahead and turn there if you want to. If you don't know where that is, please lean over to your neighbor and go, where's Mark? That's fine. Why in the world would you be expected to know that Mark is the second book in the New Testament if you haven't been around church in a long time? I try my best to not leave anybody behind, to not assume any knowledge on your behalf, to bring everybody up to speed. But sometimes I mess up. And when I do, man, you should have the courage to ask questions. In Bible studies, ask questions. Long-time church people, ask your questions. Don't be scared of them. They are good, and they are positive, and they follow this biblical model that I love of the Ethiopian eunuch. There's a guy in Acts. He's an Ethiopian governmental official, essentially, and he's on a chariot, and this guy, Philip, sees him reading from the book of Isaiah, and he walks up to him, and he says, hey, that's Isaiah. Do you understand what you're reading? And the eunuch responds in such an incredibly bold way. He says, how can I unless someone explains it to me? Isn't that refreshing honesty? Someone comes up to us, hey, you're reading Isaiah. You understand what that means? Yeah, you want some tips? And in our head, we're like, I don't know anything. Please don't ask me any questions. This doesn't make any sense. Have the boldness to be like that guy from Ethiopia and say, how can I know this unless someone explains it to me? Ask your questions. The fourth thing that I want you to know is that we are rooting for you. We're rooting for you. We believe in you. There is this thing in our culture, and I'm sure it's in all cultures. Whenever you start a new initiative, everybody around you doubts you, right? Like when I go into the gym on day one, I've had a lot of day ones, I feel the same way every time, that everybody's looking at me in their matching clothes and in their good shape, and they're looking at me going, yeah, it'll be nice seeing you in January because because you ain't making it to February, pal. And then I can have my treadmill back, and you'll be out of the way, right? Then we can keep the weights like where they need to go instead of on your level, you know? People tend to look at you with skepticism, and they don't believe in you. Spouses are the best at this, right? Like, if I tell Jen, like, I'm going to start some new initiative in my life, like, hey, I think I'm going to journal. He's like, all right. Let me know how that goes for you, buddy. You know? Don't they, like our people who know us the best are sometimes the worst at this. I think I'm going to pray 30 minutes every day. Good luck. Why do we do that to one another? So I want you to know that that attitude doesn't make it into here. If you're here and you've been wandering from God for a long time, but you've decided, you know what, I want to get serious about my faith. I believe that Jesus worked in your heart to bring you here. I believe that Jesus has been slowly working on your heart and drawing you near to him for months and years leading you into this day. And I don't believe it's on accident. And I don't for a second doubt the sincerity of the decision that brought you in here. So I want you to know that we believe in you. If you made a spiritual resolution this year, you've been coming to church for a long time, but you've resolved to do this. I want you to know that I believe in you. I don't look at you with a bit of skepticism. We don't look at you with a bit of skepticism. We only look at you with hope. Man, it would thrill my soul to know and to hear the story years from now of somebody who wandered in here in January of 2019 and had known God or had been around church, but for some reason, when I came here this month, something clicked and I just felt God's presence like I never had before. And my life has been different ever since. I would love to know that story. I would love for someone right here, in here right now, who is far from God to become one of our elders or one of our leaders in the children's ministry or one of our volunteers or small group leaders one day. I believe that story is possible and I believe that you are here on purpose. And so there is no doubt here. We believe in you. This is such an important idea that in the middle of the most theological, theologically technical book in the New Testament, Paul, the author of Romans, stops in chapter 14 and he makes it about encouraging more mature believers, encouraging those who are less experienced. He says this over and over in his writings. He says that we should constantly in Thessalonians, that we should build one another up. The author of Hebrews says that we should outdo one another in kindness and that we should spur one another on to good works. And Paul in chapter 14 of Romans devotes an entire chapter where he's talking to the more experienced believer, and he says over and over and over again, don't pass judgment. Don't judge them. Encourage them. Don't do anything that would cause them to stumble. Don't do anything that would cause them not to grow. Do everything you can to encourage other people as they seek to grow closer to God. And so that's what we do here. We believe in you. And I'm going to ask the grace people, if you're a partner, you've been coming here for a while, I'm going to give you a homework assignment and just ask you to be willing to do this. Will you, every day this week when you pray, will you pray for those people who have made a decision to get back into church in 2019? Will you please just remember to do that? And let's together pray for those folks every day this week. And you guys know that if you're here for the first time in a while, like we're praying for you. And the other thing is, if you've made a spiritual resolution, I want to pray for that too. I would love for you to write that on your communication card and hand that to somebody after the service and make sure it gets to me. I want to make a list, and once a week I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to pray for all the resolutions in the church that have to do with becoming more healthy spiritually. I'm going to do that every week until you tell me to stop, because we want to encourage one another. We believe in each other here. And if you say you're serious about this, then we believe you. The last thing I want you to know this morning, the fifth thing that I would love to be able to say to everybody is this. God is the only reason that any of us are here. God is the only reason that any of us are here. And here's what I mean. Again, at the gym, when I see other people who are really healthy and really fit, honestly, I admire that. I admire that because I know what goes into that. Having failed so many times, I understand the discipline it takes to be in shape and to be healthy because it's not just the time you spend at the gym. It's what you eat and how you sleep. And it's a whole lifestyle thing. And so I look at people who are in shape and honestly, I admire them and I admire them for their character. I admire them for their discipline, for their stick-to-itiveness. When people are disciplined in their profession, when they're successful in their profession, I admire that. I look at the way that they work hard. They wake up before everybody else. They work harder than everybody else. And they put in time when nobody else is putting in time. And I admire that. And in our culture, we have a culture of success that admires success. And we all tend to believe that that success was brought about by personal disciplines that accelerated you beyond your peers, right? And so what do we do when we come into church? We apply the same metric. We come into church and we see somebody who looks spiritually healthy to us, who sets a good example, who may be a leader somewhere or seems godly, or we like the way they interact with people, we like the way that they interact with their family or whatever it is, and we admire them spiritually. And what we tend to do is attribute to them some sort of discipline that won that for them, and then we try to duplicate that discipline in our own lives. And when we attribute discipline to other people in different arenas outside of church, I think that that is a good and fair thing to do. But when you attribute discipline to people inside of church, I don't think that that's right at all, and here's why. If you were to go to the person that you admire spiritually, and you to learn more about them and you were to somehow tell them, man, I wish I could have your discipline. I wish I could grow like you. I wish I was as self-disciplined as you are. They would tell you, listen, if there is anything in me that you admire, it has nothing to do with my discipline. I promise you that. It has everything to do with a God that loves me enough to continue to stick with me even when I don't stick with him. It has everything to do with a God working in my heart even when I don't know he's working. Being spiritually healthy has nothing to do with our white-knuckle discipline. And if that's what you are relying on this year to bring you spiritual health and closer to Jesus, let me tell you something, you're going to fail and that's not all right. Because this is the one arena where it's not about you and it's not about your discipline. It's about getting out of the way and accepting the free love that the Father offers so graciously. The author of Hebrews sums this up well in Hebrews chapter 12, some of my favorite verses in the Bible. Hebrews 12, 1 says, That's what they tell us to do. And that's a great verse. It's an inspirational verse. But the problem with that verse is it makes it seem like the impetus is on us to run it well, right? Because the direction is throw off the sin and get everything out of your life that does not help you run the race, that doesn't help you live the life that God has for you to live. Get rid of everything in your life that doesn't make you spiritually healthy so that you can run the race that you need to run. That's the implication of that verse until you get to the second verse, which says, How do we run the race that we're supposed to run? How do we live the life that we're supposed to live? How do we achieve spiritual health in 2019? Not by focusing on the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. Not by focusing on the behaviors that we want to be done with, but by focusing on Christ and falling more in love with Him and allowing Him to work more in our hearts as He draws us near to Him. Can I just tell you that if you're seeking spiritual health this year and you're doing it by identifying some behaviors in your life that aren't good, that shouldn't be there, that we would probably call sin, and you look at this group of things and you go, I'm not going to do these things anymore, and your focus is on the behaviors and not on Jesus, can I tell you that you're going to fail? Because spiritual health is not wrought by white-knuckle discipline. No one has ever in the history of mankind besides Jesus himself gotten themselves closer to God by focusing on their behaviors and trying to be perfect. The only spiritual health anybody in this church or any other church has is as a result of figuring out that we need to focus on God. We focus on God. There's this great verse in Psalms that says, delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. And how it works is the more I focus on Jesus, the more I follow the advice of the author of Hebrews and fix my eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of my faith, the more my heart begins to beat in sync with his, the more I want the things that he wants, the, I want you to know that that was not won by their discipline and it being better than yours. It was won by them realizing the only thing that matters is how I relate to God. John 15, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. All that matters is following Jesus, is allowing him to draw me closer to him. Don't focus on the behaviors this year. Focus on what you can do to draw yourself closer to the Father and allow that drawing to happen to you. Pray more, read the Bible more, come to church more, be around other believers more, but let Jesus draw yourself into him. Fix your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. There's actually one more thing that I would love to tell people on their first visit at church, but it's such a big deal that I'm going to devote a whole Sunday to it next week, and that's you can't do this alone. There is no such thing as a John Wayne Christian. You cannot do this alone. It was designed to be done around other people. So next week, that's what we're going to come back and we're going to talk about. The weeks following, we're going to talk about spiritual health as a lifestyle, as a lifestyle, and then we're going to talk about how long it takes to get spiritually healthy and the stick-to-itiveness that it requires. So I hope that you'll join us for the rest of those in this series as I continue to share with you my thoughts from the gym. I'm really looking forward to this January. I hope you are too. All right, I'm going to pray, and then Steve and the band are going to come up, and they're going to close us out. Father, thank you so much for today. Thank you for this year. Thank you for this Sunday. God, I thank you for the way that I believe you are drawing everybody in here closer to you in just the subtle and gentle way that you do it. Lord, let us know that we are loved by you, that we are cherished by you, that we are pursued by you. I lift up all those here who have resolved this year to do something that they believe will draw them closer to you. Give them the courage to get up when they fail. Give them the faith to lean on you when they don't find strength. And God, let 2019 be a year of marked spiritual health and change for us. Lord, we love you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.