Sermons tagged with Church

Thank you, Mikey. I have prepared some dazzling things, so you guys should be duly excited. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. And as I always say, thank you for making grace a part of your Sunday. Mikey's right. We are launching into a new series called Final Thoughts that covers what theologians refer to as the Upper Room Discourse. It's found in John chapters 13 through 17, the back half of 13 and through 17. I'm going to tell you more about what that is and why it's so important. It should matter to every Christian. But for now, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it to John chapter 13. We're going to be to the back, the last few verses in 13 and the first seven verses in 14 today. So open up your Bible and get there. We are going to be in this series. It's going to carry us to Easter. So my hope is that you'll bring your Bible with you on Sunday, that we give you some things that are worth noting down, that are worth highlighting, that are worth underlining and notating, and that you can kind of carry this series with you in your Bible. Now, this is what I'm thinking of as our spring series. And I know that it doesn't feel like spring because it's Super Bowl Sunday and we're in the dead of winter. But for me, every year as your pastor, this is my, believe it or not, my eighth spring with you guys, which I know time flies and we haven't even been having that much fun. It just goes quick. Every spring in the weeks preceding Easter, we sit down as a staff knowing that what we want to do is put a series in the plan that's going to be focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ. And the purpose of which within the series, the purpose of the series is to begin to prepare the hearts and the souls and the minds of the church to celebrate Easter. Easter is the greatest holiday on the Christian calendar. I know that Christmas gets a lot of attention, and it should, but Easter is when the victory is won. And so Easter is the most holy of holidays, in my opinion. And in the liturgical Christian calendar, it's all set up to get us ready for Easter. And so the purpose of each of our spring series is to prepare our hearts, minds, and souls to celebrate Easter together as a family of faith. And so we tend to do that by focusing on the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the past, we've looked at Hebrews that compares Jesus to other things and says he's the greatest. Last year, we did the table where we looked at Luke, this gospel of hospitality, and said that ministry happens around tables. And then we've looked at the life of Christ through the gospel of John. We've looked at the parables before. This year, we're going to look again at what's called the Upper Room Discourse. Again, it's found in John 13 through 17. And John is my favorite gospel. John is a unique gospel. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are referred to as synoptic gospels. They all follow the same kind of timeline and they cover roughly the same events. Whereas John wrote his last and covered the life of Jesus much differently than the others. And the detail that we find in these chapters is not found in the other three gospels. What we have have in the Upper Room Discourse is the longest, nearly unbroken recording of the words of Christ just to his disciples. So we have the Sermon on the Mount, and in Luke it's the Sermon by the Sea, where we see the teachings of Jesus. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, it's a prolonged big box of words that Jesus uses to teach the masses. But here in John 13 through 17, what we have is this nearly unbroken discourse. It's not a dialogue, it's a discourse. It's almost a monologue. Very few times the disciples deign to interject. And in it, what we have is the final thoughts of Christ. Because when he's done with this discourse, when he's done with the unity prayer in John chapter 17, the high priestly prayer, he gets the armed guards of Caiaphas, the high priest, come. They arrest him. He's taken to Caiaphas' house. He's put through a kangaroo court. He's arrested, beaten, crucified. And then he raises on the third day, and then we have the book of Acts where we see what these disciples do. But before he goes, he has some final thoughts for these young men that he's training up to build his kingdom and to build his church. He has some final instructions for them, some things he wants to communicate again intimately for just his disciples. Most of the time when he's communicating with them, especially at length, he's doing it when there's other people around. He's doing it for a big audience. This is just for his disciples. I don't know if you realize what's about to happen. These are the young men to whom he is entrusting the keys of his kingdom. He came here. He lived a perfect life. He's about to die a perfect death. But he stayed for 33 years. He had a public ministry for three years. Why did he bother having a public ministry for three years? Why didn't he just come, live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and then bring us to heaven with him? Because he needed to leave behind the disciples to build his church. Which is what happens in Acts. And to do that, he trained them personally, intentionally for three years. And he's about to give them the keys to lead this kingdom. And he is their plan. There is no plan B. He is the plan and the way through whom he intends to reach the whole world. He is placing in the disciples trust and hope that one day, 2,000 years from now, there can be a group of people that gather in Raleigh, North Carolina, a city that did not exist and a continent that was virtually unknown back then. And he's going to trust them to spread the word of the gospel all throughout the corners in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So the thoughts that he has for the disciples here are profound. They're remarkably important. I have been fascinated for years with the upper room discourse and the things that Jesus thought was important to share in the final moments of his life. Now for a little context of what's happening here. The disciples are confused and dismayed. They've been following Jesus for three years. They entered Jerusalem the better part of a week ago. And they've been watching Jesus' ministry. And they've been watching with a certain expectation. Hopefully, you've heard me say before on stage, if you've been in my men's group, you've definitely heard me say this. But hopefully, you've heard me say before that there was only a few people. I think there's really only two people in Jesus' whole life who really knew who he was and what he really came to do. And I would argue, just for fun, that that was Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I think those are the only two people in the life of Christ that really understood who he was and what he came to do. Everybody else, including the disciples, misunderstood who Jesus was and what he came to do. They put expectations on him based on a poor interpretation of Old Testament prophecies that he simply did not ask for. You see, they thought Jesus came to be an earthly king and establish an earthly kingdom. They thought that when the Messiah showed up in this context in the first century A.D. or last century B.C., however you want to phrase it, that he would show up. In this case, Israel is a far-flung province of the Roman government, the Roman Empire. They thought that this Jesus person, this Messiah, when the Savior arrives, he will overthrow the king. He will sit on the throne of David. He will rise Israel to international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and be the king of kings and lord of lords. And we're going to have an Israeli empire that's going to dominate the whole earth. That's what the Messiah is going to come to do. And the disciples believe this so much that a week ago, before this conversation, a week ago, Jesus is coming into Jerusalem in what's called the triumphal entry. And James and John and the other disciples are behind Jesus arguing about who gets to be the vice president and the secretary of war and the secretary of agriculture in the new regime. They still didn't know what was going to happen. But over the course of the week in Jerusalem, they began to suspect that things were not what they expected them to be. Something seemed amiss, afoot, if you will. They could sense things moving towards a climax, but it wasn't the one they expected, but they still weren't sure what was going to be happening. And Jesus keeps dropping these hints. I'm going to tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days. He keeps dropping these hints that he's not going to do what they think he's going to do. And it's all kind of coming to a head. And in the midst of that tension and those expectations, at the Last Supper in the upper room, that's why it's called the upper room discourse, Jesus addresses his disciples in an intimate and sometimes clear way. Jesus was remarkably unclear. He liked to mess with us in that way. Because of that, because of the context of what is shared here, I would say to you that Christians should have deep interest in the upper room discourse. If you're here today, you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, whether you're here for the first time or the thousandth, whether you ever intend to come back. One thing I can tell you for sure is if you call yourself a Christian, which I always say is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. If you believe those things, then the upper room discourse should be of great import to you. It should matter a great deal to you. So here's what I want to challenge you to do, Grace. During this series, first of all, I'd love you to commit to being present with us on Sunday morning if you can be. If you can't be present with us on Sunday morning, try to keep up with us online because I believe that every one of these weeks is important because they're all reflective of the words of Christ. Second, I hope that you'll read it. I hope that you'll spend time on your own steeping in John 13 through 17. And I hope that at some point, preferably early on in the series, that you'll read it straight through as it was presented and as it was intended. Take 15 or 20 minutes. For some of my friends, maybe 30 or 45. I don't know how you are. It's sounding out words. But take a few minutes and read through. You know what I'm talking about, Kentucky, right? Read through John 13 through 17. When you sit in the front, Rob, you're right there, buddy. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't help it. That's right. It's okay, buddy. Take some time between now and Easter. Read it all the way through. Let it wash over you. Then go back and read it bit by bit. I'm sure it's broken down in our reading plan that you can follow and read along if you want to. But take some time to do that because this Upper Room Discourse ought to be of great import to us. It's a hugely impactful text. And my prayer is that God will use this series to move you closer to him. and maybe change the way we go about some things in our life. The first thing I want to point out to you is really kind of parenthetical to the sermon. This is not what I'm talking about this morning, but just the way that it opens up, I think, is so profound that I wanted to at least point it out, and then we'll move move into the sermon and we'll focus, like Mikey said in the announcements, on that statement that Jesus makes, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. We're going to get there. But before we do, a little bit of context within the conversation of what they're talking about can be found in John chapter 13. I'm going to start reading in verse 33. It's not going to be on the screen. I did not tell the production team about these verses. So if you want to read along with me, please do. If you'd rather just listen, that's fine too. But John chapter 13, verse 33, I'm going to read through 14.1. So we know what's happening here. Jesus says, my children, speaking to the disciples, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me. And just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now, where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you. Love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. We're going to come back to that verse. That's a whole sermon. We're going to spend a whole week there. So I'm not just glazing by it. Simon Peter asked him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus replied, where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later. Peter asked, Lord, why can't I follow you now? I'll lay down my life for you. And Jesus answered, will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you'll disown me three times. And then verse 1. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. So Jesus has got the disciples assembled. It's an intimate circle now. We don't talk about this a lot, but there was not just when we think about Jesus and the disciples, we think about Jesus and the 12 disciples, but really there was probably 100 to 120 people traveling around with Jesus at any given time. So the moments of intimacy between just Jesus and his disciples were not as common as you might think. So it's just them now, and they can sense something's up. And he tells them, boys, you can't come with me. You can't come with me to Caiaphas' house. You can't come with me to the dungeon where I'm going to be held overnight. You can't stand with me while I'm being beaten and being spat upon and being blindfolded and hit and being demanded to prophesy who hit me. You can't be with me when they drive the crown of thorns into my head or the nails into my hands and my feet. You can't be with me when I do that, and you can't be with me as I die and I go. You can't be with me in those places. But you can come in a little while. And then, because the disciples, you've got to understand, are completely and totally dismayed and confused by this. They do not know that in a few hours Jesus is going to die on a cross, that he's going to raise himself from the dead, and in doing so is going to conquer death and sin for all time. They do not know that he is making a way into a perfect eternity in heaven with him and with his Father. They do not know that. They do not know that they are going to be left to be the leaders of the church and to bring as many people as possible with them to heaven on the way. They do not understand that yet. What they think is that Jesus is supposed to be the king of Israel and they're going to be with him as he rises to prominence. And so when Jesus starts talking about this stuff, where I'm going to go, you can't come, they're like, wait a second, that's not the deal. The whole reason we've been doing the whole bread and fish thing and sleeping on rocks for the last three years is so we could come with you. So you're kind of breaking the agreement here, Jesus. He says, where I'm going to go, you can't come. And Peter, you're about to deny me three times. I know you don't think you will, but you're going to. All of this confuses and dismays them. To which Jesus, as he launches into the upper room discourse, opens it with, let not your hearts be troubled. Do not worry. Do not be anxious. Don't let your hearts be troubled. His first words out of his mouth to his confused and dismayed disciples are those of comfort and of peace and of healing. And so it occurs to me, and again, this is parenthetical. That's why in your notes, it's literally in parentheses. And on the screen, it's literally in parentheses. This is not the point of the sermon. I just couldn't breeze past it without making the point. Worry and anxiety are not God's will. To carry constantly worry and anxiety are not God's will for you or your life or for the people around you. If you feel confused and dismayed and anxious and concerned and worried, that is not from God. That is not something that God wants you to feel. That is not his will for you. This does not mean that we can't be anxious and that we can't be worried or that we can't be concerned. But what I want you to know is that when we feel those things and they are pervasive and we live in a pandemic of anxiety, those things are not from God. Those things are not his will. And I believe us, I believe whether it's through counseling or conversation or prayer or devotion or small groups or service or whatever it might be, that God gives us every tool that we need to overcome the enemies of worry and anxiety. But what we see reflected in the heart of Jesus is that he doesn't just launch right into instructions for them without first comforting them and making sure that they felt peace. And he has that same desire for you and for me. I don't want to guilt anyone who walks with those things, but I do want you to hear your pastor say from stage that those things are not God's will for you. And he gives you the tools to begin to combat those because he is ultimately a God of comfort. Now, let's look at what else he says. John place where I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and you have seen me. I don't know about you guys and maybe no one can relate to this, but when I read those words, I'm going to prepare a place for you. In my father's house, there are many rooms. When I was a kid, I learned at many mansions, which sounds better. I don't want a condo, God. I'd like a whole, you know, whole place. In my father's house are many rooms. I'm going to go there. I'm going to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you. I don't know how far back into your memory church goes, but for me, I don't have memories without church. And so I don't know how to describe it other than when I read these words, it feels in a way that I'm already going home. It feels like this warm blanket of these familiarly trodden paths, and I just love returning to them. When I read those words, I'm going to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you. It already feels like welcome home. And this is the idea that we get where this is the whole place where we get the idea that Jesus is preparing a place for us, that there is a home in heaven for us, be it an apartment or a mansion. When we get there, we're not going to care at all. And it's also where I believe that I've done funerals before and I've lost loved ones. And for the ones that are hospitable, for the ones that love to have people around, it always occurs to me that they're going to go and they're going to work with Jesus to begin to prepare a place for us. This passage is the reason I believe that when I get to heaven that my papa will be there and he will have a fried catfish and creole spread out waiting for me and there's going to be a big dinner. Now I can't back that up theologically. I don't know for sure that's going to happen, but it doesn't hurt me to think it. So Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. And here's what I love. Here's what I love. He says, I'm going to this place. I'm going to prepare a place for you there. Talking to the disciples and in turn, anyone who ever believes in him. And he says, you know the way to where I am going. And Thomas interjects. And Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas is referred to as doubting Thomas. But I just think Thomas was the guy who was willing to say what everybody else was thinking, Thomas. And I got a lot of respect for that guy. Because I try to be that guy. And sometimes it doesn't work out. You got to be careful when you think you're thinking what everybody else is thinking. And then you throw it out there and people are like, we were not thinking that you jerk. Cool. Sorry. But Jesus says, I'm going to go to this place and you already know the way there. And Thomas goes, I don't, I don't think we do. And to that Jesus says, yes, you do. Because I am the way. And I am the truth. And I am the life. And no man comes to the Father except through me. And in that sentence, in that phrasing, what Jesus does is extend comfort and assurance and an invitation to Thomas. Thomas says, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know where you're going. We know he's talking about heaven. He says, I don't know how to get there. And Jesus says, you do so. You've known me for years. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I'm the only way you get to the Father. From now on, you know the Father because you know me. Don't you see that what Jesus is doing here is, first of all, he's assuaging Thomas' concerns and fears. He's comforting him, and he's extending him an invitation into eternal life with him and the Father. This verse, this statement, I am the way, the truth, and the life, as Jesus intended it, was an invitation into fellowship and eternal life with him. It was a statement of comfort and assurance and welcoming. Which is why how the church has treated this verse historically makes me really sad. For some of you, what I'm about to say, you will not be able to relate to at all. You don't have a church background, or if you do, they didn't talk about this in your church. And listen, you're lucky if you can't relate to what I'm about to say. But some of you can relate to exactly what I'm about to say. Because in the evangelical conservatism that I grew up in, this verse was used as a virtual cudgel to play whack-a-mole against world religions. It was used as a weapon to knock doubting middle schoolers back in line. Do you understand what I'm saying? We would refer to this verse, how do we know that the Muslims are wrong? Because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. So they're out and we're in because we believe in Jesus. Some middle schooler raises their hand in youth group, I'm not sure if I understand. I'm not sure if I believe. Well, you better believe because Jesus tells us right here in John 14, upper room discourse. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. And the way that I've seen this verse used in the last couple decades of church history is as a weapon to keep people out and to win arguments rather than an invitation extended to invite people in. It's the last nail that we drive into the coffin of apologetics to prove that we have an airtight argument against all comers that don't believe in Jesus. And listen, you can use it that way if you want to. If you want to reduce this verse to that, you can. If you want to take from this verse what Jesus is saying and make it mean the Muslims aren't in and the Buddhists aren't in and the Confucians aren't in and the Hindus aren't in and the Pantheists aren't in and the Atheists aren't in, and the Hindus aren't in, and the Pantheists aren't in, and the Atheists aren't in. They're all out, and we're all in. Praise God that we're not going to burn. If you want to use it that way, you can. But frankly, you look like a tourist wandering around Gatlinburg taking pictures with an iPad. You can do that if you want. You can take a picture at Ripley's with your iPad if you want to, but you look stupid. The iPad was invented for other uses. Can you take pictures with it? Sure. But you're probably over 65 if you're doing it. I'm just saying. Technically, it will do that. That is not the purpose for which it was intended. Technically, if we want to, we can use that verse to draw lines between us and others, between out and in. But I simply want to point out to you that when Jesus made the statement that became the verse, that is not what he intended. Jesus was not attempting to draw lines here. Jesus was not giving us a way to tell people whether they were in and out according to how we understand theology. He was not attempting to set up an apologetic fence so we would know who to include and exclude. Jesus was offering comfort and an invitation to Thomas. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And the people of the early church believed in this statement so ardently. And those around them in the cultures in which they were surrounded, in Ephesus, and in Rome, and in Corinth, and in Thessalonica, they believed in this principle so much that did you know that the early Christians, the first few generations of Christians after Christ were not called Christians. They were called the believers of the way. The followers of the way. Every now and again you'll see the church of the way. This is why. It's a stupid name for a church, but it's where they get it. And when Jesus said it, it was an invitation, not a weapon. When we use this verse as a weapon, we are more concerned with winning an argument than saving a soul. We can repeat this verse as a defense of the faith and as a way to draw lines between us and them. But when we do that, I think it belies an underlying desire that has more to do with being technically right than winning people over to our Jesus. It shows me that we're more concerned with drawing lines than inviting people in. This is such an important concept that when we get to the unity prayer, I'm going to spend a whole Sunday morning talking about the sins of the church and our insistence on looking at other churches and other Christians and other denominations and telling them, you're not Christian enough. You need to be Christians like us. When Jesus nowhere does that. But for this morning, in our corner, in our small corner of the kingdom that God has entrusted to us at Grace Raleigh, let's not use this verse as a weapon to draw lines, as a cudgel to defeat world religions, as an apologetic staple to win the argument. Let's use it for what it was intended, an invitation to us and to everyone we've ever met to come to know Jesus. See, I believe, based on Romans 1, where Paul writes that God has revealed himself as nature so that no man is without excuse. Based on Romans 1, I believe that Jesus has, when he says that verse, you already know the way. I believe that's true of every person that's ever existed. And that what evangelism looks like for a Christian is to help people see that Jesus has been showing up in their lives since the day that they were born. And you already know the way. And he desperately wants to know you. And he is the truth and the life and he is the way by whom you come to the Father. He's going and he is preparing an eternity for you. And he desperately wants you to join him there. He wants you to join him in eternity so badly that he condescended and took on sin and hell and death for you. And he endured the most painful death that mankind has ever invented so that he could go and pray. He made a way so that he could prepare a way so that you could follow the way until we are there for all of eternity. That's the invitation that Jesus extends to us in this verse. That's the comfort he offers to Thomas. Thomas, you already know the way. I've been working in and speaking to your soul since the day that you were born. You've been lucky enough to walk with me for three years. You know the way. And I believe that when we share the gospel and the good news of Jesus with our friends and our brothers and sisters who don't believe yet or may even believe something different, I believe that Jesus has revealed himself to them, that there's something in them that knows the way. And when we extend the same invitation that Jesus does, we move them a little bit closer to seeing that Jesus has been speaking to them for their whole life. So I want to plead with you to use this verse. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. I want to plead with you to use it as an invitation, not a weapon. As a welcoming end, not a dividing line. I think it's a much more rich and frankly textually consistent way to understand that passage than to pluck it out of its context and use it as a weapon. So what do we do with this? What's the takeaway here? Whenever I think about a sermon, I think about the so what. What's the so what? Okay, that's true. I have a better understanding of that. I see it in this context of Jesus extending this invitation to Thomas. What am I to do with that? Well, Jesus answers this question for us. If we were to ask Jesus, I believe you, that's true. Now, what would you have me do with it? He answers this in John chapter 14, verses 11 and 12. So if you just look down the page in your Bible just a little bit further, verse 11 he says this, Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do greater things than these because I am going to the Father. What are we supposed to do with this realization that Jesus is the way? That he's extended an invitation to us that we are to in turn extend to others. But verse 11, he tells us, he says it plainly. Believe in me. Believe in me. What are we supposed to do with the revelation that Jesus is the way? Believe in him. Have faith in him. Two things occur to me here. The first is just how much I love the symmetry of scripture and what Jesus teaches. Because those of you who were here for the first Sunday of the year on January the 7th, well, I guess it was the second Sunday of the year, but the first one that we observed this Sunday, for the first service of the year on January the 7th, I preached about the Ephesians prayer, and I preached about Paul's opening desire. What does he pray for his churches? That through the power of God, through the movement of the Spirit, that Christ would indwell their hearts through faith. The riches of God, the power of the Spirit, that Christ would indwell their hearts through faith. What's his first prayer and priority? For everyone that he encounters, that they would know Jesus. That in our words, they would be saved. What does Jesus want us to do in light of the revelation that he is the way, the truth, and the life. He wants us to be saved. He wants us to believe him. It's also Jesus's first prayer and priority for anyone that he meets. You know what's so wonderful is I've had some conversations since that first Sunday of the year with some people who are beginning to express the faith, who had faith, but it was young and immature and brittle and maybe never took hold, and then they left the faith because of questions that they had. But now God has been moving in their hearts. Jesus has been revealing himself to them. They're coming to recognize him as the way, and they've articulated to me, we believe, but we want to believe more. We want a stronger belief. And so, if you were here that Sunday, and you heard me encourage you, pray for your children that they would know God. Pray for your family that they would know God. Pray for your friends and your loved ones that they would know God. He's answering those prayers. Keep praying them. And we come back to the very beginning of this series. And what's the point this morning? Believe in God. That Jesus' first prayer and priority for everyone that he encountered, like Paul, was that they would be saved. That they would know him. So the first thing we do is we continue to pray that prayer for ourselves and for the people around us. The second thing we do, and this occurred to me as we were singing. The disciples say, what are we supposed to do with this? And Jesus says, believe in me. Does it occur to you that they already did? They already believed who he was? A few weeks prior, he told people, if you want to go to the kingdom of heaven, you got to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. And everybody was like, that's weird. We're out. And they left. And he looked at Peter and he says, what about you? Are you guys going to leave? And Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of God. You have the words of eternal life. Where are we going to go? We believe. We don't understand all the time, but we believe. We're in. And then he teaches this to the disciples. I'm going to go someplace. You can't come yet. You will be able to come. I'm going to prepare the way. We don't know the way. Yes, you do. You know me. I'm the way. That's how we do it. What should we do in light of this? Believe me. Trust me that I am who I say I am. That I did what I said I did. And that I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do. And it's moving to me that to a room full of people who already believed, Jesus' first petition to them was to continue to believe. And to you, most of whom already believe, Jesus' petition to you is to continue to believe. Because if you've believed for long enough, you know that there are battles and scars and hurts that would seek to rob you of that belief. And Jesus says, continue to believe. Through the ebbs and flows of life, through successes and failures, through sin and through victory, continue to believe. With that belief in place, with our assurance of the invitation of Christ being the way intact and understood. We're ready to approach the rest of the lessons that Jesus has for us in the Upper Room Discourse. I hope that you'll be a part of the series and that God will use it to prepare your hearts to celebrate Easter. I'm going to pray and then we're going to move into a time of communion together. Jesus, we love you. We are moved by you. We are in awe of you. We are unworthy of you. God, I pray that if anyone here doesn't know your son, that they would come to know him. That the people in this room and listening to my voice would recognize where Jesus has already been moving in their hearts, would recognize that he's already been speaking to them, he's already been showing up, and that there is a part of them, a part of their soul that already knows the way. Would they just see that for what it is? Father, would we use your words not as a way to draw people in and out of your kingdom and your will, but would we use your words as they were intended as an invitation for others to recognize that Jesus has been working in them all along? And God, would we see even this year people come to know you through our extension of that invitation? Would you give us the faith to continue to pray for the salvation of those we love the most? And God, would you give those of us who already believe the strength to continue to cling to that belief, trusting that you are the way? It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's so good to see you. Thanks again so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. It's such a blessing when you are. Last week we wrapped up a series in a prayer out of Ephesians that we're making the prayer for 2024. And next week we're going to launch into what's going to be our spring series. It's going to carry us to Easter called Final Thoughts. It's going to be a look at what's called the Upper Room Discourse found in the second half of John chapter 13 all the way through John chapter 17. And you'll not be surprised to know that I'm excited to go through that series with you guys. I've been doing a lot of reading and studying there and I'm'm looking forward to sharing that with you. Right here this morning, we're taking a break between series to do an update Sunday. As many of you know, hopefully all of you know, we're in the midst of a campaign to build a permanent home for grace. We do not own this space, believe it or not, as nice as it is. It's not ours. But it is our goal and our hope and our belief that God wants us to have a permanent home. So we have four acres right around the corner on Litchford on which we intend to build about a 16,000 square foot building that's out there. You can take a look at it if you want. We believe it's God's desire for us to take steps of faith to be able to build on that land and move into a permanent home from which we will minister to serve the community and hopefully draw closer to God together. And I'm going to give you an update on where we stand with that at the end of the service today, because of course I'm going to wait to the end of the service. In the meantime, I also wanted to take this morning in the sermon to talk to you about the subject of giving, which I'm sure is very exciting for everyone. Yes, no one wakes up excited to hear a sermon on giving. As a matter of fact, we kind of cringe at the idea of the sermons on giving. And I've known that I was going to need to do this since the elders at the end of last year were like, hey, man, it's been a minute since you talked about giving. And I've known that I was going to need to do this since the elders at the end of last year were like, hey man, it's been a minute since you talked about giving, and we think that's an important thing to teach the people of God about. So we need to try to work that in. And I knew that they were right, but I haven't done a sermon on giving, I think in three or four years. As a matter of fact, the last sermon at Grace that was done on the idea of giving, tithing, stewardship, generosity, whatever you want to call it, was done by Doug Bergeson, one of our elders. And one of the reasons I've waited so long to preach one on giving is because his was so good, I wanted you to forget it before I had to preach one and you compared it. But like I said, it's been three or four years since I've done a sermon on giving. And it's not for the reason that you probably think it is. It's not because I don't, I'm shy about the topic. It's not because I don't want to put in front of you things that scripture says about it. As a matter of fact, my thought in leading you guys, and I've tried to lead this way since I was hired in 2017, is to be of the mindset that this room is full of, for the most part, smart adults. For the most part. This room is full of reasonable, spiritually mature people. For the most part. This room is full of reasonable, spiritually mature people for the most part. And I need to lead you in that way. So it's not that I'm shy about giving in its relationship with the church. You all know that if you don't give to grace, then grace doesn't exist. That's how it works. You guys are aware of real life. You know that if you're a partner of grace, we need you to give to grace. That's not a secret. Now, there's misconceptions about giving sometimes, and so we may not know all the details. And when I say that, I remember back at my previous church called Greystone, we had a couple of guys who were general contractors, and they, for a while, were helping us with some of our facilities. And so we were walking through the auditorium one day, two of the general contractors and me and the executive pastor, and they looked at us and they said, so how do you guys, like, get paid? And we said, you know, the church allots us a salary. And they go, but do you, like, do you make money on commission? And we said, what? And they go, like, if you invite a family and they start to give to the church, do you get a cut of that? And I said, no, but I'm going to do that at my next church. But I'll never forget it because I thought it was funny. We laughed. No, that's not how it works. It's a set salary, yada, yada, yada. So I know that not everybody understands all the mechanics, but you know the bottom line that if you don't give to the church, the church doesn't exist. That's just how it goes. So we don't need to be shy about that. And I would say two things. One, if this is your first time with us, this is not a typical Sunday, an update Sunday, and me talking like this is. But me talking about this, it's a special, specific Sunday. And two, if it's a turnoff to you that I'm talking about giving in the church, I don't know how to give you a longer break. You're just going to be mad at me. But we need to talk about giving. And the reason that it's been a while since I've used Sunday morning to focus on it is this. I think of Sundays, and there's more ways to think about them than this, but rudimentarily, I think of Sundays as either strategic Sundays or spiritual Sundays. Spiritual Sundays push the needle forward spiritually. They challenge us. They encourage us. They inspire us. They draw us closer to God. We leave here desiring God more. We leave here desiring to know Jesus more deeply. We leave here with hopefully our roots deepened a little bit. And spiritual Sundays are what I want to do every Sunday. You guys will remember, I'm not sure if it was last fall or fall before last, when we said, hey, we're not doing announcements anymore. And some of y'all made fun of me. And then we didn't start doing announcements again. We just started taking some time to tell you what was going on in the church. But the reason we did that is because we felt, Aaron and I did, that they disrupted the spiritual flow of what was happening in the service. And we didn't want to keep doing that. We wanted the service to be spiritual in nature and spiritual in focus, and for you guys to leave focusing on that, we didn't want to denigrate it with bringing it down to this practical level, but we had to accept and acknowledge that the Sunday morning time has to do some things for the church body that can't all be 100% spiritual all the time. And so we've accepted that and we've reinstalled announcements and that's fine. But in that ethos is a desire for every Sunday morning to be a spiritual encounter for you with your creator so you leave here feeling a little bit closer to him and more desirous of him than you did when you entered. So there's spiritual Sundays, but then there's also strategic Sundays. Strategic Sundays are Sundays that are necessary to inform you guys, to direct us, to point us to a place, to bring you along, and it's something that's needed in the life of the church at the time. And that's how I've kind of thought about giving sermons. Is that from time to time it's necessary to talk about giving because we need you guys to give so that we can do God's will. Because giving allows us to go and to serve God. Giving allows us to go and to build God's kingdom. Giving allows us to accomplish spiritual things. But as this sermon was coming up, and I was kind of wrapping my head around what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, it was really impressed upon me that I was very wrong in the way that I thought about the approach to those Sundays. And I wasn't wrong intentionally. I never made a conscious decision to relegate giving as a strategic topic rather than a spiritual one. I just somehow did it, thinking if we focus on spiritual things, that the other behaviors and practices will follow that are necessary. So let's just keep having spiritual Sundays. And how I've shortchanged you guys is by failing to realize that a Sunday spent talking about giving is very much a spiritual Sunday. Giving is a spiritually impactful act. And in fact, I would say the spiritual value of giving is diminished when we regard it as a means to an end. Giving doesn't allow us to serve God. It is serving God. Giving doesn't enable us to do God's will. It is God's will. Giving doesn't make spiritual things possible. It is a spiritual thing. It is what's best for us. It is what's good for us. God desires us to grow in our capacity to give. It is a spiritual discipline that is just as important as any other spiritual discipline. I said it this way. Learning to give is just as spiritually impactful as learning to repent. Learning to give is just as spiritually impactful as learning to repent. And that word repent there there I kind of labored over what to put there just consider it a placeholder for any spiritual discipline on which we would all agree We need to pursue post salvation Once you accept Christ as your Savior once you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart that he is who he says he is He did what he said he did and he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do We would all agree that there's a series of spiritual disciplines that we need to into our life. We need to learn to forgive. We need to learn to pray. We need to learn to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and be students of scripture. We need to learn how to show mercy, how to show grace, how to be kind. And we need to learn to be generous and to give. It's so on par with the other spiritual disciplines that in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6, my men's group pointed out to me this week, Jesus puts giving on a spiritual plane with prayer and fasting, saying it is just as important for his people to give as it is for them to learn to pray, as it is for them to learn to forgive, as it is for them to learn to repent. So the act of giving is a spiritual act. It progresses us in our faith. The act of giving moves us closer to God. It deepens our desire for him. And we'll see in a minute that it grows our gratitude for Him. So really, it's to my detriment and yours that I don't talk about it more often. Because it's a spiritual act that makes our lives richer and brings us closer to the Father when we do it. Now there's any number of places I can go in the New Testament to show you how it's a spiritual act and what its benefits are for us. Why? Because when I say it's a spiritual act, in part what I mean is it's what's best for us. God tells us it's what's best for us, which seems counterintuitive because we kind of have a mindset in life that we're supposed to get all we can, can't all we get, and sit on our can, right? Like that's what we're supposed to do. We get everything we can, we keep it, and then we let it grow. That's what we do. So it seems counterintuitive that the best thing for us would be to have a mindset to begin to give part of that away. And yet God says it is best for us. God says he makes it very clear he wants us to be generous people. So I want to talk to you about two reasons, two things that it does for us when we give, two ways that it's spiritually impactful. There are myriad more, but these are the two that we have time to focus on this morning. I would first take your attention to Matthew chapter 6. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. You're going to see verse 21 on the screen, but I'm actually going to read a little bit prior to that, beginning in verse 19. Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. Listen, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That is such a concept. Such a rich verse. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. In my men's group on Tuesday morning, we're going through the book of Matthew, and we arrived at chapters 6 and 7 on Tuesday. And there is so much to talk about that as I was reading for the morning, I thought we probably should have only read one chapter because there's just so much detail here. And despite there being so many things to discuss, we spent the entire discussion in this verse. What does that mean and how do we live that out? Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. I've heard since I was a little kid, show me your calendar and your checkbook, and I can tell you what you care about. And it's absolutely true. And so what we see from this idea of where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, is that our passion goes with our giving. Our passion follows our giving. I think sometimes we wait to be passionate about something, and then we expect our giving to follow that passion. No, our passion will go where our giving goes, wherever our treasures are, wherever we spend our time and our talents and our treasures, our passion will follow that. And here's how I know that that's true experientially. A few years ago, Lily, she just turned eight, so she was four or five. She was on a four and five-year-old soccer team, and I agreed to coach it, which was an egregious error that I will never make again. I hated almost literally every second of it. We had several kids from the church also on that team, and so my small group would basically sit on the sidelines with their Yetis in their lawn chairs laughing at me as I screamed at their child to please pay attention to the game. Just literally laughing out loud at me the entire time. I hated it so much. I'll never do that again. If John asks me to coach his team when he's five, I'm going to tell him to kick rocks. So Lily, last spring, had her first soccer season in like real soccer. It was YMCA soccer. It like counted. They don't keep score yet, but I do. And she did okay. The coach was this lady named Heidi, and I really developed a respect for Heidi. She did an excellent job with the girls. I thought she approached practice in a really respectable way. And then she had an assistant coach named Jamie, who's just a really nice, friendly guy. I loved his demeanor with the girls. And so at the end of the season, I stayed out of it. I kind of would help Coach Lily a little bit and holler at her to get in the right spot. But that was it. But at the end of the season, Heidi and Jamie came to me. And Heidi said, you know, she had two daughters on the team. She was like, my oldest daughter is going to be playing at a different level now. I can't coach two teams. Jamie's going to be the head coach. Can you be his assistant coach so our girls can continue to play together? And I said, okay, I've got a couple caveats. Because she started talking about, we'll give you access to the portal. And I was like, I don't want access to any portals. I don't want any login information. I don't want to go to a single website. I'm not doing that. She's like, we'll send you the spreadsheet for playing time. You will not. I will not open it. You figure that out. It doesn't take two people to figure out how to make 10 girls play the same amount of time. All right? You do that. If you make me do it, I'll just sit lily. I'm not even going to think about it. And I'm like, I'm not. Like, I'll be at practice. I don't care what we do at practice. Don't ask for my input. So I'm just there for the name, okay, just to get our girls to play together. I'll play along. That's how I approach the season. But every Wednesday, Heidi and Jamie start texting. What do you think the girls need to work on tonight? And darn it if I didn't have some thoughts. And then we'd go, and the girls are running drills, and I'm like, ah, you're doing this wrong. So I'm going over there to help them. And then on Saturday, I can't help but interject a little bit. I'm telling you, by the end of the season, by the end of the season, Jen will attest to this, I'm on the sideline. You can hear my voice over the whole field the duration of the game, hollering at our girls to get into position and to move up and to push back and to attack and to yada, yada, yada. Like, I'm all in. When there's a timeout, I'm running out on the field, and I'm high-fiving the little girls. I love those little girls. Whenever they would do something great, like new, like, oh, look at that. She had a flash of this is really great. I would always turn and find Mom and Dad and celebrate that with them. By the end of the season, I loved them. I loved coaching. I was texting Jamie and Heidi during the day with jokes and thoughts. And at the end, they're like, can you help us next season? Yes, I'm all in. I can't wait. I thought about how excited I am for soccer season the other day, right? And it's because, I don't think it's because I'm like sports dad. I don't really care if Lily plays or not. It's because it was fun. It was fun to get to know the girls and to celebrate with them and to get to know the families. Like it was a good time. My passion followed my time. My passion followed my giving. Jen and I give to some nonprofits. I get a lot of emails, updates, nonprofits. I don't read hardly any of them. But if I give, I read. Not because I want to see what my money's doing, because it's not a lot. The answer is not much, buddy. But because I'm genuinely interested in those ministries and I want to know what's happening and I want to know that they're thriving. When we give of our time and our talents and our treasures to the things of God, our heart for the things of God grows. If you want more passion for the church, if you want more passion for the things of God, for organizations that are building God's kingdom, give to those things. And our passion will go with our giving. The other thing we see that I would highlight in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians 9. On the screen you'll see verses 11 through 12, but I'm going to keep reading because I think the verses that follow that are really interesting as well. Verse 11. Listen. Verse 15, this is amazing. You know what that indescribable gift is? The opportunity to be generous. Thanks be to God for the indescribable gift of the invitation into generosity. That's a remarkable statement. Now, a little context around that passage, that group of verses. The church in Jerusalem was struggling financially. Jerusalem was stricken with poverty. And so the church in Jerusalem had great needs and needs in the community around it and not the means to care for them. So in Paul's missionary journeys around Asia Minor, he takes up love offerings to be taken back to Jerusalem on their behalf. And so in this passage, he's petitioning the church in Corinth family and use it for somebody else that needs it. And you'll experience the gratitude that happens when we're invited into giving. And that gratitude will be multiplied by the recipient who will then turn in praise to your God for providing them what they needed. That's why it's an indescribable gift when we give out of our wealth, out of our extra, out of our surplus. It makes us more grateful for what we have and for what God has invited us into, and it doubles when the recipients get it and they turn in praise to our God as well. This is why I say that not only does our passion go with our giving, but our gratitude grows with our giving. Our gratitude for what we have, for the opportunities that we've been given. It grows with our giving. The more, as it would seem in these verses, the more we give, the more we experience of this indescribable gift, the more we experience of what it, the goodness of what it is to be a conduit of God's generosity to others. He's been generous to you, not so that you might hoard it, but so that you might direct it into different places. And listen, he doesn't need, listen to this, this is super important. He doesn't need to give you money so that you'll give money to the other things. He can find ways to get it directly to them. But what he's doing by funneling it through you is inviting you into the process of generosity that you might be blessed. It's an indescribable gift. And I love the way it starts out. He has made us rich that we might give. And I don't think that everybody in the room is rich. And I don't even have a good working definition of that. If we wanted to compare us to the average family in Honduras, we're all rich. If we want to compare us to the average family in Manhattan, we're not. So it's a sliding scale and I'm not here to define it. But what I do know is some of us have the means to give and that we should do it. Some of us might not feel like we have the means to give. Things might be tight, but we should still give. So I can say this with no hesitation, with no qualification. If you are a believer, it is God's will that you would be someone who would give. If you are a believer, then a step of obedience that God calls you to take unequivocally is to be a person or a family that gives of your time, talents, and treasures. That's without question. We are certain that God wants us to give. And again, he wants us to give because our passion goes with our giving and our gratitude grows with our giving. He wants us to give for our sake. In light of that, the reality that God calls us all to be people who give generously. I would say a couple things about what that means and the reality of that. The first thing I would say is this, and it's so important to me that I wanted to put it on the screen so that you could read it with me and we could be certain that it was covered. The New Testament does not mandate giving 10% or giving to our local church. So I'm aware that any time I preach a sermon on giving, it can be viewed as and is unavoidably in a yucky way self-serving. I get that. Which is why I have never once preached to you at Grace or to anyone to grace. I'm trying to get you, if you do not have a habit of it already, to experience the goodness and the indescribable gift of giving. Because when we give, it grows us in our spirit. It brings us closer to the Father. It helps us know Jesus more. We find him in his service. I ardently believe that giving is what's best for you. So I'm pleading with you to give, but I'm not asking you to give to grace. The other thing is, I'm not asking you to give 10%. 10% is an Old Testament number. It's not a New Testament number. We can find nothing in the New Testament that compels us to give 10%. That's where we get the word tithe. And that's why we try not to use tithe around here because we don't believe that that's a New Testament thing. We would tell you, and most people I know who have a good theology of giving would say that 10% is a good starting point. But sometimes we really can't afford 10%. Give 5%. Some of us have been giving, and I say this delicately, we've been giving 10% for years comfortably. It's time to pray about ramping that up. 12, 12 and a half percent, 15%, 20%, whatever it might be. But here's the other thing I would say is that when we see giving show up in the New Testament, it's almost always like it was in Corinthians, to give to the poor, to give to the needy, to give to those in need, to the have-nots. It's almost always in reference to giving to those who have less than you. That's where we see it in the New Testament, and that's why I'm certain that we need to be giving. Now, here's what I would say about grace, just to be honest and transparent about this as well. I would genuinely hope that if you partner with grace, and for those unfamiliar with our terminology at grace, we have partners, we don't have members, because members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So if you're a partner of Grace, we hope that you would partner with us financially. And the way that I would say it is, if you have been touched by what happens here, if your marriage and your family is made stronger, if your faith is made deeper by what's happened at Grace, then we hope that you would consider partnering with us financially. And I would also tell you, because giving is about giving to those that have less than us, 10% of everything that is given here to the general budget goes to ministries happening outside the walls of Grace, and that is how you can actively participate in giving to those who are in need. And I will also tell you this. We would love to see, just because it's indicative of health, we would love to see our top-line budget number grow, to have more money received this year than we received last year. And the reason that the elders, when I say we, I mean the elders, the finance committee, and the mission committee want to see that number grow. And we want to see it grow not so that we can redo the sanctuary. That's just putting makeup on a pig. That's not even worth it. We don't have computers that we want to buy or new speakers. We don't want to give extravagant raises to anyone but me. We don't have any other things that we want to do. And obviously I'm just kidding about that. We want to see that 10% that we give away grow to 15 and 20 and 30 and 40% of our budget. We want to collectively be conduits of grace. We spend the same amount in virtually every ministry that we have since I got here because we want that number to grow so that the percentage of what we give away can grow. That's the heart of the elders and of the finance committee. So I hope that you would consider partnering us in that way, but I will not tell you that you have a biblical mandate to do so. My heart for you, quite simply, is that you would see giving as a spiritual exercise. And if your family is not one that gives, it's okay. We want to invite you to start doing that. If there's other people or institutions building God's kingdom outside the walls of grace and you're passionate about them and you're compelled to give, start there. Give to them. Give to where your heart leads you to give. Be prayerful before God and ask him where he would have you funnel his resources. And do it. And watch your passion go with that gift. And watch your gratitude grow with that gift. But step into that. If you are someone who's been giving comfortably at a certain rate for years, prayerfully consider if you're married with your spouse, where God might have you direct more. And in that way, we can be obedient to this biblical command to give, and we can grow in our wisdom and in grace and in our faith deeper roots in Christ as we learn this new spiritual discipline of giving. I'm going to pray, and then I'm going to update you on where we're at with the building campaign. Father, thank you for the indescribable gift of providing us with resources that we might be used to funnel those to others. God, I pray that you would make us conduits of grace. Lord, for all of us, I pray that we might consider what you would have us do in light of this. Who and to what and to where you would have us give? Give us courage and faith that you will provide for us what we need. And God, for those that take steps to begin giving for the first time, I pray that they would see very quickly their passion grow towards your things, your heart, your places, and that they would see their gratitude grow as well. Lord, we ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you have a Bible with you, go ahead and open it up and turn it to Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We have been spending the month of January in this prayer, this prayer that Paul prays over the church in Ephesus. And I've mentioned that he prays similar prayers over the other churches that he helped to start or founded, and then ministers to through letters and through visits as he continues his life. So this prayer is indicative of what I believe Paul prays for all of his churches. We've got a lot of work to do today. This Sunday we arrive at this two-fold petition at the end that we would know the love of Christ and that we would be filled with the fullness of God. And it's pretty much the whole point of the series. Today is what I think about when I think about this prayer. So my prayer today is that God would give me clarity of thought with what to share and how to say it, because this represents for me like four or five years of thought that I really want you guys to get today. So let's get going as we finish up this prayer. I'm going to read one more time with feeling the whole prayer all the way through, and then we'll focus on verses 18 and 19 and really kind of dig into Paul's request and what he's asking for and what it means. Verse 14, And so we arrive at the climactic request, the climatic petition of the prayer where we see here in verse 18 that he's saying, because you're saved, first of all, the very first thing he prays in verse 14 and 15 is that you would be saved through God's goodness, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that Christ would indwell in your hearts through faith. That's that you would be saved, that you would be a Christian, that you would know Jesus. Now that you know Jesus, you're rooted in his love. We talked about those deep roots and how important that is to anchor our faith. We talked about how the communal nature of our faith along with all the saints, but now that he's established those things, he punches. He gets to the thing that he's really asking, and what he's really asking is this twofold petition that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and that you would be filled with the fullness of God. That's what he's praying for in this prayer. That's what he prays over them. That's what he prays over you. So this morning, we have to wrestle to the ground what it means to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and to be filled with the fullness of God. We have to talk about what that means, which is a really difficult task. When I'm studying, and I'm in particular studying a verse, I really want to understand a verse. One of the places I'll go is a series that a pastor from Minnesota named John Piper does online. He's retired now, but I think he still does some of these. There's a ton out there. I think it's called, and I should have done my research on this, but I think it's called A Look in the Book. And it's just, it's a black screen with a verse on it, and he's not in the video. It's just his voice in the video, and he just explains the verses to you. He's circling this and drawing lines over here and making notes at the bottom and references to other things. If you are one who enjoys Bible study, if you want help in understanding different passages, Google John Piper, a look at the book, and there's so many verses that he walks through. It's such a helpful resource. That may be the most helpful thing I say to you this morning. The rest of this may be garbage, but hopefully not. But I went and I was, and I was, he did, he does a series, like a 10-part series on these verses. And so I was watching the one where he explains the knowledge that surpasses understanding and the fullness of God because I wanted to see what he had to say about it. He's one of the most theologically deep and professorial pastors I've encountered in my life. And so I wanted to know what he thought. And he made a great point that we're going to make up front here. This is him from that video. He says, the phrasing itself, talking about the verse, admits that we are over our heads in attempting to rationally understand these things. If in the verse, Paul says that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge, and then it's kind of this nebulous, wispy phrase filled with the fullness of God. What does that mean? It's intentionally nebulous. It's intentionally difficult to grasp because it's bigger than we can comprehend. We cannot rationally understand these things, but rather we must experientially understand God and Christ if we are going to understand what Paul is talking about here. And so that's the first thing I would point out to you if we're going to say, what is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge? What is that? Well, I think the best way to approach it is to say this, a true knowledge of Christ comes from experiencing him, not simply learning about him. A true knowledge of Christ comes from experiencing him, not simply learning about him. I think about it this way. I don't want to brag, but I've been in the ocean a few times. I've been in the Atlantic and in the Gulf. I've been in the Pacific. I've seen where the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet off the southern coast of South Africa, which I'm just bragging there. But I have seen it. I've swam in the ocean. When I was a kid, my grandpa lived in Florida. He had a sailboat, and they lived off the intercoastal, and so we would go up and down the intercoastal and look at Christmas lights and stuff, and one time, we went out in the ocean, sails up and everything. I got horrifically seasick and realized I'm a sissy, and that's just my life. I just have to deal with that. So no more sailboating for me. But I've been around the ocean, not as much as some of y'all. Some of y'all have beach houses, you love the water, you've got a boat, you're out there. You'll never find a Salt Life sticker on any car that I own. But I have been there, and I do like it. However, I don't know anything about the ocean compared to a sailor. I don't know anything about the ocean compared to a fisherman who does it professionally. Those guys with the thousand-yard stare, and you look at them, and you're like, those eyes have seen some things. They have some tales to tell about the sea. I don't know the ocean like they know the ocean. They've lived in it. They've experienced it, the good and the bad and the ugly. They know it. We can read about it. We can learn about it. You can learn facts. We can Google pictures. We can look at it from the beach. But until you've lived in it like they've lived in it, you'll never understand the ocean like they understand the ocean either. Jesus works the same way. When we walk with Jesus, we abide with him. When we pursue him day in and day out, we have a lifetime of walking with him. We know him in a way that you can't get to know him by simply listening to sermons or simply reading about him. We should do those things. But those things are introductory things. As we grow to know who Christ is with a knowledge that surpasses understanding, it's an experiential knowledge. These people we know who have been walking with Christ for decades and just seem to have a peace that we don't have. Those people have walked with Jesus. They know him in the way that Paul is describing here. So the question then becomes, if we know Christ through experiencing him, then we have to ask, and I hope you're already asking it in your heads, how do we experience Christ? How do I do that? How do I allow Jesus to show up in my life? I think we experience Christ by this. We experience Christ by taking steps of faith that allow him to show up in our lives. We experience Christ by taking steps of faith that give him the opportunity to show up in our life. I think of a trip I took to Honduras somewhere around 2010. I was a school teacher at the time, a high school Bible teacher and a chaplain. Those were some very lucky kids. And I took the senior class to Honduras. And while we were there, one night, one of my students, this girl named Allison, a really sharp, bright girl, wonderful parents, she kind of came to me and she said, I'm just, I'm really struggling with my faith. And I said, okay. And she said, I just, I'm having a hard time believing in Jesus sometimes. I just, I just kind of feel unsure. I don't want to let anybody down, but I just have some doubts and some struggles. And first of all, that's a wonderful conversation. I think every Christian needs to have that conversation at some point, probably multiple times throughout your life. That's a healthy thing to want to work through. And so we talked about it a little bit, and I said, Allison, I know that this is going to sound funny, but tomorrow we're going to go to this village and we're going to give rice out to the women of the village. And they really need it. So they're going to be really excited to get it. And I'm not going to position you inside the truck where you're grabbing the rice and you're handing it to another student and they're working it down the line. I'm going to put you at the end of the truck handing it out to the ladies. Because Jesus says that whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. And I just kind of believe that if you look those ladies in the eye that Jesus will meet you there. I believe you'll see him as you do his work. And she said, okay. Okay, I'll try it. So that morning, I prayed for her that she would encounter Christ in the service that afternoon. And sure enough, the next night, she came back to me with tears in her eyes, and she said, I saw Jesus. I saw him. I can't explain it. I still have questions, but I believe he's real. Thanks. She made space for him to show up in her life. She said, hey, I need you here. I need to see you today. I need to encounter you today. She made space. She took a step of faith, and he showed up. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, I've had like a nagging sin or a nagging attitude, something that was in my life that I know didn't need to be in my life, but it didn't feel like a big deal. And I got kind of comfortable with it. It was kind of like John every day, my son John, he's two and a half. Every day he grabs a different toy and that's his toy for the day. He's just, there's no favorites. It rotates. It's totally unpredictable what it's going to be. Today it's a puzzle piece of zebra. That's what it is. Great. Tomorrow it'll be something totally different. It'll probably belong to Lily and cause a fight in our house for the entire day. Sometimes we have sins like that that we just kind of carry around. They're just our little pet sin. Not that big of a deal. I'm going to pick a different one, whatever it is. We'll have that. And we don't even want to get rid of it. But I can't tell you how many times I've prayed, God, would you work in me to want to not want to do this? Would you work in me to want to repent of this and get it away from me? And how almost always the same day I pray that prayer, something happens and I get disgusted with that part of myself. And I get so sickened by it that it becomes very easy to just move away. It becomes very easy to repent. And that's nothing more than creating space for Jesus to show up in my life. If you feel like you need to encounter and experience Jesus, pray that he'll show up somewhere. Take a step of faith and make some space for him to show up. Make some space for him to show up in a relationship. Make some space for him to show up in the waiting. Make some space for Jesus to show up in different ways, and he will. And it will deepen your faith, and you'll begin to grow in this experiential knowledge of Christ. So that doesn't wrestle that to the ground all the way, but I think it gives us at least some handles around what it might mean to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. But we still need to understand what it means to be filled with the fullness of God. And I'll be honest with you, I did a bunch of research on that phrase. I did more research on that phrase than the last time I did that much research on anything was when I preached through Revelation for you guys. Other than that, I don't think I've ever done this much research, just trying to get to the bottom of what that meant. But nothing I could find, not even St. John Piper, nothing I could find was sufficient. Nothing I could find made me go, yeah, yeah, that's how I want to explain this to them. Nothing helped me. The one thing that was pointed out that I thought was really helpful and interesting was that being filled with God means there's no part of you left untouched by his goodness and grace. When a container is filled with something, that something touches every part of that container. So to be filled with the fullness of God means that he has touched with his goodness and his grace every aspect of your life, your thought life, your prayer life, your anxieties and your worries, your successes and your failures, your values, your checkbook, your calendar. Do people still have checkbooks anymore? Your credit card and your Venmo account. To be filled with God truly means that he has touched every aspect of your life, which also begats this reality that being filled with God is a gradual process. It's something that takes a lifetime. Because when God hasn't touched a part of our life, it's not because he doesn't want to. It's not because he's not trying to. It's not because he's not telling us that he would like to be involved there too. It's because we're not letting him. Either intentionally or unintentionally, when God hasn't touched a portion of our life, it's not from lack of effort or desire on his part. It's from lack of effort or desire on our part. So it's a progressive thing. I think, honestly, that being a Christian is just to grow in a progressive revelation of the parts of you that God has not touched yet. To grow in a progressive revelation of things that I have not given over to the Father. Through His goodness and grace and His mercy, the Holy Spirit will just show us the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. That's why we say that at Grace we're step-takers because everybody has a next step of obedience that God is beckoning them to take. And it's just going deeper and realizing parts of our life that we have not given over to him yet. But as I tried to wrestle this to the ground and was coming up empty with a good scholarly explanation to offer you guys, I just kind of hit the reset button and thought, well, what is it about the prayer that moves me so much? What is it that I love so much about it that it's on the wall of my office, that I pray it over my family, for myself, that I pray it in every situation, that I pray it over you in every situation that you're in? Anytime God brings to mind somebody while I'm praying, this prayer is what I pray for them. So what is it about this prayer that's so powerful for me? I thought maybe if I could share that, that would be helpful for you as we seek to understand what Paul's praying for here. And for me, the power of the prayer is in the simplicity of the petition that we would know God. The power of the prayer is in the simplicity of the petition that you would know God. That's what he's praying. That's all he's praying. The whole time in a bunch of different ways that you would know God. First thing out of the gates, what's he praying? That you would know Christ. Along with all the saints that you would understand his love that he has for you, that you would be filled with the fullness of God. This whole time through, all Paul is praying is that you would know God. And I pointed out in the first week that I find this remarkable because he's praying for a church that he founded, the success of which he earnestly desires. He wants that church to be successful. He wants that church to grow. He wants that church to impact their community. And yet he does not pray for success. This church is in an era of persecution, high infant mortality rates, low average lifespans. These people knew tragedy. Certainly, I would bet a lot of money or Chick-fil-A sandwich, I bet you Chick-fil-A sandwich, that Paul was acutely aware of suffering happening inside the church. Somebody sick, somebody experiencing grief or loss or persecution. I would bet that Paul knew of specific instances where people were hurting, and yet he does not pray for safety. He does not pray for security. He does not pray for health. He does not pray for circumstances. He does not pray for success. He doesn't pray for any of those things. And I think that speaks volumes because all he does pray is that they would know God. That's it. That's all he wanted for them, that they would know God as if it's a light that shines so brightly that the brighter it gets, the more everything fades away. When I stand up here on Sunday, these lights are in my face. I hate them, but it's part of the deal. They're at like 40% right now. They were so bright a few weeks ago, I couldn't see any of you. I forget, I think it was the rooted sermon. I couldn't see any of you. It was so distracting for me. I was in my head the whole time. These lights can get so bright that everything else fades. And if we have in our hearts a burning desire to know our creator, that light begins to burn so brightly that everything else just kind of fades in importance. There's really nothing else that matters outside of pursuing God. It is the apex pursuit in life. Success doesn't matter. Relatively speaking, health doesn't matter. Failures don't matter as long as they bring us to a place where we know God more deeply. And my prayer for you is that that light will burn so brightly in your life and in your mind and in your conscience that everything else will begin to fade in comparison to knowing God. And this is biblical. Paul talks about it, David talks about it, and Jesus talks about it. In Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 and 8, Paul says that he considers everything rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing God. David says in Psalms, better is one day in your courts, Father, than a thousand elsewhere. This is a king that has experienced the highest highs that life has to offer, and he says you can keep a thousand of those days if I can spend one of them with you. Jesus in Matthew chapter 13 describes the kingdom of God as something that you sell everything that you own to go claim because of the surpassing value of knowing God. It is the chief desire of Paul. It is the chief desire of God himself that you would know him. And it should be our chief desire that burns so brightly in us that everything else fades away. That's why this is the prayer that I pray for you. That's why this is the prayer I pray over the church, for myself, and over my family. And when I pray it, it sounds like this. This is what I pray. I put it in writing so that maybe it will help you as you pray, but this is the thought that's in my head whenever I pray for anyone or anything. It's this, Heavenly Father, would the events of this circumstance conspire to draw them into a deeper knowledge of you? Whatever the situation is, whatever's happening, my first thought, dear God, with the things that are about to happen to them, to this family, to that place, would those events conspire to bring those people to a deeper knowledge of you? Towards the end of last year, many of you know one of our great partners, one of the great people of grace had a stroke. And we did not know how he was going to be doing. Praise God, he's doing a lot better. But as soon as I heard it, I dropped to my knees and I prayed. And I did not pray that he would be healed. I did second. I did not pray first that his family would be okay. I did not pray first for his safety or his health. The first thing I prayed was, God, would the events surrounding this circumstance somehow conspire to draw him and his family into a deeper knowledge of you? This is an awful thing that's happened. And we don't have to make it a good thing, and we don't have to pretend like it happened because God has a lesson to teach us. I don't think that's how it works. I think cruddy things just happen in a broken world. And when those cruddy things happen, we ought to remind ourselves to say, God, I care deeply about the circumstances and the people in them. But before that, would you please use them to conspire to draw him and his children and his wife into a deeper relationship with you? Would you use this opportunity to show up and show off, Father? I think it's such an important prayer to pray in success and in failure. And I think it's such an important prayer to pray because it does this. I'm going to read this slowly because I think it's important. This prayer brings peace and purpose in suffering, patience in waiting, perseverance in trial, and humility and gratitude in success. When we pray that prayer, God, whatever happens here, whatever's going to happen, would what we take out of it be a deeper knowledge of you? When we pray that prayer, it imbues our suffering with purpose. It imbues our waiting and our grief with purpose and peace. Some of you are in moments of waiting. You're in a season of your life where you're praying for a prayer to be answered and it's not yet and so you're waiting. Some of you are in a season of trial. It's difficult. It's trying. It's hard. Some of you are in seasons of grief. I want you to know, if we pray this prayer over them, those are holy seasons. Those are holy moments. I know that you're hurting. I know that you want the thing. I know that the wait is tough. And I know that it seems unfair. But that's a holy place where God is shaping you. And he's beckoning you. And he's drawing you into a deeper faith in him. Whatever the outcome is of your waiting, it will be a marker in your life when God showed up. So we do not always pray away those things because they're holy moments. And I don't want you to be so drugged down in your waiting and in your hurting that you miss God's drawing in the midst of that suffering. Similarly, when we pray this prayer in the face of success, it begets humility and gratitude. When we sell the company, when we get the job, when our kid wins the thing at the place, when we make the sale, when life goes really good, our very first response should be, God, this success is great. It's really fun. Thank you. Would the events of this success conspire to bring me to a deeper knowledge of you? Whatever happens, however it goes, whatever we decide to do, whatever the next thing is, as I celebrate this God, and maybe even sometimes look to a new reality because of the opportunities that you've just brought me, as I do that, God, would you not let me lose sight of you? Would the events of the circumstances of this success conspire to bring me to a deeper knowledge of you? That puts the success in its proper place, which is simply a positive experience to be used by God to draw you close to him. If you have the success and it doesn't bring us any closer to the father, then the success has no point. Nobody cares. And they're not going to talk about it at your funeral. I know you think they will. I do funerals. We do not talk about your business success at your funerals. Yeah, it's going to hurt. It's going to be hard to walk through. But God, I pray that I would grow to a deeper knowledge of you through it. Yes, this is great. This is wonderful. It's a good thing that happened. But God, let me not lose sight of you. Let it help me walk in a deeper knowledge of you. So I hope and I pray that you'll make this your prayer in 2024. I believe Jordan told you at the beginning of the service, we have magnets on the table right out there. You can put wherever you want to see them. It says one per family, but if you're lingering for like 10 minutes and there's still a bunch and you want a bunch, grab a bunch. Nobody cares. I hope that you'll make that your prayer for yourself and for your family this year. I hope that this prayer will be pressed into your conscience the way that it's been pressed into mine and that it will be your abiding prayer for your family and for your children and for your friends and for your loved one and for your church for the rest of your days. And I hope that the desire to know God will burn so brightly in all of us that everything else will simply fade as we pursue him. Let's pray together. Father, I don't know what's going to happen this year. The way it's shaping up, it's probably going to be nuts. Lord, would you use the things that happen in our lives and around our lives to conspire, to draw us more closely to you? Father, would the desire to know you burn so brightly that everything else fades? Would we be people who desperately want to know and experience the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge? Would we be people who invite you into every part of our life so that we may be filled with your fullness and your goodness and your grace and your mercy. God, we make that our prayer over grace this year, our prayer over our families, our prayer over our friends and loved ones. Help us to know you more, God. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning, a part of your January. I've enjoyed diving into this Ephesians prayer with you this month. This is the third part in our series called Rooted, where we're looking at a prayer by Paul over the church in Ephesus that we find in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 19. In the first week we looked at the act of salvation and how that's Paul's first priority in prayer for everyone that he encounters. And we talked about shaping our year around a similar priority for everyone that we would encounter. Last week we talked about the importance of going deep and developing deep roots in Christ. And this week, I want to give you what I believe is one of the most important ways that we can do that. One of the most important steps we can take in our life to intentionally develop deep roots. And I'll just say up front that this sermon is, I'm not sure that it's a sermon. Next week is a sermon. Next week, I'm going to light your faces on fire. Next week, I'm preaching. This week, I'm talking. This week, it's as if I can't sit down with every one of you over lunch or a drink and just casually discuss our faith and our journey and spirituality. But I have been able to do that with some of us and some friends outside of church. And we've had some frank discussions about small group, about conversations, about what really helps and what really drives growth. About what moves us and stirs our souls and about how we can connect ourselves to things that do that more so that we can pursue God with more fervor and more earnesty and with more depth. And so what I want to do this morning is kind of share with you a thought that I've been having for probably the last three or four months about something that I think everyone who's a Christian needs to do. And I honestly think, I know that this is, well, I was going to say this is kind of optimistic, but only if you think my other sermons are impactful. So maybe it's not optimistic at all, but I think that this could be the single most impactful one for you this year if you hear what I say and you agree with me and we take steps to do what we're going to talk about. So with that preamble, let's look at the prayer. Now this week is a little bit of a departure from the prayer because I believe in the middle of the prayer there's this almost parenthetical phrase, this parenthetical claim or reminder that Paul makes who writes the prayer. And so we're going to look inside that parenthesis today and wonder why does he say that and what does it mean? What are the implications for us? See if you can find it with me as we read Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 19. established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know the love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That's the prayer. Next week we get to the climax of the prayer. What does it mean when Paul prays that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we would be filled with the fullness of God? I've spent two solid weeks trying to wrestle those phrases to the ground, and I'm excited to share with you next week. But before we get there, in the middle of this prayer, there's almost this just parenthetical reminder. And I know on the screen it says something different, but it says all the Lord's holy people. But in this NIV, apparently NIVs are different too. Who knows? I can't win for losing. But this, it says along together that you would have the strength to comprehend. And then here's a comma together with all the saints. What is the love of Christ that He doesn't have to include that little along with all the saints in the prayer. You can read the prayer without that. And it still means the same thing. He's still hoping for the same thing. He still wants the same thing for the church in Ephesus. He still wants the same thing for you and for me. Nevertheless, he pauses in the middle of it to almost remind them that there is a big C church. There are other believers going on. It's not just in Ephesus. It's not just about you. He pauses to remind them parenthetically, I believe, in the prayer, along with all the saints. He pauses to remind them that Christianity is inherently communal. This faith, if you're here and you call Christ your Savior, then the faith that you and I share together is inherently communal. It was always, always, always intended to be lived out in community. And I know that this is true because the communal nature of the Bible jumps off the page when you read the New Testament. I want to take you to Acts chapter 2. If you have a Bible with you, turn to Acts chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 42 through 47 for just a little bit of context of what's happening when we read these verses. This is the very beginning of the church. This is the genesis of what you and I understand as the church. This is when worship in the Jewish culture and this culture moved away. They departed from the synagogue. They departed from the sacrifices. They departed from the old ways and they started figuring out a new way to meet and to gather and to be the church. The context in Acts chapter 2 is that Jesus has come to earth. He's lived a perfect life and he's died a perfect death. He resurrects himself from the dead. He spends 40 days with the disciples and then he ascends heaven, and he says, I want you to go hang out in this room until you feel like you know what to do. And so they're hanging out in this room going, gosh, I don't know what to do. Do you know what to do? They're like going, I don't know what to do at all. So then they just hang out in the room, and then the Holy Spirit descends on them in tongues of fire. This is the event of Pentecost. Now they feel like they know what to do. They go out on the front porch. They preach the Word of God. They tell the story of who this Jesus was that we just saw killed and then resurrected. They tell his story. And everyone present hears it in their native tongue. This is the gift of tongues that we see in the New Testament. And thousands of people are saved. They say, what do we need to do to be saved? We agree with you. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. The fundamental repentance of Christianity. Repent of who you thought Jesus was. Acknowledge who he is. He's the Lord and Savior of the universe. And be baptized. And then they did that. They were added to the church. So now the church is a couple thousand people strong. And they're going, what do we do? In verses 42 through 47 of Acts chapter 2, we see what characterizes the early church. We need to know that what we have, what we see in here is called descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes the early church. It does not prescribe for us everything that we are to do. One of the things you'll see in here is that they sold everything they had and they shared it in common. They lived literally communally like that. The reason they did that is because the church in Jerusalem was in a time of significant poverty. There was a huge disparity between some of the people in the church. And so they helped those who were in need. The church in Jerusalem was in such a tight spot that if you carefully read Acts and you study the life of Paul, what you'll find is that as he was going from place to place, he was also asking these churches in Ephesus and Galatia and Thessalonica for money so that he could take that money back to Jerusalem to support the saints there. So just keep in mind that what we see is not prescriptive. We should do everything here. It is descriptive. We should take the principles from here and apply them to our church. So if you want to know, is grace doing the right thing? Is grace the kind of church that Jesus would recognize if he were to show up here? What you do is you go back to the litmus test in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, and you read it. So we're going to read it together, all the verses, and then we're going to look at, to me, what jumps off the page of my head. Those who were being saved. Here's what jumps off the page to me when I read that. There's lots there. I could do a whole series on those verses. I just might one day. I've preached out of this passage a bunch of different times at this church and my previous church. This is home base for community in the church. But whenever I read this passage, what jumps off the page to me is that Christianity was never intended to be a solo exercise. Christianity was never, ever intended to be a solo exercise that we do on our own. It was never, listen to me, it was never intended to be a private faith. This idea that we don't talk about our faith or that we don't talk about our spirituality because my spirituality is between me and God. No, it is not. It was never intended to be just between you and God. And if you say that, how do I say this nicely? You're wrong. You're wrong. Our faith was always intended to be communal. It was never supposed to be a stoic solo exercise. That's private between me and Jesus. You won't find that kind of faith anywhere in the Bible. I'm not saying that the occasional solitude isn't important. We see all the time where Jesus goes off by himself to pray. But he prays so that he might come back and be ministered to and minister to. The times of solitude are to improve us for our times of community. Christianity was never intended to be a solo exercise. If you read the New Testament, you can't help but conclude that that's true. I would defy you to read the New Testament and not come away with the distinct impression that my faith is to be lived out in community with others. At Grace, we ardently believe this. That's why our mission statement is connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people. Because we simply don't believe that you can become everything that you are in Christ. That you can grow to the fullness of what he wants for you. Developing your gifts, walking in maturity, being rooted and grounded in love. Oh. Who was going to tell me? I saw you two laughing and I was like, oh, were you doing it? Oh, geez, old Pete. How long? How long was that there? Since the lights came on? Okay. Well, listen, you guys have been paying attention great. So good job. And that also makes me feel better because I saw Taylor and Wes laughing, and I thought, oh, no. I know I checked my fly before I came up here. What was I talking? Solo. That's where I'm at? Thank you. Let's pray. Let's go home. We're having BLTs today. I'm excited. You can't read the New Testament. That's so great. No one's going to remember anything I say. That was the bug sermon. Yeah, it was the bug sermon. All right. All right. Let's get ourselves together. Christianity was never intended to be a solo exercise. We cannot read the New Testament and not see the communal nature of our faith jumping off the page. One of the places that we see it show up over and over and over and over again in different ways is in the one and others. I know that if you've spent any time in the New Testament, you've seen the one another commands. We should love one another. We should forgive one another. We should encourage one another. We should outdo one another in honor. We should show humility to one another. We should show hospitality to one another. We should be welcoming to one another. We should confess our sins to one another. Over and over and on and on, we see these all through, especially the New Testament. Jesus has some commands for us. Paul has some commands for us. And the other general epistles have some commands for us. The other authors, it's all over. It's universal. There are these one another commands. And I've spent a lot of time in the last several months thinking about these one another's and the implications in the church. One of the studies that I've written for us for our discipleship pathway that we're going to start to use and deploy in August of this year. That's the goal as we try to build some other stuff up. There's a whole eight-week study that I've written on the one and others and how we can be obedient to them. If you Google it, depending on which list you click on, there's 56 or there's 72 or there's however many, but there's more than 50 one another commands in the New Testament, showing us that Christianity is inherently communal. And as I look at the one another commands, I see them in concentric circles of possibility. I see some that you can do for everybody, some that you can do for a few, and some that you can do for a core. And so I want to look at those today and talk about the implications of this as we ask, how can we leverage Christ's community for our personal growth and for the growth of others as we seek to be obedient to the one another's admitting that our faith is inherently communal? And I promise that all of this will make sense as we move through it. So if we look at the one another's as concentric circles in which we can be obedient to them. The first set that I want to look at I'm calling church one another's. Church one another's. These are one another's that we can do for everyone at the church. Anyone that walks through the doors, we can be obedient to these one another commands for everyone in the whole church. If you have your notes, if you have a bulletin, today was a really great day to have a bulletin because I have all of these detailed in your bulletin for you so that you can have the examples and so that you can know I'm not making these up. I even gave you some references. In the church one another's, I put love one another, honor one another, welcome one another, and then just a few more, show hospitality, have fellowship, live in harmony. To love somebody, now certainly that's an intimate thing, but to love someone the way that Christ loves us, we love them sacrificially, we love them wanting what's best for them. I can love everybody who walks through these doors. I can love anybody in the way that I want what's best for you. I can try to love you sacrificially if I need to. I park far away. I don't know if that counts. We can love everybody here on a Sunday. We can welcome everybody here on a Sunday. We can all do that. We can show hospitality to anyone who walks in these doors. There's some one another's that we can do with everybody. But there's some that if we're being honest, we really can't do them for, we can't be obedient to those one another commands for everybody in the whole church, especially not in an effective way. And for those, I'm thinking of those as small group one another's. Small group one another's. That's the next concentric circle. I think of things like forgiving one another and bearing with one another, comforting one another, caring for, encouraging, instructing. If we look at those and we think about what they require, this admonition to forgive one another. Certainly, we can forgive people at the church community level if they've done something wrong or committed a sin or made a misstep or whatever. We can forgive. But I would just mention that that sort of forgiveness isn't really challenging. If you did something over there to offend your kids or your spouse or your friends, and I don't really know about it, I just heard about it, it's really easy for me, being separated from that situation, to go, I forgive you. God restore you. At the small group level, these families that we do life with, when they do something boneheaded and we have to forgive them, that's a little bit more challenging. So that one another and the challenge to that one another shows up, I think, at a more intimate small group level than it does at the whole church level. I love this one, bearing with one another. That literally means putting up with one another. You don't have to bear with somebody until you spend one night a week with them and their picadillos and their quirks and their questions and the way they go about their things, right? You guys who are in small groups, which is most of you, you know there's people in your group you have to put up with. If you can't think of anyone, someone's thinking of you. They just have quirks. They just have ways about them. But we love each other and we offer each other grace. And those things are okay here. We have to bear with one another in those small groups in ways differently than the general mill you. I put comfort one another there because it's one thing when someone offers an impersonal, I'm praying for you. When someone just gives you a hug and says, looks like you needed that. When someone says, I hope this works out well for you. That's fine. But when it comes from a friend, it means more. When it comes from someone who actually knows what you're walking through, it means more. And all of these reasons are reasons why we need small groups. They're reasons why we say, if you're not in a small group, you're not experiencing everything God has for you. We need to be in those groups. If you're here and you're not a part of a small group, I know that Kyle gave a pitch beforehand. It was very good. I would really love for you to prayerfully consider joining a small group. I just, I've been doing ministry now for 20 years. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone flourish spiritually who never walked alongside other people in their church. I know I've never seen anyone get connected and stay connected to a church without a group of friends at that church. And we need the connectivity of small groups. We need these groups. We need them to connect us. And so if you're not a part of one, I really hope you'll prayerfully consider being a part of one. The other thing I would mention is if you look through the catalog at the information table, and you can call that table whatever you want. There's two tables out there. One has coffee, one has paper. Go to them. But if you look through that and you don't see one that works for you, would you email Erin Winston? She's essentially our associate pastor. Pastor in charge of small groups as well. Will you email her? Because she might know about some that aren't on there that would be a good fit for you. We'd love for you to join a small group because we can't be obedient to all the one another's on the church level. But even as I say we'd love for you to join a small group, I would also admit that there are some one another commands for which small groups are simply inadequate. And those one another's, the deepest core of one another's, I'm calling intimate one another's. Intimate one another's. These are one another's that cannot be done at the small group level. And I think, I think one of the great sins, and this is where I'm just kind of talking with friends now, I think one of the great sins and errors of the church over the last two decades is insisting over and over again that the small group provide for these kinds of one another's when it is simply not equipped to do it. I think one of the great sins of the evangelical church in the last 20 years, and there's a lot, so I'm going to say one of the great mistakes, not one of the great sins, because I'm not going to put this on par with other ways that we've screwed up. One of the great errors we've made is putting all this pressure on small groups to help with these one another's for which not only are they not equipped to help, but it would be wrong if they did. One another's like confess your sins to one another. Not bear with one another, but bear one another's burdens. When's the last time in your small group that someone just kind of lowered their head and shared in a moment of weakness, hey, I'm angry. I'm angry all the time. And I don't know why. But I do know that it's causing me to treat my family in ways that I regret. I do know that my kids don't get to see who I want them to see. I know that I'm not the husband for my wife that I need to be. And I don't know what's making me so angry. But I'm pretty sure I should go see a therapist about it. Will you pray for me and walk with me in this journey? Will you help me and come alongside me? When's the last time in your couples group, in your men's group or your women's group, somebody said something that vulnerable? What space do you have in your life for a conversation like that? When's the last time in a small group somebody confessed their sin by saying, you know, I have a co-worker that I'm attracted to. And I know that I shouldn't be. And I know that I shouldn't indulge it. And I haven't. But I'm skirting the line. And I just want to say it out loud here so that you guys can help me. Anyone saying that in your couples group? No. And here's the thing. If you say that kind of stuff in your couples group, stop it. You're making people uncomfortable. Don't do that. That's not the place. That's not the place. But do you see what I'm saying? You can't truly confess your sins in a small group. You need a different space for that. Here's what else you can't really do in a small group. We're told that we should bear one another's burdens. Well, do you know what I know? I can't bear your burdens until you tell me what they are. And nobody's telling each other what they really are in small group. And I'm not sure that we should. That's not a condemnation of small groups. But no one in small group is saying, you know what my burden is? I feel alone. I feel like I don't have anybody who knows me. I don't know what to do. I need friends. I need people that I connect with, who see me for me. You're not going to share that in a couples group. But we can't be obedient to the one another of bearing one another's burdens unless you trust me enough to tell me what they really are. Unless you trust me enough to say, man, I'm struggling. I am depressed. My life is a dark cloud. I have thoughts that I shouldn't. I'm not sure what to do or where to go. Sometimes I don't want to be here. Listen, there's a reason that the room is so quiet right now. It's because everyone in here knows that our souls need spaces like that where we can talk about those things. And we also know, those of us in small group, that it is not adequate for that. So my suggestion to you, what I want you to do in light of that truth, is to understand this. Everyone needs a second place. A sacred space. Everyone needs a sacred space. And I call it a second place because to me, I think everybody needs to be in two groups. Everybody should be in two small groups, especially, and listen to me, leaders and elders, especially leaders and elders. Because if anyone's going to start confessing junk in your small groups, it's not going to be you. Because Tom Hanks taught us in Band of Brothers that crap goes downhill, not up, right? You leaders, you elders, you can't share in your groups what you need to share sometimes. You more than anybody need two groups. But we all need two groups. And I know that that feels audacious for me to tell you that you need to be in two small groups. Like, Nate, I'm barely holding it together. I can barely get to my one small group on time. And a lot of times we just pretend that the kids are sick so we don't have to go. Like, it's a lot. If you're laughing, you've done it. I heard Liz Roberg very loudly. I know it sounds like a lot, so here's what I want to offer you. That second small group, that sacred space, it can and should look unconventional. If you get together once a week trying to have that level of depth of conversation, it's going to exhaust you so much that you're going to quit very quickly. It needs to look unconventional. It needs to be a small group of people. As I was preparing the sermon, I realized that I have one, which is really nice. So I don't have to feel convicted like you. I'm doing it. Yay. The last Thursday of every month, I meet with a current elder and a former elder. We get together at somebody's house. And when we walk into that space, we take off all of our hats. I'm not a pastor there. They're not elders. We are men who want to grow spiritually. We are men who want to encourage one another onto good works. We are men who want to create safe spaces for confession. We are men who want to bear with one another and open that up to one another. And in that group, once a month, we ask two questions. What's God showing you? What's he teaching you? This is a good spiritual check-in question because in that is the implication of, I'm assuming you're reading your Bible. I'm assuming you're praying. I'm assuming you're listening. What's God teaching you? And sometimes the answer to that question needs to be nothing. I haven't been pursuing him, but I'm here. Great. There's space for that. But we ask, what's God been showing you? What's he been teaching you? And then we ask, where are you struggling? What's been harder for you? That's a space to say I'm angry. That's a space to say my marriage is really on its last leg. That's a space to say I feel really underappreciated in work or in my relationships or in my marriage. It's a safe space to do that. And here's what I've learned about those spaces. That all that they require is trust and respect. All they require is trust and respect. I think we're wired to think that spaces like that, that allow conversations like that to confess sin and to bear our burdens and to show what we're actually carrying and to actually be vulnerable and go deep, that those require deep friendships. And I don't think that's true. I was in an environment a month or two ago where there was just different people in the church, different guys in the church that I had had some really interesting conversations with. And I wanted them to be able to talk to each other. And so we found a night that worked for us. We got together at somebody's house and everybody had, the job was for everyone had to come with one question, one question that you want to hear an answer from, from everybody. And two of the guys had never even met each other. All three of them, I knew all three of them better than they knew each other. And two of them had never even met before. But because there was respect there and because there was trust there that you want what's best for me, once we started answering questions, they started ripping each other apart. The very first answer. The very first answer, I asked a question, somebody answered it, and somebody else looked at them and went, what does that even mean, man? That's just a platitude. Let's get to the bottom of that. They were not best friends, but there was trust and respect, and so we were able to go to levels that were deeper than normal conversations can go. You need a second space. That second space requires people you trust and respect. And now, here's a little bit of pushback that I think you could be offering in your head. If we were talking, I think these are the things you would say to me. First of all, you'd say, Nate, this feels a little like a one-sided conversation. I'd say, yeah, I'm sorry. But you would, there are some who think, I have that. I have that. I have my friends that I can call and I can have those conversations with when I need them. That's great. I'm so glad that you do. One of the big mistakes we make with those kinds of friendships is that we are not intentional enough with them. We wait until the warning light is on to pick up the phone instead of having those conversations regularly for maintenance. You follow me? I heard one pastor say that the reason to work on our marriage and talk about our marriage consistently is because we have a tendency to not want to talk about it until it's shattered on the floor in front of us. If you have those friendships in your life, men or women, that you can pick up the phone and you can have an intimate conversation with and say, hey, here's why I need prayer. Here's why I'm struggling. Here's what's going on. That's great. Just become more intentional with them. Talk with those two or three or four people. Pick a space monthly or quarterly where you can ask those two questions. What are you struggling with? What's God teaching you? Don't just let them idle and not take advantage of them. We need them in our lives. And I see good Christian friendships. Grace is really, really good at developing connections. I see friendships here abounding. You know what I'll tell you? After seven years of being your pastor, I do not see grace excelling at strategically using those friendships to leverage us towards spiritual growth. I see those friends existing as mechanics in our life that we call when the light comes on. But I don't see us very good at regular maintenance. So the assignment for some of you is to reach out to the friends that you have, the acquaintances that you have that you trust and respect, and get something on the calendar. Pick a rhythm, monthly or quarterly. Find a time to do it. Spouses prioritize it for one another, and it shouldn't be your spouse for obvious reasons that I will not go into. You need a sacred space this year where you can be obedient to all the one another's. You need small group. We should stay in small group. Some of you who've been coming here the last three to five years, you started coming to Grace. You got connected in a small group. Your kids now look forward to coming to church because their friends go to church. You look forward to coming to church because your friends go to church. It's what's kept you connected and rooted at Grace, and that's wonderful. So we need small groups. We can't just all go into our own inclusive, intimate groups of three or four that we never invite anyone into ever. So we need both things. So for some of you, you have rich, deep friendships where there's trust and love and respect. Please begin to intentionally leverage those for your spiritual growth rather than letting them idle by. For others, you're thinking to yourself, perhaps, yeah, man, I want exactly that. That sounds great. My closest friends are not believers. I don't know where I'm going to find that. First, start praying for it. I bet there's more opportunities than you think. Second, and I mean this sincerely, email me. Email me and say, hey, I want what you were talking about. I don't know where to look. And here's what I'll do. If I get two or three of y'all that email me in, I'll email y'all as a group and go, why don't y'all get coffee? And we'll figure this thing out. If you want that, you don't have it, you don't know where to go, pray about it. Let me know or somebody and let's start pursuing this together. If you do this, if you begin to leverage your friendships with the people that you trust and respect for your spiritual growth and for their spiritual growth, I believe that 2024 will be a hugely spiritually impactful year for you. And that's why I think this may be the most important thing I say to you this year. As a pastor, as someone who cares about your spiritual health, find those places where you can go deep. Don't leave your small groups. We need small groups. But find a sacred space. And when you find it, be consistent in it. And if you find those and you start doing this, would you let me know? I want to hear the good stuff that happens in there. I hope you'll do it. Next week we're going to come back and wrap up this prayer and I'm very excited to share with you what's there. Let's pray and then Kyle's going to come up. Father, I thank you for friendships. I thank you for community. I thank you for the power of what it is, what it can do, what it means. Lord, we are adept here at making friends and connections. But God, would you convict us to take those deeper? Would you convict us to go further? Would you give us spaces where we can bear one another's burdens and we're willing to share what we are bearing? Would you create spaces where we can confess the sin that we struggle with, where we can shine light on the dark shadows and the corners of our life? Father, would you give us these spaces where we can flourish, we can know you, grow closer to you, be deeply rooted in you. So that we might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and that we might be filled with all of your fullness, Father. Give us a sacred space. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, and welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is not really a good time. This is the second part of our series called Rooted, where we're looking at a prayer found in Ephesians 3, verses 14-19, and we're saying that we're going to make this the prayer for Grace for this year. I've encouraged you to make it your prayer for yourself and for your families. And I shared with you last week that this prayer really colors how I do ministry, how I live life, how I pray for everyone whenever I pray. And so we're taking the first four weeks of the year and we're saturating ourselves in this prayer. For just a little bit of context for those that may have missed last week, or were not paying attention to this part of the sermon, this prayer is found in Ephesians. It's in the middle of the grouping of Paul's letters. If you've not been exposed to the Bible or Paul's letters or Pauline epistles and aren't sure what those are. The Apostle Paul wrote about two-thirds of the New Testament. And the books of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians are written to churches that he started and then wrote letters of advice and counsel and encouragement and conviction, whatever was necessary in those churches, wrote those letters back to them. We preserved them, we put them in the Bible, and now we use them to lead our churches. And in those books, you will find times when he says, hey, when I pray for you, this is what I pray. And they're all very similar to the prayer that we're looking at this year. This just happens to be, to me, the most eloquent one. And so we're looking at it together. Last week, we looked at how we opened the prayer and prayed for everyone's salvation. This is first priority for everyone that he meets. We talked about how that shapes us when that's our first priority. And in that sermon, incidentally, I laid out the clearest explanation I know how to lay out on how to become saved and what it means to be saved. So if you have some questions around that, you can go back to last week's message and listen to that, and hopefully that will help you at least begin to think about things, frame things up for you. Before I dive in this week to the next petition that we find in Paul's prayer, I just wanted to read the whole passage and then we'll focus back on verse 17 and a phrase that we're going to spend our time in this morning. Really, we're going to spend all of our time this morning on one word, rooted, and what it means. So if you have a Bible, open it to Ephesians chapter 3. I asked you guys towards the end of last year to be in the habit of bringing your Bibles and looking through Scripture with me. One of the wonderful benefits of doing that is in the off chance that I say something meaningful to you, you can write it in your Bible. And then years later when you're reading it, that note can pop up and remind you of past lessons learned. So I also have been told, and I'm very sorry for this, that some people for Christmas got ESV Bibles because they're like, we're going to be able to follow along with Nate now in the service. And I think that's a wonderful thing. And then right out of the gate, January 7th, first service of the year, I was like, hey guys, I'm switching to NIV when I preach, just so you know. I ruined a middle schooler's Christmas. That was like his big gift. So I'm going to get you a Bible. I'm going to buy you one. I promise you. It's going to show up at your house, NIV, leather bound. It's going to be fancy. I hate that I ruined your Christmas. Read with me if you have a Bible these verses from 14 to 19 in Ephesians 3, and then some of them will show up on the screen and we'll talk of God. That's the whole passage. This week, we're going to be centered in on verse 17. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love. And then from there, if you look at the verse, he makes some petitions. Because you're now rooted in love. So because you're saved, because you know Christ, because the Godhead has had the threefold effort to bring you to a knowledge of Christ, because God according to His riches has offered you salvation, the Spirit and His power has moved in your heart to want salvation, and now Christ dwells in your heart through faith. So because the Godhead has moved and you know Christ and you are now saved, he considers you that now you are rooted and established in love. Now you're rooted in love. And listen, today I'm going to say you're rooted in love. You're rooted in the love of Christ. You're rooted in the love of God. You're rooted in Christ. To me, for the concept for this verse, that's all synonymous. Okay. Iocating some things here. So, I'm going to say all those words, but what I mean is rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, which I think totally agrees with Paul's intent when he was writing this. So, because you're saved, you're now rooted and grounded in love. And because you are, here's what I pray for you, that you would have the strength to comprehend with all the saints. And that's what we're going to look at next week is the communion of the saints. And why that's always so important. And then to know the love that surpasses knowledge. That you'd be loved by Jesus. That you'd be filled with all the fullness of God. So in that way, this concept that we're looking at today of being rooted in Christ's love is the fulcrum of the whole passage. I sum it up like this. Being rooted in Christ's love is the concept through which the rest of the prayer flows. Because you're saved, you're rooted in the love of Christ. Because I know that you're rooted in the love of Christ. Here's what I pray for you. I think the other petitions flow from this petition. So it's important for us, if it's the fulcrum of the passage and the prayer, if it's kind of the therefore, we need to understand what it means to be rooted and established in the love of Christ. We need to know what that means and have an appreciation of it. If we don't value that, if we don't understand it, if we can't define it, then we really can't comprehend the rest of the prayer. So when I sat down to write the sermon, I knew that was where I needed to focus. What does it mean to be rooted in the love of Christ? We're naming the whole series Rooted. So this must be a pretty important idea. And I have sometimes, often for series, I'll have a series guide where whenever I sat down and kind of framed up the series, which for me, this was in October or November that I framed this up. I keep a document on my computer because I don't know where else you keep a document. And I'll sum up each week. Let's focus on these verses this week. And I'll usually leave myself a two or three sentence guide, sometimes more, of what to think about and what to talk about and how to approach it so that when I hit the week that I'm prepping it and that I'm actually writing it, I'm not hitting it fresh. I've already done a little bit of prep work for it. So I opened up the document a couple weeks ago when I was writing this sermon, and it said, you know, verse 17, rooted, established, and loved. And then the guidance that I gave myself was, explore what it means to be rooted and established in love. Like, thanks, November Nate, because you're not helping January Nate at all. So whenever I don't know what to do, I just read stuff on the internet that other people have written about this until I get an idea. They teach that in seminary. And one of the places I wanted to go is to explore root systems. Let me just understand roots more and see if that sparks something. And I'll be honest with you. I kind of don't like when pastors do this, when they take one word. I'm going to do a lot of research about this word, and we're going to draw out a ton of lessons from this one concept, from this one word. Look at everything I've learned about root systems, right? Because I don't think it's totally fair to what the author intended, because Paul did not have Google, and he was a tent maker from a relatively cosmopolitan city. I do not think he had an exhaustive knowledge of what root systems do when he wrote this. So for me to go and dig deeper into it to figure out what we can learn about root systems and how we can apply that to the passage isn't necessarily fair to his intention when he wrote it. And sometimes when pastors do this, we kind of mislead the congregation, the people who are listening, to believe that this was the original author's intent too, and this is the only way to understand the passage. So I'm just saying that up front so you know I'm not trying to do that this morning. What I will say is, as I began to learn about root systems, which was some exciting stuff. I was on like botany websites in like college. I started to read like a scientific, I don't even know what you call it, write up on it, paper. And I bailed. I was like, yeah, this is not, I can't understand this. But as I did the research and started learning, to me there's just so many parallels firing off that I thought this is worth it to sit in here and figure out what we can learn about root systems that also apply to our spiritual lives. So that's what we're going to do this morning. One of the things I saw and read about, and this is not a surprise to anyone, if what I'm about to say about how root systems function, if this first point surprises you, if you learn right now, you need to go back to school, I think. But one of the first things that I think is profoundly important about root systems is this. Being rooted in Christ anchors us. Being rooted in Christ anchors us. On, I believe, Tuesday of this week, we had a big storm. The big storm blew through sustained winds of 25 to 30 miles an hour, gusts of 45 to 50 miles an hour. It was a big storm. They even canceled school. We did a half day for school, which, as an aside, is patently absurd, all right? I went to elementary school in the 80s and 90s, and there's no way in the world it was going to be so windy that we canceled school. Like, it's going to be really raining hard when you get off the bus, so we're just going to let your mom pick you up at 12. That didn't happen. They didn't care if a stick blew off a tree and hit you in the head on the way home. That didn't matter to them. We're doing school, but now the world is run by sissies, so we come home at noon. Fine. I just need to get that off my chest. Thanks, guys. When I woke up the next day, I go outside to assess the damage, and my neighbor has recently redone his yard, and he has some plants that he's planted, and then over those plants, he's placed a basket about this tie. It's like tent structure. It's got some meshing around it. And I think it's to keep so that the deer don't eat the plants and so that the people who own the plants can never actually enjoy them. I guess they have to walk up and take over the basket and go, boy, that's a beauty. And then they just put it right back down. I don't know. It seems to defeat the purpose of plants. But that had blown into my yard, which no problem. I picked it up. I walk it over. I don't know what, I just picked one. It's just because this is the plant it needs to protect. But do you know why the basket was in my yard and the bush wasn't? Because the basket wasn't rooted. The bush has roots. None of you woke up after that storm on Wednesday morning and noticed that your shrubbery had blown completely out of your yard because they're all rooted. So one of the first things that roots do is they keep us anchored. And here's why that's important. Because sometimes the winds of life blow, and those winds would seek to uproot us from our faith if they can. There are things that happen in life, grief, loss, tragedy, disappointment, disillusionment, doubts, that when they occur, if we are not deeply rooted, we will blow away and we will lose And in that loss, they had deep questions of their faith. But they stayed grounded where they were because their roots were deep. It reminds me of the parable of the sower, where the sower sows seeds and it lands on different kinds of soil, and some of it lands on shallow soil and the roots don't grow deep and the enemy will come and snatch them up, or things will happen and they will be uprooted. We need deep roots to keep us grounded in our faith. I remember a time in my life that's more recent than you'd probably want it to be if I'm your pastor, where I experienced profound doubt in my faith. The way that I kind of describe it is I grew up in the church, good leaders, good folks. I went to Bible college. I went to seminary. And I feel like those things kind of equipped me with boxes or categories to place all my experiences in life, to be able to explain why do bad things happen to good people and why do good things happen to bad people. I've got a box for that. I can explain it. Why did we experience this loss? I've got a box for that. I can explain it. What should I do in this situation that's morally gray? It's not morally gray. It's black and white. Let me explain to you why I've got a box for that. I can explain it. And so I felt like I kind of got pushed into adult life with a set of boxes and categories that could explain everything that has happened to me and will happen to me and will happen to the people around me. And then I became a pastor. And I started noticing, slowly but surely, that everything I experienced doesn't necessarily fit into one of my boxes. I started to need new boxes. I started to need different categories. And that pushed me into a season of profound doubt, of not being sure if it was all true true anyways because my experiences in life did not fit to the categories I had been given I'll say this here if this resonates with you if that's something that you've walked through or are walking through or are experiencing I would love to have coffee with you and talk about that but I can can tell you this. The only thing that kept me in my faith was the fact that God and his goodness over time had developed deep roots for me in my faith. And I could not abandon it. And the wind was blowing hard. But it kept me grounded where I was because I agreed with Peter in that confession. You are the Christ. Where else are we going to go? When we struggle or are disillusioned or disappointed, it's important that we have roots to keep us grounded in our faith. I think that this is probably what the author of Hebrews was referring to when he wrote this verse in chapter 6. Read it with me on the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, and then he continues. He writes about this anchor that we cling to for our soul. And that hope that we have that we cling to is a hope in Christ. It's a belief in Christ that anchors our soul in Him. And so our roots serve us as an anchor that holds fast to our faith no matter what the world is doing, no matter how hard the winds are blowing. So the first thing that jumped off the screen to me as I read was that our faith anchors us. That's incredibly important. Our being anchored in the love of Christ anchors our faith. The next thing I learned, and again, this is not a shocker, but I think thinking about it can be profound for us. Being rooted in Christ nurtures us. Being rooted in Christ nurtures us. The primary function of the root system, and I didn't know this, which is, I should probably go back to school. I did not do well in science. The primary function of the root system is to draw nutrients out of the soil. Yes, it anchors it, but the primary thing that those roots are doing is drawing life out of the soil. I thought the leaves were responsible for that. That's a different deal. It's the roots. They draw life out of the soil. And so when we are rooted in Christ, we are drawing life from the very soil in which we are planted. This is very similar to what Jesus talks about in John chapter 15, verse 5, when he says this, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Other versions have the word abide. If you abide in me and I in you, if you remain attached to me, if you stay rooted in me, you will bear much fruit. It will nurture you. You don't have to worry about all the other things. You don't have to worry about how it's going to work out. You don't have to worry about the right thing to do all the time. You focus on being rooted in me, and I will produce in you what I need. I will care for you, and you don't have to worry about the rest of it. I'm not going to belabor this point, because in the spring we're going to a series called Final Thoughts where we go through the Upper Room Discourse which is found in John chapters 14 through 17. It's Jesus' last thoughts with the disciples before He leaves and goes to Heaven to prepare a place for us. In the middle of that, chapter 15, He talks about abiding me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. We're going to spend two whole weeks on that in March. So I'm not going to belabor it here. I'm going to draw up two points about this nurturing thing that I think matter today. The first is this. When a plant has a good root system, you can cut it to the quick. And if the roots are healthy, that plant will grow back. Even though there's nothing on the surface, even though it looks dead, even though it looks like things are done for that plant. And we all know that this is true instinctively because weeds. Because we all hate pulling weeds. Maybe you don't. I hate it. I hate pulling weeds. I hated like like, when I was a kid, and my dad would be like, all right, we've got to work in the yard today. Let's go pull weeds. I'm like, oh, no. And he would always say, get it by the root. And I never would. I would just rip it out. Sorry, Dad, he's right there. I never would do it. He knows this anyways. I'd just rip it out and throw it away. You can't see it. It's gone. What happens? That's coming back. Now, as a grown-up with my own yard, when I'm pulling a weed and I'm trying to jiggle it and do what you're supposed to do to get it out by the roots and it breaks off and I don't get it, I'm like, dadgummit. I know it's just coming back. I'm going to do this in another couple of weeks. When a plant has a good root system, it doesn't need anything above the surface. It can just regrow, oftentimes bigger and stronger than it was before. Sometimes life cuts us to the quick. Sometimes we get chopped all the way down, and we're not even really sure if we see a path forward. But because the root system in Christ is healthy, we grow and we flourish. If you've been coming to Grace for a while, you've heard me talk now and again about my college roommate, Chris Gerlach, who, when he was 30, died of a widow-maker heart attack. Perfectly healthy guy, just throwing a Frisbee and dropped dead. He left behind Carla, my wife Jen's college roommate. We're all really close friends. And two boys. Five and three. And I remember sitting with Carla at the visitation. And even the day of the funeral. Just in this back room with her and some friends. And I just remember watching her vacillate between tears and just kind of icy numbness, thousand yard stare. And I remember Jen talking to her in the weeks and months subsequent to Chris's loss. Carla had been cut to the quick. She didn't know how she was going to go forward. And as Jen talked to her, we both saw, slowly but surely, hope begin to creep back into Carla's life. Belief that her voice could be okay. Belief that she might find joy again. Clinging to Christ, letting him be the anchor. Remaining committed to being a person of devotion and to prayer. And we saw her slowly but surely grow back and begin to flourish again. This last October marked 10 years since Chris's death. Carla is married to a wonderful man who loves Jesus and loves her boys, and her boys love him. They have a daughter together. It's a new life. She's flourishing in Christ. When our roots are deep and healthy, even when we are cut to the quick, we can still, because of Jesus, regrow and flourish. Some of us today may have come in here feeling like you were just sheared down to the ground. There will be hope. Your roots in Christ will serve you, and you will flourish again. Here's the other thing I learned about root systems that I did not know. The deeper the roots, the more mature a system of roots, the less irrigation and fertilization matter to that plant. Did you know that I did not know that? The deeper the roots are the less fertilization and irrigation matter to a particular plant and I think this has really interesting implications in the Christian life because what it means is the deeper our roots in Christ the more established with we are, the more mature our faith, the less all the extra stuff on the surface matters as much. Meaning, when you're a new believer, when your root system isn't really firmly developed, you're just learning and exploring, you need good sermons. You need good worship. You need the books that the latest pastor, Christian influencer has written and then are showing up on Instagram. You need those things. You need the Bible studies. You need the small groups. You need all the extra sprinkles of Jesus in your life. You need the Instagram feed that comes up and shows you a verse and a thought for the day. You need all those things. Those things are good and they're helpful and their return on investment is good. But the deeper you get, the longer you walk, the more mature you are, the healthier and deeper your roots, the less those things impact you. The less your faith needs those things. It doesn't mean that they're not helpful. It doesn't mean that it's not helpful if I preach a good sermon for you, if you listen to a good podcast or another pastor during the week or even another pastor on a Sunday, whatever. It doesn't mean that sermons don't help you. What it means is if you don't get them, you're fine because you've got this and you've got prayer. There is a time. I'm not even sure if I would call it a threshold, but there is a level of depth and maturity that a Christian develops where a church service and a sermon and worship really are not what move the needle for them spiritually. What moves the needle for them spiritually is spending time in God's word and time in prayer. That's why I always say that's the most important single habit that anyone can develop is to get up every day and do those things. There comes a time when your communion with God is so deep and so rich and so good that if that's all you had, you would flourish. And we know this is true because we can think of the older saints that we know, people with weathered faiths, with deep roots, where you get the profound sense that they kind of come to church for you. They're not coming for them. They're coming to serve. They're coming to help. I think of old pastors that I know that are flourishing with God because all they need is their Bible and prayer and they grow and they flourish and their faith sustains. I think it's really interesting, the idea that the closer we grow to God, the deeper our roots, the more established we are, the less we need all the extra stuff, and all we really need is him. Last thought. Being rooted in Christ awes us. It amazes us. The last thing that I noticed or that I learned was that botanists are really good at explaining what's happening in a plant above ground, but they're remarkably bad at explaining to you what's happening in a plant below ground. Root systems are really tough to study. They're really difficult to learn about. It takes a whole lot of effort to even see what they're doing. They don't understand how the roots are taking nutrients from the soil. It doesn't make sense to them. They can't explain it. They can explain a lot about what's happening above the surface, but they can explain very little about what's actually, comparatively speaking, about what's happening below the surface so much that in botany circles, which is not a phrase I ever expected to use in a sermon, but in botany circles, or in life, really, in botany circles, the roots are known as the hidden half, which is like, yeah, duh. But what they mean is they just don't understand it. And in the same way, and here's the thing too, is what's happening above the surface is almost entirely reflective of what's happening below the surface. They know it's true, they just can't explain how it works. And in the same way that a botanist or a scientist can't fully explain to you what's happening below the surface to produce what's happening above the surface, neither can a pastor or a theologian fully explain to you what God is doing in the depths of your heart as he works on your soul to produce what's happening above the surface. It's even more mysterious. I don't know or understand how God works in our heart to change us and mold us and make us more like him. I just know that he does. I can't explain to you all the ins and outs of how it works, but we see on the surface kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, and gentleness, and self-control. We see the fruits of the Spirit being born on the surface. We see graciousness, and magnanimity, and kindness, and patience being born out on the surface. But we can't explain to you in detail, with precision, what's going on under the surface. God just works in mysterious ways. We're told His ways are higher than our ways. We're told in this passage that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge. I wish I could explain to you everything that goes on in your heart when Jesus takes up residence in there and how he changes us. I just, I can't. I just know that he does. I can't explain to you. I have a friend back home. I went to my old church. His story, his testimony is that he was an alcoholic and dealt with it for years and woke up one morning after a bender and just felt awful, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically wrecked. And he cried out to God. He said, God, I hate this. I believe in you. I give you my life. Please take this addiction from me. And he will tell you, from that moment on, not only did he not ever touch alcohol again, he's never even wanted it. Now that, some would argue, is miraculous. It defies science. Addiction recovery does not work like that. But it did for him. I can't explain that to you. And I also can't explain why for some people the battles and struggles they carry into a profession of faith, for some people, those battles are instantly over. And for other people, they linger for mind-numbingly frustrating years and decades. I don't know why God removes some sin or some proclivities or some addictions overnight in some people and over long, difficult, tearful battles for others. I don't know why he does that, but that's what he does. I don't know how this concept works. One of my favorite psalms, one of my favorites. A concept that I love, that I think about a lot, is this psalm that says, Delight yourself in the laws of the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Which sounds like it means, it sounds like God can serve as kind of a genie if you'll just focus on Him. Right? Just delight yourself in the laws of God, and in His statutes, and His words, and His holiness holiness and pursuing the things of God. And he will give you anything that your heart desires, which for me used to be like maybe a yacht and a private chef. But now if I could just get two kids who weren't picky eaters and didn't wine, I'd be like, this is, hallelujah, I'm all in God. But that's not what that verse means, and we know that. What that concept means, if we delight ourselves in the things of God, in the holiness of God, in the pursuit of God, in the law of God, in the word of God, that as we do that, he will slowly, over time, shape our heart to beat in rhythm with his. And the things that we desire will be the very things that God desires, and in that way, he will give us the desires of our heart because God's will triumphs all eventually. Now, how does he shape our heart to beat with his? I don't know. For some, it's pain. For others, it's success. For others, it's time. For others, it's an experience. For some, it's reading. For some, it's music. For some, it's nature. For some, it's hiking. For some, it's church. For some, it's small group. For some, it's prayer. He uses all of those things to shape us over time so that our heart beats with his. How does he do it? I don't know, and there's no formula for everybody. If there was a formula that we knew, our small groups ministry would be a lot better. But we don't know the formula. We just know that when we're rooted in Christ, over time, he produces in our life fruit that sometimes we can't explain. This is why circling all the way back to the beginning, I believe that Paul prays that we would be rooted and established in the love of Christ. Because when we are rooted in the love of Christ, we are anchored against anything that life can throw at us. We are nurtured by our connection to Christ and can weather the storms and eventually can commune in ways that we don't yet understand. And then, because we're rooted in that way, we can have the strength to comprehend with all the saints the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God. So now that we understand why it's important to be rooted, we can come back in the next two weeks and better understand what it means when he talks about the saints, the love of Christ, and the fullness of God. We're now prepared to understand the rest of the passage. All right, let's pray and we'll worship together. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the folks that you've brought to grace. Thank you for the folks who aren't able to make it but are participating online. Lord, I pray that you would develop in each of us very deep roots, that we would be rooted in your love and your son in such a way that nothing can tear us apart from you. God, for those who have been cut to the quick, I pray that they would see a glimmer of hope for flourishing. For those for whom the winds are blowing pretty hard right now, I pray that you would keep them anchored to the hope of Christ. And God, if we can encourage people around us with this, I pray that we would. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.