Sermons tagged with Jesus

Good morning, Grace. I'm Nancy LaCivita, and I'm a partner here and one of your elders. This morning, I'll be reading from Psalm 134, a song of ascent. Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. May the Lord, maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion. Awesome. Thank you, Nancy. All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, which essentially means I am the pastor for students sixth grade through 12th grade. Our middle and high school students, I get to hang out with them every week. We meet on Sunday nights. We have the best time. We get rid of a lot of these chairs and we do really fun stuff that honestly we don't do enough of on Sunday mornings. I'm trying to bring in more of the game aspect to the Sunday morning experience, but truly it is such a blessing to be able to be the student pastor here at Grace. I've been here for a little over six years. I love our kids. I love our families, young families. If you are looking for advice on parenting, talk to our student parents because they're unbelievable. They're almost as incredible as our students. I love these kids and I love student ministry. Before I came here, I was a student pastor in Georgia. That's actually how Nate and I were connected. He led me as I was a student pastor at a church that he was also at in Georgia. I've basically been doing student ministry full-time since I graduated college in 2015. Go Dawgs. And I don't know how many of you know this. I'm actually from kind of a family of student pastors. I am one. Also, my brother's one. My younger brother is a student pastor in Athens, Georgia. Go Dawgs. Yeah, again. And my dad is currently a student and a college pastor in Dahlonega, but he has been doing student ministry full-time as his job for, I think, over 20 years at this point. Now, I will also say that my mom has been volunteering and teaching in student ministry way before us guys started doing any of it. So we followed in the blueprint, and we took it full-time, and we took it professional. But, Mom, I see you. I know you're probably watching or listening. And so I wanted to give her the shout out. But my dad actually went into student ministry and he went into ministry in general a little bit later in life than a lot of people do. And he actually started out in student ministry when I started out in student ministry. As I was going into middle school, he had accepted the call and accepted a job at his first church, meeting and loving and serving the students. Now, sometimes that doesn't go well. I have ministered to some really incredible kids and some really incredible families that love each other a lot, where the parents would be unbelievable leaders and youth group, and their kids are like, no way, I would never want you to be there. It's a pretty common thing when you're a middle schooler and high schooler. I know that it's going to shock some of you that sometimes they want their freedom as they start to get older. And that is the case a lot of times, but I didn't really have that choice. I will instead, all I have known of student ministry from the time that I was young, from the time I was in sixth grade was simply being ministered to by my dad. And while I know that being a pastor's kid sometimes doesn't always have the best connotation, sometimes people who grow up as pastor's kids kind of fall away from the church, but I'm just so thrilled that my brother and I fell in love with the church instead. And specifically, we fell in love with student ministry as a part of my dad's youth group. I'm sorry, I thought I might cry, and it is not yet, so we've got to lock in. And when I think back on that, I spent some time as I was going through this and thinking through just my journey and my life in this ministry and spending time in my dad's ministry and just wondering what made that ministry so special to me and what made it so special to everyone. And I'll tell you straight up, I think my dad is the best at it. I don't think that there is anyone who exists who does student ministry better than he does. I know that kind of sounds like I'm the five-year-old who's like, my dad can beat your dad up. I can give you a lot of names and I can give you a lot of numbers to reach out to of people who would agree. Over the course of his 20-something years, he has been so impactful on the lives of just unbelievable amounts of students. He has completely taken over and revamped and completely just turned on its head these ministries and turned them into these, from these small insignificant ministries to these thriving ministries that bled into and impacted the community at large. And I thought about what was he doing that made him that good? What was he doing that was bringing so many people in? What was he doing that was so impactful to the people around? I'm thinking it back and I'm like, all right, what what, what did we do at youth group that was that awesome that people were that drawn to or whatever. First, we did do Wednesday nights as our main nights. And I don't know who is from a smaller area than Raleigh and has gotten to experience having Wednesday night dinners at the church. Um, some, I got a few nods. Uh, Wednesday night dinners is basically when you're at a small local church, there are grandmas all over the place that come into the kitchen at whatever time on Wednesdays. They make everyone in the church dinner that shows up. So if you showed up for student ministry, then you got to have a dinner cooked for you by a lady by the name of Mama Jane. And if that name's not enough, you don't miss opportunities to eat food from Mama Jane. So maybe that was it. But dad did work really hard. He spoke well. He raised up leaders well. He planned great trips. We went on awesome camps. But as I continued to come up with all of those different lists of things, I'm like, none of these are more or less significant than really any student ministry that I've ever seen or been a part of. The only thing I can think of is this, that I don't think that there is a person that exists on this earth who loves students more deeply, more purely, and more Christ-like than my dad does. And whatever reason you walked in the door that first time, whatever drew you, Mama Jane, I heard you're making whatever. I heard my buddy is singing tonight, so I'm coming to support. Whatever drew you in that first time, it's the same thing that ended up drawing you in that hundredth time. That to be in the presence of my dad was to know what it meant to be loved. And when you experience that, you want more of it. And I wonder, if you have people like that in your life, dads that are student pastors, no. Are there people in your life that have those same qualities? You're connected for whatever reason you're connected. Maybe it's a family member. So you were born, and when you're born, it's like, hey, you have no other choice. You have to hang out with this person. It's your mom. Maybe it's a friend. You have the same hobby. You like pickleball. You like birding. You like playing golf. This person wants to play. He hits you up. She hits you up. Let's go do it. Maybe your kids are friends and you're like, well, we should hang out too. Whatever your reason for your connection for these people, I bet that you have at least one person that comes to mind where you go, man, you know what? What I love most about them and what draws me the most to them is simply who they are. To be in their presence and to be with them is to be loved. To enter into their presence is to enter into joy, is to enter into peace, to feel safe, to feel whole, to be made full. Do you have those people? If you do, I'd love to hear about them, first of all. But you know that there's no blessing greater. There's not a greater blessing on this earth than having people that make you feel whole and right and make you feel holy and completely loved and brings you joy and brings you peace by simply getting to be with them. It doesn't matter what you do with them. It doesn't matter how much time you have with them. It doesn't matter how often you're able to see them because every time you do, you just get to rest in their presence and it's good. The Psalm that Nancy read for us a few minutes ago, Psalm 134, that Psalm is a celebration of this type of love. That Psalm is a celebration of the fact that we have access to this. Celebration of the fact that God offers us the blessing of a perfect version of this love in his presence. Psalm 134 is the last psalm of ascent. For the last couple months, we've been going through this journey, if you will. We've been going through this ascension also, if you will. This series called Ascent. We've been going through these different psalms. And as Mikey said, these pilgrims, these Israelites who are traveling upwards, they're traveling up the mountain to Jerusalem to be in the temple of God and to be able to bless and spend time with God. All of the journey, all of the hardships, all of the everything that is involved in a journey up a mountain for one single solitary purpose. And Psalm 134 is the resolution of what that purpose is. Can we read it together? Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the top of this mountain. What's their goal? What's their purpose? It's to simply be able to rest and enjoy and rejoice in the presence of God. You can see on your notes, if you're looking at them or if you have them, that the title of this is called Blessing. And it's called Blessing because of something that I learned through research in this psalm. Because in this psalm, there is the word bless. We saw it. It's right there. May the Lord bless you from Zion. But I wouldn't say it's the most significant part of this until I did a little bit more research. This series that we've been going through, we've been reading through this book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, and it is kind of, we've used it as a guide for our series. And I learned through that, Eugene Peterson writes that when the word bless is used here. In Hebrew, it's the word blessing. It's the word bless that it talks about that when God is blessing us, he is blessing us in the way that he is coming down, that he is making himself known to us. He is making himself ours. And he, let's see, you know what? I'm just gonna read this quote. It's so good. The passage describes what God does to us and among us. He enters into covenant with us. He shares the goodness of his spirit and his creation and the joys of his redemption. He empties himself among us and we get what he is and that is blessing. To understand that is to realize and to understand that the blessing that each and every one of those Israelites, what they were pursuing, the goal and the prize for their long and their harrowing journey to Jerusalem was nothing more and was nothing less than God himself. And to connect with him deeply and to connect with him intimately and to rejoice, put your hands up and rejoice in his presence. And that same exact deep and intimate connection is offered to us as well. As Christians, our motivation for living out our faith should be to enter into God's presence. As we've gone through this ascension, as we've talked about this literal physical journey of the Israelites, of these people, these pilgrims that are journeying upwards, we've used it as kind of a connection and as a backboard to also describe that, hey, we, each one of us in this room, is also taking a journey upwards as well. That we are taking a spiritual journey somewhere. Whether we're ascending upwards towards heaven, we are all ascending or going or moving in some way, even if it's just through time. But as Christians, we are called to make this discipleship journey. We're called to step and to move ever closer and ever nearer, just like these people were as they were heading up and moving up to Jerusalem. I love the way that Psalm 1611 puts it. Can we read that together? You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of God, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. All right, there we go. We've got the path. This is perfect. This is such a perfect, because we're talking about a journey. We're talking about making steps. All right, so God gives us a path. He makes the path of life known to us. Okay, so in our life, we have this path. And on this path, if we will move towards him, if we will take steps ever closer towards him, what we are doing is walking into what he calls fullness of joy. I think sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we forget that this thing that we're doing when we worship, when we come to church, when we're listening to the sermon, when we do all this stuff, it's for joy. It is to be able to experience and witness the presence of God, and in the presence of God is fullness of joy. There's this pastor named John Piper, and he calls it Christian hedonism. For those of you who know the word hedonism, you're like, oh, this feels weird. Hedonism, I'm giving you guys a lot of terms today. Hedonism is basically this term that describes doing everything to serve yourself. I am going to seek and pursue pleasures for myself as much as I'm able to do. Not great. But what John Piper says is Christian hedonism is this, that this verse says that the best and most joy-filled version of your life possible can only be found in the presence of God. And so the most self-serving thing you can do, the thing that will bring you the most joy, the thing that will bless you the most is simply by moving and taking steps towards God. And guess what? When you're taking steps towards God, when you're serving yourself by unlocking this joy that you never knew existed, you're bringing everyone along with you. Because when you know joy, so do the people around you. And that's my reminder. I know that, you know, this is a lot of like, all right, sweet. That's a lot of quotes from a lot of pastors. Way to go, Kyle. We should live for God more. It'll give us the most joy. But think about this practically. All right, let's do an exercise together. I want you to think about the people in your life who are the most connected and the most committed to their faith. The people who you would put as a pillar of like, this is the person that I would strive to be in my faith. They love the Lord well, whatever. How would you describe those people? The people in my life that I know, they're the most joy-filled. They're able to offer the most love because they're the people who've experienced the most love. In a world where everyone needs more and needs the next thing and needs to grow, they are the people who are the most content. They're the people that are most at peace in a world of anxiety and fear. Man, think about my dad. You think he just fell into loving like that? No. My dad wasn't a Christian until college. He met my mom. He pursued my mom, and my mom was like, can I offer you Jesus instead? Because I'm not interested otherwise. And he was like, well, you're pretty, so I'll come to church. So I guess my mom used her spiritual gift of being pretty. I don't know. But in my dad's pursuit of my mom, he fell head over heels in love with Jesus. Living a life away from Jesus, a longer life away from Jesus than a lot of us have who've grown up in the church, is to be able to just fully recognize and understand and be rocked by the grace and the goodness and the forgiveness of God. And because of that, I watch him. And if he was standing right here and you watched him worship, he would look just as joy-filled as the first day that he experienced the goodness and the grace of God, because every day since he continues to pursue and is the most joy-filled and love-filled person that I know in my life. The people who pursue God are the people who are characterized in the ways that we wish we could be characterized in. And yet, we still don't do it sometimes, man. I wonder, like, I'm like, okay, I know that there are joys beyond compare that come simply from making steps towards God, making God my priority, discipleship, taking my next step of obedience, whatever language we want to use. So what's the deal, man? Why don't we do it? Why don't I do it? And as I thought through that, I was like, you know what? I can think of a couple of reasons that I don't. And if we walk through those reasons, then maybe you can find yourself in them. Maybe you have also felt or had a hard time experiencing God because of these things that hold you back in the same way they hold me back. And maybe we can talk through those. And as we talk through them, maybe together, we can be people who strive towards Jesus and the presence and the goodness of God. I think that the first thing that, oh, if you want to fill in the blank, I realize that oftentimes our life of faith isn't marked by the joy of God's presence. Ultimately, we know that there are times where as much as we know that we should pursue God, we still don't because life gets in the way. First reason I think this could be is maybe you haven't experienced the joy of salvation through repentance. I know there's probably, there may be people in this room who have not become Christians yet, who have not accepted this love of Christ, this forgiveness of Christ, that Christ came, lived a perfect life, died on your behalf, and was raised on your behalf, and have not come to the saving knowledge that, hey, I want to be a part of this. I want to be part of this God who made a way for me to be able to experience him. If that's you, I want you to hear this verse. And I just want you to ruminate on this one thing. Romans 2.4 says, God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance. When we think about our sins and our shortcomings and the ways that we fall short in our life, it's sometimes hard to separate those from our shame. We know this, you know this. Think about the things that you do wrong to your kids or to your friends or to your husband, your wife. Wrongdoing oftentimes leads to shame, but it is, as Romans says, God's kindness that is intended to lead us to repentance. As you see and recognize your sin, allow you to not ruminate on the shame that comes. Don't let it be the fear of God that brings you to him, but instead seek out his kindness. Seek out his love. Seek out the grace that God offers every single one of us if only we would believe. Now look, we're going to stay on the first one. I know most of, a lot of the people in this room are Christians. But I've got a question for you. We just did a repentance sermon. They just did a repentance sermon. I think sometimes we say yes to Jesus. We repent. We say yes. Praise God. I'm a Christian now. And I to ask, was that the last time you repented? If so, it's time to do it again. How about this? Is yesterday the last time you repented? If so, it's time to do it again. Repentance isn't a one-time thing. It's not a sometimes thing. It's an all-the-time thing. Matthew says to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Every time we repent, what we are doing is we are putting God in his place and saying, God, you are good and I am not. Thank you for your grace. Allow me to get rid of this sin that is holding me down and allow me to experience your joy to the fullest with nothing, nothing that is holding me back from you. Every time we repent, we have to turn to praise. Every time we repent, we have to turn to thankfulness. And so if you're in this step and you are a Christian there, I still think we can up our repentance game, if you will. If God has new mercies every morning, then guess what? We have access to new mercies every morning. How many of us are taking hold and taking action on making those a part of our daily existence and our daily life? The second thing is unbelievably wordy, and I'm very sorry. Are you currently settling for the supplemental blessings of God and deferring enjoyment of the presence of God until heaven? All right, sweet. Everyone got that? I'm sorry for how wordy that is. Essentially, here's what I'm saying. I think sometimes it's easy for us to go like, sweet, boom, I'm a Christian. That's awesome. I'm a Christian now, and guess what, God? I am going to bless you for all of the things that you've done for me. I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for my house. I'm going to say the blessing, and when I say the blessing, I'm going to say thank you for all the things. I can't wait to enjoy all the things that you've given me, and then I also can't wait because when I get to heaven and eternity, God, I'm going to enjoy you forever. There is no blessing greater than enjoying God. And sometimes we forget that the Jesus that died for our eternity died for our right now just as much. The second that we give our hearts and the second that we give our lives to Jesus, we have access to him. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the ability to witness and ruminate and spend time in the joy of his presence every single day. Another quote from the book says that God gets down on his knees among us, gets on our level and shares himself with us. He does not reside far off. He kneels among us. God shares himself with us generously and graciously. The perfect creator of the universe says, I want you to be with me right now. Why would we settle for anything less? If that's you, this series has been about discipleship. If that's you, we just did a series where Nate did a specific Kermans, Kerman, Kerman the frog. Nate did a specific sermon called Step Takers. If you're in the habit of just sitting and chilling and saying, you know what? I'm good, y'all. I'm going to enjoy just the blessings that I've got in my life and I'm going to focus on you later, God, thanks. If that's you, I would encourage you to look around, to spend some time in prayer. Maybe go check out that step-taker sermon and just spend some time looking and seeing, hey, what if I did take a step forward? What if this journey of faith wasn't just me sitting and watching time pass away, but it's me stepping forwards and stepping deeper into the love of Christ? The third way, I think a lot of us get stuck here. I think this is a really difficult one, and I think all of us probably have experienced this at one point or another. Maybe you have been living for God, but your obedience feels devoid of the joy of his presence. Have you ever done what you feel like you're supposed to be doing? And it's like, God, I don't really see where you're at. I'm doing it. Nate said to take my next step of obedience. I'm four steps down and I haven't felt you once. I haven't experienced you once. What's the deal, God? Come on. If you find yourself here, my encouragement for you would be to check your motivation, would be to take an internal pressure and an internal temperature of, why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing what I'm doing because God is good and I want to be and experience his presence? Or am I doing it because I want to set a good example for my kids? Am I doing it because I want other people to be like, that guy's got a good head on his shoulders? Am I doing it because, you know what, it's Sunday, so we should probably go? Am I doing it because, you know what, I ought to do it? The shame and the guilt's going to get me if I don't, so I might as well do it. It's very easy and a very real thing to do things, quote unquote, without God involved. I'm gonna be honest with you guys about something. I tried to write this sermon without the help of prayer. I am doing the literal like, hey, like the pinnacle of what I could do today to take my step of obedience, to live out my faith, is to be able to make a sermon for you guys and share with you guys the joy of God if we'll simply allow him in. And I forgot to allow him in. And so a few days ago, I'm going to be really honest with you. I mean, Ashlyn knows this. None of you do. I had a rough day because I couldn't figure out. I couldn't crack it. I couldn't understand. I felt overwhelmed. I felt frustrated. I was like, God, why am I even here? I'm trying to do this thing for you and you're like, and you're not coming through at all. I don't have an ending to this. I don't know what to do. And I was like, you know what? Guess how many times I prayed about it? Zero. It is very easy to do what we believe is the will of God without God actually being at the center of it or even involved at all. Man, once I realized that, it changed how I approached it. I put the sermon down. I'm like, God, I need you. And wouldn't you know that writing the rest of the sermon, man, there was just a lot more joy and a lot more peace that came from it. Turns out the presence of God is pretty sweet. Turns out the presence of God is the only thing that can sustain us if we're trying to take our next step of obedience. If that's you, I would refer you back to the top. Recognize where your motivation maybe falls short. Repent of that. And make your next step of obedience one where you're stepping towards Christ. If God offers fullness of joy, if God offers new mercies every single morning, I promise you he wants you to have them. He wants you to experience them. So all you gotta do is ask, man. Wake up. God, what would you have for me today? Not only that, but God, whatever you have for me today, will you just show me where you're in it? And will you be at the center? Because I don't wanna settle for anything less than your presence. I'm thankful for everything else around me. I'm thankful for everything in my life, but God, more than anything, I simply want you. And maybe we establish a different motivation. And maybe your motivation is this, that every step of obedience is a step deeper into God's loving presence to which nothing compares. When we step towards God, when we take a step of obedience, the goal, the prize, the win of every single step is that we get to be closer and deeper into the loving presence of God. And I promise you, there is no sweeter thing. Let's pray. God, we love you and we're thankful for you. God, thank you for the fact that you are enough. Would you work in our hearts, in our minds, and in our actions to where we could fully and brightly see and understand that. Lord, we are so thankful for you. Thank you for being a God who not only sent his son to die for us, but did so so that we could know you right now all the way to eternity. We love you and we're thankful for you. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Wes. I'm one of the elders here, and I'm going to start us off with a reading from Psalms 131. And yes, I've joined the club now, too. My heart is not proud. Lord, my eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters of things too wonderful for me, but I have calmed and quieted myself. I am like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child, I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore. Thank you, Wes. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. We are in the fifth part of our series called Ascent. It's inspired by the book by Eugene Peterson called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It's a hugely impactful book for me and for some of the folks on staff, and I've encouraged you guys to pick it up and read it. And hopefully you've started to do that and it's impacting you in similar ways. The book Long Obedience in the Same Direction is based off of, and you should know this by now because we're in week five and we've been saying this every week. It's based off of the Psalms of Ascent that are found in Psalms chapters 120 through 134 that were meant to be read and sung and worshiped through on a family's pilgrimage to Jerusalem on their way to go worship. So it's worship to get their hearts and their minds right on the way to go worship. And so the whole idea of the series has been to go on a journey of spiritual pursuit of God as I challenged you guys in September to let's all take our spiritual lives, our spiritual health more seriously and begin to take intentional steps in that direction. The series has been designed to help us with that. And so this morning we arrive at Psalm 131, which is a Psalm that places its focus squarely on this idea of humility. And humility is an idea that I think that we probably think incorrectly about. I think we probably default to an unhelpful definition and application of humility. I remember a few years ago, and I think I've mentioned this story in church before. I can't remember if I have or not. So if you've heard it before, if it sounds familiar, I'm not going to belabor it, but I think it helps me make my point today. A few years ago, I was with some family and family friends, and we were at this get-together, and the guy whose house it was at said, hey, come help me get some food for everybody. I said, great. So we go outside. We get in this car. It was a brand-new Mercedes S-Class, super nice car, over $100,000 vehicle. And I get in there, and I go, oh, is this new? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I just got it last month. I said, do you like it? He goes, I love it. It's great. I said, it looks great, man. These seats are nice. They got the cooling things. You got the screen across here. This seems like a really great car. And he goes, yeah, it's just a car. Just gets me from A to B. And I just went, okay. And we started talking about something else. But in my head, I thought, oh, crud. Just a car. A 2015 Prius with 150,000 miles is just a car, okay? $115,000 S-Class is not just a car. That's a choice. And if that's a choice you want to make, that's fine. I'm not here to critique it, okay? I have no criticism for what he chooses to do with his resources. And any of you that have nice vehicles, I'm not trying to criticize those. But here's what I will criticize is when someone, when you spend $115,000 on a car and someone goes, this is nice, don't try to act like you're driving a Civic, okay? I just found it to be disingenuous, and I think it was his attempt to be humble and modest, but I found it annoying. Kind of like those people that you have in your lives that you can't give a compliment to. Compliments won't stick to them, right? You go tell Aaron he did a great job leading worship last week, and he just goes, oh, glory to God. Like, he won't accept it. I I've seen women do this to each other you show up at a wedding or at an event or the the I joke that the Addis Jamari uh night of new beginnings every year is like uh Grace Raleigh prom everybody gets dressed up for it when you go and a group of women standing around you're like oh you look so good I love your dress and they're just like oh this I just got it at Dillard's it's deal. You know, like they won't just say thank you. I feel pretty too. They won't say that ever. You go over to someone's house and it's wonderful. This meal is fantastic. Oh, thanks. My husband did all the hard work. And we know good and well your husband didn't do anything. But there's this idea in our culture, and I think particularly in Christian culture, maybe Southern culture, which how do you unparse those things, where humility is really false modesty. And I think that's just an insufficient way to think about humility because I think if we can actually understand what biblical godly humility is, that there's an efficacy to that that we really probably haven't considered when it comes to humility. So this morning I want to posit to you that maybe this can be a working definition of humility that we understand together. Maybe humility is the result of how we estimate our sin and ourselves. Maybe humility, true biblical humility, is how we estimate our sin. And when I say our sin, what I mean is the current situation of our sin, the current sins with which we wrestle, the things that entangle us and cause us to not run our race that we need to cast aside, the current sins that we deal with, and the capacity that we have for sin in the future. If we want to be truly humble, we need to adequately and accurately estimate our current sin situation and our capacity to sin in the future. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here this morning because I think what we'll find is that we're all on the same page and it would be a little bit of a redundant sermon. I think how to accurately estimate ourselves is where we can make some more interesting headway. But I can't talk about biblical humility without addressing the fact that it's immediately intertwined with how we understand our sin condition because of verses like this. I'm going to read from James 4, 6 through 10. It's on your bulletins, but it's not in the notes. James 4 says this, will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James, when he says humble yourself, when he says that really ought to be scary term for us, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. I'm not exactly sure what God's opposition looks and feels like, but I don't want to know. But he gives grace or favor to the humble. James immediately ties humility into an awareness of and disgust with our sin. You see that? He immediately says, be humble. And to be humble, he says we have to weep and wretch before the Lord, that our joy has to turn into mourning, that our laughter has to turn into sorrow, that we need to be brought to a place where we are rock bottom with our sin, where we despise our sin and what it does to us and those around us. Now, I'm not going to belabor this because any point that I would make here would be very similar to the points that I preached in part two of this series on repentance. The first Psalm, Psalm 120, is a Psalm on repentance. It's how the Psalms of Ascent start off. And I said, no journey towards God can begin without the first step being repentance. And for repentance, we have to come to a place of disgust with our sin and who we are and what it's doing to the people around us. And that's what James is echoing. And that's what leads to true humility, which is why we're talking about it today. Now, as it relates to being realistic about our current sin condition and our capacity to sin in the future, I think that Christians, in my experience, kind of fall into three categories. And I've been in church world, I have no memories outside of church. I've been in church world my whole life. These are the blocks of Christians that I've experienced. So the main block of Christians that I've experienced are the ones who, when you say, how are you doing with sin? How's sin in your life? And what do you think of your capacity to sin? You think terrible, wretched, I'm miserable. I'm so glad everyone in the room does not know what the sins that I'm dealing with, the things I'm thinking of right now. When I say, what sin do you deal with in your life? For many of us in the room, instantly, we know which one it is for us or five, right? And for you, you walk around constantly aware of your sin. On Tuesday, I was sitting in a recliner, not moving, watching TV, and I got a crick in my neck. I don't know. I'm getting old. I guess this is what it feels like. And it's gotten a little bit better every day since. All right, I can do this now. But on Monday, on Wednesday morning, if Lily, my daughter, needed something, I had to go, yeah. And every, on Wednesday, everything I did, every reflex that turned my head, every way that I sat, every way that I laid, every time I tried to take pressure off of it, it didn't matter. Sometimes it felt a little bit bad. Sometimes it felt a lot a bit bad. But I was all day acutely aware of it. And if you've ever had a crick in your neck for days afterwards, it is part of your consciousness. That pain is there all the time. And for a lot of us, we carry sin in the same way. There's a sin that we're aware of that we need to fix, that we need to eradicate, that we need to start doing or stop doing. And we don't do it. And so anytime we're in church, anytime we're in small group, anytime we're exposed to spiritual things, any movement, any slight movement of our head, we feel it, we're reminded of it, we feel bad about it, we want to get rid of it. That's fine. That's actually a good, humble place to be. It's not a good place to stay, which is why we should go through repentance and not exist there. But we should all have a sense of our capacity for wretchedness. The second category of Christians that I've seen and how we think about our sin is kind of the group of people that goes, you know what? I'm doing okay, right? I'm not an alcoholic. I don't have things in the shadows that I'd be ashamed for other people to see. When they talked about me being embarrassed if everybody knew my sins, I mean, maybe a little bit, but not really. We think we're kind of doing okay. That's great. But what I would ask you is, is your doing okay really just you playing the comparison game between you and people who are not? And going, I'm doing fine? Is your okay complacency? Is it laziness? Is it fear or cowardice? Is it a lack of engagement? I would argue almost always that it's just simply a lack of awareness of ourselves. If you think you're doing okay, ask your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your close friends. In the last three to five years of my life, do you see me increasingly growing in the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, do you see in my wake a greater production of those things? Do you see me growing closer to God and increasing in zeal and increasing in discipline and increasing in patience and wisdom and joy? Do you see these things manifesting in my life? Because if for the last three to five years those things are not increasing in greater measure year over year, then what I would tell you is, buddy, you're not doing okay. You're stagnant. And if you're stagnant, you're going back. But I do think there's a third group that genuinely is doing okay. And you say, no, I am increasing in those ways. I don't want to make space for that. Because I'm not trying to make everybody feel bad. But if you are doing okay, if this is a season in your life where you feel closer to God than you've ever felt, you have more earnest desire for him than you've ever had, I think the humble thing to do there, the thing to help us accurately see our sin is to understand I'm in a good spot now, but nothing that has happened has changed my capacity for sin in the future. There but for the grace of God go I. I don't care how good you're doing. You're two bad weeks away from some of the worst decisions you've ever made in your life. And so if you are in a good place, look at that as grace from God. That every day and week and month that's gotten you there is a gift of grace that he gave you where he gave you the clarity to allow him in your life to shape your character, to sanctify you, and to make you more like Christ. But it's God's working in you that puts you there. So the first thing we do to seek humility is we have an adequate perception of our sin. We hold that well. We understand our current sin situation and our capacity to sin in the future. But I didn't want to belabor that or spend a lot of time there this morning because I think having an accurate estimate of ourselves is something that, because I think as Christians we've probably all thought about the things I just said in some capacity. But I'd be willing to bet that not all of us have thought about humility in this light and accurately estimating ourselves in this way. The first verse of Psalm 131 speaks to this. I want to bring our attention back to it. My heart is not proud, Lord. My eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. In long obedience in the same direction at the beginning of every chapter, you're given the psalm. But it's the psalm from the message that was translated by Eugene Peterson to be very easily approachable. And the way that he phrases it there is, God, I'm not too big for my britches. I don't think that I'm a bigger deal than I really am. And I think that's a great concept. But the problem is that I think we've tended to apply that principle. My eyes are not haughty. My spirit is not proud. I'm not too big for my britches. I don't think I'm too big of a deal. I think we've applied that the way that my family friend applied it to his new car. It shows up as a false modesty. It shows up as disingenuous. It shows up as, oh, you know, I didn't have anything to do with that. Oh, no, that's not me. It shows up as that friend that won't let compliments stick. And you just want to grab him by the shoulders and say, can I just please bless you? Will you accept this? Will you just admit that you've done something good in someone's life for once? And we apply this incorrectly. I think we often mistake humility as the disingenuous reduction of ourselves. I think we often seek to be humble. God opposes the proud, gives grace to the humble, So I'm not going to be, to run from pride, I'm going to be extra reductive of myself and who I am. I have no talents. I have nothing to offer. I've never done anything good. Even like, I used to do this. I've tried to move away from it. But if somebody said, hey, you know, that was a great sermon. I would say either, yeah, hey, glory to God, thank you so much. Like, nothing to do with me. Or I would say, yeah, well, you know, blind squirrel and things. Like, not accepting any of it. And I think when we're the person trying to compliment, when we're the person who sees other people, when we're the person who sees what other people have to offer, and we can't get that person to agree with us, not in a braggadocious way, not in a haughty way, just in an honest way, it becomes frustrating and disingenuous. So I actually think that true humility is realizing our abilities, our gifts, the things at which we excel, are actually gifts from God. He created us with those gifts, and he gave them so that we might use them to build God's kingdom, which is a wonderful invitation from God that fills our life with purpose beyond ourselves. It's incredible how it all works together. So let's say that you're smart. God made you smart. And here's the thing. We have a lot of smart people in this room. I think about, Grace, that we have an unusual concentration of capable and intelligent leadership. Some of us bring the average way down. Others of us are really gifted in this area. So let's say you're smart. So, what'd you do to be smart? You were born smart, right? Let's say you're fast. You can run really fast. So, you were born fast. What'd you do at three to get fast? Nothing. Let's say you're funny. Great. You're going to brag about it? Did you make yourself funny? No. Somebody making fun of you when you were a little kid and giving you trauma made you funny. No, I'm just kidding around. God gave you the capacity for humor. Let's say you're a leader. You're a good leader. People seem to follow you. They seem to rally around you. When you use your voice, people tend to listen and you don't really understand, but people just always kind of get behind you and kind of go where you're going. So, did you make yourself that way? You're hospitable, or you're kind, or you're gracious. Whatever your gifts may be, my attitude about those gifts with you and with me is who cares? Who cares? The Bible says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. He created all of us with gifts and abilities and a path to good works that we should walk in. We're told in Corinthians that we are the body of Christ and that within the body, the nose, the toes, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the arms, they all have a job. We were all gifted to be a part of that body. What do I care about what your gift is and what my gift is? The flip side of this is being haughty about it, is being proud of it. Let's say you're smart and you're proud of the fact that you're smart. And you kind of think everybody else can be a bunch of dummies sometimes. And if they don't think about it like you think about it, maybe you find yourself gracious by thinking, well, I don't think they're that smart. So it's probably hard going through life that stupid. I'll give them some grace. I've never personally thought that. It's not my struggle. If you're successful, it's to be haughty about that success. I've done it. I've earned it. I put together the amalgamation of ambition and perception and leadership and intelligence that produced in me what has been successful in the business place. I am proud of that, and we walk around with our chest puffed out because I'm a big deal. You know what you're like when you do that? You're like the teenage kid whose parents decide to buy them a $100,000 Range Rover. If that's what you want to do for your kid, I'd like to be adopted. But, not criticizing you. But you're like the kid whose parents buy you the $100,000 Range Rover, and you drive to school, and you park next to the kid in the 2015 Civic, and you make fun of them for it. You look down on them for it. Look at your stupid car. My car's so great, your car's so dumb. Yeah. Jerk. You didn't do a thing to earn that Range Rover except breathe for 16 years. All right? That's your daddy's money or your mommy's money. That is not your money or your granddaddy's money. I don't know where you got it, but you didn't get it. That's what I know. And that kid probably earned his car. Which one of you is better off for that? When we walk around proud of our gifts and abilities, yeah, I'm smart. Yeah, I'm talented. Yeah, I'm kind. I'm nicer than everybody else. And we take pride in that. I take care of other people better than everybody else, and we take pride in that. When we walk around proud, one pastor put it this way, we were born on third base, and we act like we hit a triple. We should not do that. Once you've identified where your gifts and abilities lie, the absolute wrong thing is to start to give yourself credit for putting those things in there because you didn't make yourself that way. God did. And this is what gives Christians a unique path to humility because we're able to go, yeah, God made me smart. So I have a capable and curious mind. God, how can I use that to further your kingdom? God gave me a good voice. So, God, how can I use this voice to bring glory to you and grow your kingdom? God made me a good leader. God made me good at making money. God made me good at building things and companies. God made me good at hosting people and making them feel welcome. I have this unnatural ability where when I sit down with someone I don't know, they just start telling me all of their problems. Okay, great. That's a gift that God has given you. Who cares about bragging about it? The important question is, once we acknowledge it, is to go, great, I've been made this way. You've been made that way. Nobody cares. What's the best way to use and deploy this gift to build God's kingdom? And in that way, we exist in this posture of gratitude. God, I'm so grateful that you made me the way you did. And then it gives me the opportunities that it does. Please help me to always hold them in the proper light and to use them to bring glory and honor to you and to build your kingdom. When we have this posture of humility, where we're willing to be honest with ourselves, it's not bragging to admit and to acknowledge that God has gifted us in certain ways. It's actually in concurrence with all of Scripture because we know that He does. It's simply estimating ourselves accurately and holding them properly to know that those gifts were not given to make our lives better. They were given so that we might participate in the building of God's kingdom. I think Jeremiah the prophet probably said it best when he says this in chapter 9 verses 23 and 24. or the strong boast of their strength, or the rich boast of their riches. But let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord. God says, if you want to boast, don't boast because you're wise. Don't boast because you're smart. Don't boast because you're capable or successful or kind or generous or hospitable. Don't boast about any of that stuff. If you want to boast, boast in me and boast in this. Boast that you know me. Boast that you have the humility to know me, to recognize and have faith in me. Boast in who your heavenly father is. I was walking by before church started to get my last minute water. And as I walked by, my son John is three. As I walked by his room, he saw me and he goes, that's my dad. For everyone to know. If you're going to boast, boast like John, that when we see God, we go, that's my dad. That's my heavenly father. I know him. I'm his child. I'm proud to know him. Everything else is just a gift that your dad gave you so you can point other people towards him. That's all it is. To hold it in any different regard than that is foolish. Now, there's a flip side to this coin because not everybody in the room has the same comfort level with admitting their various gifts and abilities. There are some of you in the room. There are some people, when I say, hey, whatever your gifts and abilities are, they go, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, I got them. There are other people that when I go, whatever your gifts and abilities are, that you think to yourself, I'd love to know, because I don't have any. And I don't really have anything to offer anyone. I'm just kind of there. I'm nice. I do my part. I don't have anything in particular to offer God or his kingdom. The second verse in the psalm is for you. This verse says, but I have calmed and quieted myself. I am like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child, I am content. In the chapter that Peterson writes on this psalm, he points out these opposing sides of the humility coin. One is pride and haughtiness. And the other is infantilism. To infantilize ourselves unnecessarily. And he thinks that's the figurative language with I'm a weaned child because a child that isn't weaned, that still relies on its mama for sustenance day to day, can't yet be a productive member of society. And so the picture that he paints is once we are weaned, once we are separated, once we don't need somebody else for our daily sustenance, we can actually take our step into being a productive member of society and God's kingdom. And so it's actually harmful to refuse to acknowledge our gifts. And when we do that, when we think we have nothing to offer, when we've taken humility so far in the other direction, so far away from pride that we don't allow ourselves to even identify how God has gifted us and how we might be used. This psalm says we're like a child who's still a suckling. We're not yet ready to be productive. And I think that refusing to acknowledge our gifts actually makes us less productive as believers. Refusing to acknowledge that you have a good voice, that you have musical talent, that you're organized, that you lead well, that you build well, that you ask good questions without, by refusing to acknowledge how God made us we actually make ourselves less productive towards God's kingdom now I will admit to you and I don't think this is going to come as a shocker to anyone if you we all lean towards one side of that coin this is not the side to which lean. So I don't want to try to paint a picture like I don't struggle with pride somehow. I do. But there has been one very, to me, profound area in my life where this struggle has shown up. I went into vocational ministry when I was 19 years old. In the year 2000, I began to get paid to be a Christian. I just took my faith professional. That's all I did. Because I think that what I do is just be a professional Christian. I think everybody's got their part to play. Everybody has their gifts to apply, and we should just do it. Anyways. I've been in vocational ministry close to 25 years. And again, started in 2000 as a student staffer for a local Young Life Club. It took me until 2021, the summer of 2021, after I read Eugene Peterson's autobiography called Pastor. It took me 21 years of vocational ministry to say out loud, I believe God has called and purposed and designed me to be a pastor. Not simply a teacher of God's word, which is how I would have phrased it prior to, but a pastor, a shepherd, someone who has been called and purposed to look out for people, to draw people in to one another, to provide leadership for the corner of the kingdom to which he's assigned me, Grace Raleigh. It took me 21 years to acknowledge out loud that I believe God has designed me and purposed me to be a pastor and that he's gifted me in some capacity to be a leader so that I might serve his kingdom in that way. It took me 21 years to admit that because I thought it felt so arrogant for me to admit that before 2021, even though functionally I had served as a pastor for 20 years. It struck me as so arrogant and I had so much imposter syndrome about it that I could never say it out loud. I always considered myself less than that, apart from that, not quite made to be that. It took me so long to be able to admit that and simply say it out loud. And when I said it and when I admitted it, there wasn't an ounce of pride in it, I promise you. It was just coming to the place where I could admit what other people told me and what God has shown me that this is the way that he's gifted me and what he wants me to do and I think that there is a lot of you who are limiting yourself and your estimation of yourself by over-correcting pride towards a useless humility that's actually causing you to be less productive in God's kingdom than you could be. Since that revelation in 2021, I'm not looking for any of you to say like, yeah, I've noticed you've been a markedly better pastor since then. But here's what I know. Since then, I've accepted the mantle of the church far more readily than I did before. Since then, I understand my role with more acuity than I did before. Since then, I understand what I'm supposed to do and how I'm supposed to use my voice so much more accurately and clearly than before and unapologetically. And again, not because it's somehow gone to my head and now I think this is what I can do, but because I feel the weight of responsibility of where God has placed me and it does me no good to not acknowledge that weight. And it does you no good either. You have people around you waiting to be impacted towards God's kingdom. You have people in your lives who need you to walk with God. You have friends and neighbors and family members who will listen to your voice far more than you think they will if you'll simply acknowledge how God has made you to reach them. But refusing to accept it isn't humility. It's fear and overcorrection and dishonesty. And it's not godly humility. When we accurately estimate our sin and ourselves, we are perfectly positioned to build God's kingdom. When we have that first piece of the puzzle in place, I have an accurate estimate of my capacity to sin in the future and my current sin situation now. When we see that clearly as God sees it, and when we see ourselves as God sees us, you are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. We just all sang it together. When we really believe that and we see ourselves as God does, and we see our sin as God does, and our potential to sin as God does, and we don't hold our gifts as something we're proud of. We offer them up to God, and we have the courage to admit how he's gifted us. When we can do that and accurately see those things, we are perfectly positioned to build God's kingdom. Don't you see? Because we go, okay, sure, you may be good at this thing. Who cares? It's neither good nor bad. It just is. God, how should I use it? And I just wonder what could happen in your families if you decided to pursue true godly humility and saw your sin in yourself accurately the way that God does. Parents, most of the parents in the room that's still raising kids are over here parents what if what if the kids that grew up in your home had the clairvoyance to think when they were 16 years old, sure, I'm smart. So what? It's my job to figure out in the next decade how God wants me to use that in his kingdom. What if that's who you release into the wild? What if that's what we produce at Grace? What if your kids at 25 and 30 have careers and lives and are involved in things that are a result of true humility that you showed them and modeled for them. How much better would they be at this than you are? If we can do that now. When we pursue godly humility, we perfectly position ourselves to build God's kingdom. And it's a powerful thing. So let's no longer think of humility as simply a disingenuous modesty. Let's think of it as accurately holding a vision of who we are that agrees with God's vision for ourselves and pursues the future that he's designed for us. Let's pray. Father we thank you for. Who you are. We thank you for how you love us. We thank you for the gifts that you've given us. God, for those of us who have a tendency to let pride and haughtiness sneak in, to begin when we go unmonitored to think that we're somebody and we've done something special. Would you help us remember who we are and who you are and how you made us? And God, would we see what you see and hold our abilities as gifts that were given to us so that we might build your kingdom? Father, for those of us that struggle and might think that we don't have anything to offer, I pray that you would help us see through the people in our lives who love us, the way that you've gifted us so that we might be productive in your kingdom, so that the people around us who need us would see us and be pointed to you by us. God, I pray that we would be a church full of humble people, but not humble in the way that the world describes it. Humble in the way that you lay out so that we might be servants to you as we go. We thank you for all these things. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, guys. We want to invite you to stand as we just worship together this morning. Let's sing this together. There's a God. There's a God who is real and strong. He's alive and fights for his own. Let me hear you sing it out. Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Our eternity stepped into time The water turned into wine Come on, let's sing it. Come on. Ruler over earth and sky Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Let's sing this out together. Clap your hands. Sing it out. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing again when you are done. Endless praise to the Holy One. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Church, can we put our hands together this morning? Let's just celebrate. Come on. You guys can go ahead and have a seat. All right. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been going to Grace for a long time, this may be the first time in your life you've ever seen my face. I shaved down to a mustache so I could be Mario for Halloween. And now I'm actively trying to grow the beard back so that I don't scare you next week when I preach. So let's just get that out of the way because I'm getting a lot of weird looks in the lobby. All right, with that out of the way, I want to read to you this morning the first four verses from Psalm 122 as we continue in our series called Ascent, where we're looking at the different psalms of Ascent in Psalm 120 to 134. So here's the first four verses of Psalm 122. Listen to this. Every year in the fall, now for the past several years, we pause and we do a morning of worship where the whole service is an opportunity for us as a body to worship God together. We set aside the sermon for that morning, and we let ourselves be ministered to through song as we approach God's throne together. And it made a lot of sense to put this service here in the middle of the series ascent because of this psalm. Because in the middle of these psalms of ascent, in the middle of praising, they stop to acknowledge, they stop before they enter Jerusalem. We're standing at the gates of Jerusalem. So they're not going in yet. They're going in to worship. But before they go to worship, what do they do? They pause and they worship. And last year we did a series called The Songs We Sing. And we focused intentionally on worship for a large portion of the fall. And one of the things that I said over and over and over again is that corporate worship, raising our voices together, singing to God together, proclaiming his praises together is probably the most important thing we can do as a body of believers on a Sunday morning. I tell people all the time, you can download all the best sermons on Wednesday. The best speakers in the world, the most dynamic sermons, you can download those on a Tuesday while you drive to work. You can listen to those anytime you want to. What you can't download is community and corporate worship. What you can't fabricate on your own and experience during the week is what we're going to experience this morning. Coming together, unified as one voice, praising our God together. And as we were coming to church this morning, my wife Jen pointed out to me, this is really an important time this morning because we are in such a consumeristic culture and even time in that culture. We're inundated with news, especially now in this season. We're sitting and we're listening and we're taking in information and the TV is on and a podcast is going or the phone is on or noise is being made and we're just being bombarded with information all the time as we go throughout our days. So it's right and good to pause and not be told things, not have to sit and listen for much longer, but to participate and to praise and allow it to just be your thoughts and your God as we worship together. And I believe that if we do that, that God will speak to each of us in uniquely encouraging ways today as we lift our voices. So let's sing loud, let's give ourselves over to it, and let's allow God to move as we pause to praise him. Please stand and we'll continue to worship. We worship the God who was. We worship the God who is. We worship the God who evermore will be. He opened the prison doors. He parted the raging sea. My God, He holds the victory. Yeah. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out right back. We sing to the God who always makes a way. Because he hung up on that cross. Then he rose up from that grave. My God still rolling stones all way. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. We were the beggars, now we're royalty. We were the prisoners, now we're running free. We are forgiven, accepted, deemed by His grace. Let the house of the lord sing praise we were the beggars now we're royalty we were the prisoners now we're running free we are forgiven accepted redeemed by his grace let the house of the lord sing praise All right, Grace, come on, sing it out. Here we go. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy your praise. We shout out your praise. We shout out your praise. Church, can we put our hands together and let's just celebrate this morning. God is great. Thank you. I've seen a glimpse of your heart a billion years. Still I'll be singing. How can I praise you enough? How can I praise you enough? You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in glory. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Creation calls all to the Savior. We are alive for your praise. In earth and sky, no one is higher. Our God of wonders, you reign. Our God of wonders, you reign. You are the Lord all mine. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Not to us, but to your name, we lift up all praise. Not to us, but to your name name we lift up all praise not to us but to your name we lift up all you are the lord almighty outshining all the stars in glory Great. Lift your voice. Yes. I'm sorry. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you. All of my days I want to praise the tower of refuge and strength. Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you Shout to the Lord All the earth let us sing Power and majesty Praise to the King Mountains bow down I see joy I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Psalm 98, 1 through 9 says, His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Burst into jubilant song with music. Make music to the Lord with the harp and the sound of singing. With trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Let the rivers, to lift our voice, to sing. It doesn't matter if you play an instrument or not. It doesn't matter if you can sing well or not. We are commanded and called to shout to the Lord, to give him glory and to worship his name. So we're going to continue singing this song and we're going to worship the God of all creation. Sing my Jesus. I give all of my days. I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love. My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength. Let's sing it. Shout. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise, all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name I sing for joy at the work of your hands Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Sing this with me. Silence the boast of sin and shame Heavens are rolling The praise of your glory For you are raised to life again You had no rival You had no equal Come on, sing it out. Come on. what a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Let's sing it again. Yes. How great Thou art. We serve a great God. A God whose love is unconditional. A God whose love is never failing and never ending. And whatever, whatever moment you may be wrestling with and whatever moment life may have you in, can we just, can we just declare that truth? Can we just lift up our voices, sing this out, then sings my soul. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Lord, we just ask you to hear our heart. Hear our cry this morning, Lord, that we believe that you are great. Your greatness isn't dependent upon our season. Your greatness isn't dependent upon what's happening to us. We're around us, Lord. You are great and you are worthy of our praise. And so this morning we offer it. We just put you in your proper place, which is above all. We just seek to give glory and honor to your name, Father. Church, can I just ask you this morning, what reason might you have to be grateful? What reason might you have to just give God praise and thanks? With that in mind, can we just do that? We get to this portion of the chorus that says, so I throw up my hands and I praise you again and again and I sing hallelujah. Hallelujah simply means this, I give praise to Jehovah. I give praise to the King of kings in this symbolic gesture of lifting my hands. Father, I surrender all to you. I give you all and I trust all. It's just offering our thanks and our gratitudes. All my words for sure I've got nothing new How could I express All my gratitude I could sing these, as I often do. Every song was dear to you and me. Come on, let's sing. So I throw up my head and praise you again and again. All that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah. I know it's not much. I'm nothing else fit for a king. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I've got just Come on. so i throw up my hands and praise you hold back. Let's just offer a praise inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. Come on, church. Lift it up. Come on, my soul. Don't you get shy of me. Lift up your soul. You've got a lion inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. All right, give it all you've got. Let's shout it out. All right, one more time, shout it Lord. Shout it. So open my hands. Praise you, Jesus. Because all that I have is a hallelujah Come on, shout it out. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. All that I have is a hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. And I know it's not much. I have nothing. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I sing it again so I throw up my hands. So I throw up my hands. And I praise you again and much, but nothing else fit for a king except for a heart singing. We sing hallelujah. We say hallelujah. Hallelujah. are called to worship you. We are called to shout out your name, God. We are grateful, Lord. I pray for everyone in this room. I pray that you are stirring in our hearts, God. We feel you moving in this place, Lord. Thank you. Amen. You can have a seat. We hope you guys are having a good morning so far. I wanted to share with you something that really stood out to me as we read through Psalm 122. As Nate said a little earlier, we're in this sermon series called Ascent. And really what we're doing is we're looking at this collection or a portion of the collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. And it's just songs that the Israelites would sing while they were in route to Jerusalem, while they were on their journey. They would just sing these songs. And then you get to Psalm 122, and I thought it was really interesting that on their way to worship, they begin to sing the song about worship, right? And if you read it, Psalm 122 really reads more like a prayer than it does anything else. And so you may have heard me say this before, that when we come together, when we sing in this moment right now, like we're coming in, we're lifting our voice. Our song is simply a prayer to a melody. That's all it is. In these moments where you sing corporately, while you sing songs of worship in your car, all of these times, you're offering a prayer in the form of a melody. So when you come and you're singing these songs about hope, we have these fear, we have these moments that we aren't sure what's going to happen, and we just start singing about this. I place my trust in you. What you are saying in this moment, God, I need you for my hope. God, I need you for what's coming. I don't know how to deal with what I'm doing right now. When you sit in these moments and we say, God, you are worthy, you are above it all, we trust you, we praise you, and you offer this glory and thanks. What you are doing is from your mouth to God's ears, you are offering this prayer, expressing gratitude, showing thanks, declaring his glory. And that's one of the things that makes corporate worship so beautiful. There's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me because I say wise stuff all the time. But it's not necessary. But no, there's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me, because I say wise stuff all the time. It's not necessary. But no, there's a quote that says, the beautiful thing about corporate worship is not the songs that we sing, but the fact that we sing them together. And so when we come together with that idea that our songs are a prayer to a melody, how beautiful is it that you come together as one body, lifting one voice, serving one God, offering one prayer in unison. It's a gorgeous thing. How awesome and how incredible is that? Does it have to be to God's ears? That's what Nate was saying a little earlier. The thing that you can't have watching online, sorry if you are, but it's true. The thing that you can't have is this unison of prayer, this unison of voice. And so at the end of Psalm 122, it shifts, the prayer shifts just a little bit. What the Israelites begin to do is pray for their family and for their friends. I want to read it for you. Maybe this is going to be more complicated than I thought. Okay, here we go. Psalm 122, verse 6 says this. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. Listen to this. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity. En route. En route to the temple to worship. They are worshiping. They are singing a song about worship. They are offering a prayer about the beauty of worshiping together. And then in this prayer, towards the end, they begin praying for their family and versions. It says, for the sake of the house of the Lord, I will seek your good. In this prayer, where they are praying for their family and friends, they also include a line that says, help me to pursue your good. God, for the sake of my community, it is good that I pursue what you say is good. For the sake of my community, for the sake of the people around me, it is good that I pursue the life you have created me to live. It is good for them, for me to be who you've created me to be. It is good for them. It reminds me of this, Nate said we're not going to talk. He lied. I don't know if he knew I was going to talk like this. I love Mark 7 because that's what this really kind of points to for me. There's this portion in Mark. Jesus is maybe at the height of popularity in his ministry right now. Like everyone has heard about this guy. They've heard of the miracles that he's done. They've heard of his teachings or they have seen the miracles that he's done. And they've heard his teachings himself or they've seen just all of these different things. And so you have this one little section in Mark 7. I think it's in verse 30. But it says that there was a guy who was deaf and could hardly talk. And there was some people in his life, some people in his community that brought him to Jesus. And then it says they begged Jesus to touch him. They brought this guy to Jesus and they begged Jesus to do Jesus things in this guy's life. And it's not isolated to this. There's multiple areas throughout the Bible. You can read just a little bit later in eight. Those are the first two that I'm aware of. But time and time again, you see people bringing to Jesus and then begging Jesus. And I love this. I think it's what we see in Psalm 122, this combination of action and prayer. This combination of doing everything that I can to point people to Christ, to take people to Christ, to move people to Christ, to live a life that reflects the love of Christ and saturating that action with a plea for Jesus to do Jesus things. That's what happened in Mark 7. Hey, I've seen, I've heard you can do this, Jesus. I saw you do this before. I need you to do this for my family. And it's not just a passing prayer. It's a plea. It's a beg, begging Jesus. I think that that's what James would call a works that shows your faith you move towards Christ and you beg to do Jesus things and when I first saw this when I first recognized it I wrote in my Bible I have friends like that right and I underlined it. And then we all kind of want that, right? I have a group of guys that I meet with. One of the guys, he calls it an intimacy group, and I don't like that. So we're not going to call it that because it just feels weird. Put your hand down, Jacob. We're not talking about that right now. But this group of guys, and what I love about it is that we can be open, we can be honest, we can just tell the struggles, and I know. Then we walk away from there. I have a group of people who are pleading with Jesus to do Jesus things in my world. We all want that. That's right and good. I wrote it down in my Bible while I was sitting there. I was like, oh, that's good, right? I felt kind of like this little poke, right? It said, hey, buddy. It felt like Jesus was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could. You could find friends like that. You have. You could also be. Be that friend. You could also be that husband. You can be the husband that lives a life that reflects the life of Jesus. Be the husband that lives a life that reflects the love that you've experienced. Be the husband who reflects a life and lives a life that believes and trusts in the life of Christ while at the same time interceding with prayer. Not just a passing prayer, but a plea, a beg, like such a hurt and such a longing for the people in the world around me, such a hurt and a longing for the people in my community that I'm not just gonna say, hey, Jesus, just help them with that. But it's like, no, you do Jesus things. Jesus, do Jesus things in their life. Like I love them too much to just let this go. And I beg and I beg and I plead. Like be that type of husband. Be that type of pastor. Be that type of leader. Be that type of friend. And then after it hit me, I was so convicted, I just sat back and I wept. It's like, man, how much more faith can you express than living the life that Jesus has called you to live? All at the same time saturating everything that you can do. Believing, living this life, everything within your power, saturating that action, that life with a prayer. It struck me hard. And what I want us to do this morning as we wrap up is I want to give you an opportunity to do that same thing. My prayer is that while I'm talking through that and I say just, hey, begging Jesus for people, interceding in prayer, just lifting, having such a hurt for them. Maybe you have a child who's entering into a new season of life, some new things coming up. Why don't we take some time and just begin to beg Jesus to prepare the path that's ahead of them, to begin to beg Jesus to just move and stir in their life that they experience Him in a way that they never have before. Maybe you have a child or a friend who's dealing with depression and anxiety and they just can't seem to shake it. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in their life, just to begin to put them in the right places, to begin to put the people around them that needs to be there and just help relieve some of the torment that they're feeling. Maybe it's a spouse. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in the area. Maybe it's in your relationship. Maybe there's a fractured relationship. Maybe it's your relationship at home. But I just want to give us a little bit of time to model what we see in Mark 7 and model what we see in Psalm 122. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to shut up, right? Then I'm going to give you some time to just pray. And to close out our morning, we're going to do exactly what we read in Psalm 122. We pray blessings upon the people that we love. We pray for the sake of our family and friends. We will stand together and we will sing and offer a blessing, but also include in that prayer, it says, Jesus, help me to live the life you've created and called me to live. Help me to live a life that is a reflection of you. Help me to live and build my life on your love. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes and then we're going to start singing the song. If you know it, you're more than welcome to stand and sing as well or just stay and remain praying in your own words. But towards the end of that song, I'll invite us to stand and we'll close that off seriously. So take a few minutes and just begin praying for the people that God has laid on your heart. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Amen. Thank you. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every and all of anxiety. To every storm held captive by depression, I speak Jesus. Oh, I just want to speak the name of Jesus over fear and all anxiety To every soul held captive by depression I speak Jesus Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Church, would you stand and sing it out. Jesus for my family Come on. I speak the holy name, Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows Burn like a fire Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is life I just want to speak the name of Jesus over every heart and every mind. Because I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Oh, I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Church, we're just going to make this our prayer. I will build my life on your love, Lord. Let's just sing this out together. Father, we give you our heart, we give you our life, and we give you our hope. Our faith is expressed in the life that we live and the prayers that we offer for our family and friends. Come on, church, time. Sing it out. Let's pray this blessing. generations He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. Come on, sing it out. Amen. Amen. Amen. May His favor be upon you and a thousand generations and your family and your children and your children and your children. and behind is is Just our voice, let's sing it out. One more time. We sing. Amen. Amen. Amen. God, we thank you so much and we praise you, Lord. Grace, we're so glad that you decided to join us today. We hope that it was a good morning for you. Make sure you come back next week. Don't forget Thursday night, the fall fling at Ignite Up. You guys have a great week. We'll see you.

Well, good morning. My name is Michelle Maskin. to be one of the pastors here. And sorry about that. This is the second part or the third part of our series called Ascent, where we're focusing on the 15 Psalms, Psalm 120 to Psalm 134 in the book of Psalms that are meant to be used as your family takes its pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And so these particular 15 Psalms in a book with 150 Psalms are really important and central to life growing up in Israel. And so we thought it would be good to take some time and focus on them for us and see what we can learn from these Psalms of Ascent as we journey towards God ourselves. Last week I talked about repentance. Mikey, those are all online. You can listen to those whenever you'd like. I talked about repentance and how that's always, repentance is always the first step in a journey towards God. This week, I'm looking at Psalm 126 that Michelle just read for us very well about joy. And I picked this because I think I'm the perfect person to give a sermon on joy, right? Like if you guys were out to dinner with some friends who didn't go to Grace and they said, describe, give me three words that you think best describe your pastor. 95% of you in the top three would have joyful somewhere. I'm pretty sure of it, right? There's giggles because I think that there are some misconceptions around joy and what it is. I think sometimes we can think of somebody who's joyful, and it just means that they're exuberant. It just means that they're bubbly and they're happy all the time. But we don't realize that that could be masking a deep anxiety that they're trying to counter with and they're not actually a deeply joyful person. And so I was talking with Jen about this idea, about, Jen is my wife if y'all don't know us, about joy and what it is and how we define it. And I actually saw a clip that helped me think of it a little bit. It was just a quick clip of Jerry Seinfeld on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. And I showed it to Jen and I showed it to Aaron Winston and to Carly. And it's of Seinfeld and he's talking about vacations and complaining about stuff like he always does. And he goes, but at one point he looks at Jimmy and he goes, I'm very happy. I'm a happy guy. I'm very, I hate everything. And that makes me happy. I'm, I'm perfectly happy hating everything all the time. And I told them like, I feel so seen. This makes, I love this. I'm a very happy guy. I love, and then he goes, he goes, but I do like to complain about things, and that's something I do enjoy. And I was like, yes, this is my guy. So I think joy comes in all shapes and sizes, and I was asking Jen, when you think of someone who's joyful, what do you think? And she actually said Jimmy Fallon, and because he's bubbly and exuberant and yada, yada, yada. And I said, I don't know. I don't think, that's not what I think of. And she said, what do you think of? And I know he's going to hate me for saying this, and I'm very sorry. But I think of Ron Torrance when I think of someone joyful. And if you don't know Ron yet, you will. If you come back three times, he will know your name. I promise you he will. He's got some more years under his belt than me. But whenever I talk to Ron, whether it's during the week or on a Sunday morning, I always leave that conversation a little bit happier and a little bit more encouraged than I was when I entered that conversation. And he exudes for me the type of joy that we want to think about this morning. So as we seek to think about it, understand it, learn about it, we should probably together define it. The problem with defining joy in a sermon on joy is that our definition needs to come from the Bible. It shouldn't come from me. However, when I search the scriptures for a clear definition of joy, the Bible is quiet on that. It's not quiet about the topic of joy, but it is silent on giving us a direct explanation of what it is and how we can best understand it. So instead it just talks about it and it brings it up and it points us to it and it says that God desires it from us and it says that God seeks to make us joyful and shows us the benefits of joy, but it doesn't define it. And so we are left to define it on our own. So I'm going to offer you my best definition of joy. And if you don't agree with me or you think it's somehow incomplete, that's okay. You add your own stuff too. The important part is that we have a common understanding of the foundations of it. So here's how we're going to define joy this morning. Joy is a state of happiness fueled by gratitude. Joy is a state of happiness fueled by gratitude. So it's not a fleeting moment of happiness. This is important. I thought about words like foundational and unimpeachable, but those seem too cumbersome in a clear definition that I wanted you guys to kind of remember a little bit. So it's a state of happiness. It's not an experience of happiness. It's not a brush with happiness or a feeling of happiness. It's a state that we exist in, just kind of this simmering happiness, positivity, joy. And it is fueled, and this is important,'s fueled by gratitude. Joy is always fueled by gratitude. It has to be. When you think about it, when you think about the things that make you joyful, you're thinking of things for which you are grateful. And this psalm maps it out for us very clearly. It shows us, they model for us how we arrive at joy. Those first two verses, I don't know if you paid attention to them when they were being read, but this is what they said. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. So there was a time in the past when they were not doing well, where the people were not doing well, where they were living, they were living in poverty, they were living in oppression, and they were scattered. And then God restored their fortunes. He built the nation back up. And now there are joyful people with songs in their hearts. And the other nations around them looked onto them and said, wow, they are really blessed. And so this joy that they're experiencing comes out of abundance. Joy is always the product of abundance. If we want to talk about the joy that we experience from God, it is always the product of abundance. Think about a time in your life in which you've been exceedingly joyful. Think about some of the happiest moments of your life. Think about a season where you were just deeply content and you look back and you go, man, that may be the sweetest season of my life. I don't think of seasons for me as much as I think of moments. I know that for me, anytime I have my arms around both of my kids voluntarily, and we're not wrestling on the bed, anytime I sit there with that long enough, I start to tear up. Because we'll be watching, I'll be watching football and sometimes I'll want to come watch it with me, which really makes me tear up because that's just great. This is the perfect, the absolute perfect two minutes right here. Because I'm watching my favorite thing and I'm hugging my favorite people. And sometimes we're watching TV and one of them will climb up on my lap and then the other one will want to do that too. And I just completely tune out. I check out of whatever's on the television and just kind of sit there. And I just feel so much joy. Why do I feel that? Because I'm existing in this abundance right now. Right? I remember, this is so cheesy, but it's true. Jen plays the piano a little bit, not a lot of it. And don't get any ideas, she'll never ever play it for you, ever. You will never hear her play the piano. But she plays it, and sometimes she'll play the old hymns like Great is Thy Faithfulness, and those are my favorite. And whenever she plays the piano, I always tell her, that's my favorite sound in the world. I love you filling the house with the sound of this piano because I know it brings her peace and joy and I love it too. And I think it was last Christmas. In the lead up to last Christmas, Jen was at the piano and I was standing next to her and she was playing Oh Holy Night. And then she and I just started singing Oh Holy Night. That's my favorite Christmas song. It's my favorite song, just in general. And Lily knew some of the words, so she started singing it too. And it was this moment of abundance. And then here's what I did that makes me a crazy softie, is I spun it forward. Because I think that the house that we're in now, Lord willing, and the creek Don't Rise, is the one that we're going to be in for a long time. And so I think our kids are going to come home from college to this house. And I would anticipate, if God grants it and is good to us in this way, that they might one day bring grandkids into this house, and we might get to celebrate holidays in this house. And our piano is in the dining room. And so I just, for whatever reason, I let myself start to imagine 15, 20 years down the road when the family's coming in and Jen and whatever her weird mama, Mimi nickname is, is playing piano. And the whole family's singing along. And I just started to, like, I started getting emotional. I started to tear up. And Jen's like, what's the matter with you? I was like, I really don't want to tell you because I'm going to sound like a loon. But when we think about the moments of joy in our life and the pockets of joy in our life, I think we can conclude that the joy is always produced by abundance. It's always in moments and in times when we realize we have these amazing blessings in our lives. And it reminds me of a verse that I like to remind you guys of often, one that we have on our wall in the house, John 1 16, where it says, but from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God, from all of his goodness, he bubbles over grace and goodness, and it spills down onto us, and we are happy recipients of this grace and goodness. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all been blessed in ways in which we don't deserve. I love Tom Sartorius, one of our elders and greeters. If you ask him, hey, Tom, how you doing? I guarantee you, better not deserve every time. That's kind of an acknowledgement of this. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. And so one of the things I would just stop and point out to you is if you're not experiencing joy, if you don't think of yourself as a joyful person, if you don't think of yourself as existing in a state of happiness that is fueled by gratitude, maybe what's happening is we're running short on fuel. And it's not because we don't have enough. It's because we don't notice what we do have. We're like my son John when he goes to the store. Whenever John goes to the store, the Dollar Tree or whatever it is, if he sees animals, little plastic animals in a bin, in a bag, on their own, if he sees animals, he wants the animals. He has to have them. He loves animals, and he wants them. Now this, I've been complimentary of Jen. Jen is a sucker. I never buy that kid animals. 100% of the time, they go to the store. He comes back with another gorilla, and I'm like, what are we doing here? Because he loses his mind if he can't get the animals, and it's easier at the Dollar Tree just to spend $1.25. Go he'd go, here, kid, shut up. Here's a monkey. Now let's keep going. So she does it to keep the peace. I get it. But he's so concerned with this animal that he wants that he forgets that we have literally a whole bookshelf full, like in cubbies, filled with plastic animals that will never see the light of day again until we throw them away. Ever. If any of you just had kids, because we've got a lot of you right now, if you need animals, we got you. I think so often in life, we can move through life like John moves through the Dollar General. And we have a house full of blessings. But we just want the one that we don't have. And I think that if we would just stop and spend some time being grateful for the abundance that we see in our lives, that we would by, be a more joyful people. And so I think in many cases, we might not be experiencing joy because we're just not looking around at the abundance that does exist in our life. And so that's where we should start. And if we're not experiencing joy, we probably want it, right? We probably all want to live a joyful life. I know that this is true because if you ask anybody from any walk of life, no matter their religion, I can at least speak to Western culture, what is your top hope for yourself? And more interestingly, what's your biggest goal for your children? What do you want your children to experience? What do you want you to experience? What do you pray about for your children to experience? Somewhere in the top three, unlike your answer about me being joyful, this is actually legitimate, sometime in the top three, you're going to say happiness. What do you want for your children? I want them to be happy. I want them to be content. What do you want for your future? I want to be happy. I want to be content. The whole world defaults to a pursuit of joy. Every commercial you see tells you, if you buy this product, you will experience a more joyful life. If you vote for this candidate, usually the way it goes is you will experience a less joyful life. Right? We are drugged up. We are counseled up. We are self-helped up. Every facet of our society tells us to pursue this happiness. And here it is sitting right in the Bible where we get this psalm of joy. And we need to realize that joy is fueled by abundance. Joy is given to us by abundance, fueled by gratitude for that abundance. But we ought to be asking the question by now, if I'm not experiencing joy, how do I get it? If it's a little bit more than just looking around at my life and seeing what's there, how do I pursue this joy? How do I pursue this happiness that God offers? I think that there's a great answer for this that Eugene Peterson offers himself. He says in the chapter on joy, he says, joy is the verified, repeated experience of those involved in what God is doing. Joy is the verified, repeated experience of those involved in what God is doing. I want you to do this with me. Think of the most joyful person you know or the most joyful people you know. Think of who would come to mind in your life when you're asked that question. People who seem to exist in a state of happiness that's fueled by gratitude. Once you have them in your mind, let me make two bets about this person. The first thing I bet is true about them is that they have said they have sacrificially served others with their lives they are people who have spent their lives serving others I bet you they are people who have spent their lives getting involved in what God is doing and going where Jesus is growing I bet you the most joyful people that you know whoever it is you're thinking of I bet you that they have a long track record of getting involved where God is involved, of serving Christ and pursuing him and living their life for him. And I would bet that they have personally sacrificed. They've allowed some pain and some pain points to come into their life so that they could serve Christ well, so that they could serve others well. I bet you the most joyful person you know is also a servant of Jesus who sacrifices for others. See, we think that the road to joy, this is what the world would have us believe, that the road to joy is paved in pleasures. That if we just go from pleasure to pleasure, from experience to experience, from good time to good time, from enjoyable thing to enjoyable thing, if we can just stack together enough fun, enough pleasure, enough relaxation, enough good times, enough luxury, enough things, then eventually we'll arrive at joy. And the path to joy is not paved in pleasure, it's paved in sacrifice. Joy is the verified, repeatable experience of those who are involved in the work that the Lord is doing. So for one, that joyful person you're thinking of, I bet that they are a servant of Christ. The other thing I would bet about them is that their life has not been void of tragedy. I'd be willing to bet whoever you're thinking of has walked through some dark days. I'd be willing to bet that whoever you're thinking of has reasons, good reasons in their life to maybe not be joyful all the time, and yet their joy persists. We do not get to joy by pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. That's not the pathway there. The pathway is through Christ. And when we pursue Christ and what he has for us, what we find is that he produces an abundance of joy in us that cannot be touched. I think of it this way. So we do not pursue joy. We said, how do we pursue joy? How do we pursue this abundance that God offers us? We don't. We don't pursue joy. We pursue Christ. We don't pursue joy. We pursue Jesus. This falls in line with this other verse I like to mention that I have on the wall of my office that I think is really applicable here. John 10 10, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus says, do you know that I want you to have the best life possible? Do you know that I want you to, to, to, to experience an abundance of joy? Do you know that I want you to experience the overflow of the Father and His goodness? Do you know that I want you to have the best life possible? And I love this verse because if we just decide to trust it, we'll never mess up again. Anytime in our life we mess up, we sin, we develop a bad habit, we make a bad decision, we behave poorly in a situation, we allow something into our life that we know we shouldn't allow into our life, but we keep it there. All we're doing is saying, Jesus, I don't trust you to bring about the best life for me. I'm going to figure this one out on my own. But Jesus tells us, the path to joy is through me. The path to happiness that we want for ourselves and for our children that all of society seeks after every day in every way. The path there is through Jesus. So we do not pursue joy. We pursue Christ. And when we pursue Christ and he blesses us with an abundant life, and we have to be careful about this because I am not talking about financial abundance. I'm talking about the kind of abundance that actually makes you joyful. I'm talking about blessings. I'm talking about your kid coming up to you and giving you a hug when you didn't expect it. I'm talking about a wealth of relationships and friendships that you have in your life that when you think about it, you're just so grateful for. I'm talking about the years of marriage when you've been married 25, 30, 40 years and you look at this person that, gosh, we haven't always gotten along and sometimes I don't know that I would choose you every day, but man, we love each other deeply for what we've walked through. That type of richness. That type of abundance. That's what Jesus offers us. So when we pursue Christ, we can proclaim with the Israelites like they do in Psalm 126, verse 3. I love this proclamation. The Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy. The Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy. And Eugene Peterson's the message. He translates it. We are a nation of joyful people. We are a joyful nation. And so if we can look around at the abundance that we have in our life and allow that to fuel gratitude within us, then that will fuel joy. And if we can pursue Christ, then by that pursuit of Christ, the byproduct is joy. So the first two things I would say to you today, if you're not experiencing joy in your life, check those two things. How's your gratitude doing? How grateful are you for the abundance that you have in your life? And then how's your pursuit of Christ coming along? Are you devoting your life to him and serving him? Are you getting involved in the things that God is involved in? If you'll do those two things, I promise you God will move you in this inexplicable way towards joy, and you will be able to proclaim with the Israelites that we are a people of joy. Now, here's what I also know about joy. There are some who are in this room, who are listening online, who will listen, who are absolutely not feeling like they're in a season of abundance right now. As a matter of fact, they're feeling like they're in a season of scarcity. And the reality of life is that sometimes life is hard. And sometimes the days are dark. And sometimes it's heavy. And so I know that for some of you, as you listen to me go on and on about joy, you're like, yeah, dude, this ain't for me because that's not what I'm feeling right now. If I had to try to preach this sermon to my wife in the wake of the loss of her father without this last part, she would have scoffed at the whole thing and swept it aside, and I wouldn't blame you if that's what you wanted to do so far. But sometimes life can be heavy, and if that's your season, I understand. This week was a little bit of a heavy week for Jen and I, just in the things that were happening in the lives of the people around us, not in our lives. But in a 24-hour period, we got news that a mama who we had been praying for since she started trying to get pregnant, there were struggles there, and so we joined with them and we prayed with them and we were elated when they were pregnant. We'd been praying the whole time. She went into labor. We were very excited, but a C-section had to get involved. And it was frantic there for a minute a minute and it was scary and I spent some uneasy moments with her mama and daddy in the waiting room of the hospital who were concerned about their baby that was heavy everyone's happy and healthy there then the next morning we learned that a really good friend of ours, someone that we hold dear, was going to need to be hospitalized for psychological issues that have not been experienced before by this individual. It's a scary thing. There's a heavy load on her family. And then just a few minutes after getting off that phone call, we found out that another friend of ours was separated from her husband because her husband let his family down. And she doesn't really know how to walk through this. And then that day, I'm on the phone with my buddy who's in marriage counseling with his wife and they were asked hey his name's Dan it doesn't matter you don't know Dan do you think you could find a path to love for Beth and he said yeah I think I do I think there's a version of her that I really love and I'd like. And she said, Beth, do you think that there's a path to love for Dan? For you to love Dan? And she goes, no. I think that ship sailed years ago. They have four kids. He might be thinking about divorce. She might leave him. Sometimes we have seasons like that. Sometimes we have heavy seasons of pain. And when somebody gets up and starts talking to us over and over again about joy, we're like, yeah, man, not for me. I'm not buying that this morning. So if that's your season, or you know somebody in that season, this psalm actually addresses that. It finishes with this in mind, that we don't all just look around at hyperabundance all the time. Sometimes life is hard. So this is how we pursue joy in moments when we don't think we're having it at all because life is heavy. Verse four, restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. I don't know if you picked it up, because I didn't. I just saw it as kind of flowery language and imagery. But Eugene Peterson points out in the chapter this idea that the pain and the sorrow that we're experiencing, the heaviness and the worry that we have, those are seeds. Those are seeds of future joy. And what we're supposed to do, what they pray here in this psalm is, God, when I'm experiencing pain, when I'm experiencing hurt, I'm going to hand my pain over to you. I'm going to trust you with it. I'm going to give you my suffering and my despair and my pain, and I'm going to trust you with it. And I know that one day, eventually, if I trust you with it and I walk towards you, that you will reap for me a great harvest of joy from this seed of pain. And I think it's a beautiful idea that even at our darkest and even at our lowest and even when life is the most difficult, we can take the pain that we're experiencing, we can see it as a seed of future joy that we hand God and say, I don't know how you're going to turn this into joy, but I'm going to trust you to do it here. And we walk as faithful pilgrims on our journey waiting for God to bring about joy. It reminds me of what I do find helpful to say to people who are experiencing great tragedy. The best advice I ever received on how to talk to people who are going through incredible pain was from my pastor growing up. And his advice was, Nathan, don't say anything stupid. Okay? Thank you. What's stupid? Stupid are the empty words that don't really help. Stupid is when we miscarried our first child and somebody meaning well said, I guess God needed another angel. That's dumb. That's not helpful. So we'd be very careful about what we say in those moments. But one thing that I do think is helpful is when someone's hurting very much and they say, this sucks. I don't see how I'll be happy again. I don't see how I'm going to get through this. This hurts so much. I hate this. The one thing I found helpful to say there is to say, yeah, today stinks. Today's the worst. And you're allowed to hurt. And however you respond to this hurt is the right way to respond. No one can tell you what to do here, but here's what I also know. Not every day will feel like today. Not every day will hurt as bad as today. I know right now you can't see a light at the end of the tunnel. You're not even sure if light's going to be there, but one day you'll wake up and you'll see light. And one day you'll wake up and you'll be closer to it. And one day you'll wake up and you'll be in the light again. So let today be what today needs to be. And just know that not every day will be like this one. I think it's the same idea from Psalm 126. You think of your pain and your suffering as seeds of joy to be planted with God and allow him to reap a harvest of joy. So our job in pain and in trial, if we're here today and we're just feeling low, and it's not because we don't have abundance, it's not because we haven't been pursuing crisis because something really cruddy is going on and it's heavy on me and I'm having a hard time finding joy from here. Here's what you do. So your seeds of pain with God and wait expectantly for him to reap a harvest of joy. If you're hurting, sow that seed of pain with God and wait expectantly for him to reap for you a harvest of joy. So this morning, we're talking about a thing that everybody wants. Everybody that you meet, everybody that you see just wants what this is offering. They just want joy. They just want happiness. That's what everybody wants. And so in this psalm, we learn about it. We see about it. We learn how to get it. So here's my encouragement to you. If you are not in a season of pain right now, if life is pretty easy, pretty good, you're in good steady flow, nothing really bad's happening, but you wouldn't call yourself a joyful person, you're not in a state of happiness that's fueled by gratitude, two things for you. Check your gratitude dial. How's that doing? Check your Jesus dial. How much am I pursuing him? And if those are both turned way down, then it's no wonder that you're not experiencing exuberant joy. If you are in pain, plant the seeds of that pain with God and walk daily expecting that one day he will turn that sorrow into wonderful, exuberant joy because we serve a faithful God and he wants that abundant life for you. So my prayer for you is that you would be a joyful people and that together grace can say the Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you want us to experience joy. We thank you that you desire for us to live in abundance that's been poured out by you. God, I pray that you would give us an unshakable, unimpeachable joy out of a sense of gratitude for what you've done for us. God, give us eyes to see the blessings that maybe we miss. Give us ears to hear the good news that maybe sometimes we tune out. And God, for those of us who are hurting, those of us who are in pain, for those around us who hurt, I pray that they would hand that pain over to you, trusting that you would produce from that an unmeasurable joy. And God, I pray that we would be such a joyful people that those that we encounter would mark us for it, would sense it from us, and that through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of you simply by the joy that we exude. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Morning, everyone. My name is Tom Sartorius. I'm one of the elders and partners here at Grace, and this morning's reading is from Psalm 120. I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues. What will he do to you, Tom. You may have noticed Tom using a church Bible for that. We do not require elders to own their own Bibles, but we're hopeful that Tom will be able to acquire one in the coming months. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, this morning is the second part of our series called Ascent. Last week, Erin Winston, our children's pastor and pastor extraordinaire, opened the series up for us. And she kind of explained a little bit what it was, why we're doing it, where it's from. But as she was doing that, there was a little bit of sound issues. It was really nobody's fault, but no one was paying attention. No one heard what she said. So just to reorient us in this series, it is, this is one that's been a long time coming. I've kind of shared with you guys before. Sometimes we'll have series that we know we want to do. We know they'll be good for the church. We know we want to expose you guys to that thought process or information, but it just, it sometimes takes two, three, four years to work it into the calendar just right. And so we're all excited to finally be able to do this series. It is based on the Psalms of Ascent, which are Psalms 120 to 134. And what I didn't even know, I knew offhand that these existed, but I didn't really learn about them entirely until I read a book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson called Along Obedience in the Same Direction. It's a phenomenal book. If you get nothing else from this series, I hope you'll write down the name of that book and that you'll read it. It's a movement through all 15 of the Psalms of Ascent with some commentary before and after, and it will serve you. I just tell you, it will serve you better in your spiritual journey to read that than to listen to me preach about it for the next several weeks. I hope that I can do it justice, and I hope that it can focus our attention on the right things, but Eugene Peterson, to me, he's one of my favorite Christians that's ever lived. I think back in 2021, maybe, I read his autobiography just called Pastor about his story as a life in his life being a pastor, and it's one of the most personally impactful books I've ever read. So I'm really excited to expose you guys to what is probably his greatest work, a long obedience in the same direction. And these Psalms of Ascent are called the Psalms of Ascent because typically when you're going to Jerusalem, you're ascending, you're going up a mountain. No matter where you're coming from, Jerusalem's highly elevated compared to the rest of the country of Israel, give or take. And so usually when you're ascending, you're ascending to Jerusalem. So these are psalms that families were supposed to go through as they approached the city on pilgrimage. There's also a specific place in Jerusalem, the Temple stairs, I believe, where you were to pause when you arrived. You were to pause on the first step and sing this first psalm and pray over it as a family. Take the second step, do the second psalm. There's 15 psalms and 15 steps that aligned in this way. And overarching this entire series is this idea of pilgrimage, of a long obedience in the same direction, of the perseverance required by the Christian life, an acknowledgement that the Christian life is not simply a decision one day to accept Christ as our Savior and allow God to be the Lord of our life, but it is a daily decision that we renew. The Christian life is a long, steady obedience in the same direction. And so that idea serves as an umbrella over everything we talk about, that this implication that the Christian life is long and it is difficult, and we are pilgrims on a journey. This morning, we take the first step of that journey. The first psalm is Psalm 120, and that is a psalm of repentance. And when I think about repentance, I kind of think about it like this. Have you ever been in a space, your office, kids' room, kids' playroom, your kitchen, wherever it is, and you just look around and there's so much junk everywhere, you go, I can't live like this. This is disgusting. I have to clean this before I can do another thing. Have you ever had that impulse? If you have never had that impulse, you should clean your home this afternoon. Some of us would freak out. Some of you have that impulse so much that you will secretly clean your sister's house or your mom's house. You'll secretly go behind people and just clean at their place because you just want it to be nice for them. It's funny. I wrote this sermon a couple of weeks ago, but Jen took the kids. Lily's on fall break. Lily's my eight-year-old daughter. So she took Lily and John down to Jen's sister's house so the kids could play together and go to zoos and all the things that little kids do. And so I've been home alone since Thursday. And when I got up this morning, took a shower, went downstairs, got my Bible, got my notes, and went to go through the sermon. I go through the sermon on Sunday mornings just to make sure I'm familiar with it. And I went to go through the sermon. I'm standing in the kitchen, and I was like, I can't live like this. I can't do this. It just had four days of bachelor junk sitting around, you know? And I was like, I got to whirlwind clean this thing. So after I was able to clean the living room and the kitchen, I was able to get to work. But I don't know if you can relate to that, but I think most of us can. This idea where you just look around and you go, this is a mess. This is disgusting. I can't live like this. I have to do something about it right away before I can take another step. This, to me, is the heart of the beginning of repentance. Now, repentance gives a bad rap. We don't like to think about repentance. That one's hard. That's when we have to be hard on ourselves. We have to make better choices. We have to change things. Repentance is tough, and it might be uncomfortable to bring it up, but it's absolutely essential, and I hope that after this morning, that many of us can think about it perhaps in a different way and even seek to make it a habit. But along the lines of repentance being the first part of it, just kind of being disgusted with what's going on as we look around our life, Eugene Peterson says it like this, a person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. So a person before knowing Jesus has to look around at their life and be so disgusted with the way things are going, with the current state of affairs, with what's happening on their inside life and in their outside life. And be so disgusted with it that they go how we do in a mess. This is disgusting. I can't live like this. I have to do something about it. That moment has to come, has to precipitate genuine repentance. So he says, and I think as a Christian, because most of us in the room are Christians, as a Christian, we can think about it this way. We have to be so disgusted with the areas of our life that we have not yet relinquished to God. Because we've given our lives to God, right? But we've all got these little pockets where we know God probably doesn't want this habit in our life. He probably doesn't want this attitude. He probably doesn't want this pattern. He probably doesn't want this in my life. But I'm a Christian, and I'm good, and I'm pretty squared away. So I'm just going to keep this. This is under the lordship of God. Yes, this is my Christian life. This is my personal life. It's under the lordship of me. I'm going to continue to run things here. And Eugene says, until we get disgusted with how this feels, we will never convert it over to the Lordship of God in our life and take a step towards the Christian path. So one of the objects this morning is to help us think about our sin and look at the things that we have in our life in certain ways that make us miserable and make us disgusted and cause us to wake up in the morning going, who am I? Or cause us to finish an argument with our spouse and think, what was that all about? Or after we lose our mind on our kids, we go, what in the world, where did that come from? Or after we just go through a day thinking everyone's annoying or everyone's a moron or everyone's an idiot, and then we get home and we're like, is this really, do I want to be this angry? In those moments, we should reflect and become upset at the mess around us that our sin is making. David did it like this in the Psalm. Tom just read it for us. It starts off doing exactly this. I call on the Lord in And I think that's great. It's a great way to start off repentance. Last week, Aaron preached about, when I struggle, where does my help come from? Does it come from the mountains? Does it come from the altars on the mountains that serve me in different ways, that allow escapes and outs in different ways? And the psalmist says, no, lift your eyes up to God. Your help comes from God, creator of heaven and earth. So this repentance starts out in the exact right way. He looks to God in his distress. It's the song we just sang, God, I need you. We look to God in our distress. Run to the Father, fall into grace. So in his distress, he looks to God, which is the right way to start in repentance. Very first thing, I can't do this. I'm not going to white knuckle my way out of this sin or out of this attitude or out of this way of life. I need your help, God. And then he laments his sin. He laments his lying lips and his hypocrisy. He laments who he is and who he has become because of where he is and who he's surrounded himself with. He reaches a place of disgust with his sin, and so he cries out to God in his distress. And as I wrote this sermon, it occurred to me that for this to make sense, we can't just exist in the hypothetical and talk about vague sins that we deal with, you deal with, David dealt with, I dealt with, you know, whatever. We would need a specific example, and that example could only come from me. So I'm going to share with you more about my personal life than I want to. Don't get nervous. It's not any bad. Because I think we need to actually walk through a sin together to help us get this idea. Somebody did this for me, and it's what helped me understand the idea. So a couple, two, three months ago, Jen and I were finishing up the day, and Jen's my wife, and we got in a little spat, just a little normal marriage tiff, you know, not a huge deal. And we don't really do a lot of those. We're not fighters. Fighting with Jen's like kicking a puppy. So you can't really do anything there. You just feel terrible and shut up. You're right. I'm sorry. So we don't do a lot of anger and frustration in the house. We really don't. But we were frustrated with each other this night. And I honestly don't remember what it was about or what brought it on. I think it was probably just our typical disagreement, which is she's annoyed at me with something and I'm annoyed at her for having the audacity to be annoyed with me. And so then we butt heads. And towards the end of the conversation, I hit her with this one. This is a classic marriage argument. I don't know if you've used it before. I would not recommend if you don't mean it. But I hit it with, you know, lately I haven't even felt like you've liked me very much, which is kind of the emotional jujitsu of, do you see how all this is your fault? Because you haven't been being kind to me. You haven't been being the wife that I deserve. How do you expect me to do the things you want me to do when you don't even like me? It didn't land and we went to bed. And that whole night I was tossing and turning because I realized that the whole disagreement, I was reflecting on the last couple weeks, months of my life. And I realized that the whole disagreement was my fault because of some bad patterns in my life. And I knew that I needed to confess. I knew that I needed to apologize. And so I couldn't sleep. I'm just waiting for her to wake up so I can pounce on her with apologies and love, right? I just, I need this to be right, and I need her to know that I know it's my fault. And so I get up, I make us coffee. That's the peace offering, coffee on the nightstand. And when she wakes up, I said, hey, listen, I'm super sorry. She said, okay, tell me more. I said, the argument that we had last night was 100% my fault. She goes, what makes you think that? And I said, I just realized that all I've wanted from anyone in my life for the past couple of months is just to leave me alone. I've just been living selfishly. I just feel pulled in every direction. And all I want from anyone all the time is just leave me alone. And I said, that's a really cruddy way to be a father. It's a really cruddy way to be a husband. And by the way, I'm really sorry. It takes some special kind of chutzpah to accuse you of not liking me when I've been acting wholly unlikable for the last two months. My bad. And she laughed, and she said, I'm glad you know. And then we were good. We were good. But that tossing and turning all night, being concerned with the disagreement, wanting to get to the bottom of what was going on and motivating there. That was the process that the Holy Spirit used to bring me to a point of disgust with myself. Because what a terrible thing it is to go through life, especially as a father, a husband, and a pastor, and all you want is for people to leave you alone? Dude, you've made some bad choices. You have misaligned your life with what you need to do if that's really what you want is to be left alone. And so that's not an option. So I had to come to a place of disgust where it shook me so much that I could actually stop and let the Holy Spirit help me see where I had been selfish and confess that to my wife. So first I had to confess it to God at four in the morning and then I had to confess it to at seven in the morning. Because I got to this place of disgust where I looked at my life and I said, I can't live like this anymore. I have to clean it up. Right? But if we're going to truly repent of a sin, after we confess, we have to consider. Once we confess our sin, yes, this is in me. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, I have this habit, this pattern, this attitude. Yes, I've been making exceptions for myself in this way. I confess my sin. After that, we must consider the consequences of our sin. David says it this way, Psalm 123-4. I don't know what burning coals of a broom brush are, but I don't want them. I'd like to not find out experientially. He says, he stops and he considers. What will happen if I continue in this pattern? What will happen if I continue to be surrounded by lying tongues and deceitful lips and I continue to have lying tongues and deceitful lips? Well, what will happen in this instance is that God is going to allow warriors to come in and punish us on his behalf. The consequences of this sin are grave. And so it's good for me to sit and face those consequences and look at the reality that my sin could bring about. For me, in different times and ages and places throughout the church, the threat of divine punishment has served the church well to get us to make better decisions in our life. But for me, that's never worked super great. For me, I have to think about the actual literal results of my sin if it goes unchecked. And so to consider your sin is to think through the impact that it's having on the people around you. So in that season of selfishness in my life, which was just a season. I've only been selfish about two or three months out of my life. Everywhere else is super giving. So how about in that heightened activity of selfishness in my life in that particular season? I did the exercise the next day in the office. I sat down, I had my quiet time, and I made myself go through the exercise of how can this sin hurt the people around me? And the first thing that was brought to mind was Lily, my eight-year-old daughter. And I immediately just felt terrible because I've noticed this with other people's kids before I had kids. And now that I have kids, I see that it's absolutely true. When there's a little kid, three is like the height of cute. Three is super cute. One, two, three, it's all great. Four is pretty great. Five, all right, most of the time. But eventually, somewhere around five, six years old, it's like, all right, you're just an annoying little kid now. You've transitioned. You've got a goofy-looking smile. You do dumb stuff. You're always saying, look at me, when you do some regular thing that every kid in the world can do. Like, look at me, dad. Yeah, I mean, you jumped. That's really great. You know, like, every kid gets to this annoying phase until they're cool again. Like, they're, I don't know, 23. And part of what was requiring energy from me was to engage with Lily, to laugh at her jokes, to watch her dance, to give her the attention that she wants from her dad. But my selfishness, and this is hard to say, my selfishness was penalizing her for being eight. Not bad, not unreasonable, not demanding, not selfish. My own junk, as her dad, was penalizing my daughter for simply being eight. What does it communicate to her if I'm annoyed with her at every turn? It teaches her that she's fundamentally annoying. What an awful thing for a father to do to a daughter. It taught John similar lessons. When I didn't want to do trucks or have the dinosaurs fight again, or listen, I'm so bad at engaging in imaginative play. You be the dad. Oh, jeez, I am the dad, and he doesn't want to play. But by not doing those things, what I teach him is I don't want to be with him. I don't want to indulge him. I don't want to. I just want, I'm going to be selfish, and I'm going to do my thing. You do your thing, John. I distance myself from him. And then worse than that, the way that it hurts Jen is because she sees me annoyed with the load and the burden of the family, because she's sweet and because she's selfless, she takes on more of it. She tries to protect me by protecting me from the kids, and she takes on a bigger burden in the home. And that engenders in her resentment for always having to pick up my slack because I'm always in a grumpy mood because I always want to be left alone. It's completely unacceptable. And then you think about how it makes the staff feel at church when my door is constantly closed and I never want to talk to anybody and I go quick into meetings and out of meetings and I'm not available because I just want to be left alone. The ripples of this are terrible for a husband and a father and a pastor. But it's an important step in the process of repentance to think through the consequences of your sin if it goes unchecked. The question, after we realize our sin, after we've come to a place of disgust and we've said, I've got to clean this up, as we begin to clean, the question we should all learn to ask about our sin, we need to do the mental exercise to help with the disgust. The question we should learn to ask is, who am I hurting with my sin and how am I hurting them? Who am I hurting with my sin and how am I hurting them? I don't know what your sin is. I genuinely hope by now that you've been thinking along with me. That when I talked about the idea of confessing sins, that maybe you started to go through your mind and what the wake of your last few weeks have looked like or months. And I hope that you started to kind of go, I wonder what I need to confess. I wonder where my messes are. I wonder where the pockets of my life are that I haven't surrendered to the Lordship of God and I'm still ruling the roost there. And maybe those are the things that are actually making me miserable or anxious or whatever sometimes. I hope that you've begun to do that exercise. And I hope that as I was walking through the consequences of my sin with the people that I love the most, that you were starting to spin forward and think about the consequences of your sin with the people you love the most. Maybe it's selfishness like me. Maybe there's a secret habit or addiction that you're fostering. Maybe there's an attitude that you're maintaining. I'll tell you this, if you can't think of one, if you're sitting there going, gosh, I don't know what I need to confess or repent of, this is tricky. Well, then yours is pride. So that's easy to figure out. And if you still don't know what it is, ask your wife. She knows. She'll tell you. Ask your sister. Ask your best friend. Hey, I need to think about confession and repentance, but I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. I promise you they do. They'll help you out. But I hope that you've been doing that math and thinking along with me. But even as we confess and consider our sin, that's still not repentance. Repentance requires this last step. After we confess and consider, we must commence. After we confess our sin, we consider its consequences. We must commence. We must step. We must move. David are going to be if the sin goes unchecked. And he chooses to commence and take a step and go, I can't be here anymore. I have to move. I have to move away from what the world offers and towards what God offers. This whole Psalm follows the prescription that Eugene Peterson laid out at the beginning when he said that we have to be thoroughly disgusted with things the way they are before we can take a step towards God. It is not lost on me that in this sacred portion of the solemn book of Psalms, in these songs of ascent that were written by David for every generation of worshiper that would ever follow him to go through them every year in their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That a Jewish person would know these Psalms as well as a lifelong Christian knows the Christmas story out of Luke 2. And the angels appeared over the shepherds giving watch of the flock by night. It's all very familiar stuff for us. To the Jewish person, these Psalms of Ascent were just as familiar. You heard them every year. You heard your granddad give them, and then you heard your dad give them, and then you gave them. They were part of their life. An absolutely crucial spiritual linchpin in the life of a Hebrew in ancient Israel. And it is not lost on me that something of that great of import was started intentionally with repentance. He could have picked any topic. He could have started anywhere he wanted. He could have talked about the greatness of God. He could have talked about our need for God. He could have talked about the glory of God. He could have talked about loving our family. He could have talked about joy. He could have talked about all these things, but he starts with repentance. And I think it's so important because the first step of every journey towards God is always repentance. The first step of every journey towards God is always, always, always genuine repentance. To confess, to consider, and then to commence, to move. The most clear example of repentance in the Bible that I see is found in the book of Acts in chapter 2. Jesus has died. He rose again on Easter. He spent 40 days ministering to the people in and around Jerusalem, specifically the disciples. He ascended up into heaven. And then he told the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit to come. And they waited for 40 more days. And then at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came. And when the Holy Spirit came, Peter goes out on the balcony and he preaches to thousands of people in and around the Jerusalem area. And these are the same people who were a part of the mobs 80 days ago who crucified Christ. And he goes out there and he tells them who that Jesus was that they crucified. And they said, we believe. What do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. The very first step he asks them to take in their Christian journey is to repent. And it's to repent. This is a fundamental repentance of all Christianity, I believe. What are they to repent of? I believe that specifically what they needed to repent of in this instance is repent of who you thought Jesus was before I told you the truth about him. That's the fundamental repentance of Christianity. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian because you came with a spouse or you're just checking it out or you're considering or whatever. If you are going to become a believer, the Bible urges you to make this fundamental repentance of Christianity, which is whoever I thought Jesus was before I came in here today, I now agree with who he says he is. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God who came to take away the sins of the world. He did what he said he did. He died on the cross to make a path for us to heaven and reclaim creation. And he's coming back again to get us. Revelation 19, crashing down through the clouds with righteous and true written on his thigh to rescue creation back to its maker. That's what it is to be a Christian. And so the fundamental repentance of Christianity is to repent, move away from, confess, consider, and commence away from who we thought Jesus was and move towards who he is. And in this way, all repentance is saying some version of no to the lies of the world and what it offers and to our little kingdoms and fiefdoms in our own lives. And moving towards, as we confess that sin, we consider the consequences and then we commence our movement towards God in this pilgrimage of a long obedience in the same direction. Confession is fundamentally, or repentance is fundamentally a rejection of the world and an acceptance of God. And you know, in September, September 10th, I opened up a series called The Traits of Grace. And I said, this sermon is going to be, I think, the most important sermon I've delivered in several years at Grace. And I rolled out for you discipleship pathways. And I encouraged us to be step takers, people who take our next step of obedience, kind of like being on a pilgrimage. I said that everybody has in front of them a step of obedience that they need to take. And I want to encourage you to take yours. And I challenged us on September 10th. Listen, the most important thing we can do over the next few years is not build a building, is not grow the church, is to allow God to grow us in our depth spiritually. I challenged you to begin to take your spiritual growth personally, to begin to prioritize it, to begin to prioritize personal holiness. And now here we are at the onset of another series. And God has brought this theme back around of repentance and confession and a beginning of a move towards him. So I'm inviting you as we move through this series together, as we reflect on the one that we just had and what it asks of us, on this journey towards God with grace. And if you want to do that, if you want to take your spiritual health seriously, then that journey begins with the step of repentance. So what I'm going to do, instead of closing us out in prayer, is I'm going to let Aaron continue to pray. And I'm going to invite you to respond to what you've just heard in a time of your own prayer. If you're not sure what to confess, if you're not sure where to start, ask that God would open your eyes and let you see. Where are the attitudes and actions and habits in my life that don't need to be there that are actually causing me misery that I might not recognize? Ask God to make you disgusted with the pockets of sin in your life. And then in prayer, consider how that sin could hurt the people that you love the most if it goes unchecked. And then in prayer, if you feel so led, begin to take steps towards God in that area. And let's have a time of repentance together this morning as we take our first step on this journey towards God in the Psalms of Ascent.