Sermons tagged with Mission

The Good morning, Grace Raleigh. How are you doing? It's good to see you today. I'm Dale Rector, Nathan's dad, and I am glad to be with you today. Hang in there for a minute. It's going to be a journey. I've got two Bibles. It's a long sermon. So just bear with me. Maybe it'll go quickly if we try. But I want to say something to the Grace Raleigh family first, and that is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not just for moving my son out of my basement four and a half years ago, but for loving him, loving his beautiful wife, Jen, our precious, precious grandchildren, Lily, and now John. And we are so grateful for you. Within the sound of my voice are those of you who will volunteer and step up and will do something to minister to my family and to my kids. And I can't thank you enough. You will do life together. You will laugh together. You'll cry together. You'll tell them the word of God together. You'll grow together. And I couldn't think of a better place for my family than here. So thank you very much, Grace Raleigh. When I was a child, I was given this Bible to me by my grandparents. 1969. I was 11 years old, and they gave me this Bible, and of course, this King James Bible. But Matthew chapter 24 is perhaps the most read portion of this Bible during my young adult life. In Matthew chapter 24, if any of you don't remember or recall, it is the place in which the disciples asked Jesus, what are the signs of the end times? What are those signs? And when is your return? If you pay attention and read Matthew chapter 24 this week, you will see it mirrored and imaged in Revelation chapter 6 next week with Nathan. So pay attention to that. We were crazy about eschatology. What's that? That's the study of the end times. And we dove in and we heard sermon after sermon. In fact, we predicted that Jesus would come back in 1988. There was a book that was written that said 88 reasons why Jesus would come back in 1988. And I'm like, wow, really? It didn't happen. It didn't occur. He still hasn't returned. And it seemed like over the years, the eschatology speeches and the study of Revelation got to be a little quiet and a little silent because most people were wrong. Most people, when they tried to predict something or say what this means, they were wrong. I have another Bible in front of me. This Bible was stolen by, it's not a Gideon Bible. It was stolen by my son four and a half years ago when he came up to here at Grace Raleigh. And four and a half years ago, he took this Bible that I had as a high school student, and I never had a chance to write in it and to say something in it, you know, sappy and meaningful like, you know, the greatest ever, the great Nate, you know. I love you dearly, the best dad you've ever had. Nothing like that at all. I don't have the words. Until I was preparing for this sermon, I thought, I have the perfect words. And to my son Nathan, this is true. That's it. This is the word of God. In Genesis, we see the tree of life. In Revelation, we see the tree of life. In Exodus, we see the ark of the covenant. In Revelation, we see the ark of the covenant. In Joel, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Revelation, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Joel, we see the trumpet sounds, and the day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. In Joel chapter 2 and chapter 3. In Revelation chapter 7, we see the trumpet sound, and the day of the wrath of the Lord and the Lamb comes. In Daniel, we see the exact specific days of the tribulation period. In Revelation, we see the exact same specific days in that book as well. Over and over and over again, if you fall in love with the Old Testament, you'll fall in love with Revelation because it all ties together. It all links together. It's true. It's right. It's God's word. It's what he wants us to have. So I'm grateful for you guys and your study of the word. And I'll be going into Revelation chapter four. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. But basically, you know, when Doug got up a couple weeks ago and he spoke, I thought to myself, Doug, it's really kind of funny and hilarious that you were given one verse. I was given the two easiest chapters in the entire book of Revelation, and you'll see how easy it is in a minute. But chapter 4 is a mirror image of Ezekiel chapter 1. And if you have Ezekiel 1 and you study it later, you'll see this same throne room of God. But John, 90-year-old John, is caught up into heaven. And he's caught up into heaven. And on the Lord's day, he's in the spirit. And whose voice does he hear? Jesus. He says, John, come up here. I have some things I want to show you. I have some things I want you to see. And he shows him where dad sits, where God the Father has a throne. And there's this throne. It's a majestic throne. And on the throne is a brownish image. It's an image of God. It is God. And it looks brown. And it's got an emerald rainbow around its head. Ezekiel says there are fire and metal around his waist. And there's lightnings and thunders that come from the throne of God and go out, and there's a brightness and a brilliance and a wonderment. The throne is set on a firmament of solid water and glass, and it looks still, Still to indicate the comfort and the sovereignty of God. And that's the picture we see of the throne room of God. And around the throne is 24 elders and four cherubims. And we get all enthralled with the brilliance, with the majesty, with the wonder, with the glorious look of the throne of God. And we forget what the point is. What is the point of Revelation chapter 4? It's so simple. It's so easy. Theologians miss it. They like to describe everything that's in here. And I'm going to tell you this, and you're going to go, well, that's not that bright. What's the point of the throne of God? God is on the throne. That's it. God is on the throne. He is on the throne. When Joseph was in prison, captive, God was on the throne. When the children of Israel spent 400 years in captivity, God was on the throne. When the first Passover came and the blood was put on the doorpost of every Jewish family and the death angel passed through and spared those children, God was on the throne. When Moses led the children of Israel out of captivity and 40 days became 40 years, God was on the throne. When Moses was put to the side and went up to the mountain and wasn't allowed to go to the promised land, Joshua went into the promised land with the children of Israel, and God was on the throne. City by city, they took over. Promised to them, to the father Abraham. And the Jews possessed the promised land, they possessed the Canaan land, and God was still on the throne. The period of judges came. We had a few good kings with a bunch of bad kings. We had a dispersion of the nation of Israel. The temple was destroyed. Again, the nation of Israel was taken back to captivity to Babylon this time, and God was still on the throne. They came back to Israel. 400 years of silence. Jesus was born. And Jesus was born of a virgin, came to this planet, and lived in the filth that Satan and we created. And God was still on the throne. The thorns were placed upon his brow. The blood came down. His hands were pierced with the nails. He was hung on the cross, and he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? God was still on the throne. He couldn't look on his son because of our sin, but he was on the throne. Remember that. At that Passover, he was on the throne. Jesus was put into the grave. Three days later, God said, come forth. He came forth. God was still on the throne. 47 days, he appeared to 500 people at one time and then ascended into heaven. And guess what? God was still on the throne. He was still there. Still in control. Still in charge. Now what happens from here? What happens from here? Well, we have 11 of the 12 apostles martyred. John sees 60 years go by. And 60 years go by and he's caught up into heaven on the Lord's day. He thought he died and went to heaven, but he didn't. He was in the spirit. And guess what he saw? Revelation chapter four, God on the throne. Now what's going to happen in Revelation chapter 6 and following is nothing more than a full court press, nothing more than a reclamation process in which God reclaims stolen property. And he comes back and he takes what's rightfully his to redeem the last person who will say yes to Jesus and to say no to Satan and to crush Satan underneath our feet is what Romans says. And guess what? During everything you encounter in the next few weeks with Revelation, as good and as bad as it may seem, God's still on the throne. He is there. He hasn't left. He hasn't abrogated his position. He hasn't vacated it. He's still there. Through your cancer, through your COVID, through your disappointment, through abandonment, through your addictions, through your loss of family, loss of loved ones, to the loss of a young child. Everything that this world can throw at us and this world system can throw at us, God is still on the throne. That's chapter four. Now you say, well, what are the four cherubims? Everyone wants to know about the four cherubims and who are they and where'd they come from? And at this point in the sermon, I would say, who cares, right? Because God's on the throne no matter what. But we've got this curiosity about us. Have we seen the four cherubims before? Yes, we have, Ezekiel 1. The question is not what are the four cherubims, but where is God? You see, when the four cherubims show up, you would expect to see God, because God made these cherubims, angelic beings, if you will, looked like a human, had four sides to their head, the one of a man, the one of an ox, the one of an eagle, the one of a lion, and they looked weird to us, but we've never seen them. And John saw them and described them is exactly how Ezekiel described them in Ezekiel chapter 1. And these are around the throne of God. They move in unison around the throne of God. They're all together, the four cherubims, angelic beings. And I've got this to say about what the faces represent. And most people are guessing. And I'm guessing as well. But the faces represent the very essence of God. You see, we are made in the image of God. When I picture God, I think of a man. The descriptions of God, he has a head and face and hands and so forth. So I think these angelic beings meant to reflect the very essence of God, which is man, which is one of the faces you see. The other faces you see is the very essence of God as creation. And I think he made what he likes. You become that which you worship. And these four creatures, these four cherubims, wherever they go, they're around the throne of God. Can you imagine someone watching you 24-7, 365? I challenge you. Follow Nathan around 24-7. You may all leave the church. I hope you don't. I hope you stay with it. Jen's got a lot of love. We were so grateful for her. But for 24-7, 365, these angelic beings are around the throne of God. And you know what they say? It's recorded in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 8. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. What is holiness? What does that mean? Holiness is the intersection of love and justice. It is the attribute of attributes. It's the attribute that contains all the other attributes. It's where love and justice collide. Everything, God's mercy, God's long-suffering, God's love, God's justice, is all wrapped up in this perfect word called holiness. It means different, different, different. Unique, unique, unique. There's never been anything like God. There'll never be anything like God ever again. He is holy. He is different all unto himself. The perfect amount of love is sprinkled with the perfect amount of justice at the right time, in the proportion in the right way. It is God's way and he is holy. So who am I? Who am I to question the character of God? I think it's funny. Each of us periodically do this little thing, which is wrong, but we do it anyways because we're human. Well, if I were God, I would zap them. Right? I mean, just think of it. When I'm driving down the road in traffic, you know, it's like, okay, here it comes. I believe half the people on the planet would be gone if I was God. Really. My wife knows that's true. You can't, you did what? Come on, man. But we sit there and we judge God through our lenses and through our eyes and from our limited perspective and we say, God, why didn't you exercise justice quicker? Hitler. Six million Jews died. We sit in amazement and say, well, God, if you'd just zapped them a little earlier, we wouldn't have had six million Jews die. And we question God's patience and long-suffering. And then when he does zap somebody, we go, man, that was mean. I can't believe God did that. What's going on here? So, you see, we can't do that. Whenever God acts, God acts in perfectness of love and justice all the time. There's a second group of people around the throne. It was the 24 elders. People have said it represents 12 apostles and 12 representatives from the tribe of Israel. They're wrong. I'm amazed at how wrong theologians can be. And when you study commentaries, be careful. Be careful. The way I study Revelation is in light of what it says in other parts of the Bible. Because some people have a bent on how it should play out. Well, I believe in this, and I believe in that. Well, I believe in the Word of God, and I'm going to let the Word of God just speak to me and say, what does it say to you? It's not Mother Teresa, it's not Billy Graham, it's not the Stanley brothers, you know, it's not Charles Stanley, it's not Andy Stanley, it's not any leaders, it's not any brilliant, it's definitely not me, definitely not my son. We're not one of the 24. What are they? Angelic beings. Well, how do you know that? Job 38, 7, where God is basically, if you will, talking to Job and saying, where were you when I created? You remember that? And Job 38.7 says, when the morning stars were put into place, when the planets were made and the solar systems were made, The sons of God rejoiced. Yes. The angels were there during creation to prove what the Savior did in creation. And these are nothing more than angelic beings that have some authority and some leadership. Why do you say that? Well, I say it because of what is in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11. You created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. That's what they said. They're not puppets. They saw it. They were there. Hebrews 11.3 says, You mean the law of thermodynamics is wrong? In this case, it is. God created something out of nothing. He created that which is seen out of nothing. Well, that just doesn't compute with science. I love the faith of a child. Don't you? I love my grandkids. I mean, you can tell them almost anything and they believe it, right? And some of you think they have been duped in believing that Jesus is real and the Bible is real and they just haven't learned enough yet. When you walk a child through salvation and through that experience in following God, they look at you and they believe it. They trust you and trust you what you're going to say. Then they start trusting the word of God. Then they start trusting the teacher. Then they start trusting the preacher. And it says right in here the word of God that God created. Well, you know what? That's good enough for me. I don't care if it takes you 4.5 billion years to get there. I don't care. God could speak and it could happen. Well, science says this. Who cares? I believe what it says. He made us. He created us. And the reason we don't like to believe in a creation is because we don't want to be subject to God. But the whole thing hinges on his creating us. Because he made us and therefore he owns us and we're subject to him. Now, as an older adult, and this church has a lot my age and older, we kind of return back to that simple faith. That simple time that we had as children. And we sit there and we go, yeah, okay, I get it. Scientists have changed the age of the earth 18 times since I was born. Maybe they just don't know. Maybe they weren't there. And I'm telling you, the reason I believe it is because if I believe God existed in the four walls of my brain and that was it, I'm in big trouble, buddy. I really am. I mean, really, seriously. I get up from my easy chair, I go to the other room, and I wonder why I was there. Right? Hey, honey, would you bring the crackers back? You forgot the crackers again. What about the pudding? Well, I ate the pudding in the kitchen. Did you leave the light on? I don't know. Where's your phone? I don't know. Is it on silent? I don't know. And right now, all of you are thinking, I need to check my phone. You leave the house and you say, did I close the garage? Did I close the garage? You drive back, it's closed. You didn't believe yourself. I mean, this is fun. I mean, this is a blast getting old. And the older I get, the bigger God gets. Nathan, when he was of age to go to college, and we were grateful, my wife and I were both crying. We were crying for different reasons. When he went off to college, he went to Auburn. Not my pick. I picked a Bible college. I said, you should go to Bible college for one year. He didn't necessarily want to be a preacher. And he said, no, I'm going to Auburn. Why? Why do kids do that? Because they know more than you, right? They're smarter than you. They've got this thing figured out. So he went off to Auburn and I said to him, son, I've got one requirement for you and one only. And he says, what's that, dad? This is going to be pretty easy. I said, yeah, it's really easy. When you return from college, I want you to be dumber. And he looks at me, dumber? You want me to be dumber? Yes. He says, why dad? I said, well, right now, you know everything in the world. When you finish your first year, I want you to know a little less and I want you to be dumb again. I checked with him a few weeks ago and I said to him these words, son, the older I get, the bigger God gets. The more miraculous he gets, the more wondrous he gets. And he said, dad, I think the exact same thing. And I'm like, yes, he's dumb again. I like it. John 1 says, That's John 1. The triune God created mankind. We were created in the image of God. And in chapter 5, we see a segue to the right hand of the throne of God, and it is on the right hand of the throne of God you see a scroll. It looked nothing like this. This is the best we could do. And the scroll represented the title deed to planet Earth. And the title deed would be opened one seal at a time. And you had a seal, you opened it, you read it. You had another seal, you opened it, you unscrolled what was written. Had writing on the outside and writing on the inside. The writing on the outside was a person authorized to take the scroll from God the Father, from his right hand. And on the inside was the playbook to the end of the earth, to the reclamation of this planet and us back to our rightful position where he makes all the wrong things right. It's the playbook. It's the rest of the book of Revelation, what was in the Father's right hand. And there was a search in heaven as to the person who was worthy to take the scroll out of the Father's right hand and then loose the seals that were there. And John, 90-year-old John, weeped bitterly. He wept bitterly. Why? It's conjecture on my part, but can you imagine for a 60-year period of time between when Jesus ascended into heaven and when John was called back up into heaven, 60 years had passed. When you became a believer in the New Testament church era, first and second century, it was a death sentence. It was a sentence by which you would die. So John had led and given the gospel out to the ends of the earth and basically had seen his friends die. 11 out of the 12 apostles died and John and John alone only remained. And I can imagine, because I have doubts as an old person, always I have doubts, and I sit there and I go, is this really true? Is this word of God really true? Is this right? And John, I felt like, he thought for a moment, what if Jesus is not coming back to reclaim stolen property? What if this is all in vain? What if those people died in vain? And what I've been saying for 60 years is wrong. What then? What are we going to do? The angel of the Lord said to John, John, there's no crying in heaven. We don't cry up here. Dry it up, buddy. Something like that. And the angel said, behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the root of David. Whoa. Wait a minute. To a Jewish boy. That meant something. That meant something. The lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David. That was the Messiah. That was the Messiah they expected to come the first time. And rescue him for all the pain. And set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah they expected to come the first time and rescue him for all the pain and set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah. This is the one I've been waiting for. This is the guy, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And when John saw between the throne of God and the cherubims that were around the throne, he saw this figure. And it was a figure as a lamb that was slain. Wow. The lamb that was slain. Now wait a minute. Let that sink in a little bit. You mean it's not pretty picture book Jesus with the nice flowing hair, all his hair, with a nice face, a nice body, fit body? You mean it wasn't that Jesus? No. It was a Jesus from 60 years ago he recognized on the cross with the crown of thorns, the nails in his hand. It was a lamb as if it was slain. He had the scars that he got from the crucifixion. And John, I believe his countenance probably changed from tears to gladness, recognizing that the Savior he had followed for 60 years was really true. It was really right. It was the right thing. This was the lamb that was slain because he saw the marks. You see, you can debate the resurrection all you want, but it happened. You can debate creation, but it happened. You can debate how God is going to come back. It's going to happen. Jesus was around with 500 people at one time. There's no scientist on this planet that has the key for that. Nobody has the key for that except God. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope. Let's go watch football. Let's go play. Let's go eat. But we exist because of the resurrection. We are the Easter people. We do celebrate. Every week, the new church celebrated the resurrection of Christ because it was such a miracle. And John, 60 years later, saw that same Jesus in front of him and was just overwhelmed with joy and gladness. That is the resurrected Christ. Now, the disciples, I believe, had their marching order in a couple places in the New Testament. One is found in Matthew chapter 16. There's a location that's in northern Israel called Caesarea Philippi. And at Caesarea Philippi, there was this, what is called the gates of hell. I'm allowed to say that in church because it says it in the Bible, the gates of hell. And what was that place? It was a cave, and me and Nathan were there in 2014. It was a place where people came to worship false, dead gods. It was a place where they came to do unspeakable atrocities, things that were wrong, to try to please these false gods, dead gods. And Jesus had the boys there in such a wicked, vile place with all these gods and the pan-god, and he says to them this something very simple, who do these people say that I am? Who do they say that I am? Well, you're Elijah. You're John the Baptist. You're a righteous dude, right? You're a good person. And then Jesus stopped them and said, no, no, no, no, no. And this is the question of questions that everyone must answer. But whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? And I love Peter. Peter finally got it right with all boldness, with all everything in his gut. And I believe the decibel level got really high. And he said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And what did Jesus say? Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And upon this rock moment came back in every one of the apostles' mind as the ascension of Christ occurred, as they gathered together, as Jesus conquered death, as we see him overcoming death and overcoming all obstacles. They were worried that they would die too, but now they weren't worried. Why? Because Jesus came to life. And when Jesus came to life, they approached Pentecost with a fervor and an intensity that they never had before. And that intensity, I think, they kind of looked like, after the ascension, I think they kind of looked a little like William Wallace. Braveheart. You know the story. Every time I see this, I think of Peter. That's William Wallace. What happened to William Wallace? He died. Hey, you guys don't know what I'm referring to. Google it. In Google, we trust. So just Google it. You'll find out what Braveheart is. He lost his life for the cause. And Peter died, crucified, upside down, dying for the cause. 11 out of the 12 died and were martyred because of what happened. You know what we need today in the church? We need more William Wallaces. We need people that are willing to die for the cause. You know, we just kind of want them to show up to live for the cause, let alone die for it. And why has it become so hard and so different? 2,000 years later, what happened to our intensity? What happened to our focus? I've got a hero of mine. His name is Randy Rye. Randy was a preacher. He left his church because of illness. He was supposed to have died eight times. He's got cancer. He's got organs that shut down. A couple weeks ago, he texted me and said, pray for me. I've got pneumonia. I'm hoping it's not COVID. If he gets COVID, he may die. It may be a death sentence for him. Randy, everywhere, he has no money. He has two nickels to rub together. But he loves the Lord with all intensity. And you know what he does? Everywhere he goes, he says to the doctors, to the nurses, to the patients without hope, he says, I want to tell you about Jesus. And I don't know a better place than in a hospital to tell somebody and get them prepared for eternity. But that guy, he approaches the gates of hell and he says, I'm going to tell this last person about Jesus. In our offices, God is there. Tell people about Jesus. Now, how can we do that today? How can we be the person with intensity today that lives out its Christianity with all fervor? I don't know about you. I haven't checked with this church yet. You're probably not typical of every North American church because Nathan's here. You're probably a little different. But every church I know of has a need for children's ministries. Always. Always a need. Hey man, it's the next generation in there. It's an opportunity to teach and train the next generation. Aaron should have a waiting list of names for people to do childcare. Look, you can hear Nathan on video. We know that. So go sit with the kids. Tell them about Jesus. Well, I don't know what to do. Well, Moses didn't either, but he did it. We need people to step up. What if we had twice as many people step up for children's ministries? What if we had a need come about and twice as much money came in? What about if we had a missions trip and twice as many people signed up for it as could go. What about if we asked for volunteers to serve to love our neighbors and twice as many people showed up? We've lost our intensity. John was the bishop of the church of Ephesus. And at that church, if you read the first two and three chapters of Revelation, you'll find out that the church of Ephesus lost its first love. And John was the bishop there, and he held some responsibility for losing that first love. And they were admonished by God that, hey, you need to get that first love back. Maybe that's what we need to do. I believe when John went back, he was different. And things were different from that point on. Now, if you all would do me a favor and go ahead and stand up, we're going to have the reading of the word of God, and then we're going to transition right into worship at the same time. But John went from Patmos to paradise, from paradise back to Patmos. In one year, he left Patmos and went back to Ephesus. And for five years, he lived. And then five years later, he died. In that five-year period of time, he discipled many young person. Hey, who would like to learn at the feet of John, one of the apostles, particularly after he'd been up to heaven? Well, I would. That would be neat. And so John went back to Ephesus and he discipled a young man, 25 years old, by the name of Polycarp. Polycarp became the bishop at the church of Smyrna. He died a martyr's death in 155 A.D. He had somebody else he trained, Irenaeus, which gave us all the doctrines that we preserve today. The grandchild, if you will, the spiritual grandchild of the apostle Paul. Or, I'm sorry, John. And you see, it pays to disciple one another, to disciple our kids. And I believe John's life ended well with discipling one another. He also had a song. He had a song he learned when he's revelation experience and it's found in verses nine through 13. And it went something like this. And I heard a voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000, and thousands and thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature, every creature, which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and that are in them, I heard saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

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

We are in the fourth part of our series now called With, where we've been reading through together and then discussing on Sundays the book With by a pastor and author named Sky Jethani. I want to thank Doug Bergeson last week for doing a phenomenal job filling in for me as we learned about life from God. Because I either have less courage or more sense than him, I'm not going to start my sermon by singing to you. I don't think that I could ever do that. If you missed that last week, watch the sermon at least for the song at the beginning that you may have missed. It was really, really great. As we've been moving through this series, we've been looking at different postures that we adopt before God that ultimately become harmful for us. They do more to hurt us than they do to help us. And this week we arrive at what I think is probably the sneakiest and maybe most damaging posture that we can adopt that is wrong. And I think that if you spent any time in the church, if you grew up, especially for those of you who grew up in church, if your memory, as far back as you can remember, when the doors were open, you were there, then I guarantee you this is going to be hitting on some nerves for you. If you've been a part of the church for any number of years, for any length of time, then there are going to be some things in this posture that resonate for you. I told you that when I read this book first in 2013, I've never read another book that caused me to stop, put it down, pray, and repent more than this one did. And this chapter in particular, this dude read my mail. So if it feels like at some point in the service I'm stepping on your toes, just know that that's not condemnation. That's not accusation. That's empathy. This is me. I almost made this sermon just a confessional, to just confess to the church body how I've walked through this posture. But as we approach this posture, this life for God, I wanted to share with you an experience that I had years ago. I think it was 2007, in about April or May of 2007. Jen and I, my wife, we were moving back home. We had lived our first year of marriage in Columbia, South Carolina, where I was going to go to seminary. We decided not to do that, so we moved back home, and I was going to pursue being a teacher, being a Bible teacher at a private high school. I didn't know which one. I was applying and hoping for the best. That's a really difficult job to get. I was really foolhardy in my efforts, but that's what we were trying to do. And there was a position that came open that somebody told me about. I didn't see it on any of the websites. Somebody told me about it, just word of mouth. And so I sent my resume in to them. And I ended up getting hired at this school called Covenant Christian Academy and became the Bible teacher there. At the same time, they were looking for a science teacher. And this is again in April or May. So this is, if you know anything about school world, this is after the hiring process. Hiring starts in February or March for the upcoming year. So this was actually too late in the year. So it was odd for them to even be hiring at this point. And they advertised very low key this Bible position and this science position at the same high school for three weeks. And in three weeks, I wonder how many resumes you think the science teaching position got. Three. I wonder how many resumes you think the Bible teaching position got. 60. In three weeks, barely advertised. And that's always stuck out to me. I thought that was odd. In my process to come here, I was looking for different jobs. This was back in 2017. There was a church in Kingsport, Tennessee, which if you know anything about that area of Tennessee, it's booty. There's nothing there. It is an undesirable area of the country. It just is. Being honest with you. I know somebody from there. They will confirm this. A church there had an open position for a senior pastor and received over 500 resumes from a search firm. Now, why is that the case? Why is it the case that this undesirable, this school that I got hired at, my starting salary was $27,000 a year in 2007. It was podunk out in the country, the far-flung suburbs of Atlanta with a school that had a cafe gym notarium. Like that's how, it was not this glamorous thing. Yeah, we got 60 resumes in three weeks. How's that happening? How is a church in the corner of Tennessee really not around very much at all getting 500 resumes in a year? Why is that happening? I think it's happening because of this life for God posture that we adopt as churches. The life for God posture says this, and I'll explain to you why I'm thinking this way in a minute, but the life for God posture says this, God's love for me, God's value for me is equal to my accomplishments for him. God's value for me, God's affection for me is equal to my accomplishments for him. The more I do for God, the more he values me. The more things I accomplish for God, the more he loves me and approves of me, the more valuable I am in his kingdom. It's this mindset that says, if I want to be a good Christian, then I have to go and do. I have to go and perform. I have to go and be a professional Christian. And this is why I think there's so many resumes when jobs like that open up because there's so many people who grew up in the church, who have been around the church and have been in this vice grip and this pressure cooker of if you're going to be a good Christian, then you need to be a professional one. If you really, really love God, then you'll go make a huge impact for him. If you grew up in the church, you felt this pressure of if someone's a really good Christian, they're going to leave everything and go be a missionary somewhere. They're going to go be a pastor. They're going to go start a ministry or a nonprofit. If you're just kind of a regular okay Christian, go get a business degree, make some money, and tithe so that the good Christians can go do the job. And now listen, I say that, and we chuckle at its absurdity, but you can't tell me that you haven't felt that pressure. You can't tell me that that hasn't felt true, that there's this economy within the church, that the more I do for God, the more valuable I am to him. The more I perform, the more he loves me. The more I do, the bigger the accolades get, the bigger crowd I draw, the bigger Bible study I have, the bigger following I have online, whatever it is, then the more the people around me and my God admire me. And this is a tricky, sneaky, pernicious posture, partly because it preys upon something that is in our very nature. It preys upon our desire to be valuable and to be valued. Every one of us is born with an intrinsic need for approval. Every one of us is born with a need in our hearts and our souls for someone to look at us and say, you're enough. I love you. You're good enough. I value you. We all need that. That's why my four-year-old daughter, Lily, everything she does, Daddy, watch me do this. She can't go down a flight of stairs without making me watch her jump down the last two. Now I watch her pause at three and consider it for a minute and then step to the second one and jump, right? Daddy, watch this. Daddy, look at this. Daddy, look at what I colored. Look at what I did in school. And it's all these little things. None of them are super impressive except that she's my daughter and I love her. But what is that in her except for the need to be approved of, the need to be valued, the need to perform, the need for somebody to look at her and say, yeah, you're good enough and I love you for that. And like, guys, we don't lose that need. We don't lose that desire. As you get older, you don't lose the need to be valuable and enough for somebody. That doesn't go away. We just have more nuanced ways of asking for it, right? We see this in young adolescent boys that brag about everything. All they're doing is begging you to tell them that they're valuable and that they're enough. As we mature past that, we let other people tell us that we're good enough, but we don't solicit it. Or we're really sneaky. In my early years of ministry, I used to ask people for feedback on a sermon or on a talk. And listen, I didn't really want your feedback. Don't be critical of me. Just tell me all the ways you think I did great. That's all I'm looking for. That's just a sneaky way to get you to tell me that I'm valuable and that I'm enough and that I performed. It's intrinsic in us to grope for that value. And this posture says the more I perform, the more valuable that I am. Another reason it's really particularly sneaky is we celebrate it in church. We celebrate the stories. I think of Sarah and Casey Prince who grew into adulthood here at Grace years ago, and then they go to South Africa to do God's work there, and we celebrate that, and we should. That's the problem. We should celebrate that. But what we don't do is celebrate like a faith leverant. I mean, she was the online partner of the week a couple of weeks ago. But that's not really celebrating. That's just a joke that's fun. She's a stay-at-home mom. She crafts lessons for her two boys and for her young daughter every day. She prays over them and pours into them and teaches them the Bible. And we don't celebrate that nearly as much as we celebrate someone leaving everything and growing across the world to preach the gospel, when in reality, both calls are the same. Both calls are equal. Both calls are from God. Timothy tells us that we are all vessels in God's house and he chooses which ones he will place where for noble purposes and for other purposes. We're all a part of the body of Christ. We all have our part to play. Yet some reason, for whatever reason, we value some gifts over others and some ministries over other ministries. And one of the reasons we do this is because it feels biblical, right? Like the Bible tells us to perform. If you know Scripture well, hopefully you've already thought of a few where you'd like to raise your hand and be like, but Nate, we're told to do ministry. We're told to preach the gospel. We're told that we should have an impact. And you're right. Paul tells us this over and over again. At the end of his life, he says, I've run the race. I've kept the faith. He says he's fought the good fight. He tells us to run our race as one who desires to win. That's performance. Jesus, as he leaves, his last instructions to the disciples are go and make disciples. The thing I did with you, now you go and do that. Go do missions. Go and do. He tells us to do that. When he calls the disciples, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. I will give you purpose. So he says in Matthew 4.19. So it seems biblical that we should adopt this posture of life for God. I'm going to follow God so that I can derive my sense of purpose and worth and value from him because he tells me to go and do these things. That's why it's pretty sneaky. And it's similar to the other postures, not life over God. Life over God says, I don't need God in my life. I'm going to be the authority in my life. I'm just going to extract his principles and apply them for maximum efficiency like a self-help guru, but I don't really need his authority in my life. That's a different one. But those other two postures, life under God, I'm going to live my life under his authority. Life from God, I'm going to follow God so that I can get blessings from him. Those seem biblical too. The Bible wants us to live our life under the authority of God. The Bible does say that if we follow him, we will be blessed. Those are in Scripture. But what I want us to see about those three postures, those two and this one this morning, is that these postures are the results of following God, but they serve as terrible reasons to follow him. They're the results of following God. When we follow God, those things happen, but they really serve as terrible reasons to follow him. When I follow Jesus, I'm going to live my life under his authority, life under him. That's okay. That's good. That's a result of giving my life to him. When I give my life to Christ, I'm going to experience blessings from him. That's a result of my walk with him. When I give my life to Christ, I'm going to do things for him. That's a result, but they make terrible reasons. And when these things become the reasons that we follow God, I think three really terrible things happen in our life. The first one is this. I want to walk through a little exercise before I tell you what it is. This exercise really stuck out to me from the book, and I wonder if it's true of us as well. I know it's gonna feel cheesy to do this. I have a very high cheese meter. I hate all things that are cheesy. So just trust me, I wouldn't ask you to do this unless I thought it was particularly effective. But I would like for you to close your eyes. If you're watching at home, close your eyes. If you're here, close your eyes. If I look at you and I see that your eyes aren't closed, I'm gonna shame you by name to everyone watching everywhere. But I want you to do this. Close your eyes and picture that you're in heaven and you're walking before the Father. You're in heaven and you can finally see the face of God. The first time after living the life that you've lived, you can now see his face. What does it look like? What's the primary emotion on the face of God as he looks back at you? What does he feel towards you? All right. You guys can look back up here. I would be willing to bet, just like it talked about in the book, just like I know what my answer is when I do that exercise, I would be willing to bet that a lot of us, if we answer that question honestly, how is God looking at us? We would say that he's disappointed. He's disappointed in me. I should have done more. I should have known better. He gifted me in ways. He gave me opportunities, and I didn't do as much as I could. My Father in heaven has got to be disappointed in me. He does this exercise in the book with a bunch of kids going to Bible college. And their answer was universally, he's disappointed in me. And listen, when we live a life where we feel like God's value for me is equal to my performance and accomplishments for him, I think we have no choice but to walk through life assuming God is disappointed in us. One of the terrible things that happen when we adopt this life for God posture is that we walk through life assuming that our good Father in heaven is disappointed in us and who we are. And sin is no longer this thing that damages our relationship with our Father. It's no longer this thing that necessitated the death of Jesus on our behalf. Sin simply becomes this thing that makes us less effective than we could be. We don't properly think about that either. I wonder if you can relate to that at all, the idea that God is disappointed in you. And listen, I said at the beginning, this chapter eats my lunch. This is me. Even as I sit here and I tell you in the next few minutes God's not disappointed in you, even as I finish talking about God's love for you, I'm just being honest with you. I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm not trying to make a point or be dramatic. I don't feel that. I feel God's stark disappointment in me. And if you're with me there, I wonder what that must do to us. What must that do to our psyches? There's an entire industry of counseling, a vast majority of which is based on helping people get over the fact that they feel like their parents are disappointed in them. We have a whole industry of counseling and psychology that sits down with people and helps them get over the wounds that their parents caused them by never being proud of them, by never telling them that they were enough, by not loving them the way that they needed to be loved. And we as adults have to move through that in our wounding and try to figure that out. There's a whole industry based around it. How much more then must it affect us for us to walk through our life convinced that disappointed in us when we're so sure that he loves everyone around us so much? If I were to ask you, close your eyes and imagine your spouse before God. Close your eyes and imagine anybody in this room or anybody watching online before God. What's God's face to them? You would say it's love. It's joy. It's happiness. So then why do you make his face disappointed at you? What must it do to the way that we think about God, to our heart for him, to just assume that he's disappointed in us? What must it do to the way that we raise our children and teach them about our good God? It's no wonder that maybe some of us have a hard time praying or spending time in the Bible because we think the God that we find there is disappointed in us, like an angry coach on the sideline waiting for us to come off the field. And because of that, because we so often walk through life assuming God is disappointed in who we are and how we've performed, I think it causes a lot of us to kind of give up on being able to earn God's affection that way. And because it does, we begin to look to our peers for affection and approval. And in this way, our service becomes currency for comparison. In this way, we use our service as currency for comparison to others. We do the exact opposite of what Paul talked about in Galatians. Paul in Galatians wrote this striking verse, verse 10. He said, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Paul in Galatians says, listen, we don't live for other people. We don't live for the approval of our peers. We live for the approval of God. But when we adopt this life for God posture, when we try to perform at a rate that earns us his love and affection, we inevitably will realize that we fall short of that. And then we will turn our eyes to our peers and begin to compare ourselves to them. I know I'm disappointing to God, but these schmucks think I'm pretty great, so I'm just going to keep performing for them. A good way to know if this exists in you is to answer this question honestly. And listen, I'm about to step on some toes. I would say I'm sorry. I'm not. But this is me. I experienced this too. How many of you have ever served on a team, participated in a ministry, accepted an appointment to a board or to a committee, or pursued a position in ministry somehow. Not because it was your earnest and fervent desire to use your gifts to further God's kingdom, but because you liked the way that position or that appointment made you look to the people around you. How many of you have served on boards because of how it's perceived by others? How many of you have accepted appointments or desired to be on a committee or on a team because of the respect that it would garner from your peers? Listen, I'm chief among these people. I know through counseling of my own that the whole reason I got into the pastorate was because it was the quickest path of respect I could find in my life. Where I grew up, the people around me, the people that we respected most were the pastors. So I figured if I wanted the respect of other people, I'll just go do that. I can run my mouth for a while. I hope over the years God has purified that motive in me. But I'm lying if I tell you that every week I don't have to fight the grossness inside me that just wants to be impressive to you. If you can relate to that, it's probably because you too have fallen victim to this life for God posture. The more I perform, the more my God will love me and the more of the people around me will respect me. And suddenly our service to the Father simply becomes currency for comparison. And when we do that enough, when we do that enough, one of two things happens. Either we give up and we say, I can't compare to the people around me. I'm nobody. I'm nothing. I don't matter. I'll never matter in the church. I'm just kind of doing my little thing. I'm just staying in my box. People aren't going to respect me and we just forget it. We become discouraged and disheartened and we walk away from all that. Or we just double down and we become me monsters and we just perform, perform, perform. Look at me, look at all the things that I'm doing. When we don't even really want to be doing any of the things anyway, we just want the respect that they'll garner. And what happens when we do that is this last terrible thing that comes from this posture. We become deaf, blind, and numb to God's relentless and continual love for us. When we try to perform our way into God's love, to perform our way into the admiration from others, we become deaf, blind, and numb to the continual stream of God's wonderful affection to us. I wonder how many of you feel that way this morning. I wonder how many of you feel blinded and numbed to the fact that God loves you. I told you earlier that even as I preach that we're not disappointments to God, that he looks at us and he loves us. He's a loving father. We're not disappointments to him. I confess to you that I don't feel that truth. Every time I read about the love of the father, I don't know how much I feel that love. I feel that this performance, this idea of accomplishing enough for him, creates this voice in our head that's so loud that we need to do more, do more, do more, do more, that we drown out the voice of God that is telling us over and over again that he loves us and that we're enough for him. And we know this is true. The Bible shouts it at us. It tells us that the Lord is gracious and slow to anger and abounding in love and he is good to us. It tells us that give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. It tells us that he is love. It tells us that he loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die for us. Listen to this. If you're in this room, you probably know that this is true. If you're watching online, you probably know that this is true. The Bible screams at us that God loves us. Do you realize that he loves you so much that when you sinned and you messed up that relationship, he sent his son to die for you. His son whom he loved and whom he was well pleased to die for you so that you could have a path to spend eternity with him. Do you understand? God wants your soul and your presence in his life so much that he sent his son so that he could spend eternity with you. That's the whole reason that he did it? Y'all, I don't want to spend a week with any of you. Right? We don't want to spend that much time with anybody. What would you do to spend a week with a stranger? Nothing. I wouldn't give anything. I don't want to do that. God loves you so much that he sent his son to spend eternity with you. There couldn't be a more clear message of love coming out of Scripture than that truth. But yet we convince ourselves that we're somehow, we're the one. Everyone else in this room, they deserve it. But us, we should know better. And we're the one who doesn't deserve God's love. We're the one who can't hear that voice. We're the one who can't let it wash over us. And so we either get more discouraged or we try harder. And the whole time we make ourselves blind, deaf, and numb to this message of love that comes out of Scripture. And so my hope this morning, more than anything else, is that maybe for a few minutes that voice in your head that tells you that you're not good enough, that tells you that you're not worthy of the Father's love, that tells you He's going to be disappointed in you as soon as he gets to see you, that that voice that tells you to push harder and to do more and that you're not doing your part, that maybe that voice this morning for just a second will shut up long enough for you to hear the actual voice of God pouring out of Scripture, telling you over and over again that he loves you, that you're enough for him, that he waits like the father in the story of the prodigal son with open arms and runs to you. And that if you are here this morning or you're watching and you don't know him, you don't know Jesus yet, he is pursuing you. He is chasing after you. He is leaving everybody behind and coming after just you. He wants you so much that he died for you so that he could spend eternity with you. Can we please stop muting that voice coming out of Scripture and hear it? And accept God's love for us and quit trying to perform for it? My hope as we wrapped up with this posture this week is that over these last four weeks that God has primed our hearts, that he's revealed some things in us about why we follow him, about why we call God our Father and Jesus our Savior. And that as he's primed and readied our hearts that as we come back next week for the proper posture, life with God, that we will be ready and eagerly and earnestly desirous of what that posture is and what it looks like to be before Father for all the right reasons and finally find a way to walk with him that is fulfilling and life-giving and enriching so that we can hear the voice of the Father saying to us every day that he loves us, that we are adopted sons and daughters of the us. You're gracious. You're slow to anger. You're abounding in love. May we believe that we don't have to perform for you. May everything that we do be an outflowing of the love that you offer to us. God, help us to quit trying so hard to earn a thing that we already have. God, if any of us have adopted this posture of living our life for you, and our service has become currency for comparison, and it's driven us to this place where we assume that you're disappointed in us because we're simply not doing enough, may we please just be still this morning. Just calm down. Sit in your presence and bask in your love. May we feel that even as we finish up and sing. May we feel that as we go throughout our week. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace, and happy Father's Day to all the dads. This is a special day for those of us that have great dads to get to honor them, so I hope that you're able to do that today. And dads, I hope that you get to spend the day however it is that you want to spend it. This Sunday, we are in our series called Still the Church, where we're looking at the book of Acts, the story of the fledgling church and how it started and all the things that went into the beginning of this institution getting off the ground. It's the institution that 2,000 years later on another continent we participate in. It's the institution, the thing that is the bride of Christ that Jesus died for, that he came to start, that he left the disciples in charge of. And so we've been moving through the story, unveiling and uncovering the practices and the principles and the philosophies of the early church that we can still apply to our church 2,000 years later here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Today we arrive at the conversion of easily the most influential follower of Christ who's ever lived. A man who grew up by the name of Saul of Tarsus, and God changed his name to Paul. Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He did a lion's share of the missionary work immediately following the birth of the church. It's Paul that we look to who's responsible for spreading the gospel all over Asia Minor, who gives us a lot of our theology and the things that we understand about Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit and how they relate and how salvation works and what exactly it is we're all doing here. He's a hugely influential figure in the church. I would argue one of the most influential figures in history. And so today we arrive at his conversion. It's an important point in the book of Acts. It's an important story in the book of Acts. After his conversion, the rest of the book really mostly just details his ministry. That's how important and influential he was. So it's right and good that we stop and we go, what was it that converted him? And I think that there's a special insight that we can get in the events of his conversion, in the events of his conversion, that can apply to us right now. I believe that we're invited into the same thing that Paul was invited into, and I want us to see what that is this morning. So as we approach the story, you can find it in the book of Acts chapter 9. I hope you have your Bible with you there at home. I hope you guys are in the habit of watching these sermons with your Bibles open, of interacting with the text. There's nothing that can replace opening up God's Word and interacting with the text on your own, particularly if you have family and children around to go through it with them, because I want you to go through and pull out your own nuances and your own details from the story. More importantly, I never want you to accept what I say about the Bible at face value. I want you to do your own work and do your own thought and read it for yourself and make sure that what I'm saying is true to what God is communicating in here because I'm trying my best to communicate to you clearly what Scripture says, but I'm also human and I'm going to mess up. And I'd love a church full of people who are going to catch me when I do that because we're all reading our Bibles too. I would also love a church full of people who are gracious when they send me the email about catching me. But I hope you're following along in Scripture. In Acts chapter 9, we see Saul of Tarsus, who's a young and upcoming Pharisee, who's been given permission, special instructions from the high priest in Jerusalem to go to Damascus. The church was blowing up in Damascus and it was starting to cause a ruckus. And so Saul gets commissioned by the high priest to go to Damascus and snuff out Christianity. And we'll see later, we're going to look back at a verse in chapter 8, that Paul was ravaging the church. He was arresting people. He was putting people to death. He was pulling them out of their homes and throwing them in prison. He was doing everything he could, Saul was, to stamp out the church. And so he's on his way to Damascus to stamp out the new movement there. And Jesus appears to him in the clouds, knocks him to the ground. And he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And Saul says, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus. I'm the one that you are persecuting. And after seeing Jesus, Saul converts. He believes. He realizes that he's been spending his life trying to stamp out this movement that God himself appeared to him and said, hey, stop doing that. I want to use you to grow the movement that you're trying to stop. And it must have been an incredible scene because he had an entourage with him. And it says that they could hear the voice, but they couldn't see what Saul could see because he could see Jesus. And as a result of that, something like scales went over his eyes. And the text tells us that though his eyes were open, he could no longer see. And he went and rested in a place in Damascus for three days. And scripture tells us that it was three days without eating or drinking. So he is weak, he is feeble, he is blind, he is scared, but he's converted. And after this conversion, we see in Acts chapter 9 that the Lord appears to a man named Ananias. Now, Ananias was a righteous man who lived in Damascus. He was a devout follower of God. And the conversation that they have is incredibly interesting to me. I want you to look at it with me if you have your Bible. I'm going to pick up the story in Acts chapter 9, verse 11. In verse 11, the Son, or the Holy Spirit that appears to him. Scholars are unclear. But the words in my Bible are red, which indicates that at least the editors of the ESV think that it's Jesus who's speaking to Ananias. We hold that loosely, but that's probably a pretty good guess. So Jesus is talking to Ananias. And I just want you to pick up on this. This is one of those details that we're likely to just breeze right by. Ananias is just chilling out, and the Lord appears to him in a vision. And Ananias is apparently so used to discoursing with the Lord face-to-face in a vision like this that he just responds to him. He just talks right back to him. God says, hey, Ananias, there's a guy named Saul of Tarsus. He's in Damascus. I've blinded him. He's expecting you. I want you to go heal him. And Ananias responds. Ananias says, hey, listen, what he said is a very nice way of saying, I know who that is, and I don't want anything to do with him. You can find some other sucker. I don't think so, God. So let's just get together on this. Ananias is so righteous and so devout and so faithful that when the Lord appears to him in a vision, he just responds right back to him as if it's casual conversation. I don't know about you, but if the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would spend the next 12 to 24 months trying to figure out if I really saw the Lord in a vision and what to make of it and what it meant and if I could trust it, and then I would write a book about it and start a ministry. If the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would be terrified. And Ananias just talks right back to him. He says, yeah, I don't think so, God. I can't do that. Are you kidding me? I know who that is. He's going to kill me if I go. And God's response is profound. To me, this statement is so packed with truth that it's one of the most profound statements in the whole Bible. Look at what God says to Ananias. When Ananias hesitates and says, I don't think so. I know who that is. He's going to kill me. This is how God responds to him. Verse 15. Whoa. Ananias says, no, I don't think so, God. I don't want to do that. That's dangerous. I know who that is. And God says to pause. I want to pause this sermon right here. I'm going to leave that sermon here, and I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to talk about something else. Okay, so let's pause on this sermon. I try to do the best I can usually to follow one thread and not get sidetracked with other things, but this is such a big deal that I wanted to pause and say it and preach it for a second and then jump back into this sermon. So pause with me right here if you can, and we're going to talk about, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Okay, I'm over here different. This is parenthetical, okay? I'm within some parentheses. I just want to say this. There exists in Christendom, in faith, this insidious doctrine, this harmful and hurtful belief that to be a faithful Christian is somehow an insurance policy against pain and suffering in our life. Somehow or another, and I'm not exactly sure where we developed it. We assume that because God is love, that a loving God would never allow me to hurt in a way that is profound. And by the way, I am the sole arbiter of how much pain is too much pain. And so we walk through our lives with this erroneous and harmful belief that because I'm faithful, because I follow the rules, because I do my part, because I play my role, and I'm faithful to God and I live for him, that because of those things, he is going to insulate me and protect me from pain in my life. That because I'm faithful, God will navigate me through the raindrops of tragedy. And I think it's worth it because it's so dangerous and so damaging because what happens is people believe that and then pain happens in their life, tragedy comes into their life, and it shipwrecks the faith that they built on false assumptions that God never promised. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that when we follow God, our problems go away. Nowhere in Scripture does he promise that when we love him and obey him, that we won't encounter pain and hurt in this life. Paul, one of the most faithful people who ever lived, one of the most passionate people, most purpose-filled people for the gospel who ever lived, easily the most influential Christian who ever lived on the Mount Rushmore of faith, that there is anyone who deserves the blessings of God and the protection of God and to be able to circumvent tragedy in his life, it's Paul. If there's anyone who deserves God's protection, it's Paul because of service rendered to God. Yet Paul himself in one of his letters details his suffering for God. He details the times that he was beaten to within an inch of his life with the same punishment that Jesus received before he was crucified, the 39 lashings of the cat of nine tails. He details the times that he was mocked and that he was persecuted. He details the times that he was stoned and left to die on the ground. He details the times that he was shipwrecked, the times that he was so sick that he was sure he was going to die. Does it sound like based on Paul's life that Christians get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy? We don't. They're a part of life. They're a part of this fallen creation. And the more quickly we can move away from that expectation, the more holistically we can offer our faith to God and the better understanding we can have when tragedy and pain do befall us. Back over here in this sermon. Thank you for allowing me that freedom. The phrase that I really want to key in on in God's response is not, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. The phrase that I want us to let ring in our ears today is that God says about Saul that he is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. And in his sovereignty and in his great sense of irony, God had even prepared Saul for this moment. See, Saul of Tarsus grew up in the religious system. He grew up as the star student. He went to the Ivy League equivalent schools. He was a young, up-and-coming Pharisee. He was going to step in and be in the Senate and lead the nation. He was very likely a future high priest of Israel. He had all kinds of potential, and God had prepped him and groomed him for this moment. He had prepped him and groomed him to lead. Saul grew up exposed to the best possible training. He grew up learning the Old Testament inside and out, and he didn't know it, but he was learning it inside and out so that when Jesus appeared to him, he was able to uniquely connect all the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And we see him do it in remarkably succinct and accurate ways all through his writings. God was preparing him for what was ahead. He exposed him to leaders and leadership. He learned how to peddle and exchange in the respect of men. He learned how to commandeer a room. He learned how to orate. He learned how to do all of these things for what he thought would be the sole purpose of stamping out the very movement that he was going to take those gifts and use them to advance. God and his sovereignty knew this. And if that's not enough to see that even when Saul thought he was preparing himself to do the exact opposite of what he was going to do, God was already using him. This is remarkable to me. This is something that I discovered years ago and I've been wanting to preach about it ever since. I'm so thrilled to get to share this with you this morning. But if you look back at chapter 8, beginning in verse 1, it says, Last week, we look at Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who with boldness and faith stuck his face in the wood chipper and spoke truth to power, knowing that they were going to kill him for it. And while they killed him, there was a young man named Saul of Tarsus who held everyone's coats and approved of what they were doing. And after that, he began to ravage the church. There arose this uprising from within traditional Judaism to stamp out this new movement of believers. It says is in trouble. Stephen has just been martyred. The powers that be, the authorities have decided that they do want to actively stamp out this movement. They're not going to be patient with it any longer. And Saul becomes the epicenter of this persecution. And as a result of this persecution, the church scatters. They leave Jerusalem. In fear, they flee from Jerusalem. And this is the part that I think is fascinating. What is Saul doing? Saul is doing everything he can to stamp out this new movement. And as he seeks to stamp out this new movement with arresting and with cruelty and with beatings and certainly with some violations of some rights, the Christians in Jerusalem grow fearful. And what do they do? They scatter to the surrounding regions. And I read one time, what do they do when they scatter to these surrounding regions? When a family of Christians flees to another city in these surrounding areas, to Damascus or to Ephesus or to wherever else, and they get there, and they're in this new city, and they don't know anybody, and they're trying to figure out life. Who are they going to look for? They're going to look for people that have something in common. Who has something in common? Other Christians who just fled Jerusalem because of persecution. And in these cities that they scattered to, they began to band together in these small groups of believers. And what do these groups of believers do? Well, they're from the original church in Jerusalem. They devoted themselves to the apostles' preaching and to the breaking of bread and to prayers. And they invited one another in one another's homes and they took care of one another as any had need. They began to be the church. Don't you see that when Saul applied pressure in Jerusalem in fear, the Christians scattered to surrounding cities. When they got to those cities, they band together with other Christians that had things in common and began to exercise and express the church as a body there. And in doing so, started all these little churches all over Asia Minor that were there as seeds for Paul to come and water later when he's preaching the gospel willingly. Isn't that cool? Saul was doing everything he could to stamp out the church. And God said, great, I'm going to use your efforts to grow it. The very thing he was trying to avoid is the very thing that he caused. And God in his sovereignty knew that if the Christians are comfortable in Jerusalem, they're just going to keep the word there, and the spread of this gospel is going to be slower. So he allowed Saul to apply a little bit of pressure so that they might scatter and plant churches in the surrounding areas so that when Saul later became Paul and went out to preach willingly, that there was seeds planted and the churches that he was sent to grow were ready for it. What we see in chapters 8 and 9 of Acts and what was before the conversion, and in God's purposing of Paul after the conversion, is that God was going to do what God was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it. God was going to do what he was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it anyway. It was going to happen. Let me tell you something. If somehow Paul manages to reject the conversion, he sees Jesus, he's healed of the scales, and he still says, no, I don't want any part of that. I'm going to continue to persecute the church. If some reason Paul rejects that invitation by Jesus himself, do you know that the church is still getting built? Do you know that God's word and God's love is still going to prevail? Don't you understand that if Paul turns God down, that there's still a church today in Ephesus and Thessalonica and Galatia and Philippi and Tyre and Sidon and all the other places. Don't you understand that? The church existing wasn't contingent upon Paul. God simply invited him into the purpose of doing it. He didn't need him. If Paul doesn't rise up, then he rises up Barnabas or John Mark or Luke or Peter or James or John or some other unknown hero that gets to play that part. God didn't need Saul. He didn't need his talents. He invited him in to the joy of purpose. He invited him in to a life of meaning. He invited him in to a life of service that would matter for all of eternity. He invited him into this incredible joy. And the same is true of us. God's created us and designed us and purposed us in ways seen and unseen for things in his service and in his kingdom. His desire for all of his children is that we would be used in mighty ways to grow his kingdom. He's designed you and purposed you for that. In the same way that Saul was being prepared to go out and lead the church when he was growing up, not knowing that's what the preparation was for, so has God laid those tracks in your life to uniquely prepare you for what's ahead when you didn't even know what you were being prepared for in the past. I want you to understand that when God offers an opportunity for you to serve, for you to be used, for you to obey him, for you to walk with him, for you to live in submission to him, that he's not asking you to do this out of a sense of duty. He's not guilting you into it or twisting your arm so that we serve out of this sense of ought. I want us to realize that when God invites us into service, that you are invited into the joy of purpose. You're invited into this joy of purpose. God doesn't need you to do these things in his kingdom. He's inviting you in so that you might participate and sit on the front row and see the joy of people coming to know God. Paul himself is a testament to this. Paul suffered mightily in this ministry, yet he was invited into the joy of purpose. And he was able to write one of the most famous verses and misused verses in the New Testament, Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Preceding that verse, he says, I've learned how to be joyful when I have nothing. And I've learned how to be joyful when I have plenty. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Paul said, he's the one that said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. To live is purpose and great and wonderful, and to die is to be in the very presence of God. The only reason to be alive is to execute God's purpose for my life. He found great joy there. He found so much joy there, and we're going to actually preach a sermon on this in a couple of weeks. He found so much joy in the purpose of serving God that when he is arrested and in a prison in shackles in the middle of an earthquake in Philippi, he is singing praise songs to his father. That's how joyful Paul was, walking in the purpose of his God. And that's the joy that you're invited into. And listen, I think that the same is true today. God doesn't need us to get things done. He's going to do them regardless. I came to Grace in 2017, April of 2017. And when I got here, it really didn't look like the church was going to be a church for very much longer. But in God's goodness and in His sovereignty, according to His plan, He's flourished, Grace. Even in COVID, even in quarantine, we continue to flourish and just do remarkably well. I can't get over it. It's so amazing. But I firmly believe that God's hand is on this place. And that if I didn't raise my hand and say, yeah, I'll go, that sounds great. I'll do that, God. That if I didn't get to come up here and do this, that somebody else would have gotten to do it. If me and Jen didn't move up from Atlanta to become a part of grace and get to sit on the front lines and see everything that God's doing here, then somebody else would have had that experience because make no mistake about it, God was going to grow grace. God was going to flourish grace. God was going to do with this place exactly what he wanted to do with this place, regardless if I decided to come or not. I just got invited to participate in what's happening here. And it's a tremendous source of joy. For years, Grace has been building homes in Mexico. We send a couple teams down every year and build multiple homes every time we go almost. We've built dozens of homes over the years because God cares for the people in Mexico that they're getting built for. You know what I believe? Those homes get built with or without grace, man. Those homes get built with or without our teams, with or without our money. God's gonna take care of those people. You know what he let us do? He invites us into the joy of purpose. He invites us in to see and to build relationships and to be a part of what he's doing for our sake, not for his sake. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need our money. He doesn't need our teams. He doesn't need us to go down there and build the homes. We don't even know how to lay cinder block anyways. You know what he's doing? He's inviting us into the joy of purpose in Mexico so that we can experience a full life in him. Think of Steve and Lisa. Steve is our former worship pastor and our current technical director. And Lisa's his great wife, and they have a ministry called Side by Side where they partner, they come alongside couples who are struggling in their marriage and they seek to restore them to wholeness. And over the years, they've had the opportunity to walk many couples through that and see them restored to fullness in their marriage. But here's the truth. God loves those couples. And if he can't direct them to Steve and Lisa, he's going to direct them somewhere else. God's going to rescue those couples. He's simply inviting the Goldbergs in to participate in the joy of his purpose and what they're doing. That's what service is. That's what the Christian life is. God's going to do what he's going to do regardless of if we want to do it or participate. The invitation of the Christian life, the invitation of a life of service like Paul lived, is to simply participate in the joy of purpose. It's an invitation that I hope that you'll accept. I hope at Grace that we don't serve out of a sense of ought, that we don't obey out of a sense of duty, that we don't resentfully go along with these things that we don't desire, but that we would see in following God as an invitation to experience the joy of purpose. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for the story of your servant, Paul. We thank you for his humility and his service and what he left us and what we learned from him. Father, I pray that each of us would experience the joy that is found in serving the purpose that you created us for. May we walk in that joy. Let us throw off senses of duty and senses of ought and embrace this desire to experience what you're doing, to see it firsthand. Thank you for inviting us into what it is that you're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.