Sermons tagged with Repentance

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. We are in the second part of our series called 27, where we're going to be this summer and next summer going through the 27 books of the New Testament and kind of giving you an overview of each book with the goal of kind of raising the biblical literacy of the church, making us more aware of and comfortable with the Bible, and kind of knowing what each of the books are about. And hopefully this series serves to drive you into God's Word. This week we arrive at the Gospel of Mark. Last week we looked at the Gospel of Matthew. And in the next two weeks we'll look at Luke and John. So we're kind of doing a sub-series here in June of the Gospels. As I was thinking about the Gospel of Mark and the message of Mark, I was reminded of a story that I heard a while back. I think I actually heard Andy Stanley talking about this. Andy Stanley is a pastor out of Atlanta. A lot of you know who he is. If you don't know who he is, you're probably not a very good Christian, but we're happy you're here. But he's a pastor out of Atlanta, really great. I really love a lot of the stuff that he does. And I think I heard him tell this story, but I also went online and it's been written about a couple different times in a couple different ways. But in January of 2013, then President Obama, he had just been reelected, and he invited Andy Stanley to come give a sermon the morning of his inauguration at St. John's Episcopal Church. And in this room was going to be, of course, Barack and Michelle and their family, but cabinet members, his staff members, very high-level people, easily. This is the most powerful room in the world. And Andy Stanley is invited to give a sermon to the most powerful person in the world. And it makes me wonder, when I first heard this story, my immediate thought is, oh my gosh, what are you talking about? What do you preach to that room? What do you preach to someone who's about to take the oath of office for the President of the United States. And I wonder what you would say if you had 20 minutes before the next president takes office, regardless of your political affiliations. I couldn't care less what they are. Just stick with me on this. Don't be the guy that's listening to this part of the sermon being like, I'd tell you what I'd tell him. No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't, all right? Shut up. What would you actually want to say to try to be maximum helpful and inspirational to the leader of the free world? It makes me so nervous to think about that and what I would say. But here's what Andy Stanley said, and it's stuck with me ever since. He asked this of President Obama. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He's saying this to the man who is and will continue to be the most powerful person on the planet. And to a very powerful room, Andy Stanley says, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He speaks right to where they are, and he answers it with this. You leverage your power for the benefit of the other people in the room. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in this space? You leverage that power and that authority and that influence for the benefit of the people around you, not for yourself. That is a great message to the President of the United States. I don't know what the passage was. I looked hard to try to figure it, to try to find it, to try to find the actual sermon, because all that is, all that you can find if you Google it is a bunch of really conservative Christian online magazines who are upset that he called President Obama the pastor-in-chief during the sermon. Everybody got all worked up about that. So there's tons of articles that he had the audacity to say that, which who cares? And you can't find the actual sermon text. I wish I could find the sermon text because I'm certain, I'm certain that Andy preached this out of the Gospel of Mark. I'm certain that he did. Because I bring up that story. What do you do when you're the most powerful person in the room? You use your power and your influence for the benefit of the people around you. And he looked at President Obama and he said, you are in a very big room. My hope and prayer for you is that you will leverage everything that you have to make it better for the people around you. I wish every government official could listen to this sermon the day they took office. And I'm certain that the sermon came from the Gospel of Mark because that distilled down is the message of the Gospel of Mark, is to be a humble servant. Last week, I told you that Matthew was written to the Jewish community and depicts Jesus as a king. This week in Mark, Mark was written to the Romans to depict Jesus as a servant. Mark was written to a Roman audience and depicts Jesus as a servant. Mark was written by a guy named John Mark. You may recognize him if you're familiar with the book of Acts. After the first missionary journey, Paul parted ways with him and Barnabas, and then eventually John Mark got back in Paul's good graces and was with the disciples during this time. He was also very close with Peter, and his gospel is really a collection of the stories that Peter told John Mark. So this is almost the gospel according to Peter, but John Mark happened to be the one that wrote it down. It's a very urgent gospel. It's a very quick gospel. If you've never read a gospel before, I would tell you to start with Mark. It's very action-packed. It just goes from one thing to the next, and it's a very succinct gospel, and it was the first gospel written. And again, it was written to the Romans because the Romans were very prevalent in that day and age. And it was written to portray Jesus as a servant. And it's interesting that each of the Gospels is written to a different audience. Matthew is written to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, Luke to the Greeks, and John to the whole world. And in each case, Jesus is depicted in such a way that it's very clear that the author's intent is to kind of arrest your attention and make you look at this Jesus figure. So when you're a Jewish person and Jesus is depicted as the king, that's what you expect him to be. So you're listening, you're all in. When you're a Greek person and Jesus is depicted as a man, as a human, you're all wrapped up in humanity and humanity being the apex of creation. And so you're paying attention. When you're reading the Gospel of John and it presents this man as a god, you're leaning in. That's interesting to me. And so to a Roman person, getting a message about this all-powerful creator god who takes on human form and is the most powerful person, literally, who has ever lived, it would arrest your attention to note that he was a servant. Now, why is it so powerful to depict Jesus as a servant to the Roman audience? Well, to a Roman, the whole point of having power was not to have to serve anyone else. To the Roman mind, the whole point of accumulating wealth and influence and power and authority was to put yourself in a situation where you didn't have to serve anyone else. You had someone serving you. To grow were very comfortable with servanthood. They did not have the sensibilities that we had. If you were a rich person, you had some servants. How you treated them was up to you. And to be a servant was to be the lowest of the low. It was better to be poor and have your own hut to live in, but no one telling you what to do every day than it was to be the servant in the home of a rich person where you just lived at their beck and call. Or beck and call, I don't know. So to the Roman mind, they would never ever have expected Jesus to be depicted as a servant because that was the lowest of the low. And to them, as you accumulated power and authority, you accumulated servants. The whole reason for having more power was so that you had to do less things for yourself. And you know, even though in the United States, we certainly don't have a servant or slavery culture, but we do think of authority and power in a lot of the same ways. We do think that to grow in authority and to grow in power and influence means that you have more people around you to do more things for you. We start to develop this idea that certain tasks are beneath us. I don't have to do that anymore. Remember, I saw one of the guys on Shark Tank, one of the sharks in the NBC hit show, Shark Tank. If you haven't heard of it, I'm not going to explain it to you. But they're billionaires, and one of them makes a comment that he doesn't wear a watch. And they were like, why don't you wear a watch? He goes, I don't need to. Whenever I get somewhere, I'm on time. And you're like, oh, oh, you're a jerk. As people accrue power and authority and influence in certain circles, we just assume that there's going to start to be some tasks that are beneath them, and there's going to be rights and privileges that come with their influence and power. One of my favorite stories that came out of the Donald Trump presidency, don't worry, I'm not going to say anything. Just know that whenever, if you're a pastor and you say any president's name at all, the whole room goes. This is going to be fine. I've read biographies, different accounts. This is, this is, this is, this is actually, this is a verifiable fact that in the Oval Office, I believe underneath the Resolute Desk, the Resolute Desk is the name of the President's Desk. If you didn't know that, I will not belittle you for not knowing things about the Bible here, but come on, that's just basic U.S. stuff. You got to know what the Resolute Desk is. There's a button under the Resolute Desk, and President Trump would delight in having guests into the Oval Office, and he'd say, hey, watch this, and he would press the button, and a few minutes later, a waiter would come in with ice-cold Diet Cokes, and he would love that this button would usher in Diet Cokes, right? And I think that's delightful. And I've heard, I've read somewhere, I don't know if this is true, I just want to believe it to be true, that Joe Biden kept that, President Biden kept that button in place, and for him, they bring in ice cream sundaes. Isn't that fun? I love it. Grandpa Joe bringing in ice cream sundaes for the kids. This is great. Now, what we would expect and what the Romans would expect is for Jesus to be the one hitting the button. And what Mark says is, no, he's the one bringing the Cokes. He's the one in the kitchen waiting for the call, cracking it open and pouring it over ice and bringing as many as is needed, and he's doing it with a smile on his face. That's who Jesus was, and that's how he's depicted. And to a Roman mind that would expect someone in authority to just continue to be in authority the way that everyone around them is in authority. It's pretty groundbreaking to think that Jesus is the one bringing the cokes, not hitting the button. And to the American mind, I think it does the same thing. Because if we're being honest, we don't think of people in authority as typically as the people bringing the Coke. We think of them as the ones that are hitting the button. And so I think if I had to summarize the book of Mark, if there was a summary verse, what is Mark about? What does Mark want us to know? What is he trying to communicate, not just to the Roman audience, but to us and to all people for all time? In Mark's words, what's he trying to communicate? Well, we actually have that in Mark chapter 10, and it's Jesus's words. On the screen, we're going to start in verse 43, but I'm going to start reading from verse 42. Verse 42 says, That is the summary verse, the summary passage of Mark. That whoever wants to be greatest among you must be least. Whoever wants to be first must be last. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. That's the message of Mark. And I love how Jesus begins this discourse. Do not be like the Gentiles who lord their authority over one another. Have you ever had an experience with someone who got a scintilla of authority and it just went straight to their head and they were the most annoying humans on the planet? I have. His name was Philip, and I'm going to tell you his story. Normally, I do not use names to disparage people. I just say a guy that I know, but this time, Philip has it coming. This is years ago, 24, 25, I'm working for my dad, and my dad's an accountant. In the 70s, he got into this weird niche of accounting where he audits housing authorities. He travels around the country, and that's what he does. And so I'm working for my my dad and I'm on a trip, I think Dallas-Fort Worth, I'm working with Phillip. Phillip is my age. This is his first time on a business trip being the auditor in charge. It's on the work papers. It says auditor in charge, Phillip. I won't say his last name. That's not fair. Then you'll Google him or something. But he's listed as the auditor in charge. It's a big deal. And it's just me and him traveling. He's the boss. And I was very clear. I knew that I had that job because of who my dad was. He had a CPA. As Philip did. He passed the test. I had theology classes. I had nothing. Dude, you're the boss. Whatever you need me to do, I'll do. And so there's this one test that I would run in the test and control series, and I had to schedule out an account. This particular account was about $12 million. And I had to just basically retrace it through the year and make it zero out. And I don't even know what that means now. I don't know how to explain to you. I could get Greg as an accountant, he could come up here and he could kind of translate for you guys. I don't know what that means. I just know that I needed to zero it out. I needed to make sure that everything they were inputting into it had a reliable source and that it all matched up and that they weren't cooking the books, which I'm the guy to make sure no one's getting away with anything financially. I sure do know. Gosh. So anyways, I've got to schedule this thing out. And I'm scheduling it out, and I get the difference down to less than $100. And I'm going back through. It's one of those, I've got to stack. I've got this book, that thing that was printed out on the dot matrix with the green and white paper, and I'm flipping through, and I'm highlighting, and I'm looking, and I got it down to $100, about $100. And once you got the difference down to a small enough amount, you could just put on the cover page to make it all zero out, you could just put that amount there and you could write next to it, immaterial difference, which is accounting speak for, we didn't figure this out, but we're pretty sure it's fine. That's what that means. Like it's,, this doesn't matter. It's a, it's a hundred dollars and a 12 million dollar account. No fraud here, all right? So, I've been working on this thing for six or seven hours. I get it down to a hundred bucks. I can't get it down any lower than that, and I go to Phillip. I say, hey, Phillip, I've got this thing down to about a hundred bucks. Can I just, you cool if I write this off as an immaterial difference? And Philip goes, I just really want to do this one right, Nate. So I need you to go find me that $100. And I'm like, okay. All right. So I go back to the office. I'm like, I got to find this. I got to find the new sheriff in town. It's $100. Okay, here we go. So I'm flipping back to the thing again. I'm looking for it again. I find some stuff. I'm looking and I've got it down. I've got it down to four cents. Got it down to four cents. I know. And I'm just, I've got to find this four cents. I don't even care about Philip anymore. I've got to find this four cents, right? We go to dinner. We're done. I come back the next morning. I spend all morning looking, thumbing through this thing for the four cents. I had it memorized, right? I can't find it. I have to admit defeat. And I'm like, gosh, I don't want to go into Philip's office, but I got to go into Philip's office. I'm like, hey dude, I got it down to four cents. I'm going to write that off as immaterial difference if that's all right. And Philip looks me in the eye and he says, I'm going to need you to find me that four cents. I have never been closer to jumping across a desk and strangling someone out than I was in that moment. I was livid. So I go back to the office and I'm like, I can't find the four cents. Let me see what I can do here. So I grabbed the previous year's work papers. So because every job you go on, you bring the work papers from the previous year in case you need to reference something, see what we did last year, or in this case, discover that your boss is a jerk. So I found the folder. I opened it up. I go to the test that I'm working on. And guess who did that test last year? Philip did. And do you know what he wrote off as an immaterial difference? $208. I'll never forget that number. It was $208 to my four cents, and I was so mad. And I went back to him, and I told him, you know, last year you wrote off $208 as an immaterial difference. I think four cents in a $12 million account seems pretty reasonable. And he said, I need you to find me the four cents. So I went back to the office, and I wrote it off as immaterial difference, and I never looked back. I tried to play nice to you, Phillip, but guess what? My dad's the boss, and I know that he's going to take my side on this, so I'm not even that worried about it. I didn't want to do this to you, but I had to. Don't be like Philip. Gentiles, when they get an ounce of authority lorded over you, and they want to make sure that they're afforded the respect and the rights and privileges that come with leadership, you're going to address me as this, as doctor or pastor or whatever, Mr. or Mrs., if they're C-suite. You're going to address me as this. You're going to talk to me like this. You're going to defer to me. And sometimes when people get in power, they're nice until you start acting like you're equals. Then they got to make sure that you know how things balance out. That's what Gentiles do. They lord their authority over people. And worse than being annoying, when Christians do this, we push people away from God. If you're a leader in any capacity, small to large, and you allow that authority and that position of power and that influence to go to your head, and part of what you try to do with that influence is maintain your influence, and you lord it over people, you're actually pushing people away from Jesus. You're actually harming, you're not just harming yourself and harming your relationship with that person, you are harming the very kingdom of Jesus if you hold your leadership and authority in ways that the Gentiles do. If you hold it for yourself rather than for others. And what's actually interesting among many things that Andy Stanley said to Barack Obama that day is he came back at the end and he said, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? Will you leverage that for the benefit of the people around you? And then he says, and actually, to do anything less than this is to think that you're greater than Christ himself. To do anything less than serve is to act as though you're greater than Christ. Because the greatest one of all time came to serve and to be last. So when we don't do that, we are declaring to ourselves in our tiny little universes that we are better than Jesus. And in church, and this is the converse of this, when we do serve, when we do carry leadership, when we do carry authority like Jesus did, when we do that, we can actually pull people into Jesus by being Christ-like. We talk a lot in church about being Christ-like, about being more like Jesus. When the word sanctification comes up, sanctification is this time period and process from the point in which we become saved. Our salvation process starts to when it is sealed and done when we go to heaven. That intermittent time when we are in God's hand but we are not yet perfected in heaven is sanctification. And I always describe sanctification as becoming the process through which we become more like Christ in character. That's what sanctification is. So in the Christian journey, in the Christian life, we are all of us who would call ourselves Christians, seeking to be more like Christ. And so what Mark says is, if you want to be more like Jesus, serve others more. If you want to be more like Jesus, then anytime you have any influence anywhere at all, use it for the benefit of the people around you rather than yourself. And when you do that, it will draw people into Christ. That's the message of Mark. That when we don't carry our authority and our influence like Jesus does, we push people away. And when we do carry it like Jesus did, we draw people into him with Christ-like character. Now, I know that there are some of you who may be thinking to yourself, like, dude, I'm not in charge of anything, okay? I don't lead anybody. I don't have circles of influence. I don't do that. I'm not in charge of anyone anywhere. I get that. We move into seasons where we have greater and less influence. But I would submit to you that we all do at some point in our life and at some point in our week. Maybe you're a stay-at-home mom. You're in charge of those kids. Might not feel that way all the time. Might feel like they're in charge of you, but you're in charge of those kids. How are you going to exert your authority over them? Are we going to be the kind of parent that makes sure that our kids know who the boss is at every moment of every day? Are we going to be the kind of parent that sits lazily on the couch and the purpose of our kids is to go get us something from the fridge and bring it to us rather than engaging with them? How are we going to use the influence and the authority that we have in our homes? If we go to school and we volunteer, we're in charge of those kids for at least for a small amount of time. If you're over there, you're in charge for a small amount of time. If you're working at Summer Extreme this week, you're in charge for a small amount of time. We all move into places where we are the one who is in authority, where we are the one who has the most influence, where our voice is the heaviest one in the room. And when we are, how are we going to treat it? How are we going to usher a little bit of Jesus into their day, into that moment? Even when we go sit down at a restaurant, we are in authority over our server. What can we do in that meal to serve them, to show them a little bit of Jesus, to make their day a little bit better, to leave a good imprint on them for that day? How can we carry the authority that we have, even in that small situation, to bring them closer to Jesus and not push them further away? We can do this in the drive-through, in a position of authority. We are in authority. The people helping us are the people who are working for us. We can show them a little bit of Jesus just in that moment to draw them closer into our Savior. And if you don't think I'm right, go through a drive-through with my wife, Jen. Because when we go through a drive-through together, this is, I'm not making this up. When we go through a drive-ru together, if we get the food and the drinks and it's done, like we've reached the end of this exchange, and I've not been adequately kind to the people that we've been talking to, she will lean across me and say very loudly, thank you so much, you're doing great, have a nice day. And then look at me. Now, I didn't know there was such a thing as vindictive kindness, but she has figured it out. And she'll sprinkle a little Jesus on both of us on the way. A little bit on them, make their day better. A little bit on me, make my day worse, but I need to get better. I think we need to realize when we have opportunities to act in unexpected ways, to show people the kindness that exudes from our Savior, be those conduits of grace that we talk about being around here. But to more of you, not maybe more of you, but to a big portion of you, you do have some authority. You do have people who work for you. Maybe you're a team lead. Maybe you just got a new job and there's new people that are listening to you now and you've got to figure this out. Maybe you've got two employees. Maybe you've got 200 or 2,000. I know that we do have a lot of leaders in this church. And to those of you who do have people working for you, those of you that do have the opportunity to influence. Now here's what I would say about you, the ones that I know who do carry influence here. I know that you know this already. And I know that it means a lot to you to try to be the type of leader that Jesus was. And I know that serving your staff and serving the people around you matters a lot. But let this morning be an encouragement and a reminder for you to dive back into that. If you're here this morning and you do lead somewhere, you're on a board, you run a classroom, you have employees. You run a business. You oversee whatever. And you have been using that authority to serve yourself and to help yourself climb? I get it. That's how the world handles authority. But in your efforts to do that, I just want you to know as a Christian, you're actually pushing people away from you and from your Savior. But Jesus shows us that there is a way to lead and to have influence and authority that will be so radical that it would draw people into him. And for those of you who do lead, I wonder what could be better one day at your retirement party or after you're gone and there's a group of your employees and coworkers sitting around and they're talking about what it was like to work for you, what it was like to be led for you. What if the ones who believe in Jesus said about you, because that person was in my life, I'm closer to Jesus than I would have ever been? What if what they said about you after you retired, and no one's around, and they're not saying this to blow smoke up your dress, they're saying this because they mean it, because God put that person in my life, I'm closer to him than I think I ever would be because I got to watch them serve God faithfully for years. What a privilege it was to work under them because of what it showed me about who their Jesus was. What if the people who don't know Jesus but work for you would say about you, after seeing you at your best and your worst, after watching how you leverage your influence and authority, what if they were to say about you, you know what, I don't share the faith that they do, but they're one of the ones that I believe when they say it. I don't know that I believe like they do, but I know that they believed. I know that they love their Jesus. They were the real deal. We all, in different times and different ways, move into and out of positions of influence. The message of Mark is that when you find yourself there, remember, you can leverage your authority to get people to serve you and do what you want. But that's not what Jesus did. And that's not what he told you to do. And I am convinced that the best thing possible that anybody could say about you after working with you or for you or being under your leadership for any amount of time is, I am closer to Jesus because God put that person in my life. And we get them there by serving them. That's why Jesus says, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So whether we lead in small ways at the drive-through or in big ways, leading in life. We should carry that leadership and that influence and that authority like Jesus did and try to use it to serve others. Now a couple practical things on how we do that and I'll wrap up. Two things. How can we begin to be people who serve like Jesus served? Well I think one of the things we can do is that we can begin to equate serving with being Christ-like, not being belittled. We can begin to equate serving with being like Christ, not being belittled. This week, I reached out to an old friend of mine who is a pastor about an hour and a half away from here. And he and I worked at summer camp together years ago and have loosely kept in touch. And I emailed him and I just said, hey, man, I'm so sorry that it's taken me six years of living this close to you to try to get together, but I'd love to get together and just talk as pastors and buy you lunch sometime. Let me know if that's going to be possible. And he emailed me back, and he said, is Ruth's Chris or nothing for me, which is pretty typical of this guy. It's funny. And then he says, I'll have to get back with you on when. If you don't hear from me, feel free to email me again. And I thought, nope. If you don't email me, we will never speak in our whole lives. Because what did he do? He belittled me. Made me a secretary. I'm not your secretary. But as I was preparing the sermon, and I wrote that point, well, looks like I'll be emailing John. Because it's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not to be belittled. When we get asked to do something that we feel is beneath us, jump at it. Do it. It's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not be belittled. The second thing we can do is we can pray this prayer of confession and repentance. And as we consider the message of the gospel of Mark, and we consider this idea that to be first we must be last, to be great we must be least. I would encourage us all to pray this prayer together as I pray here in a second, but the prayer is simply this. Father, show me where I'm leveraging my power to be served rather than to serve. Whatever power and influence you've given me, however loud my voice is in a particular room, would you please show me where I'm using that influence and that authority for myself and not for the people that are around me? And in praying that prayer, hopefully he will open our eyes to greater opportunities of service and servanthood so that we can be like Christ and serve people towards the kingdom of God. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for who you are and for how you love us. We know that your son could have showed up and just lorded it over us, and he would have had every right to do it, to just ascend to the throne, to be the most important and most powerful person in the room. He could have done that, but he came meek and mild, and he came as a servant. God, as you move us into positions of authority and influence, would you remind us of the way that your son came and that your son led and that your son served so that we might do the same? Would you, Father, in your goodness, keep us humble, make us eager to serve, give us a heart that sees the needs of others and meets them where they are, and deflate our egos where they're too big and where they're making it hard for us to serve like we need to. Thank you for your son. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for how you've loved us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday. A lot of you have chosen this morning to make this a part of your Sunday. So many so that Keith had to sit in the front with the good Christians. So this is going to be a great Sunday. I almost said the good Christians except for Alan's up here too. So you guys can be buddies together. Sorry, you're both excellent placeholders for that joke that I wanted to make. And if you're, listen, if you're new here and you're trying to, you're kicking the tires, what just happened in worship is just such a great microcosm for, I think, who we are as a church, where we are worshiping earnestly and singing and getting after it. And it was a sweet moment. And then we start the next song and there's a little whoopsie and then we all laugh at ourselves and we just get right back into it. And I just thought it was great. I actually got on my knees and prayed and I pray before every sermon. And I'm just, I was just praying that I'm just so grateful that I get to be the pastor, one of the pastors of a church that I just love so much. I just, I just, I love this place. I love you guys. I consider it a huge privilege. I've told a couple different people this week. It just came up in conversation that I just don't think there could be an easier church to pastor. You guys are so great to me and my family. But anyways, we're in part two of our series called Big Emotions. I think, is that right, Carly? Is that what we're calling this one? Okay. I never know. I always tell them what it's about and then they just name it and I go, okay. And then I get it wrong. But part two of big emotions. And basically what we're doing is looking at stories, instances in the Bible where the people in the Bible had these big emotions, sometimes a blow up or a blow out. We're looking at that. We're examining it. We're relating to it because we're emotional creatures. We have blow ups and blow outs sometimes. And we're trying to figure out what we can learn from it. And so this week, we're looking at a pretty unique instance in the life of Christ. When I was growing up, I don't have many memories at all that don't involve church. I don't have a memory that goes beyond my church involvement. And so growing up, I heard all the stories. And before I heard the stories about Jesus, I heard about him that he was perfect, right? That he lived a sinless life. That he never did anything wrong, which is remarkable. And so I knew that as a little kid, but there's two stories that I encountered when I was young that gave me pause. Like, wait, are you sure? Because that really feels like sin. That really feels like that guy did stuff he wasn't supposed to do. The first one is in, I think it's Luke, when it records that Mary and Joseph took the family to Jerusalem for Passover, as was their habit. And they left, and Jesus chose to stay behind as a 12-year-old to talk to the rabbis and the scribes and the Pharisees. And I always looked at that story and thought, like, listen, I'm not trying to accuse our Savior of anything. I just know that when I was a kid, pretty high up on the obedience priority list was when your parents say it's time to go, you go. Like you don't just be like, yeah, I opted in to just remain at Six Flags after you guys left. Like I'm just going to, or I guess here it's Bush Gardens. I'm just going to, I'm just going to stay there. You guys go ahead. I'll figure it out. Like that seemed like pretty egregious sin for a 12 year old to just say, you know what you guys go on. I'm going to talk to my new pals in the temple, but obviously he didn't sin. I still not quite sure how that worked out for 12 year old Jesus, just to start making decisions about where he's going to stay. But I don't think that it blemishes his perfect record. The other story that made me go, gosh, that really seems like there's a different way to do that, is the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. And I honestly think that even now, and we'll get into the story in a second, so if you don't know what that is yet, don't worry, we'll get there. But I think even now, if you made us contemporaries of Jesus, and we saw him do what he's about to do when he cleanses the temple, we probably would have pulled him aside and been like, hey, buddy, I don't know that that was the best way to handle that. There's probably a different way to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. It's pretty untoward to do that. We would probably tell him that he was wrong and that he owed some people some apologies. But we're going to get into the story and actually see why his anger and zeal in this story is pretty warranted. So this story is in all four of the Gospels. I think John gives the best account of it, and we find it in John 2, verses 13 through 16. So I'll read it to you, and then we can talk about what's going on. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And then in verse 17, he says, So to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wherever you were, you needed to get you and your family to Jerusalem to observe the holidays. Passover was one of those times where it's written in God's law and expected as you exercise your faith that you would be obedient and go supposed to go to the temple. And when you got to the temple, you were supposed to offer sacrifices in accordance with just your regular religious maintenance. In Leviticus, we see a ton of laws about what kinds of sacrifices are required for what types of grievances and sins. And so you had to offer those as well as your traditional Passover sacrifices for you and your family. This is all written into the law and required of good religious people. And so good religious people from all over Israel would go to Jerusalem on these high holidays and walk in obedience to those instructions in what we call the Old Testament. They're being obedient and living out their faith well. So if we picture this from the perspective of a family in Nazareth where Jesus was from, to get to Jerusalem, I believe is about 30 miles. Scholars believe that that journey is going to take three to five days depending on who you've got with you. For my family with a seven-year-old and a two-year-old, that's going to take seven days, and I'm going to not have any religion by the time I get to Jerusalem. Or I'll just have some serious sacrificing to do, right? To make things right. So whatever pace you go at, it's a three to five-day journey, a lot of people think. And you get there, you've got to find some place to stay. Maybe you stay in an inn. Maybe, I'm sure they had a commercialization set up and people would take advantage of people needing places to stay. Maybe you had friends or family in Jerusalem and there was one big house that you all got to stay at, but you've got to figure that out. And then you've got to go to the temple, right? But to go into the temple, you had to pay a temple tax. I don't know why you had to pay this temple tax. It feels a little bit like kind of Catholic indulgences, middle ages, like that kind of thing where the leaders of the church are just trying to extract more money from the people who come in. It would be like if I charged you $5 a seat to listen to the sermons and to worship with us. I don't think anything could clear this place out quicker than if I started asking for, that's right, than if I started asking for money to listen to me. But that's what you had to do when you went there. And so these money changers, they had these coins, and this is where the racket comes in. They had these coins that were made in Israel for Hebrews, and they did not bear Caesar's symbol. They had a real issue with coins with Caesar's symbol on them because Caesar claimed to be Lord, and that wasn't good. And so they couldn't accept the Roman currency that was ubiquitous in the country. Far more Roman currency going around than this particular, specifically Israeli currency going around. And so they would ask for you to take your Roman currency and exchange it for that Israeli currency or that Jewish currency. And some people think it's because of the issue with Caesar and other people think it's just that the Jewish coins were minted with more and better silver, and so it was of greater value. But at any rate, you had to take the coins that you had and exchange them. And you know, as well as I do, that the guy who's got the bucket of the Jewish coins at the temple and is exchanging them isn't doing that on good faith. He's making a little off the top because he's got a family to feed too, right? And maybe, maybe the family in Nazareth has its own cash of Jewish coins that are acceptable at the temple, and maybe they don't need that money changer. But my bet is they probably do. And my bet is he's scalping them. He's making some money off of that exchange. And we don't know for sure that the people in the temple who were selling animals and lending money, we don't know for sure that they were price gouging, that they were taking advantage of the populace. But we do know that Jesus said that they had turned his father's house and the other gospel accounts, that they had turned his father's house into a den of thieves or robbers. Which leads me to believe that they were taking advantage of their situation. You're a family from Nazareth. You're traveling three to five days. Who knows how many people are in your caravan. You probably don't want to or have the capacity to bring sheep with you, doves with you for the sacrifice, oxen with you for the sacrifice. You probably don't have that capacity. And even when you get where you're going and you've got to stay at the Hampton Inn, they probably don't allow sheep in there. Maybe you have a house that you can go to and they've got a stable or a barn and you've brought all your sacrificial animals and you're self-sufficient. But I would guess, and research bears this out, that most of the populace did not have that stuff to bring or the capacity to bring it to Jerusalem. So once you get to Jerusalem, to the temple, and you've got to get in the temple with the coin that they accept and you've got to perform the sacrifices that your God demands of you, you have to buy those animals once you get there. Do you see what I'm saying? This is like, this is a North Carolina zoo situation at the junction. This is Disney World. They've got you. You're going to get chicken tenders and you're going to pay $17 and you're going to like it. Nothing you can do about it. And again, we can't say with certainty that they were price gouging, but everything in the text points to the fact that they were. And so Jesus sees this and he's rightly angered by it. Because when you think about it, it's pretty appalling what they're doing. They are leveraging God's laws to line their own pockets. They are commercializing the sacred. And what's more, to me, the high priest is complicit in all of this. Because you don't get to set up shop on the temple grounds. And when we hear this story, please know that when we think about a temple, I think we think about this indoor structure. But at the Temple Mount, there was this outer courtyard that was the size of several football fields, and everyone's allowed in there, Gentiles and Jews alike. You're allowed in there, and that's where all of the tables and the moneylenders are set up. And then you have like this rectangle in the middle, and the rectangle is divided into two squares, and the front square is where Jewish men and women are allowed, and the back square is where Jewish that Jesus goes in and clears out. He goes in there. First of all, he sees what they're doing. And if you read the text, it says he fashioned a whip. He didn't go find one. He sat down and anger wove a whole whip. And then he took it and he started flipping over tables like a madman. And I assume hitting people with the whip. That's one of the scenes in Jesus's life I would have liked to attend. But when you understand what's going on, his anger makes so much sense. And to me, it's so very justifiable. These people are humble people trying to be obedient to their God, trying to do the right thing. And they're going to Jerusalem to take the pilgrimage like good Hebrews should. And listen, we know how faith works. We know how religious cultures work. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think 100% of the Hebrew people are taking a pilgrimage for all three high holidays every year. Some people had opted out. Some people didn't care. Some people couldn't make it. I'm sure a higher percentage of that population went than would go in Christian America in the 80s making some pilgrimage, but not everybody went. So the ones who are going are the faithful ones. They're the committed ones. To them, this faith matters, and they're trying to do the right thing, and they're trying to teach it to their children and their children's children too. And when they get there, they're being taken advantage of. We don't know this for sure, but I'd be willing to proffer a guess that the people exchanging those coins had a higher net value than the people who needed the exchanging done. I bet the people selling oxen had a higher net worth than a majority of the people buying the oxen from them. The rich were likely getting richer while the poor were getting poorer. And the galling thing is it's all in the name of God. They're taking advantage of the sacred to line their own pockets, and it's gross. And Jesus won't have it. He goes in there, flips tables, drives them out, and the disciples are reminded that it was said about him that he would have zeal for his father's house. So there's a lot of things that we can learn from this story as we look at it and we pull it apart and we analyze it. There's a lot of things we can learn from this story. I think one of the things, and I almost preached about it, but I'm just going to set it here and let you guys consider it later in your own time. Maybe you can talk about it in your small groups. But this story pretty heavily indicates that justice matters a lot to Jesus. And fighting against injustice matters a lot to Jesus. I think what galled Jesus was the fact that these people who in good faith were trying to be obedient to their father were being taken advantage of for their very faith. It's remarkably unjust and it ticked them off. But I think more than that, more than that, was what they were turning his father's house into. And what I see glaring like a bullhorn from these passages is that Jesus will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Our Jesus will not put up with, he will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. I don't know where you draw lines in your life. I don't know what you feel like you can't put up with, what really gets your ire going. I know for me, when I see someone who is, believe it or not, when I see someone who is willfully unkind and hurtful to someone else, I write that person off. I have a really hard time with someone who is willing to be unkind and hurtful to someone else. I just can't tolerate it. I don't know what your thing is. Jesus' thing is, one of them, you will not sully the sacred while I am here. Because the temple, the temple was sacred to the Jew. It was sacred to Jesus. Do you understand that the temple was the place of the presence of God for thousands of years? In that back rectangle where the Holy of Holies sat, in the Holy of Holies behind a veil sat the Ark of the Covenant. And on the Ark of the Covenant, there's two angels, golden angels, and their wings touch in the middle. And where their wings touch is called the mercy seat. And on the mercy seat rests the very presence of God, making that temple and that city and that nation unique in all the world. Do you know that every synagogue built outside of Israel is built to face Jerusalem and that every synagogue in Israel faces Jerusalem. It's all about the Holy of Holies and what's in there and the presence of God being in that place. The temple was a sacred space. A space that when you go into it, it's different than any other experience in your life. A space where you take your children and you teach them the way that you were taught. The space where when you become the matriarch or the patriarch of your family, you sit your grandchildren down and you tell them about the pilgrimages that you used to make. And most importantly, it's a place of worship where we assign worth to God. Not just praise and worship, not singing like what we did a few minutes ago, but worship where you declare with every breath and with every action and with every thought and with every deed that God, you are Lord and I am not. That was a place where you went to lay yourself down prostrate and say, God, you are amazing and to stand in awe of God. The temple was a space for the sacred and they sullied it with their selfishness. And so Jesus said, no, I will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Now here's why that should matter a lot to you and I, because of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul tells us this, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. The New Testament teaches us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And I used to hear growing up, I would hear Baptists say that you shouldn't drink because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and alcohol is not healthy for you. And then you just look at them and be like, do you eat fried chicken? And then that clearly is a misapplication. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Meaning, Paul tells us in other writings, I think it's Ephesians, but I'm not certain on that. But I am certain that what he says is that when you become a Christian, that you receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment on your salvation. And again, to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. He came to deliver the world. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he is who he says he, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to get us and take us home. To be a Christian is to believe those things. And when we believe those things, the Bible teaches us that God gives us his Holy Spirit in our hearts. And what does that language mean? We don't know. We just kind of feel that language. But he gives us the Holy Spirit in our heart as a seal of the promise that one day he's going to send his son back to take us to him, to take us home. And that because of that, because this is the place where the Holy Spirit dwells, we have now become the temple. Our bodies are the temple. Our bodies are where the presence of God sits in this earthly place. Because when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, many of you know this, the veil that was hung in the Holy of Holies that separated the presence of God from everyone else was torn in two from top to bottom and the presence of God exited that place. And then we learn at the end of the Gospels and at the beginning of Acts that that presence actually returns to us in the form of God's Spirit and that we are the houses of God's Spirit. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what are temples for? Temples are for worship. Temples are sacred. Temples are where we meet with God. And when we talk about temples being places of worship, I am reminded I'm reminded that Paul wrote that we are actually called to be living sacrifices. That going through life as a living sacrifice, Paul calls it, this is our spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable to God. He tells us as Christians that we are to live our lives as sacrifices. God, we wake up every day, God, what would you have me do today? How would you have me use this instrument for your glory today? And that is our spiritual act of worship. Not praise, but worship. And our spiritual act of worship, if what happens in the temple is every thought, every action, every deed declares implicitly, Lord, you are Lord and I am not, then what he calls us to do, what we are called to do when we understand the theology of the New Testament is to live our lives as the temples of the Holy Spirit, to live our lives as spiritual acts of worship. Meaning, when we go throughout our day, every thought, every word, every action, every deed ought to declare, God, you are God and I am not. Now that is pretty high bar. And I'll be the first to admit to you, I do not think I have yet accumulated a day where every thought, deed, action, emotion, reaction I had that day declared, God, you are God and I am not. But here's what we're not going to do at Grace. We're not going to back off of the high bar that Scripture sets for us to make it more attainable for ourselves so that we become something that we're not supposed to be. We're going to sit in humility and brokenness before the incredibly high bar of Scripture and say, Jesus, I can't. You have to help me. But when we are told that our bodies, the temples of the Holy Spirit, the way to live our lives is living sacrifices. This is our spiritual act of worship within that temple. We are told that every thought and deed and action and word needs to declare that he is Lord and we are not. And that's a very high bar. We are also reminded that Jesus does not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. And Paul has declared us sacred because we are temples. You guys can see where I'm going there. All of you, I'm certain, walked in here this morning with something in your temple that's sullying the sacred. All of us in our lives have trampled on Jesus. All of us in our actions and our thoughts and our deeds and our words have sullied the sacred, have prevented our bodies from being used for worship. And so, to me, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is in all four Gospels because it is a continuous reminder when we examine it and consider it and reflect on it that we ought to be people of repentance. That we ought to be people who invite Jesus into our life and say, turn over my tables if you need to. Show me where I am sullying the sacred and help me to get rid of those things. I don't need to enumerate the possible sins and the possible attitudes that you walked into this room with. And when I say you, I mean me too. I don't need to list those for you because you already know what they are. Because you have the Holy Spirit and he's getting after you about them right now. So I believe that this story calls us to repentance. Calls us to a moment where we plead with Jesus, would you please clean out this temple? Would you please turn over these tables? And when we talk about repentance, most of us in this room know what repentance is. I've done a sermon or two on it, but just so we're on the same page. Repentance means 180 degree turn. So it's not just confession. Confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yes, I see that. And it definitely was wrong to cuss at that six-year-old in the store. And I'm so sorry. That's wrong. Repentance is to move away from it and never do that again. Okay. So confession is, I'm sorry that I disappointed you in this way. I can see why that was disappointing. I agree, I would be disappointed in me too. But if we just keep doing it, then it doesn't matter. We just stop it, I'm sorry. So repentance is to apologize and then move in the opposite direction, away from sin and back towards the Father. That's what repentance is. And I think that when we think about repentance, we think about repenting of actions, things that we did. And so we repent and we say, God, I'm sorry that I did this. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry that I looked at that. I'm not going to look at that anymore. I'm sorry that I drank too much that time. I'm not going to drink too much anymore. I'm sorry that I lost my temper. I'm not going to lose my temper. I'm sorry that I worried too much. I'm not going to worry. We tend to repent of actions, things that we did. I'm sorry I did blank. I'm not going to do blank anymore. But I would actually put in front of you maybe a new way of thinking or a different way of thinking about repentance that was put in front of me a couple of weeks ago and I'm just so grateful for it. I think that we should repent of what we allow in our hearts, not necessarily how we behave. We should repent of what we allow to take up residence in our heart. The attitudes and the motives behind the behaviors are far more important to repent of than the actions themselves. Can I actually, can I tell you something? I mean, I know I can. That's a stupid question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna. I actually had an interesting conversation recently with a couple of my friends where we were asking, is God really even that interested in our behavior? Does he even really care about our behavior? And I increasingly think the answer is no. I increasingly think it's just he doesn't really care about our behavior, not because it doesn't matter to him what we do, but because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Because our behaviors will follow our attitudes and motives. So he's far more worried about cleansing our heart than making our behavior good. And I think that the way it works to repent of attitudes over actions can go something like this. You could pick a sin. I'm not sure what it is you struggle with. I can make some educated guesses, but I know for sure what I struggle with. And I shared one of those with you last week. I got angry. I lost my temper. I slapped the center console. I raised my voice at my daughter. She cried, and it was a moment that I wish I could take back. And I do that. I have a shorter fuse than I'd like. I can get angry or frustrated quickly. Hopefully, I deflate quickly too. But that's one of the things that I deal with. And so last week we talked about how when we lose our temper and we lash out, we looked at the story of Peter in the garden and they were coming to arrest Jesus and he swung his sword and he cut off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus. And Jesus picks up the ear and he puts it back on the guard and he mouthing us and he says, go on your way, Peter, stop doing that. And so we kind of talked about this language of sometimes we will lash out and we'll cut off people's ears. And so if anger is a thing that you deal with, like me, then I don't think it's really helpful to say, God, I'm sorry I cut off that person's ear. I'm never going to cut off ears again. I'm going to take a deep breath and count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my daughter. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my coworker, at my wife, at my husband, whatever it is. I'm going to count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't think that's super helpful. I think what's more helpful is to stop and think, well, why was I angry? Just in general, I'm going to step over here. This is not biblical, okay? I hesitated to even say anything about this, but when you ask why you're angry, you'll almost always find that you're not entitled to it. And most anger comes from unmet expectations. And some of those aren't very fair. Okay. When I reflect on when I get frustrated, what I find at the root of that, 98% of the time, is just unmitigated selfishness. It's just a bratty nine-year-old kid who doesn't want to do what they don't want to do. I don't want to get up and take the dog outside. I wish we didn't have one. I want to sit on the couch. So I'm angry. A lot of my anger has to do with me just wanting to sit on the couch. I don't want to get up and go do that. I don't want to clean. I don't want to go follow after a two-year-old. I want to sit right here, and I want to watch the Masters. That's what I want to do. I don't want to be going this slowly on 540. I'd like to be going quicker than you, and you're prohibiting that. I don't want to be in this conversation. I don't want to hear that story. I don't want to have to go there. I don't want to have to go stand in a field with sunshine and get my picture taken with my children who will not smile. I don't want to do that. My anger, my frustration in my life almost always is stirred up by poor Nate being made to do something he doesn't want to do. What a baby. You are too. So for me, rather than praying, God, help me not lash out at people anymore. A much better prayer is, God, help me to become a more selfless, patient person so that I might better love those around me. Help me to become, I've identified that I get frustrated because I'm selfish, so help me to be a more patient and selfless person. And here's the best part, so that I might better love those around me. Because those sins and attitudes and actions that exist in your life, who do they hurt the most? They hurt the people you love the most. And when we carry those through our lives, we actually love them more poorly than we could and should. So a helpful thing when we repent is to think, how was this attitude? How was my selfishness? How was my greed? How was my anxiety? How was my stubbornness? How was my pride? How was that hurting the people around me? And then you apologize to them and you repent of that too. But we don't repent by praying that God would take away actions. We pray that he would come into our hearts and take away attitudes. And I think that this mindset of repentance sheds light on what David writes in Psalm 139. It's a passage that's vexed me for most of my life. I'll tell you why in a second. But in Psalm 139, David says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I usually joke when I mention that verse that that's a prayer I've never had to pray. I've never had to be like, dear God, can you just show me where I'm sinning? Because I don't see it. And I would like you to help me. I've never had to pray that prayer. I know where I'm messing up. I see it. And if I don't always see it, I have a wife. She sees it. She'll tell me. She's not here today. I can say that. Lily's sick. She's got a cold. But the more I think about it, I don't really think that's what David meant either. I don't think maybe he did, but David was so very human. David was a terrible father. He had so many cracks in the facade. It's difficult for me to believe that David had a season of his life when he was writing Psalm 139 where he thought, you know what? I know I used to mess up, but I've been pretty much nailing it lately. God, I think I'm perfect for the last month, so if you could just tell me if I'm not, that'd be great. I don't think that's what David was doing. I think what David was doing is what we're talking about this morning. Jesus, can you come in my heart and search out those motives? Can you come in my heart and start flipping over tables? Some of us are people pleasers. We bend over backwards to make everyone around us happy. And sometimes that makes us be people that we're not. It's an interesting prayer to say, God, can you show me why I do that? Can you help me understand why I want those people to like me so much? Can you help me understand why I'm getting so angry? Can you help me understand why I seem to be so motivated by success? Can you help me understand why I don't like many of the people in my life right now and I know it's my problem? We start praying motive prayers, idols in heart prayers, sullying the temple prayers. And true repentance, the kind that we need, really, we can't do that on our own. If we're not repenting of actions, and we can't just white-knuckle our way back to holiness, but we have to repent of attitudes and things that we've allowed to take root in our heart and sully the sacred, then we need the kind of cleansing that only Jesus can offer. We need to pray the prayer of David in light of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple and say, God, wherever the tables have set up in my life, wherever there's money changing going on, wherever I'm taking advantage of people, whatever is in here that's sullying the sacred space of the temple of your Holy Spirit, God, would you show it to me, and would you give me the courage to pray that it leaves? And I'll help you with this too. Maybe you know exactly what it is. I don't need God to divine my attitude. I don't need to go to counseling to help suss this out. I don't need to talk to advisors who love me and can tell me what my attitudes have been. I know exactly what I need to do. But I don't want to do it. I like that sin. I like that sullying. And I'm not going to listen to one sermon by some guy and then walk away from that. Okay? I've been there too. So let me just encourage you to pray this. God, I don't want this to not be in my life. Would you help me to want to want it to go away? I'm not ready to let go of this sin, but God, will you move me closer to wanting to get rid of it, to hating it like you do? Because right now I don't. Right now I like it. Will you just help move the needle a little bit today and tomorrow and next week on not being happy with this in my life? But for a lot of us, the prayer today is a prayer of repentance, which should be a regular thing in our Christian life. God, show me what attitudes and idols I have in my heart and what things I have motivating the sin in my life that you might turn them over and force them out just like you did in the temple that day. Because if Jesus has a zeal for not sullying the sacred in that temple, then I can promise you that he is zealous about your temples too. Let's invite him in and let's be places that are places, let's be people that are places of worship every day as we learn what it is to repent of the things that are sullying the sacred in our lives. Let's pray. Father, God, we love you so much. We thank you that your kindness leads us to repentance, that it's not something you force onto us, that you don't run into our lives with a whip and start turning over tables and just cause all kinds of pain and hurt and dishevelment, but that your kindness, your love, your invitation, your grace, your patience and forbearance with us leads us to repentance. That the more we learn about you, the closer we want to be to you. And the less patience we have for the things that prevent us from worshiping you. God, I pray that we in this room would repent of sins big and little. That we would repent of attitudes egregious and simply unholy and unhelpful. And that God, even today, all of us in this room would take a step towards being cleansed. We pray the prayer of David and invite you into our hearts to clean things out so that we might be instruments of worship for you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, Aaron, and the band. Thank you very much. It was good stuff this morning. This is the second part of our series called Powerful Prayers. I think I called it Great Prayers last week. I don't really know what we named the series. I just tell them what I'm going to preach about, and then they make a graphic. So that's how that goes. But this one's called Powerful Prayers, and I am excited to share with you this morning what I believe is probably the most powerful prayer of repentance in the Bible. There's a couple different instances where we see some people in profound repentance and restoration situations, but this is probably the greatest one and the most famous one. This is David's prayer of repentance after his sin with Bathsheba. And I'm not sure what the worst thing is that you've ever done, and I don't want to know what that is. I'm very grateful that we don't have a Catholic model of pastorhood here at this church, and you have to confess things to me. I don't want to know those things. Those are your business. Those are not my business. You and God, you take care of that. I don't need to know. I don't know what the worst thing is you've ever done, but I'm willing to bet it's not as bad as what David did, and I'm willing to bet, unless it is just mind-blowing in its evil and efficacy, that they're not going to write about it so that every generation, henceforth for,000 years learns of it, okay, when they come of age. So this is a pretty unique sin and a pretty profound response to it. And so I think that there is a lot to learn from David's prayer of repentance. And that's kind of what we're doing in this series, is we're just looking at great prayers in the Bible, powerful prayers prayed by saintly people, and we're asking what can we learn from these prayers. So we're not talking about how can I get a better prayer life. We're talking about when I pray, what can I learn from these prayers? And even on this topic of repentance, we're going to be talking about repentance this morning. I preached on repentance in the spring in our Lent series. I'm sure you guys all remember, I mean, almost all of it. It was really good. But I preached on it in the spring, on what it was and on how we do it and on the symbolism of it. And when we walk away from a sin, we walk towards Jesus. And so if this raises some questions for you and you feel like it might be a little incomplete, I want to repent, I don't know how to repent, or I'm not really sure I understand what it is, then I would tell you to go back and listen to that one in the spring, because that's when I kind of talked about the details of repentance. But this week, I want to ask, what can we learn from David's repentance? And if that's what we're asking, then we need to know what he did. Now, a lot of you know what he did. You know this story. You know how David became a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. Some of us don't know it at all, and some of us know bits and pieces. So just to make sure we're on the same page and that we understand what we're reading when we look at his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, which is where we're going to be, by the way. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. I wanted to let you know what he did. We find this story in 2 Samuel 11, so you can go there and you can fact check me to make sure I'm not making this stuff up. But it says in the springtime when the kings were off to war, David was in his palace. And there's a lot of insights that we can make into this story, but I don't want to belabor the story this morning. I just want us to understand what's happened. So David's army is off to war, being generaled by Joab, who shows up in this story. And David decides one day that he's going to go out onto his roof. And while he's on his roof, he looks across the way, I would presume, and he sees a woman named Bathsheba bathing. Because in that culture, you bathed on the roof, out of sight from everyone else, but unless you're the king and you have a palace that's higher than everyone else's building, now you can see what you want to see. And so let's be clear about this. David did not go up onto the roof to have a cup of coffee, fire up a cigar, and just take in the sunset, okay? That's not what he was doing. David knew what he was doing. David went up there to see what he could see, and he saw what he wanted to see. Bathsheba was bathing on the roof, and so he tells his guys, whoever his guys are, however the attendants to kings work, he says, I'd like you to bring her to me. So they go get Bathsheba. They bring Bathsheba to his chambers. And he did with her what kings do with pretty girls that they bring to their chambers. And what's interesting, I don't know if it's interesting, but what's important to understand in this moment is that consent was not a thing. I can't say with certainty that what happened between David and Bathsheba was against her consent, but what I can say is that it wouldn't have mattered at all. David was the one making this choice. Bathsheba had no choice. I'm 100% certain she felt powerless in that situation, which only compounds the sin and the predatory nature of what David is doing. And if you're going to tell me that this is the first time David's done this roof bathing, bring her to my chambers trick, I'm going to tell you, you have not watched enough Netflix because that's not how things go. I would be willing to bet this wasn't the first time David had a woman that he found attractive brought to his palace so that he could do with that woman what he wanted to do with that woman. It's not the first time he turned a human into a commodity. So he does what kings do in that situation, and word gets back to him. I don't know. I guess it had to be a couple of weeks later. Bathsheba sent word to David that she was pregnant. And David's like, this is a problem because she's married to a guy named Uriah, the Hittite. Uriah is one of David's mighty men. That's the special forces of the ancient Hebrew army. This is the delta force that's tasked with protecting the king and then also being the forefront, being the tip of the spear in the battles. These were some bad dudes. I think it might be 2 Samuel 17 where the deeds of the mighty men are chronicled, and it's really cool. It's like, I mean, for guys it is. Girls are like, yeah, who cares? But for dudes, it's great. So go read 2 Samuel 17, and it chronicles what the mighty men did, and Uriah is one of those guys. So not only is Bathsheba married, but she's married to a man who lives to serve David, who is one of his best soldiers. And when he finds out she's pregnant, David says, okay, I got to cover this up. So he sends word to Joab on the front lines. He says, send me Uriah back. I need to talk to him. So he sends Uriah back and David says, hey, just wanted to check in with you, see how the war was going. How are you guys doing out there? How's Joab? How's everything going? And he gives him an update and David says, you know what? You're such a great guy, Uriah. You know what I want? Go see your wife. Go see Bathsheba. She's a looker. Just go see her. Spend a night there at your house and then I'll send you back to battle tomorrow. And Uriah refuses. He says, my Lord Joab is sleeping in the field, as are all the men that I fight with. How could I possibly come home and enjoy the warmth of the bed and my wife and be an honorable man? I cannot do it. And so he sleeps on the front step of his house so that all the city knows Uriah didn't go in there that night. So David's little cover-up ain't going to work. I reread the story just to make sure I wasn't misleading you. And something that I hadn't noticed before is when Uriah doesn't do what David needs him to do so that he can cover up his sin, he throws a party the next night. He says, Uriah, stay another day. And then he plies Uriah with wine. And the Bible says clearly gets him drunk and then sends him home to his wife. Maybe this time it'll work. He refuses. He sleeps outside. So the next morning, Uriah wakes up. David hands him a letter. He says, I want you to hand these instructions to Joab the general. They're sealed, so Uriah doesn't look at them. He carries them to Joab, and they're instructions for Joab to put Uriah in the battle where the fighting is the most fierce, and when it gets really intense, have everybody else back away from him so that Uriah is killed. Make sure Uriah dies in battle, is the order. So he does. Joab withdraws the troops. Uriah is killed. Bathsheba is grieving. David, the ever gracious and loving king, brokenhearted for the plight of the widow in his kingdom, does the magnanimous thing and takes her in as his bride and restores her to a proper life. What a good thing for David to do. He is a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer, and he's gotten away with it. Not only has he gotten away with it, but he got away with it, and he found a way to make himself look a little bit better at the end. The very next chapter, 2 Samuel, there's a guy named Nathan, the prophet. And he goes to David, and without belaboring the story, he says, hey, I know what you did. God told me. You need to make this right. And David is brokenhearted. He's crestfallen. Next chapter over, he's on suicide watch. He's brokenhearted at what he did. And what I love about Psalms is Psalms, David didn't write all the Psalms, but he wrote most of them. And it serves us as kind of this private prayer journal of this great king, of this great man, where he writes all the defeats and all the victories and all the laments and all the celebrations and all the times when he's brought low and all the times when he celebrates. And so this moment in his life isn't excluded from his diary. And so we get a peek into his feelings after he's been confronted by Nathan about his sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah the Hittite. And so this is the prayer of repentance that David prays in his worst moment. When his absolute worst moment is brought to life, when his most evil is brought to life, when David has to be confronted with the fact that I didn't even know I could be who I am right now. I didn't know I was capable of this kind of sin, but it just kind of builds and builds and builds until I don't identify myself anymore. And then he's confronted with it. And in that confrontation, he sits down and he prays, and then he writes out his prayer. And I think it's helpful for us to look Against you and you only have I sinned. On one hand, that's not true at all. You sinned against Bathsheba horribly. You sinned horribly against Uriah. You sinned against all the attendants and all the people that you wrapped into your little scheme. You sinned against Joab, who you turned into a murderer on your behalf. You sinned against a lot of people. But at the end of the day, what David is realizing here in this prayer is that, yes, I've sinned against a lot of people, but I have offended no one and sinned against no one more egregiously than I've sinned against God himself, because all of this goes back to him and all of this grieves his heart. So he says, against you and you only have know what hyssop is, it purges. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. I love that part of the prayer. Create in me a right heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. David's acknowledging this is broken. My heart is broken. My heart is sinful. I don't know how I became capable of what I did. Create in me a right spirit because mine is wrong. He's falling on his face before God. He's rendering his heart. And it's easy, I think, to jump into the story at this point and say, yeah, yeah, of course he's praying this. He got caught. I don't see him praying this before Nathan went to talk to him. He was perfectly fine living with Bathsheba, letting her be pregnant, planning on raising this son with his multiple other wives and multiple other sons. David's just sorry because he got caught. And we've seen this. We see this in our children. We've done this ourselves. We're not really sorry for the thing that we did. We're sorry that we got caught doing the thing that we did. And then we do all the things we're supposed to do. And it would be very easy to apply that sensibility to David. But what we see in the repentance of David is this sincere brokenness at who he is and what he's done. And we see it, like I alluded to, in the chapters that follow the story in 2 Samuel. He spends the next week on suicide watch. He's literally laying on the ground. He won't go to bed. He will not eat. He will not drink. His friends and his servants are very concerned for him. They try to get him up. They try to get him to stop crying. They try to get him to eat something. They try to get him to lay down on a bed and not the floor. And he refuses. He is broken. He is broken at the reality of his sin and who he is in light of his sin and how he's hurt the heart of his God because of his sin. And in that brokenness, he writes this prayer, and we see the contrition in verses 16 and 17. These are such important verses for understanding the heart of repentance and what God wants from us. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. Listen, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. See, in the Jewish faith that David was a part of, when you sinned, there were sacrifices that were measured out according to the sin. There was a prescription for what you needed to do. You've sinned this badly, it requires this kind of sacrifice. This was a really bad sense. This is going to be like multiple bulls cut in half, burned, probably some doves, throw in a lamb for good measure. It's like if you grew up Catholic, it's like you got to do this many Hail Marys and Our Fathers and whatever else you're supposed to do as penance for your sin. This is what he's supposed to do. There's a prescription here. And David says, I'm not going to offer you sacrifices. I'm not gonna offer you the Hail Marys. I'm not gonna go through the motions. God, I know that you don't want sacrifices. You know that I'll go kill every bull that I've ever owned. I'll do it right now. But that's not what you want. You don't want me to go through the motions. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. What God is looking for in our repentance is a heart that is broken over what we've done and who we've become. It's interesting to me, and the older I get, and the more perceptive I get of the man that David was, the more the juxtaposition of the two startles me. David's also called a man after God's own heart, by God himself. And it's not for the avoidance of sin. He's a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. I promise you this is not the first time he's done that. And he was a lifelong adulterer because he had multiple wives for his whole life. And if you read the Bible and be like, how come that was okay back then? It wasn't. David either didn't know or didn't care or some combination of the two. He was a terrible father. Every bit of evidence we have is that he was an absentee father. And yet, God says he's a man after God's own heart, which I can only find encouraging because it tells me I've got a shot. David was a mess. You are a mess. I'm a mess. And yet, David was called a man after God's own heart. How? I think it's because of his repentance, because of his response when he's confronted with his sin, because of how earnestly he returns to the Father and offers him his broken heart. So if we look at this powerful prayer and we ask what we can learn from it about our own repentance, I think the first thing I would point out to you is if we haven't wept over our sin, I'm not sure our hearts are ready to repent. If we haven't been moved to tears, if we haven't been brokenhearted, if our sin and the reality of what we've done and who we've become and who that's turned us into, if that doesn't weight us down so much that we fall on our knees before the Father and beg for his forgiveness, then I'm not sure we're actually ready to repent. Because again, and I said this back in the spring, confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yeah, this thing is wrong. Repentance is to move the opposite direction from your sin. It's to have been moving in this direction towards sin, stop, leave it, and move back towards Jesus. Repentance is moving away from sin and towards the Savior. That's what repentance is. And if we're going to truly repent, our hearts have got to be broken about our sin. I'm not sure what sins that we carry in here this morning. I'm sure I could guess a few. And by guessing a few, I just mean list mine, and then you probably will check some of those boxes too. But I think sometimes we think about repentance as in the big moments, right? Repenting of committing adultery and impregnating a married woman, and then killing her husband to cover it up, and then embroiling everyone else in scandal. I think we think of repentance there, but what about repentance of attitudes that we've carried for years that we've never dealt with? What about repentance of the way we talk to our spouse and how they don't deserve that? What about repentance of these small racist attitudes we carry around and don't address? What about repentance of God needing to teach us the same lesson over and over again? What about selfishness or things in our life that look like greed or materialism? What about that list of things that we've known for a long time we need to stop doing and we're not? Or those lists of things that we've known for a long time we need to start doing and we're not? Repentance isn't just for what we would call big sins. It's probably more helpful for all the little ones that we just carry with us, where good becomes the enemy of great. And what I'm telling you this morning is, I don't think that we can properly repent until we've been actually broken by that sin and who it makes us. And I know that some of you aren't criers, and so the idea of breaking down crying in front of, before the Father at what we've done is probably not realistic. So whatever broken down looks like to you, that's where we need to be if we're going to properly repent. And so it would make sense this morning to invite you into a place of repentance, But what I also know is that some of you are simply not ready for that. Some of us have sins. We know exactly what we are. We know what we're doing. We know who we are. And we know that we're going to go from this place and we're going to do them. And if we're just honest before the Father, what we would say is, I know I don't need to, but I'm going to. I like it in my life. And so that's just how it's gonna be for a little bit. About those things and about everything in between, I think a helpful prayer to move us towards repentance would be, Father, help me to see my sin as you do and so break my heart as yours is broken. I think I would encourage you to pray this prayer. If you know that there is sin in your life, but you've never been broken over it, you feel a little bit bad, maybe that habit doesn't need to be there, but I haven't fallen to my knees over it. I'm not brokenhearted over it. Then I think a very fair and wise prayer is to say, God, I know that this is in my life. Will you break my heart over it? Will you help me see it as you see it so that I hate it like you hate it? Will you help me see how it's hurting me and my family like you see how it's hurting me and my family? So that I would be brought to a place where I'm ready to actually repent? If you're not even ready to pray that, pray this. God, I know there's things in my life that don't need to be there. And you and I both know I'm not getting rid of them anytime soon. Will you please move the needle for me? Will you just move me to a place where I no longer want these things in my life? Will you help me to progressively hate them? Let's just invite God to move us closer to repentance this morning if our hearts aren't moved to be ready for it. But for our hearts to be broken as God's heart is broken, we have to understand, I think, what God sees when we sin. I read somewhere that God's primary emotion towards us when we sin is not anger, it's pity. He hates that we have to do it. It's like a parent watching a child make decisions that are hurting them, and you just have to sit back and watch, and it breaks your heart. And I think what breaks the heart of God when we sin is knowing who you could be and who he created you to be, and knowing that you're allowing that sin to prohibit you from being exactly who God created you to be. Do you understand that when you carry around sin in your life chronically, that you've never even met yourself? Do you understand that? That when God formed you in the womb, he knew exactly who he wanted you to be, and he knew exactly the good work that you were created to walk in. And when you sin, you prohibit yourself from walking in that good work. You prohibit yourself from growing into the person that he created you to be, and so you've never even met yourself. Your spouse is married to some truncated, soul-sick version of you. Your kids are growing up in the home of a half-person who carries around sin. Sin is like a cancer that eats us silently from the inside out and destroys our souls. So when we carry around unrepentant sin, we are a person and a version of ourself that isn't who God created us to be, that isn't who God intended us to be, and no one that we're around gets to experience the fullness of who God is in us because we're soul sick. We're truncated versions of ourselves carrying around sin who have never been able to love our children as God intended us to love them and show them his grace because of our own mess. We're soul sick people who have never been able to love our husband and our wife and give them the spouse that they deserve and let them see God's love through us because we have cancer in our life that we are not addressing. And so it is right and good to learn to hate our sin. I saw this week, someone wrote, we've heard it said that you should love the sinner and hate the sin. He said, I tell you, love everyone and hate your own sin. I think that's a good place to start. So let's ask that God would bring us to that place. And as I dug into this prayer this week to share it with you and the heart of it, I noticed something else come out of David's prayer that I hadn't seen before. I think that when we think of repentance, we think of it exclusively as this thing that brings us low, this thing that humbles us, this thing that brings us to our knees before the Father. Repentance is a low point, and then God builds us up. It's a humbling, and that's it. But we're wrong when we think of it that way, because true repentance doesn't leave us brokenhearted. It restores us to joy. True repentance doesn't leave us brokenhearted. It doesn't leave us down here. It doesn't leave us scraping on the ground. It restores us to joy. It builds us back up. It restores us to our former life. Two times David prays this in a prayer of repentance. He includes this request twice, and I think it's amazing. In verse 8 and verse 12, he says in verse 8, let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. And then verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold with me a willing spirit. In the midst of being brought low, you know what David asked for? Restore me to my former joy. Heal the bones that you've broken, God. And I was sitting chewing on that idea. How does repentance restore us to joy? And I felt like I was gaining on it, but I wasn't quite sure. I felt like I had my head around it, but I wasn't quite sure how to explain it to a room full of people to make it come alive for us. And I was just sitting in my office staring out the window for an hour thinking about this. You would have thought I was a crazy person if you walked by just this blank stare looking out the window. But after thinking through it for a while, I think the best way I can explain it is that the joy of repentance is the all clear after the cancer operation. The joy of repentance is the all clear after the cancer operation. You know, my family has been touched by cancer multiple times in multiple ways. And we all hate that C word. We all hate it. And it's touched all of us. It's scared all of us. It's cost all of us. And if you've been through the journey, you know how scary and uncertain it is. There are three families in the church who recently got that news. Hey, we found a mass. And that begins three weeks of praying and of testing and waiting for doctors to call back and uncertainty and trying to have a strong face, trying to put on a brave face, trying not to think about it every moment of every day, trying to get good sleep while you wait for this news. And sometimes you get the news, and it's like, it's benign, it's nothing, you're good. Oh, great. And then sometimes it's not that good news. And then sometimes we have to go through the whole cancer journey, and there's treatments, and there's chemo, and there's sickness, and there's a whole path that you have to go down. And sometimes, if you're fortunate, if they caught it early, if you got the cancer in the good spot where they can go get it and not the bad spot where they can't, sometimes they'll send you to surgery. And they'll go to that surgery, and they're hoping that they found it all. They know right where it is. They can get it, and they can sew you up, and you have a new lease on life. They're hoping they don't get in there and find more. And so if you're really lucky, after going through years of the cancer journey, the surgeon goes in there. He or she gets it all. And then they tell you afterwards, after you come back from the anesthesia, you're good. We got it. You're cancer free. Have you ever heard those sweet words about someone you love? That's the joy of repentance. You're cancer free, new lease on life.. That thing that was inside of you that was eating you from the inside out, that was destroying your body and destroying your health, that's not a part of your life anymore. Walk fresh, walk new, walk into a newness of life. There's going to be some recovery time. Don't like sprint, but you're good. Go. Experience joy. That's what repentance is. Repentance is handing Jesus the scalpel and saying, here, operate on me. I don't want this in my life anymore. I'm tired of this. I don't need it. Please, would you get rid of it and bring me closer to you? That's what true repentance is. And so the joy of true repentance is finding out that this cancer that we had in our soul that was making us soul sick, that was making us offer a truncated version of ourself to ourselves and those around us, what we find out is that's done, that's gone. You don't have to live with that anymore. Now walk in a newness of life that Jesus bought for you. That's repentance. David got that. That's how he was a man after God's own heart. And that's what I want for you this morning too. Those of you who carried sin in here, which is all of us, I want us to repent. I want us to hand the scalpel over to Jesus and say, would you please just come get it? I want you to be restored to joy of walking in freedom, of knowing there's nothing to hide, there's nothing to be ashamed of. I can skip, like Micah says, like a calf loosed from his stall, because we're free to love. That's what I want for you. And that's what repentance is. So in a second, I'm going to pray. And as I'm praying, Aaron's going to start to just play softly behind me. And when I'm done praying, I'll say amen. The lights will be down. And we're just going to be quiet for a minute. At least a full minute. And that's going to be your opportunity to respond to this. To what true repentance is. If your heart is ready to repent, repent. If it's not, ask God in the most honest prayer you can muster to move the needle. Take me to a place where I see my sin like you do. But I didn't want to talk about something like this without giving you the opportunity to respond to it in the moment. So not in the car, not later on, not tomorrow morning, right now, after I pray, you're going to have a silent minute or two to just bow your head and close your eyes and talk to the Father about whatever you need to talk to Him about. Let's pray. Father, You're good to us. Thank you for, through the cross, making repentance possible. Thank you for who you are and what you've done. Thank you for insisting on recording David's worst moment so that we could see what might be his best moment in Psalm 51 and his repentance. I'm reminded, Father, of the invitation to lay our burdens down at your feet, and so I pray that we would do that today. It's my earnest prayer that some of us would walk out this door this morning feeling a restoration of joy that we haven't felt in years. And God, it's my sincere prayer that if it doesn't happen this morning, that it will happen soon so that everyone who is in this room will get to experience the joy of walking with you and the people who are in the lives around the people in this room will get to meet them as you created them to be, maybe for the first time ever. But God, would you move in our hearts that we would see our sin as you see it and so be moved closer to a sincere repentance. Give us the faith and the courage to hand you the scalpel and to surrender to you removing things from our life. In Jesus' name, amen.