Sermons tagged with Righteousness

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to get to spend some time with you in this way. I'm really hopeful that we can be together again in person, but for now, caution is winning the day, and so we'll get to enjoy church in our different living rooms wherever we are. This is the last part in our series called James, where we're going through the book of James, and we're going to land today in what I believe to be is a very hopeful passage on prayer. I think that this is a really encouraging and empowering passage, and my hope is that by the time I'm done, that you'll feel empowered by prayer as well, and you'll be inspired to cling to prayer and to persevere in prayer. As we approach this topic, I'm reminded of Memorial Day 2017. 2017 is the year that I got to come to Grace and become the senior pastor. And some of y'all know this story, so if you do, bear with me. But maybe it can be a little reminder. And for those who don't know, when I got to Grace in April of 2017, things weren't great. Financially, we were really struggling. We were in debt. We didn't really have a way to go into more debt. We didn't have any more lines of credit to tap on. And so it was a little bit dire. And my goal was simply to just make it, to make it through the summer, to make it into the fall, to see if we could get a little bit of momentum going. And I'll never forget, we were headed into Memorial Day weekend, the last weekend in May. The person handling the finances at the time told me, Nate, we're in trouble. We're going to be behind on some bills in May. We're already behind on giving. We need giving to be really good this weekend. And I asked what the number needed to be, and they said we need $15,000 this weekend. $15,000 was more than we had brought in any single week in 2017. We were bringing in like $8,500 or $9,000 a week. So $15,000 was, that was pie in the sky. That wasn't going to happen. And on top of that, it was Memorial Day weekend. And you may not know this about church world, but one of the things that pastors are aware of is Memorial Day weekend, that service is the lowest attended service and the lowest giving service of the year, every year in every church in the history of America. That's just how it went. And so not only do we need more giving than we've had in any single week for the whole year, but we needed a Memorial Day weekend, which feels impossible. So the finance person told me that in the middle of the week, and honestly, I didn't tell anybody. I just knelt and I prayed. I said, God, we need something here. We need a miracle. This church can't go into debt. I'm not ready to move back to Georgia yet. I just got here. We need you to show up this weekend, God. And so we had the services, and I went into the office on Monday, and usually Tuesday or Wednesday, I get a little financial update, and so I'm just hitting refresh on my email browser, just waiting for the news to come in. And I think it was Wednesday morning, the news came in. I see that I got the email from the finance guy. I break out in the cold sweats, and I click on it, and I immediately just lost my mind. $28,000 came in Memorial Day weekend 2017. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't $15,000. It wasn't just a little bit shy of that. It was $28,000. That was the biggest single weekend giving in all of 2017. I couldn't believe it. I was floored. And God made it apparent that he answers prayers. He made it apparent that day to me, Nate, my hand is on grace. My hand is on you. I answer prayer. I hear you. I've been moved by prayer. And here you go. Here's your answer to prayer. And so that stands out in my memory as a time when prayer buoyed my faith. When prayer bolstered my faith. When I prayed fervently for something in the quietness of my own heart and in his word. And I hope that you have stories like that too. I hope that there are times in your life that you can remember where you prayed fervently for something and God answered. God delivered. He gave you what it was that you needed. He reconciled that relationship. He healed that person. He brought that thing back. He saw you through that circumstance. I hope that if you're a believer that we all have instances and times that we remember God answering our prayers. Because instances like that, like Memorial Day for me, like whatever it is that you think of when you think of answered prayer, instances like that help us believe in passages like this. If you have a Bible at home, I want you to look at James chapter 5. I'm going to pick it up in verse 13. This is what James writes about prayer. You know, when I was a kid and I encountered that verse, I encountered it in the King James Version, and it said, Other translations say that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful in its working. And I used to think, well, yeah, sure, like the prayers of righteous people, of those people that we write about in the Bible, of those pastors that are really good people, like the righteous people, as I'm thinking about this as a kid when I encountered the verse, those are the people who have effective prayers. But here's the deal. If you're a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you're righteous. You're as righteous as you're ever going to get. Because Scripture teaches us that when God looks at you, he sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, your affectionate and fervent prayers are powerful in their working. They availeth much. Christians, I want you to know based on this passage, your prayers work. When you're grieving, go to God in prayer. When you're joyful, praise him in prayer. When someone is sick, pray over them. When a situation is bad, pray over it. Your prayers work. They are powerful in their working. They work to much avail. And sometimes we have stories in our life that remind us that this passage is true. But here's the flip side of this passage. Here's the thing that I wish that someone would have told me somewhere along the way. I wish growing up, I would have heard a pastor talk about this passage in the way that I'm about to talk about it. I wish that somewhere in my formative years, back when I knew what it was like to have a pastor, that one of them, and maybe they did and I just didn't pick up on it, but I wish that one of them would have talked about the fact that sometimes this passage actually makes us doubt our faith. Sometimes passages like this make us actually not believe the Word of God, make us wonder if God really does keep His promises. And I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I had to encounter this question the hard way. But I think if I'm being honest, that when we read passages like this, that sometimes we tend to doubt it. And that makes us doubt the truth of Scripture. When this slapped me in the face, and I wish that someone had walked me through this before it happened, was in the spring of 2010. From 2007 to 2010, I taught Bible at a school called Covenant Christian Academy. And there was a kid in the class that I was a sponsor for named Alex Williams. And Alex was a great kid. He was just a charming guy. He had this winning smile. He would do anything for you. Super nice guy. I loved Alex, and I love Alex to this day. And Alex got a lot of those traits from his dad, Ron. And during high school, during his high school years, Ron contracted cancer. I forget which kind. And we watched Ron slowly deteriorate. Alex was an athlete, and Ron was always on the sidelines, whether it was football or basketball, cheering. He was the loudest voice there. You could always hear him. He was boisterous and loud, and it was really fun to have Ron around. But the cancer began to eat away at him until in his senior year, Ron would attend in a wheelchair. And I can remember the spring of Alex's senior year, we prayed over Ron. Fathers and coaches that were involved in that school who were elders in that church, according to the passage here, came together, I'll never forget it, in my classroom at Covenant. And Ron sat in the middle of us and somebody even brought oil to anoint him which is something that some denominations still observe. And we poured it over his head and we placed our hands on Ron and we prayed, we prayed a prayer of faith that Ron would be healed. And then weeks later, Ron died. And I remember thinking, how can this be true and our prayer not be answered? God, you said that if we would do these things, if we would gather and we would anoint his head with oil and we would pray, God, you said that he would be healed. You said that he would be raised up. And he's dead. God, you didn't keep your promise. And I'd be willing to bet that you have that story too. I'd be willing to bet that for most of us believers, we can point to a time in our life where we prayed fervently for something in accordance to God's will. We asked in his name. There was two or three gathered there and we asked in his name. And he promises to give us what we asked for. We prayed for healing that didn't come. We prayed for more years that weren't granted. And it makes me want to ask, what do we do when it seems like this passage isn't true? What do we do when it seems like this isn't true, when it seems like this can't be trusted, when it seems like these are just the words of James that make us feel good but aren't really a truth that we can anchor ourselves in? What do we do when it feels like this passage isn't true? And again, I wish that someone would have talked about this with me. Because I think the thing that you do is you go back to the passage and you read it again. You go back to God's Word and you ask, what did I miss? What did I presume that I didn't see the first time? And so when we read it again, here's what we find. It says, What we notice here is that there's a future tense. He will be healed. He will be raised up when we pray the prayer of faith. But there's no sense of the timeline of this. There's no sense of when it's going to happen. And here's the reality with Ron. Ron was healed. He wasn't healed in the temporal. He was healed in the eternal. Ron was raised up by God. He wasn't raised up in the temporal. He was raised up in the eternal. And so the reality is that he will heal us. He will raise us up. He does answer those prayers. And it took me a minute to figure that out. We were praying fervently, God, heal Ron. And he did. He just chose to heal him for eternity rather than heal him for a few years. God, raise him up. He did. He raised him up into heaven where he's no longer sick, where he lives in a utopia, where he walks with his Savior and he waits for his children. The truth of it is that Ron was healed, that Ron was lifted up. And this is a concept that even my four-year-old gets. My four-year-old Lily somehow understands this. A few weeks ago, we were back home visiting Jen's family. And if you've been following along in church, you know that Jen's dad isn't doing very well. And truthfully, he looks pretty sick. And after Lily spent some time with him, just Lily and I were in the car, we were driving somewhere, I think to pick up breakfast or something, and she said, Daddy, how come Pawpaw's not getting better? He's sick, but he's not getting better. How come he's not getting better? And I said, well, sweetheart, there's kind of two kinds of being sick. There's the kind of sick where it just lasts for a little bit and then you get better, like a cold. And then there's the kind of sick where you just get sick and you stay sick and you don't get better. And she said, okay. I said, does that make sense? She said, uh-huh, yes, Daddy. And then she thought about it for a second, and she said, but when Pawpaw dies, he won't be sick anymore. And I looked in the rearview mirror, like, where did this four-year-old get this? I said, that's right, sweetheart. He won't. And she goes, yeah, because he'll be in heaven with Jesus. And you don't get sick in heaven. And I said, yeah, that's true. And she goes, and then one day when I die, I'll get to see him again too, and neither of us will be sick. Right. That's it. And I think that if she can get it and comfort her own four-year-old self about her pawpaw who's going to pass away soon, and she knows that he's going to be better when he gets there, that we're praying fervently for his healing, and the reality of it is God's going to heal him. He's either going to heal him for a little bit or he's going to heal him for forever. And she knows that. And she's already looking forward to the forever healing because that's the bigger answer to prayer. When you pray in faith, when there's faith in God, when the prayer is based on a faith in God that was won by Jesus, then we know that we have eternal life and God will heal us. In order to understand this passage and how it's not contradictory with some of our experiences, we need to understand that we pray in the temporal, but God answers in the eternal. We pray our prayers in the temporal, in the here and now, with the blinders on of just these weeks or just these months or years. We pray urgently for the here and now, and God answers in the eternal. He sees all of time. And I don't think we grasp just how big of a deal eternity is. The Bible tells us that our life is like a mist or a vapor. Paul went through the worst of sufferings, and he says, though we endure these sufferings for a little while. James tells us at the beginning of his book that when you endure trials, consider them pure joy. They're not that bad. How can they say this? Because their eyes are on eternity. They're praying eternal prayers. James can say he will be lifted up because when you pray in faith, they will be lifted up, either for a little while or for forever, but they will be lifted up and they will be healed. We pray in the temporal, but God answers in the eternal. And what that means is sometimes God doesn't answer in the time frame that we want. God doesn't heal the relationship or fix the problem or bring about the answer to the question in the time frame that we would choose. Sometimes we have to wait. We're told to be patient in waiting for God because he doesn't hurry. And sometimes it's answered in eternity. And sometimes it's answered in our life. It's just answered later and in a way that we don't anticipate. I have a friend back home named Jenny. When she was growing up, she was Jenny Payne. Now she's Jenny Smith. And when Jenny was a little girl, she had two older brothers, and her mom was pregnant. And she prayed fervently as a little girl. She wanted a sister named Jessica. And she prayed really hard for this sister named Jessica. And then the birth of her sibling came about, and it's a boy named Jimmy. God doesn't answer prayer. He doesn't keep his promises. Her four-year-old heart is broken. But as she gets older, her faith matures, and she kind of understands, and she accepts that blow. And then one day, her brother starts dating somebody in their 20s, and they start to get really serious. And they end up getting married, and Jenny loves this girl. And Jenny, in her own language, said this girl is like a sister to her, and her name is Jessica. You want to tell me God didn't answer prayer? You want to tell me God didn't hear that four-year-old Jenny praying for a sister named Jessica, and that he didn't answer it? It just wasn't the way that she expected. But God listens. He hears and he answers. We just have to wait. We just need to be patient. We just need to trust him even in the midst of hurting and suffering when it feels like everything is destitute and messed up and this couldn't possibly be picked up and arranged in such a way that glorifies you, God. Even in the midst of that, we need to be patient and understand that God hears, and he's listening, and he's answering prayers. It just isn't in our timetable because we pray in the temporal, and he answers in the eternal. Maybe that's why he precedes this passage on prayer with the passage imploring us to be patient. I don't think it's a mistake that the two are married up there in chapter 5. Look at what he says in verse 7 of chapter 5. He says, Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. Just be patient on the Lord, like a farmer watching the field. If you watch it every day, God, please bring me crops today. God, please bring me crops today. It's going to seem like they're never going to come, but if you'll just be patient and wait for the late and the early rains, like a farmer, God shows up. He'll answer in due time. And then down in verse 11, he says this, James warns us. I'm about to talk about prayer. I'm about to tell you to pray. There's going to be some times when it feels like God isn't answering prayer. So be patient. Be patient like the farmer is patient. And be considered blessed. Remember that those who wait, those who persevere should be considered blessed. And then he brings up Job. It's interesting to me that he would bring up Job as an example there. For those unfamiliar with Job, he is one of the classic figures in the Old Testament. There's a whole book dedicated to his story. He was the most righteous man on earth, and Satan asked permission to tempt him and to tear him away from God. And God said that Satan could do that. And in the course of that, he took away everything that Job held dear. He lost his children. He lost the people that worked for him. He lost his livestock. He lost his wealth. It was so bad for Job that his wife's advice to him was to curse God and die. But he didn't. He held on steadfast to the Lord. And in the end of the story, what we see is that because of his continued faith, because of his perseverance, because he clung to prayer and he continued to believe that God kept his promises, that God restored everything that Job had lost and he built him back up. And I think it's so interesting because if there's ever been anybody who lived that would have had cause to not believe this passage that says when we pray they will be healed and they will be lifted up. If there's anyone who's ever had the right to not believe this passage and say God's not telling the truth, it's Job. Yet he didn't. He was patient and he persevered in his prayers and he clung to God and he believed in the power of, and he clung to God, and he believed in the power of prayer, and he believed in a God that kept his promises. Grace. We can anchor ourselves in prayer. We can anchor ourselves in God's Word. We can trust these pages. We can trust these promises because we serve a God who keeps his promises. And listen, I know that it doesn't feel like that this year to some of us. I know this year feels hard. It feels heavy. It feels like we might not get out of it. We are facing difficulty after difficulty. Candidly, in my family right now, it is hard. And sometimes it doesn't seem like these verses are true, but I'm telling you they are. And we can anchor ourselves in them, and we can trust in them, and we can believe in the power and the efficacy of prayer of those who are righteous. And we can believe that God is listening, and we can believe that God is answering. And if we'll only be patient, and if we'll only persevere, we will be blessed in that perseverance. So grace. Pray. Don't lose heart. Don't give up hope. Don't stop praying. Believe that if you're a Christian, that you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ and that your prayers are powerful and effective and they're working. Believe that they bring about healing. Believe that people will be risen up. Go to him when you are hurting. Go to him in joy. And let's continue, no matter what, no matter how bleak things might seem sometimes, to be a people of prayer who choose to believe in the power of it and choose to believe in a God who keeps his promises. Let's pray together. Father, we know that you are good to us. We know that you love us. We know that you look out for us. We thank you that you see things in eternity, that you see past the temporal. God, we thank you that you are orchestrating things in our lives to bring about our pleasure and your glory without us even knowing or understanding. God, I thank you for the gift of hindsight where we look back on seasons of our life that we didn't understand in the moment, but now we see you working. I pray that we would have that in increasing measure. God, for those who feel weak and burdened and maybe even beaten down, may we persist in prayer. Give them strength to be patient and to cling to it and to believe. For those who have been bold in their prayers and are seeing them answered, God, we are so grateful. I pray that they would become ever more bold. And God, I pray for grace. I pray that we would be a church that prays, that we would be a church that believes, and that we would be a church who knows because you tell us that our prayers are powerful and effective. It's in your son's name we pray all these things. Amen.

I am super excited for this sermon this morning. If you let me, I think I could go for about 90 minutes, so buckle up. Thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online. I'm so glad to get to be with my church family, with faces that I know and love, some of whom love me back after this week. It's been a week, man. It's been arduous. And I've been excited for this sermon since we outlined this series. And I opened up my Bible and I was reading through James and breaking it out into sermons and trying to figure out which parts we get to talk about and which parts we'll have to save for the next time we go through James. And when I arrived at this passage in chapter 3, chapter 3, verses 13 through 18, I was just excited to get to share the message from James with you guys, with my church. Because I don't know how you guys have felt about all the divisiveness and contention in our culture, racial and political and otherwise. But it's been wearying to my soul. It's been hard on my heart. It has grieved me that our culture has been this divided. It's been at least 50 years since our country has seen division like this. And as a pastor, it hurts my heart. And it hurts my heart in part because it's just a lot. But it also hurts my heart because I believe that Jesus' bride, the church, has a part to play in this, in this divisiveness. We actually have a role that God wants us to step into, that he asks us to step into. We have a role in our culture right now of who we should be and what we should do, and I believe that James speaks directly to that role and gives us hope and purpose in the midst of this contention. So I'm excited to talk with my church about that this morning. So let's look at James chapter 3, verses 13 through 18. I'm going to read them all, and then we'll talk about the passage. James writes this, Who is wise and understanding among you? By his conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. I love that phrase. James has this flourish for writing that Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, does not have. Paul writes his books like an engineer would write their book. It's very matter-of-fact, systemic, like this is how we're doing it. James has this flourish, and so he brackets this idea, which, by the way, he's extracting this idea out of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount was Jesus' first recorded public address. This is almost like a commentary on the things that Jesus taught in that sermon. And Jesus says, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth and blessed are the peacemakers. And so it's like James is pausing to say, yeah, let's talk about those people and why they're needed and how we become like them. And so he opens up with this great phrase that the good works in the meekness of wisdom, and then he brackets it with that great phrase at the end, and harvest a righteousness s is it that wisdom has to be meek? Why is wisdom meek? Why did he choose to pair those things up together? Why did he couple them together in that way? Why is wisdom meek? And so to answer that question, I started thinking about, well, who's the person that I know or that I've seen? What's the example or the personification of someone who lets themselves show, whose good deeds are shown in the meekness of their wisdom. And since I don't like to use myself as an example, I'm just kidding, I'm terrible at this. I thought of my mom-mom. My grandmother on my mom's side, I think personified someone who walked in the meekness of wisdom. Her husband, Don, my papa, I'm very southern, so those are their names, was loud and bombastic. He was a phenomenal storyteller. He was the guy that if you went to dinner with a group of friends and he got sat on the opposite end of the table as you, you were bummed out. Because you're talking to whatever boring person is over here, and you're like, I wish I could listen to that guy. That was my grandpa. That was my papa Don. And Linda was quiet. She was diminutive. She was happy to stay in the background. She didn't really want any of the focus on her. And I didn't appreciate it when I was a kid, because I didn't really understand all those dynamics. But as an adult, as the years progressed, particularly towards the end of her life, when she and I were in the habit of having coffee together every other Monday morning and just chatting for a while, I got to see the ways that her quiet strength and gentle, meek wisdom had carried her through so many seasons of her life. And so I thought, well, she's the example to me of the meekness of wisdom. Then what made her meek? So I thought about her life. She grew up in rural Baton Rouge. I have a great uncle named Dodie Sandifer. All right, that's how Cajun we are. She grew up in a very racist home. Racism was so ubiquitous in her family that when my mom was a little girl, she used racial slurs without understanding what they were. Mama grew to disdain that part of her heritage. She grew to see the evil in it. And when I did her funeral, in her retirement years, she was a bank teller. And when I did her funeral, many of her co-workers, her African-American co-workers, came to the funeral and told me how much they loved my mama and how much she meant to them and how well she loved them. She changed over the course of her lifetime. When my mom was eight, they did a church called Forest Hills, did a bus ministry where you used to be able to do this. Can you imagine? They just drove a bus through neighborhoods and just invited kids to get on. It doesn't matter. Do you have your parents' permission? We don't care. We're going to get you saved. Come to church. Do your parents know where you are? It doesn't matter. Let's go to church. They just went. I can't imagine just sending Mike Harris right here, just go get a bus and just drive around Falls River and just grab kids. It'll be fine. That's so weird. But they they did that in the 60s and so my mom went and praised God that she did because she accepted Christ. And because she accepted Christ, my mom and my papa started going to church with her. So here's a woman who grew up without a faith and she embraces a faith. She changes. But as she embraces that change, she got involved in what I believe was one of the worst kinds of churches. Super legalistic and damaging. I'm talking about super conservative, 70s, Southern Baptist, fundamental oppression. No going to movies, ever. Don't be seen at the movie house, is what it was called. No dancing. Girls wear skirts and dresses only. Always below the knees. None of this, none of this, none of this. It was just writ with legalism. And because she didn't know any better, that's the faith she taught her kids. But she grew up. She grew in wisdom. And she started going to churches that lived a more gracious faith. And she became more gracious in her faith. And she moved away from those old things that she believed. And I could talk to you and tell you story after story of ways that I didn't see at the time, but as I reflect back on her now and watching the scope of her life, ways that I saw her change, ways that I saw her grow in her wisdom. And it occurred to me that wisdom is meek because wisdom knows what it is to hold something ardently and fervently and fanatically in your 20s and be ashamed of it in your 50s. Right? Wisdom knows what it is to hold an opinion tightly and then to see the currents of change move through the community and hold it a little bit more loosely and regret how tightly you used to hold it and who you hurt in holding it that way. Wisdom has fallen on its face a few times. Wisdom knows that it has some shadows in its past and some skeletons in its closet, so it's not going to leap to beat you too hard with yours. Because wisdom has grown in grace. Wisdom has made mistakes. Wisdom has seen who they were when they were younger and been forced through introspection to offer themselves grace for their humanity and likewise is gracious towards others in their humanity. Wisdom is someone in their 60s who doesn't get super annoyed by the person in their 20s because they understand and they were that person too. That's what wisdom does. Because of that, I came to the conclusion that acquiring wisdom is a humbling process. That's why we pair meekness with wisdom because acquiring true wisdom is a humbling process. That's why we pair meekness with wisdom, because acquiring true wisdom is a humbling process. You don't grow in wisdom by just stridently thinking you're right all the time. I'll never forget when I was 18 years old, my dad took me to college. I went to Auburn University my freshman year. He drove me to college, he dropped me off, and he said, son, I'm bringing you here, and I hope that you get dumber. And I was a snot-nosed 18-year-old kid who thought he knew everything. And what he was telling me is you need to grow in wisdom, which, by the way, can you imagine how insufferable I was at 18? I would hate that guy. Like, good, find a new church, pal. I needed to grow in wisdom. I needed to be humbled. I needed to know that I wasn't right about everything. And I think that that's why James pairs meekness with wisdom. Because acquiring wisdom is a humbling process. And so, I want to offer this to you. You take it or leave it. Okay, this is Nate talking, not Scripture. This is just my opinion. You're smart adults. You take it for what it's worth. But I think that there's a litmus test for whether or not we're growing in wisdom, particularly growing in the meekness of wisdom. And I think it's this question. When's the last time you changed your mind about something important? For you as an individual, the things that you hold dear, the things that you hold firmly and stridently, when's the last time you changed your mind about something important? And I'm not talking about going to Winston's for lunch thinking that you're going to get the health nut salad and then calling an audible and getting the prime room sandwich with french fries. I'm not talking about that kind of mind change. I'm talking about the way that you used to feel about a community. Has that shifted? The way over the years that you viewed the other side of the aisle, has that grown more or less gracious? This person in your neighborhood that you can't stand, have you grown to be able to appreciate them a little bit more? The person that you were in their 20s, have you been forced to offer yourself grace for being that person? Have you changed your mind about something that's important to you? Because if you haven't, if you can't think of anything, there's only really two options. Either, dude, you're nailing it. Like, you're right about everything. And that's super impressive. Good for you. Let's have lunch. Or we're just walking in our strideful ignorance, refusing to learn anything that God is trying to teach us. Right? If our mind never changes about anything important, then we're not very open to growing in the meekness of wisdom. That's why just being old doesn't make one wise. Being old and learned and introspective and adaptable and malleable and impressionable and open to reason, like James says here, is how we grow in the meekness of wisdom. So I would ask this morning, are you growing in wisdom? And again, that's my litmus test. If you don't like it, throw it out. If it's helpful, use it. But I think it's important to understand how meekness and wisdom work together, because if we don't, if we can't be meek in our wisdom, then I don't think we can do what we're told to do in the rest of the passage. I want to pick it back up at verse 17. He finishes it this way. He says, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. I don't just want to blow by that verse because I think those things are so very important. It is pure. It seeks peace. And this is the thing that I love in here. It is gentle. True wisdom. God's wisdom from above. It's gentle. As I prayed before the sermon a few minutes ago, I prayed, God, let me be brave and let me be gentle. Bravery is not often what I struggle with. Gentleness is. True wisdom is gentle. It's open to reason. It's not convinced of its own correctness all the time. And then he finishes it this way with this great sentence. I just love it. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. And that sounds nice, but we might think to ourselves, what is a harvest of righteousness? I think it goes with the theme in the book of James. In the first week, remember I said that the reason that James wrote this letter was to help us, to help the church pursue wholeness, to help the church become this whole person with a sincere faith, to not live as two disjointed people, as the old nature and the new nature, but to walk in the person that God wanted us to become, to walk in the person that Jesus died to turn us into. We related to Romans 7 where Paul laments, the things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do, I do not want to do. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? That lament is why James was written. And so what he's saying is you will reap a harvest of righteousness. You will move towards that wholeness, towards being the person that God created you to be and died for you to become. A sowing peace by making peace. James is telling us that it's our role to make peace, that true wisdom makes peace. And so I thought, if it's our role to make peace, if that's what God has called us to do, what does it look like to make peace? What does a peacemaker do? I think it's an important question. The first answer, I think, is that a peacemaker values understanding over persuading. A peacemaker values understanding someone over persuading them. Often when we're in a conflict, when we're in a situation, in a relationship or a dynamic where we're not at peace. There's tension here. I think so very often we approach it trying to be persuasive. If they could only see my side, if they could only understand what I'm talking about, if they would only see it from my perspective, or if they would just be encountered with this list of facts, which by the way, 2020 has shown us that facts really are not argument winners anymore. We've all got our own set. We don't trust anybody else's. So that ain't it. Persuasion is not the goal. Understanding is the goal for a peacemaker. The other night, I had a moment in the house that I was very much not proud of. We've got a daughter named Lily, and Lily is the sweetest. She is the best when you see her. A lot of you have seen her on social media, or you might see her here in the church, and she is sweet and cute and adorable, and she's very quiet and meek in the church because she's scared of everyone, and that bodes well for us as parents because it looks like she has behaved. And she is. She is. But here's the thing with Lily. She has a will. She's found it, which is a fun part of parenting, I think. I've told Jen a few times, you're not raising yourself, sweetheart. I'm very sorry for this. You're raising me. And the other day, she expressed that will more than normal, and it got me frazzled. I was getting a little tired of it. And at night, it was time for her to go to bed, and I told her to clean up her room. She had taken some stuff out of a small Tupperware container or a plastic bin or something, and it was kind of all over the floor. It was like little magnets that you can dress girls up with or whatever. And I told her to clean it up. And she said, okay, Daddy. And then I walked out. I came back five minutes later. It was like two things in the bin. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, clean up. Let's go. I told you to clean. And she's like, I know, but I'm doing it this way. I said, I don't care what way you're doing it. Clean up, sweetheart. Let's go. And I left. And I came back. And there was not adequate progress made. And so I get frustrated. I said, all right, that's it. I'm going to clean this up. You go to the potty, and then we're going to bed. That's it. And she starts to leave, but she says, but Dad, I want to do the other thing. And I said, I don't care. Go and come back. And things started to escalate. And they ended in tears on both sides. And I was not proud of myself at all. And the night ended with us hugging and falling asleep next to each other in her bed, and the world is good. But as I was thinking about it the next morning, she wasn't being defiant, at least not intentionally. She wanted to organize her toys. She didn't want me to put them all up together because she was in the middle of a task, and she just wanted to keep the things that she had separated, separated. She just didn't want me to mess it up. She wasn't trying to say, I'm not going to put it up. She just had a system and it was important to her because she was going to wake up in the morning and she was going to keep playing with it. And if I would have taken just a dang second to understand a four-year-old instead of trying to persuade her, it all could have been avoided. I could have made peace. Instead, I was an idiot. And it makes me wonder how many conflicts in our life would go away if we chose understanding over persuasion. If we just stopped for a minute and thought, am I really right about all the intentions and motives and stupidity that I'm reading into this instance? Or would it be worth it to talk to them and see what their side is? Would it be worth it to try to empathize? Those of us that have relationships in our life that are not at peace, how many of those could be made peaceful if we would simply choose understanding over persuasion? It's not a panacea, but it's a start, isn't it? Peacemakers make that choice. The next thing in your notes, it says that a peacemaker seeks harmony over victory. And that's well and good and that's fine and we can talk about that. But I actually, as I was thinking about it just this morning, it occurred to me that actually what a peacemaker does is they prize the victory over small victories. A peacemaker prizes the victory over small victories. Guys, we're a church. We're believers. The only reason we walk the earth after we come to faith is to share our faith with others. The only reason we still breathe is to bring as many people with us to heaven on our way as possible. That's it. We are here for the souls of men and women. That's why we're doing the whole thing. That's why the first thing in our mission statement is to connect people with Jesus. That's what we want to do. That's the victory. That's what this whole thing is about, is to unite people with their Savior. Yet sometimes we get so caught up in pursuing the small victory that we forsake the victory. Yesterday on Facebook, I posted something that I feel is true. And I just said to Christians that the way that we respond right now in light of the election matters a lot. And I just said, if you're a guy won, be gracious. If you're a guy lost, be gracious. And I wrote that. People started to comment or whatever. I went away. I had dinner with some friends and came back to my phone hours later. And when I came back to my phone, I scrolled down and there was a comment from a guy that actually I met the year that I went to Auburn. I don't know him very well, but we're Facebook friends, and he commented, what should I be if I didn't vote for either of them because I didn't like them, which I think that's not an unfair stance, and I said, you should be gracious, but before I could say that, under his comment, someone else that I know, I know him from back home. He's a good man. He's a loving man. I like this guy. I've since deleted these comments, so you can't go and look at them. He commented under my Auburn friend's thing this big paragraph about how could you think about voting for so-and-so when all of these reasons point that you should vote for so-and-so. Just demeaning him and tearing him down. And then my Auburn friend responded to that, don't come at me with that stuff and did his own paragraph with an article attached to make his point. I didn't read both of the comments. I deleted them immediately. But here's what I know. My Auburn friend is not a believer. The man from back home is. And when I saw his comment in my Facebook thread where he attacked this guy for the way that he felt politically, I thought to myself, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? What are you trying to win? All he has to do is click your name and he knows who you are and what you stand for. And you're going to turn him off to your savior so you can turn him on to your candidate. Who cares? He sacrificed the victory to try to win a victory. And it doesn't matter. Church, the victory is the souls of men. The victory is acquainting people with their Savior. The victory is that people would see Jesus in us and want that in them too. The victory is not in small political or otherwise silly arguments. We're the church. We pursue souls. We pursue the victory. And when we do this, when we make peace by prizing what's important, when we make peace by seeking understanding rather than persuasion, when we sow that peacemaking, we reap a harvest of righteousness. We walk exactly as the people that God designed us to be, which is why I think it's impossible to make true peace if we cannot walk in the meekness of wisdom. They go hand in hand. So here's what's vitally important to me at Grace. That we be peacemakers. That we walk in the meekness of wisdom, that we understand that the true victory is that people would see Jesus, not that they would see our side. So, Grace, let's be peacemakers. I'm going to pray for us. Father, would you make us whole? Would you heal our hearts? Would you heal our community and our country's division? Would you make us your agents of peace? Lord, I pray that we would reap a harvest of righteousness by making as much peace as we can and pointing people towards you. God, may we be brave about the things that matter and may we be gracious about the things that don't. Father, let us walk increasingly in the meekness of wisdom that comes from you And let us in that meekness point people towards your son. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

This morning we are jumping into a brand new series simply called James, where we're going through the book of James in the Bible. The book of James is one of my favorite books, mostly because James tells it like it is, man. Like, James is blunt. He just kicks you in the teeth, and I need that. Subtlety doesn't work for me. I need you to just tell me what I need to do and tell me how I've messed up. And that's exactly what James does. So I'm excited to go through it with you. Another thing about the book of James that I like to share, because I think it's a really well-made point. It's not mine. It's a pastor named Andy Stanley. James is the half-brother of Jesus. And he ends up writing a book of the Bible and is one of the leaders, along with Peter, of the early church. He's like the very first early church father. So James believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Those of you with brothers or sisters, what would it take for them to convince you that God sent them from above and they came to die on a cross and save the whole world? Like what would it take for you to believe your brother or your sister when they said that? Because James believes that, that's pretty good evidence that Jesus was who he says he was, right? That's Andy Stanley's point, not mine, but it's a good reason to listen to James. As we approach the book of James, I'm actually going to share a video with you guys. There's a group called The Bible Project online. If you don't know about them, you should. They make tons of great videos that explain books of the Bible. You can find one for almost any book of the Bible. Just go to Bible Project. You can Google it. If you're at home right now, don't go yet. I'm about to show you a video. Please stay locked in here. But they make books, they make videos about the books of the Bible and about themes in the Bible. It's a tremendous way to begin to understand and approach Scripture. And I thought the one that they made for James was so good that as we kicked off the series, it was the best possible way to kind of prime us for what to expect. It's a little bit longer of a video. It's about eight minutes long. So settle in and buckle up, and we're going to watch this intro video to James together. Here you go. I hope that you enjoyed that. If the biggest thing that you get out of this Sunday, honestly, is to use that more in your personal life, I'm good with that. It's a really, really good resource. So I hope that you appreciated that video and how easy it is to kind of make the whole book approachable now as we read it. If you don't have a reading plan, you can grab one on the way out or we have them online on our live page. This week is set up just like chapter one is. You can see from the video that chapter one's kind of a setup for the rest of the book and the themes and the things that we need to be familiar with so that we can understand it and apply it to ourselves as we move through the book, and in this case, as we move through the series. And so that's what I want to try to do this morning, is pull out the themes and help us set up some parameters around what we're going to talk about for the remaining five weeks of the series. This is going to be a six-week series that's actually going to carry us into Advent. I'm really excited for our Christmas series that we're already working on that we've got coming up. So this is going to carry us all the way through to Thanksgiving. One of the things in the video that I wanted to point out that I thought could help us approach the overarching point of the book of James is that idea of perfection and living lives as our whole selves versus living lives, they called it in the video, as our compromised selves. I think that this is something that we can all relate to. In chapter one, they said that through the book of James that this word perfect or whole appears seven times and that James is writing to push us in that direction. And I think that we can relate to a need to be made whole in that way because many of us know what it is to live disjointed lives, right? I feel like if you're a believer for any amount of time, you know what it is to live a life that doesn't feel all the way in sync. You see a version of yourself that you know that God created you to be. I know that I can walk in that obedience. I see who he wants me to be, and yet I continue to walk in this direction and be this person that I don't want to be, but I keep getting pulled in that direction. We know what it is to come to church on a Sunday, maybe have a good experience, be moved by the worship, which I was this morning, that was great. Be moved by the worship. Be moved by the sermon. Feel a closeness to Jesus. Feel like it was a sweet moment. And then Monday morning you wake up and you go crack skulls at work. Monday morning you wake up and you forget that yesterday was a sweet moment. Maybe it doesn't even make it to the next day. Maybe you had a sweet moment and then in the car the wife says the thing that you don't want her to say and then you're off to the races, right? And there goes that peace and harmony. You know what it is to wake up in the morning, to have a quiet time, to devote some time to God, to spend time in God's Word, to spend time in prayer, and on that very same day lose your mind with your co-workers or your kids or your spouse. We know what it is to have a habit or a hang-up that we say, I'm done with this. I'm not doing this anymore. This has owned my life and has displeased God and displeased me for too long. I'm drawing a line in the sand. I'm not doing this anymore. And then maybe we added in some controls and some accountability and we asked people to help us out. And we took this stand. I'm going to live as that person finally. And then a day or a week or a month later, we do the same thing. And we live as the version of ourselves that we don't like, that Jesus died to save us from. But for some reason, we continue to go back there. I think we all relate to what I find to be one of the most encouraging passages in Scripture in Romans chapter 7 when Paul writes, he says, the things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. So he's talking about this tension. I see the things that I want to do. I see the person who I want to become. I want to do those things, but for some reason I can't walk in that life totally. And then I see this person that I don't want to be. I don't want to make these choices, but I can't stop myself from making those choices. The things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. And then he finishes off at the end of chapter seven with this great verse. He says in declaration, oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I've taken the time a couple of times in my life to read all the way through the book of Romans from start to finish, it's great for plane rides, I always stop at that verse and just kind of go, thank you God for Paul and for his experience of this too. Oh wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death? Because we know what it is to feel out of sync. The Bible calls it our new self and our old self. That our old self was crucified with Christ and it no longer lives and now Jesus lives in me and we're free to walk in this new self but there is this part of the world that continues to drag us down and make us less than whole. And it's this that James writes to address. He writes to the church, and I believe that the reason that James writes the letter is to help us pursue wholeness. James is written to help us pursue wholeness. That wholeness that is walking in the person that God created us to be, walking in the person that Jesus made it possible to be in the first place through his death, walking as that person, walking in that wholeness. He wants us to no longer live these disjointed, out of sync, incomplete lives. I think we'll see that's why he wrote the whole book. His goal is, some people call it maturity, others call it wholeness. He calls it perfection or completion. His goal is to help us get there. We understand that the only way there is through Christ, but we also understand that in this earth, on this side of eternity, that God asks us to obey. He asks us to walk and to follow. And in doing that, we will grow into mature versions of ourselves and to who God wants us to be. And so James writes to help us pursue that wholeness. And I think that's true because of this passage, chapter 1. If you have a Bible, you can open it. If you have one at home, open one there, and you should have the scriptures in your notes. But I'd love for you guys to be interacting with the Bible and with the chapter and see how it all ties together. But if someone were to ask me, point me to the synopsis verses on why James is even written. What is James trying to do? I would take you here. This is where I think he's trying to help us pursue wholeness. Chapter 1, verses 22 through 25 why James writes the book. Because he wants us to be doers who act. He wants us to persevere. He says we shouldn't be like, again, it's this imagery of two versions of ourselves. Don't be the person that looks at the law of God. He calls it the perfect law of liberty, which I love that phrase because God's word was not given to us to constrain us, but to offer us liberty. And that perfect liberty, that perfect law of liberty is Christ. He is the word of God. And he rewrote the law of the Old Testament to say, go and love others as I have loved you. Love God and love others. That's how Jesus rewrites and summarizes the law correctly. And he says that there's one version of us that we stare at the law, we see what it says, we hear it, we pay attention to sermons, maybe we listen to podcasts, we talk with friends about spiritual things, we have our ears open. We hear the word, but then we go and we don't do it. We live lives as those disjointed versions of ourselves. He says, when you do that, you're like somebody who looks at your face in the mirror and then walks away and you forget what you look like. He said, but if you'll gaze into the perfect law of liberty and persevere in doing it, then you will be blessed in your doing. And so I think the answer to our question, James says first, we say first that James writes to help us pursue holiness. So the question becomes, okay, James, how do I pursue holiness? Well, he tells us in these verses, we pursue wholeness by persevering in doing. We pursue wholeness, that complete version of ourselves, by persevering in doing. So that, I think, as a summary statement, begs two questions. Why does James feel it necessary to highlight persevering? Why does he put that out front? Why does he open up the book with it? It's the very first thing, once he starts writing. He says, hey guys, how you doing? And then he starts talking about how pain is going to happen. Why is it that James says right away, if you want to live as a whole self and you need to persevere, because he's communicating this idea of you're going to want to quit. It's going to be really hard. It's kind of a terrible selling point for James. So why does he start there? And then what does doing look like? What are we supposed to be doing? So as we answer those questions, the first question, why persevering? Well, we persevere because life requires it. We persevere because life requires it. James is aware of this reality. Like I said, it's how he starts his letter. Literally, verse 1, James, the servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion. Greetings, which means the Hebrew people who have dispersed outside of Israel. You also refer to it as a diaspora. Then, verse 2, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. He says, hey, how you doing? Haven't seen you in a while. Listen, life's going to stink like a lot, and when it does, just count it joy. Like, that's a terrible opener. James, why are you doing that? But he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness perseverance instead of steadfastness. But he says, And plenty of people have pointed this out before, but just in case you missed it those times, he doesn't say, if you have trials. He doesn't say, hey, if life gets hard sometimes, not saying it well, but if it does, then hang in there. He says, no, no, when? When you face trials, plural, of all kinds, count them as joy. Why? Because they're going to bear out a perseverance and a steadfastness that's going to make us perfect and complete, not lacking anything. It's this idea of being a whole person again. So a couple things from that idea and why James introduces it as a theme that shows up throughout the book. We find it again in chapter 5 when he's talking about having patience and doing good. James knows that your faith is going to be challenged. He knows that perseverance is going to be required. He knows that there are going to be couples who struggle mightily with infertility, and all they want is to experience the joy of having their own child. He knows that. And he knows that when that happens, it's going to test their faith, and it's going to make them wonder if God is really good. James knows that we lose people too early. He knew that parents would mourn the loss of children. He knows that. And because he knows that, he knows that it's going to be really easy for those parents in that moment to cry out and say, God, that's not fair. Why'd you let that happen? And that those circumstances would conspire to shipwreck your faith. And so he says, hang in there. Have faith when it's hard. He knows that marriages will end and that diagnoses will come and that abuse will happen and that abandonment is a thing and that loneliness and depression are things that we walk through. He knows that we are going to lose loved ones before we want to. James knows that and he knows that when those things happen, we're going to want to walk away from our faith because it's going to seem like God isn't looking out for us anymore. And he's telling you when that happens and it seems like things are broken, hang on, persevere, continue in faith, Continue to obey. And when you do, it will make you perfect and complete, not lacking anything. This is the real reason for perseverance. Those of you whose faith has seen that test, those of you who have walked through a season in your life where something happened that was so hard that it made you doubt if God was really looking out for you, it made you doubt if God really cared about you, it made you question your faith, if you came out of that clinging on to your faith, you know it is all the stronger. I was actually talking with someone this last week about this idea, and we just kind of noted, I noted, I don't really trust someone's faith very much until it's been through tragedy. Until it's been hardened in that kiln, I just don't trust it yet. There is something to the people who have walked through tragedy and yet have this faith that they cling to that makes it unshakable. Isn't there? I think of somebody who's going to be an elder in the new year, Brad Gwynn. To my recollection, Brad has lost his sister and his brother and his mom. He's, I don't know, in his 60s, maybe late 50s. Sorry, Brad, I don't know. He's been through tragedy. His faith has been through the tests. But if you talk to him about Jesus and about why he believes, it's humbling. It's admirable. I can honestly tell you, I don't know if I want faith that strong because I don't want to walk through what he has to walk through to have it. But I want faith that strong. James knows, if you cling to your faith through trial, if you cling to Jesus and continue to obey him even when it's hard, that it will produce this completion in us. It will produce this firm, unshakable faith that cannot be shaken, that cannot be torn down. So he opens with, hey, hang in there. Because when you do, you're going to be stronger for it. So if we're supposed to hang in there, if we're supposed to continue to obey, even when it's hard, what is it that we're supposed to do? What does doing look like, right? What does God want from us? What does he expect from us? James is setting something up for the rest of the book to go through, like, here's some simple ways to obey. If you really want to please God, then here's a simple way to do it. If you really want to walk as that person, then these are the things that you need to be doing. These are the things that you need to be paying attention to. The question becomes, what does it look like to do? And I think he answers this question by saying, doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Doing, obeying God, walking as a whole person, looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Here's why I think this. Look at verse 27. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God. You want to do what God wants you to do? You want to live out your faith? You want to live as a whole person? Then here's what you need to do. Care for the widows and the orphan and their affliction and keep yourself unstained from the world. Help the needy and pursue holiness. That's a synopsis for everything that comes in the rest of the book. Everything that comes in the rest of the book is telling you, here's the heart conditions you need to help the needy. Here's why you should do that. Here's why it's near to God's heart. Everything that happens in the rest of the book is, here's what you do. If you want to pursue holiness, then here's how you do it. And this is a theme throughout the Bible. In Isaiah chapter one, we see the very same thing. He distills, Isaiah distills it all down. God says, you want to make me happy? Care for the widows and the orphans. Pursue me. That's what you need to do. Micah says that we should seek justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. It's all through Scripture. So if we want to persevere in doing, what does doing look like? Doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. And when I say helping the needy, I really do mean that because in that culture, you've heard me teach this before, but for those who may have missed it or have joined recently, when we see widows and orphans in the Bible, what we need to understand is that in that culture, that was the least of these. Widows were typically older women who had no way to make any money. So if their husband had passed away and now they're living as single women and they don't have families to care for them, there is very little they can do besides beg for sustenance every day. They are the most exposed and endangered and vulnerable in that culture. Likewise, orphans are the most exposed and vulnerable in that culture. There's no welfare. There's no orphanages. There's no Social security, there's no public medicine, there's none of that. They're just on their own. And God says, my people should have a heart to care for those who can't care for themselves. My people should have a heart to care for those in the greatest need. That's why at Grace we partner with Faith Ministry down in Mexico that builds homes for people who can't afford their own homes because they work in a Panasonic factory for less than a dollar a day. So we send money down there and build them homes and go down there in teams every year to love the least of these, to care for those who can't care for themselves. We heard earlier Mikey talk about Addis Jamari, who literally cares for orphans in Ethiopia. As girls age out of the orphanages and have no life skills and nothing to do with themselves, they take them into a home, teach them skills, send them back to school, and give them a path forward. And now they work with families on the front end of it so that when they have new babies and they don't know what to do and they're too poor to afford these babies, they give them materials and they give them training and they give them money so that they don't have to turn those kids into orphans but they can grow up in good solid homes. That's why we partner with them. That's why so many people at our church are all into a seat at the table downtown where it's a pay what you can restaurant so that you can go and have your meal and leave a token behind so that someone else can have a meal too if they can't afford it. Caring for the needy is near and dear to God's heart. And I would say to you this, if you're a believer and a part of your regular behavior and pattern isn't to care for those in need, then I don't think you're doing all that God has for you to do. I don't think it's possible to say, I'm walking in lockstep with Jesus. I'm being exactly who he created to me. I love him with my whole heart. I spend my days with him. I commune with God in prayer and yet still not help the needy. It's one of the first things that shows up in every teaching in scripture that if you love God, you'll help those who can't help themselves. Not only should we be about this as a church, we need to be about this as individuals. If you call yourself a Christian, if you claim God as your Father and Jesus as your Savior and that's not a part of your pattern, I would encourage you to find a way to make that a part of your pattern. There's a part of God that we find in doing that work. It's who His children are designed to be. And then He tells us that we should pursue holiness. Keep yourself unstained from this world. The word holy simply means different or other. In Scripture we're told to be holy as God is holy. And it's this command, it's this acknowledgement. Listen, you're different. You're different than the world. You're not better than the world. We're cut from the same cloth. You know Jesus, and the world doesn't yet know Jesus. That's the difference. You're not better than anybody, but you're different than them. And we're called to be different than the world. We're called to laugh at different jokes. We're called to post different political memes, if any at all, ever. We're called to argue differently in the public square. We're called to behave differently than them. We're called to love differently than the world. We're called to watch different things than what they watch. We're called to different standards than what they're called to. Personal holiness matters a lot. And James says, if you want to be a whole person, then persevere in doing. And what does doing look like? It looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Now listen, we're holy because Jesus has made us holy. We're already there because Jesus has died for us and we are clothed in his righteousness. However, in this life, the Bible reminds us over and over again that we are to obey. And obeying takes our effort. So as far as it depends on us, we help the needy and we pursue holiness. And the rest of the book is about really unpacking that idea. What are the heart conditions that exist around helping those who can't help themselves? And what does it look like to live holy and unstained in this world? So I hope that that will serve as a good primer to get you ready for the rest of the book of James. Next week we come back with probably the easiest thing to do. It's why we're starting off with it, taming the tongue. And then we're going to move on to the rest of the book. I'm really looking forward to going through this book with you guys. I'm going to pray for us and then we will be dismissed. Father, you're good to us. My goodness. You're good to us and we're not good to you. You remain faithful to us when we are faithless. God, you watch us live our disjointed lives. And you're patient with us, and you're gentle, and you're loving. Father, I pray that as we go through this series, that everybody who hears it or preaches it, God would just have their heart enlivened to this idea of walking wholly with you. Of walking in lockstep with Jesus. Give us visions of actually being the people that you created us to be, of leaving behind our disjointed selves. Give us the honesty to identify where we're not obedient, and give us the courage to walk in the obedience that you show us. It's in your Son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be here with you in this way again. This week, we're jumping into a new series called The Time of Kings. You should know by now, if you've been a part of Grace for any period of time, that I love the Old Testament. I love the stories. I love the characters. I love the nuance. I love the way that diving into the Old Testament not only makes the Bible come alive, but sheds new and helpful light on the Old Testament. And whenever we do a series in the Old Testament and tell some of these stories from that period of time and that portion of the Bible, one of my hopes is that if nothing else, the Bible will come alive for you and you'll enjoy diving into it on your own. I hope that this whets your appetite or inspires you to dive into Scripture and read these stories on your own. We're going to be looking at the books of 1 and 2 Kings. We have a reading plan to go along with this series. That's on our website. So if you'll go there, graceralee.org slash live, you can find our reading plan. Many of you are on it right now and follow through the books of 1 and 2 Kings with us. It won't be exhaustive, but if you want to get ahead of it, then you can try to read in the margins and read through those books as we do this series for seven weeks. I'm excited about this series because the first and second Kings kind of covers a large narrative arc in the Old Testament. The Old Testament from Genesis all the way up through Ezra kind of tells the story of the nation of Israel. And then the books that come after that, the wisdom books and the prophecy books, the major prophets and the minor prophets kind of give us details of different portions of that story. And a large swath of the story is covered in the books of 1 and 2 Kings. And there's all kinds of good things tucked away in these books. And we're going to highlight some of those over the next seven weeks. But by way of background, so that we know where we are in history and in the life of the nation of Israel, I wanted to kind of give you a very quick overview of how we get to the book of Kings and what's going on around the story that we're going to focus on today. So if you go back all the way to Genesis, there's a guy named Abram who lives in Ur, a Sumerian city. God comes to Abram and he says, I want you to go to this place that I'm going to show you that we know is the modern day nation of Israel. Then it was the land of Canaan. But he says, I want you to go to this place where I'm going to show you. And he makes Abram three promises for land, people, and blessing. He says, I'm going to give you this particular plot of land, which we know is modern day Israel. I'm going to make your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And the Messiah is going to come from you. And then he changes his name to Abraham. And Abraham goes and he takes his family and he goes over to the land of Canaan. And Abraham finally has a son named Isaac. Isaac has sons named Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the one through some finagling that inherits the promises of Abraham and the blessing. Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom is Joseph. Joseph is kind of pushed out of his family. They sell him into slavery. He ends up in Egypt. Fast forward 30 years, there's a famine and Jacob's 11 sons, the rest of his family moves down to Egypt where they're reunited with Joseph and they exist in prosperity in Egypt for a long time. That's pretty much the book of Genesis. Then the book of Exodus starts, the second book of the Bible. We fast forward 400 years. Moses is there. He's a descendant from Abraham and a claimant to the promises that God made to Abraham. And he's adopted into Pharaoh's family. He spends some time in the desert. God appears to him in the desert and says, I want you to go free my people. And Moses does just that. He frees slaves from the most powerful nation in the world by the hand of God. And while they're wandering around in the desert, the people of God, the Israelites, the Hebrew people, are clamoring for rules. They're like, it's not enough to just follow you, to just kind of loosely obey you. We need some policies here. And so God gives them the Ten Commandments. And then on to the Ten Commandments adds more laws through the book of Leviticus. Until in the desert, we have developed this now formalized religion that we know is Judaism. That would later become Christianity. Then while they're wandering around in the desert, Moses passes away. Joshua raises up to take over leadership in the nation of Israel. They cross the Jordan River into the promised land of Canaan that God promised Abraham. They fulfill that promise. They slowly conquer it and take it over. Once they conquer it and take it over, Joshua divides the land amongst the 12 tribes of Israel and they set up shop. In this time, immediately after taking over the land of Canaan and dividing up the land into 12 territories, they don't have a king. They're ruled periodically by judges. What would happen is God's people, Abraham's children, would periodically rebel, forget about God, do whatever it was they wanted to do, ignore God's laws, and God, to get their attention, would allow them to be oppressed, sometimes enslaved, sometimes heavily taxed, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes at war. And when they were oppressed, they would cry out to God, please save us, we know we did wrong. And God would raise up what we call a judge, and the judge would free Israel of oppression and restore them back to sovereignty, and everything was good until the Israelites forgot again and they began to sin again, forgot about God, lived how they wanted to. God would allow oppressors to come in and then God would raise up a judge when they would cry out. And this is the cycle that we're in. One of the last judges was a guy named Samuel. There's two books in the Bible named after Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel. Samuel was born to a woman named Hannah who was barren, who prayed and committed to God, if you'll give me a son, I'll commit him to you. So as soon as Samuel was able to eat solid food, probably at about four or five years old, his mom Hannah takes him to the temple, gives him to the high priest Eli, and says this is God's son, that he belongs to God. And Samuel grows up in the temple and eventually becomes the high priest, the prophet, and the judge of Israel. And this is where we pick up the story. If you have a Bible there at home, you can actually go ahead and turn to 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel chapter 8. Now, I know that this series is over the kings and first and second kings, and it's weird that I'm diving into Samuel on the first day. But first of all, we're going to get into kings a little bit. Second of all, this story has more to do with the meta-narrative of the story of kings. This story is how Israel got their very first king. And I think that there is a cautionary tale that comes out of this story in 1 Samuel 8 that sheds a light on the rest of the time of the kings that's important enough for us to stop and focus on this morning. So in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel's getting old. He's appointed his sons as the next judges of Israel, and they're not good at it. They're taking advantage of their position. They're corrupt, and the people of Israel are upset about this. So they come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And listen, it's important. if you have a Bible at home, please go ahead and open to 1 Samuel 8, because I'm going to summarize a lot of this chapter, and I really want you interacting with the text and following it along and making sure that I'm not making stuff up. But the children of Israel, the people of Israel come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And Samuel says, why do you want a king? And Israel stomps their foot and holds their breath until their face turns blue and responds like a petulant middle school child. And they basically say, because everybody else has a king and we want one too. Jordan gets to have a king. Lebanon, they get to have a king. Egypt, they get to have a king. The Babylonians have a king. We want a king too. It's not fair. Everybody else gets a king and we don't get a king. And that stinks, Samuel. Please go to God and get him to give us a king. It's really an incredibly immature attitude from a whole nation of people, which is basically, why do you want a king? Well, everybody else has a king, so we feel like we should have one too. It's the same reason your fifth grader is demanding a cell phone right now. So Samuel is troubled, and he's angered, and he goes to God. And he says, God, they're clamoring for a king. What do I do? And he's clearly taking it personally. They've rejected me and rejected my leadership. They're asking for a king. Help me squelch this. Help me quell this. God, what do I say to them? And God responds this way in verse 7 of chapter 8. Listen to this. So Samuel goes to God and he says, God, the people have rejected me. They don't want me to be their ruler. They want a king. They're not happy with the judge. They don't like the current system. They've rejected me. What do I do? And God says, Samuel, Samuel, give them what they want and understand that they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me from being their king. God says, Samuel, listen, man, I set it up this way on purpose. I directed Joshua to set up the nation exactly as I wanted it to be established. The way that things are currently orchestrated, that you're a judge and that you represent me and that my nation, my people, Israel, is different than the rest of the world in that they don't have a king. That's on purpose, Samuel. And if you think about it, it's not like God didn't know what a monarchy was when he set up his nation. It's not like the idea of kings hadn't occurred to him. It's not like he thought it was a great idea and just thought, nah, I want my people to just be confused for a long time. No, his people didn't need a king because God was the king and the judge was his representative. I mean, the Israelites had the best setup in the history of history. The most altruistic, selfless, powerful, loving, gracious, forgiving being to ever exist was their king. The king of kings was their king. There could be no better ruler than God. And they had him. But they wanted a physical king. They wanted to be able to see and touch him. And so they weren't happy with what they had because they wanted it so badly they couldn't see what God did for them. Israel's desire made them blind to God's provision. Israel's desire, their earnest want for a king made them blind to God's provision for them. Because they had an expectation that led them down this path, that made them expect this thing, they didn't see what was provided for them over here in such a deep and wonderful and profound way. Their own desire made them blind to God's provision. And so God says to Samuel, listen, give them what they want. Give them what they want because they're going to keep clamoring and they haven't rejected you, Samuel. They've rejected me. I've tried to provide for them as their king and they don't see it. So don't take this personally, Samuel. This is an offense to me. And Samuel warns them. Samuel warns them. He goes back to the people. He says, okay, God says that you can have a king. God says that you can have a king, but listen. Listen to what happens if you're going to have a king. I'm reading in verse 10. He says, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking from a king, and God's going to let you have one, but you need to understand. You need to understand, listen, this is not going to be a good thing. He's going to take your sons from you and he's going to put them on the front lines and they're going to die for him. He's going to take your daughters out of your home and he's going to take them to his palace and they're going to serve him there. He's going to take a tenth of what you own. He's going to tax you. He's going to enslave you. He's going to impoverish you. And eventually you're going to regret this choice and you're going to cry out to God and he's not going to hear you. Just so you know. It's such a stark warning to these Israelites who are crying out for a king because they want one so badly. You know, it reminds me of something that I've thought for a long time. It's not all the way true, but it's mostly true. You win every argument you get into with God. There's a couple examples where that's not the case. Jonah lost the argument. But for the most part, if you want to argue with God, you win. He tells the people of Israel, you don't need a king, you have me. And they go, but we really want one. And he goes, it's going to be terrible for you. You're going to hate it. And they go, we don't care. We really want one. And God says, okay, if that's what you want. You might remember the story of Jacob who wrestled with God. God comes to him in a vision at night. He wrestles with God all night long. And do you know who won that wrestling match? Jacob did. Is that because God's not powerful enough to defeat Jacob in a wrestling match? No. It's because when we argue with God, we win. God says, hey, I really want you to do this thing. And we go, oh God, no, I don't want to do that thing. But I really, I think it'd be best for you if you did the thing. No, God, please don't make me do the thing. I don't want to do the thing. I'll do anything but the thing. Please don't make me do the thing. And God says, okay, it'd be best for you. It'd be best for your family. You're going to find joy and contentment there, but I'm not going to make you. Or God says, hey, you know, your life would really be better if you didn't do the thing. Your family would be stronger if you'd stop doing the thing. And we go, but God, I really like doing the thing. One day in the future, I'll stop doing the thing. but right now I'm gonna keep doing the thing because I'm finding joy there. And God says, you know what? You can keep doing the thing, but you're only gonna find wreckage there. You're already walking in hurt and damage and leaving a terrible wake, and you're only gonna leave a greater one, and you're only gonna end in more damage and more death, but you keep doing the thing if you want to do the thing. Go ahead. When we argue with God, we get our way. He's going to let us win. But I think what we see out of the story of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting that thing that we desperately want, that we petition God for, we need it, we're praying for it, we're begging for it, we're asking for it, and we don't, God hasn't given it to us yet, but finally he gives it to us. And that's not the best thing. Sometimes God won't give it to us. So we force it and we find our own way to make things happen. And that's not the best way. Sometimes we argue with God and we say, I don't want to do that thing that you want me to do. And he says, okay, you don't have to do it, but just know you got your way, but that's not the best way. A big warning that I think that echoes through the centuries of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. And it turns out to be true. If you'll read through the book of 1 and 2 Kings, what you'll find is that the first king they had was a disaster. He was a selfish jerk and that David, the second king, had to do a military takeover of Jerusalem just to establish his own kingdom. And then it went well for a while, but at the end of his reign, his son Absalom raised up against him and staged a coup d'etat and overthrew him. And David had to siege Jerusalem again, during which he lost his son Absalom. After that, he was able to peacefully hand it over to his son Solomon. Solomon hands it over to Rehoboam, who's such a terrible leader that the northern tribes revolt and follow someone named Jeroboam. And within four kings, within four kings, after they clamored in 1 Samuel 8, we need a king. it's gonna make us good, it's gonna make us better, it's gonna give us security, it's gonna get us respect among the nations. Within four kings, they descend into civil war and the nation splits forever. It exists for the rest of the Old Testament as the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribes of Judah. And within 300 years, each of those separate kingdoms is ushered off into slavery and exile in Babylon and in Assyria. And at the end of the Old Testament, they come limping back a people of slaves in a post, so I'll highlight for you the story of King Hezekiah. You can find this in 2 Kings 20. King Hezekiah was a righteous man. The southern tribes, the northern kingdoms of Israel had no good kings, had no godly kings for any of the 300 years that they existed. The southern kings, the southern kingdom of Judah only had three good kings. One of them was a guy named Hezekiah. Hezekiah was lauded for his faithfulness and his righteousness. When they were surrounded by the Babylonian army, led by a guy named Sennacherib. Sennacherib sends a letter to Hezekiah and he says, listen, get everybody out of the city because I'm going to burn it to the ground. I'm going to take this place over. And if you're stubborn, they're going to die because of you. And Hezekiah takes the letter to the temple. He lays it down before the Lord. He kneels and he lifts it up to God and he says, God, what are we going to do about this? And God says, your faithfulness has saved your people. I will save your people and you will not have to fire an arrow. And sure enough, that's what happens because of Hezekiah's righteousness. After that, Hezekiah gets deathly ill, and he's going to die. And he prays and petitions the Lord for healing. Please, please, God, save me. Please, please, don't let me die. And God in His goodness grants him 15 more years. And towards the end of those 15 years, there's an envoy of Babylonians that come back to Jerusalem. And Hezekiah and his pride can't resist but showing them everything in his kingdom. He shows them all the storehouses, all the wealth, all the things that he's done. It's not enough for Hezekiah to have the applause and the adulation of the nation of Israel for them to think he's great. He wants the Babylonians to think he's great too. In the south, we call that getting too big for your britches. And so after the Babylonians leave, Isaiah the prophet comes to Hezekiah and he says, hey, what did you show them? He says, I showed them everything because of his pride. And Isaiah says, because you did that, you know they're coming back and they're going to take everything that you showed them and they're going to enslave your people. And Hezekiah responds. Look at 2 Kings chapter 20. He responds, as long as there's security in my time, what do I care? Within those extra 15 years that God granted him, Hezekiah lost his way. He lost his character. He went from being humble and righteous and holy to prideful and arrogant and self-centered. And instead of remembering Hezekiah for this wonderful beacon of righteousness and hope that it can be done right, we have to balance his memory with his faltering in the last 15 years. And the story of Hezekiah shows us again that maybe getting our way isn't the best way. It would have been better for him to have gone into eternity when God allowed him to get sick. He regretted asking for those 15 years. And the same is true in our life. We all have things in our life that we petition God for, that we feel like we want so very badly. I can remember when I graduated from college with my freshly minted pastoral ministries degree. I had worked in Young Life. I had been around youth groups. I had had experience. I had done summer camp. And I wanted more than anything to be the youth pastor of a big, fun youth group at a big, fun church where I could do whatever I wanted. I wanted that, and I prayed for it earnestly. And instead, God sent me to Rocky Mount, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. Everybody's got to be proud of something. And we met, to say it was an old country church is probably a disservice to old country churches. We met in a colonial farmhouse on a hillside, literally in the middle of nowhere. It was about 35 people a week. There's three middle school boys in my youth group, and none of them cared what I thought about the G gospels. That's what God gave me. A far cry from what I petitioned him for. That was at 25, 24. But at 30, he gave me the thing I had asked him for. I had a big fun youth group at a big fun church. And what I became certain of is, if he'd have given me the petitions of my heart at 24, they would have ruined me and I would have ruined it. And so because God knows better than I do, he said no or not yet to my request when I was 24. We all have things that we petition God for. We all have things that we earnestly want. Maybe we earnestly want a new job, a new opportunity, a new challenge. Maybe we're working through an anxiety and a depression and we just, we've cried out to God, please take this from me. Maybe there's some turmoil in a relationship that matters to us and we've prayed that God would fix it and it just seems to be getting worse and we're not sure what's happening. Maybe we need money. Maybe we just want more money than we have. Maybe we want a bigger house than we have. Maybe we're praying for a move that's not working. Maybe we're praying for an opportunity that we're not getting. Maybe we're being passed up for a promotion that we feel like we deserve. Maybe we're praying for a child that's not coming yet. We're all petitioning God for something. Maybe we're even praying for health or healing for ourselves or for a loved one. We, like the children of Israel, have this thing that we really, really want. This morning, in light of the cautionary tale that comes out of how Israel got their first king. I want us to think about that thing or those things that we really want, that we earnestly need. Some of them might be silly. Some of them are deathly important. But this morning, can we just pause for a second and consider the possibility that God's answer has been no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Can we just stop and slow down and that thing that you feel like you want so badly that might even seem like a good and righteous prayer. Maybe God hasn't given that thing to you yet. Maybe his answer is no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Maybe God knows, no, I'm not gonna just drop in and magically heal your relationship because if you don't go through these hard times and do the hard work to find a way to help, then you're not gonna have a foundation for it to not get unhealthy in the future. You need this struggle. No, I'm not going to give you the job yet because you're not ready for it. And if I do, it's going to destroy you. No, I'm not going to give you the money yet because if I do, you're going to be an arrogant jerk and that's going to destroy you too. And you're going to lose your friends. And I don't want that for you. Your greatest happiness is here. I'm providing for you in a way right now that you're not acknowledging that if you would just stop looking at what you're focused on and focus your eyes on God, you would see that he's already met that need for you in your life. Just like the Israelites who were clamoring for a king, yet they had the best one ever. And I know that it's hard to hear. And this one hits close to home for me. But it's possible that even though we earnestly pray for healing, that healing simply isn't what's best. The healing wasn't best for Hezekiah. We so often forget that God sees things from the scope of eternity. And we see this much of it. And even though in this much of it, sometimes it feels like we want something so badly and we can't understand why God wouldn't let us have it, He sees this. And He understands perfectly. And in eternity, you will too. Consider this morning the possibility, just the possibility, that the reason you don't have the thing that you want so very much, that seems like God should want that thing for you, is because having it wouldn't be what's best for you right now. Consider the possibility that God is already providing that in ways that you don't notice. And listen, hear me. I'm not saying that we shouldn't petition God. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go to Him in prayer. I'm not saying that we shouldn't lay out before Him the things that we earnestly want. Jen and I prayed for years that we would have a child. Lily is the answer to that prayer. I don't regret having Lily. It's one of the greatest blessings in my life, if not the single greatest blessing in my life. We should absolutely petition God. The story from Kings is not that we shouldn't go to him with what we want, but maybe it points to a prayer by Jesus himself in the New Testament and encourages us to pray like that. I don't want you to hear this morning that you shouldn't petition God, but I do want you to hear that we should pray like Jesus did, according to the Father's will. When the disciples go to Jesus and they say, how do we pray? He says, when you pray, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The disciples said, Jesus, how do we pray? And he says, you pray like this. First, you praise God. You acknowledge who he is. Then you say, not my will, your will. What you want, God. Let your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And to put his money where his mouth was in praying like this, we see Jesus literally pray like this at the end of the Gospels when he's in Gethsemane, the night that he's getting arrested to be crucified. He's laying prostrate on the ground. He is sweating blood. He is maximum stressed out that a human can possibly endure. And he is crying out, God, Father, please take this cup from me. Please don't make me do this. I don't want to do the thing. I don't want to get crucified. I don't want to die like this. Please don't make me do this. But not my will, but your will be done, Father. See the difference? Israel says, God, we want this thing no matter what. God says, it's not going to be good for you. That's not my will. They go, we don't care. This is what we want. We know better than you. Jesus says, God, this is what I want. I want it desperately, badly. But God, I acknowledge that my will might be different than your will, so your will be done, not mine. I think the message coming out of 1 Samuel 8 and the overarching narrative of the results of this desire that's expressed in chapter 8 that we see in 1 and 2 Kings. There's this stark reminder that when we argue with God, He's going to let us have our way, but our way is not the best way. And we should remember that if there is something that we earnestly want, if we've gone to God like the Israelites had and said, hey, we really want this, and God hasn't given it to us yet, it's probably because it's not best for us. And let us remember that when we pray, when we petition God, we should do it like Jesus did. And lay out the things before the Father that you earnestly want, but let's blanket that with, Father, not my will, but your will be done. Let's pray. Lord, you are good, and you are gracious, and you are loving. You are boundlessly patient with us. You were gracious with our frailty and our humanity. I pray that we would see that more and more. God, in light of the sermon, I pray for grace. I don't know how much longer COVID is gonna be a thing. God, I hate that we can't all be together. I know that you hate it more. I know that you're seeing us through this season. And God, even though we earnestly pray that we can all come back together with a feeling of safety and security without anxiety about catching a disease that some of us cannot handle. God, not our will, but your will be done. Let us all return in your perfect timing. God, with the different issues that we're facing with our employment, with the anxiety that we're facing with whether or not our job's going to exist in a couple of months, for those of us who are on the incredibly competitive job market, Father, not our will, but your will be done. Father, may your will be done in the marriages of grace. May your will be done in the raising of the children of grace. May your will be done in the day-to-day lives of the people who call this place home. May your will be done in my life. God, help us pray like that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Grace, this week there's a man named George Floyd who was killed by a police officer. George was a black man, and you can't help but think that his race was a white woman who, in a racially fueled fear, weaponized the black man's race against him in a threat. And those instances are the most recent that have come into the national conscience. But there are just more instances in a long string of events that have happened that have pointed to the fact that we live in a culture with simmering racial tension. We live in a place where racial inequality is real. And I didn't think it would be right to get up here and just start preaching about Acts as if those things hadn't happened this week. I didn't think it would be right to meet together as together as we can be on a Sunday morning now and not acknowledge those things and pray for the racial divide and the wounds in our country to heal. And I didn't think it would be right to start this Sunday as a church and not earnestly ask our God together, what can we do, what can grace do to be a part of healing this divide? What portions of it as a greatly and majorly lily-white congregation can we own? And how can we contribute to closing the divide that exists in our culture? So I wanted to take a minute as we begin and pray for George Floyd and his family and pray for the racial divide in our country and pray for wisdom, for grace, as we seek to find how the Lord would have us be an active part of the healing of these wounds. So would you please pray with me? Father, our hearts are broken that we live in a place where things like this happen. Our hearts are broken that these incidents are not isolated. They're just the ones that we see. We know that you see all the incidents. We know that you have seen all the injustice. And we know that your heart breaks over injustice far more than ours ever could. So Father, first we pray for your heart in the face of these things. Break ours with yours. Father, we pray for the family of George Floyd. We ask that you would bring a healing that only you could bring. We pray for the attitudes that underlie the fear of Amy Cooper. And ask that you would solve those and bring those to the fore so that we might confront them and deal with them with equanimity and with justice and with grace. And Father, we ask that you would guide the partners and the leadership of grace and show us how we are to contribute to closing this divide and healing these wounds. Show us the path forward as we grieve, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. This morning is part two of a sermon that I'm calling Early Church Distinctives. Last week was part one. Hopefully you have your notes and you've got them numbered one through three. This week is going to be four, five, six, and seven. And last week I opened up with a short fictional story, really a parable, about a boy that was firing arrows at a barn and the arrows would land in the midst of a sea of red and then he would walk up and paint a target around the arrow and go, look, I hit the bullseye. And we talked about how, you know, this happens and this is applicable in a lot of organizations and institutions. It's a good parable about the dangers of mission drift. And often we start things without even knowing what we're going for, without even knowing what the goal is, without even knowing what the target is. And so we are asking last week as a church, how do we know that we're hitting the target? Another way to think about it is if Jesus and Paul were to come into the church on a Sunday morning when that's allowed, would they look around grace and everything that we're doing and say, yeah, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. This is the target that we painted for you. So last week we asked the question, how do we know that we're hitting that target? How do we know that what we're doing as Grace is right? That Sunday mornings and small groups and children's ministry and student ministry and the philanthropic ministries that we do, how do we know that all that is right and good? Well, in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have a seminal passage that defines the early church. It paints the target for us. It shows us these are the things that the early church was characterized by. What's going on in the passage is Jesus has gone into heaven. He's left the disciples with the keys to the kingdom. They've received the Holy Spirit. They went out and they preached to thousands of people this gospel of repentance. Repent of who you thought Jesus was when you killed him and accept and walk in faith in the fact that Jesus and when he challenged them to repentance, it says about 3,000 were added to their number. And then those 3,000 formed the church. And right after that, we get Acts 2, 42 through 47, and it tells us the very things that defined the church. So last week, we looked at the first three distinctives that we see as defining the early church. This week, I want to look at the next four, four, five, six, and seven. And we said last week, there's different ways to group these together. You could pull out four distinctives or nine, but we're doing seven. And so last week we talked about the fact that they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, meaning they were eager learners. They were devoted to fellowship, meaning they were devoted to Christ-centered time together, and they were devoted to prayers, meaning that they were committed to the spiritual disciplines that they expressed in that day. So this week, as we continue to ask, how do we know if we're doing it right? What does God expect of his church? I want to continue to look at these distinctives that define the early church. By way of review, I wanted to take a minute and read the breaking of bread at the prayers. This week I want to start out by looking at that phrase that they sold all that they had in common and gave to any who had need. And we want to sum that up by saying that the fourth distinctive, if you're keeping your list there, is that they were known for generosity. They were known for their generosity. And it's interesting what's happening in this passage because what's literally happening is as the church is formed, everybody is selling whatever they have and giving it to the church leadership and saying, here, this is for the greater good. You guys use it for whatever you need to use it for. Obviously, my family's going to have some needs, but we trust you to provide for those. Here's everything that we own. Please use it to provide for everyone here, which is a super high bar. That's really daunting. Can you imagine if when we had our new members class at Grace, when we did Discover Grace and we talked all about Grace and who we are, and then we got to the end of it and it was like, okay, if you want to be a partner, here are the requirements. You know, you need to commit to Sunday morning attendance. You should be a believer. We'd like to see you in a small group. Also, small thing, if you could just kind of sell everything that you have and write a check to the elders, we'll take it from here. That would be a pretty tough sell. That's a pretty tall order. But to understand what's happening here, we need to feel the freedom to apply the principle and not necessarily the practice, because the principle is far more important. First, we need to understand what's happening in ancient Israel, in Israel at the time of Christ. Israel is what we would think of as a third world country. There's lots of joblessness. There's lots of poverty. There's lots of hunger. There's lots of suffering. There's no medical system really to speak of. And so suffering and need and want in Jerusalem was great. And while it was great, there was no infrastructure to provide for those who had fallen through the cracks of society. And what we understand is that God has intentionally designed the institution of the church to undergird society as a safety net to catch those who have fallen through the cracks of familial care. God first assigns to care for others. He first assigns family to care for family. This is why over and over again in Scripture, God makes a point of saying that if you love me, if you want to express true religion, then you'll care for the widows and the orphans. We see this in James in the New Testament, that true religion is to care for the widows and the orphans. We see it in Isaiah in the Old Testament, where God says, if you really want to please me, then plead the cause of the fatherless and take up the case of the widow. And what he's saying there is, and even in Deuteronomy when he says, look out for the sojourners, for the aliens, for the ones that don't have a family and can't support themselves, what he's saying in all that is, the church needs to serve in society as a safety net to care for those who fall through the cracks of familial care. We're supposed to be there and be helping them. And when there is a need, we are supposed to meet it. God has designed the church as an institutional safety net for society. And so in that time, there was no government. There was no Medicare. There was no welfare. There was no food stamps. There was no health care. There was none of that. And so the church was the only hope for the person who didn't have a family and was in need and couldn't support themselves. But now in our culture, thankfully, we have another safety net, which is the government. We do have a societal infrastructure to watch out for people who fall through the cracks of familial care. But still, the church undergirds all of that, and people who cannot be cared for by their family and cannot be cared for by the government, God looks at us, the church, and says, now you, you care for them. So we're still there, and it's still our responsibility, which is why the point from this part of the passage is that we need to be generous. We need to be conduits of God's generosity. We need to have a grieving heart for those who hurt and reach out to help those who can't help themselves. We need to be glad providers for those that are not provided for by their family or provided for by the government. We need to rally around them and be generous in spirits and be conduits of God's generosity. Another way to think of it perhaps is like this. When I became a senior pastor, I learned eventually about a thing called a designated giving fund. I'd really never heard of that before. It might shock you guys to know that I'm not a financial titan. I don't really know all the ins and outs of all that stuff. It's all news to me. I just try to spend less than what I make. That's pretty much it. But I found out that there's these things called designated giving funds. And how this works is you have money and you give a portion of that money to this fund that a company or an individual manages. And a lot of people will give money to this individual and they manage all the money in a fund. And that money is earmarked for charitable donations, charitable causes. And whoever you give your money to, they just sit on it and they hold it for however long you want to. And then when something pricks your heart, when something touches you, when you see a need that you'd like to meet, you pick up the phone or you type the email and you let the person managing your money know, hey, I would like you to send this much money to this person because they need it. This matters to me. I'd like you to allocate my resources to that person or that institution for those people. That's how a designated giving fund works fundamentally. And what it's made me realize is that we're all God's designated giving funds. That's what stewardship is. We've heard about this idea of stewardship before, that everything we have is God's and not our own. We've heard about that. But the more I thought about it this week, I've realized we're all God's designated giving funds. He allocates a portion of money to us. He entrusts it to us. And every now and again, he picks up the phone or he writes the email and he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this thing matters to me. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to them. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to these people. That's the principle of what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, is they're expressing the Lord's generosity. And I think increasingly, and I know that that's a tall order, and I know that you may be very far away from viewing everything you have as really belonging to God. And that's, I think, a progressive revelation as we understand God. But I think one of the marks of spiritual maturity in a church and in an individual is when the church and when the person understands that we're really just designated giving funds for God. He's allocated a portion of his resources to us as individuals and to us as a church. And every now and again, he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this matters to me. I'd like you to shift some of those resources over there to them. And that's how we're to serve. It's the mark of the church to be generous. The fifth distinctive that I see in this text is that they were committed to gathering. It says they gathered day by day in the temple courts. It's this old school way of church. You know, when I grew up, we were there every time the doors were open. We went Sunday morning, we went Sunday night, we went Wednesday night, every week. That was the deal. The doors were open, we were there. That's kind of old school church. Now, increasingly, if someone is a regular church attender, it means they come to church maybe twice a month. But the early church was committed to the gathering. It mattered to them. It mattered to them to come together when they were able to be in the temple learning and praising and fellowshipping together. The early church intuitively and instinctively understood the power and efficacy of being around one another, the power and the efficacy of the gathering. This is why in Hebrews we're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Because there's something special about being in the same place. And if nothing else, that's what this time of pandemic and isolation has taught us. Across the board, across the country, almost universally, church engagement and virtual attendance is declining. And as we've talked about that as a staff, and I've talked about that with the elders, I've just made the point that, you know, online church, this ability to participate in church in our sweatpants and the comfort of our own home, that's been a thing for at least 15 years, maybe longer. And there's a reason why it hasn't taken off. There's a reason why it hasn't overtaken in-person church. Because even now in the 21st century, we understand that there's a power and an efficacy that's difficult to capture in simply being together, in experiencing the teaching together, in laughing together, in and worshiping together and sharing together in the lobby, we understand that that is important. It's why at Grace, if you do come to a Discover Grace class, that one of the things we do ask our partners to commit to is to prioritize Sunday morning service. Because we believe that the gathering matters. And I can't wait until we are able to gather again. It's a distinctive of the early church and it ought to define our church. The sixth distinctive is the one that, of all of them, probably fires me up the most. I get so excited about this, and I think that it defines the early church. They were defined by communion and community. They were defined by communion and community. We see in verse 42 that they were devoted to the breaking of bread. And then again in 46 that they gathered in one another's homes and they broke bread together. It happens two times. And then all throughout this passage, we see they, they, they, collective, collective, collective. It's always about others. And the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It is fundamentally involved with others. I've said often it is impossible to live out the Christian life on an island. It is impossible to grow closer to Jesus void of the influence of others in your life. We absolutely, our souls need to be surrounded by godly Christian community. That's why at Grace, our mission statement is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people because we believe that we cannot deepen our connection with Jesus void of connections with others. And I believe this so fervently that I would say to you, if you're listening this morning and you're not sure that you have Christian community in your life, ignore everything else that I'm saying. Put it all on the back burner. Just take it and set it aside for a later date and get Christian community in your life. Stop right now. Quit listening to me and pray that God would provide for you a community of faith who supports you, who love you, who have permission to tell you the truth about yourself and to tell you what Jesus says about you. We desperately need Christian community in our life. And the early church was a communal thing, and that persists to this day. But it wasn't just about community. It was about communion. We see that phrase, the breaking of bread, and we automatically think that this is an expression of community and hospitality, and it is. And for all of history, for all of history, that has been how we've expressed hospitality. Food has been the fundamental way that we've expressed community. Once you get to know somebody a little bit, maybe you have a common activity or something, but eventually you're going to say, hey, let's grab lunch. Let's get the wives together and let's go to dinner. Let's get the families together and y'all come over. And increasingly that means we go somewhere and we experience a food together, but the most intimate time, the most special times are when people are invited over to the home. When you invite people into your home, there's a special care taken. You clean up the house. You let them know that you care about them, that they matter to you. You try to think of the special thing that they like, of the appetizer that they went nuts over the last time, of the dessert that you can remember in conversation that they said they like. If you're making steaks and there's somebody who doesn't like steak, you make sure and you have chicken to make them feel thought for and cared for. You make sure that there's something for their kids so that they know that their kid is important to you as well. There's this special power of hospitality, of welcoming people into our homes and expressing community in that way. And when the tradition of communion started, that's where it started. It started in someone's home as Jesus and the disciples sat around and broke bread together. They sat around and they were having a meal together. They were expressing community. It was the Passover supper. And you know, we observe communion in our churches. Most churches observe it like grace does. At grace, we do it once a month in the service. The elders stand on either side at the end of the sermon. I'll go through the story of communion and when it started and we'll have a particular thought that we go with. Then we spend some time in prayer and then we line up and we get we get the bread, and we dip it, and we go back to our seats, and it's an austere, respectful time, and that's right and good. But communion didn't start that way. Communion started in community. Communion started around a table. When Jesus took the bread, and he looked at the disciples, and and he broke it and he began to hand it out. And this was not an unusual practice. Every home didn't have a knife. The way that you serve bread was to take the loaf and tear off a portion of it and give it to your guests. So what Jesus did was not a new thing. This wasn't unusual to the disciples or anyone else who could have seen it. It was a ubiquitous, common part of the meal. And in this moment, Jesus takes the thing that we do every time we express community and he imbues it with purpose. And he says, every time you do this, do what? Line up in church and get in the line and tear off the bread and dip it in the wine and spend some time praying? No, not that. Every time you do this, every time you gather in community with me as your focus and you break bread, you serve the bread to the people who are in your house. This common activity that was mundane until this moment. Jesus says, every time you do this from now on, I want you to remember me. I want you to remember that I'm the bread, that I'm the bread of life, that my body was broken for you. Similarly, he takes the wine and he pours it. It's a totally common mundane activity. It happens in every dinner party ever where the host takes the glasses and pours the drink. And Jesus says, whenever you do this, whenever you do what? Gather in church and dip the bread in the wine? No, whenever you experience community together and when you serve the drinks, I want you to stop and remember me and feel that and see that as my blood that is poured out for you. Remember my crucifixion and that I am the tie that binds here and that I am what brings you in common with one another and that I am what reconciles you with the heavenly Father. Remember that. Communion didn't start in church buildings. It started at dinner tables. It started in community. And Jesus took these mundane expressions that are a part of every communal gathering around the table, and he said, from now on, when you do these things, don't just let them be a passive thing where you just serve the bread and you serve the drinks and you move on. I want you to stop and I want you to remember me. That's communion. Communion is always an expression of community. Communion always draws us into community and community should always focus on communion. So I think the challenge for us at Grace, who love community very much, we're real good at community. That's one of my favorite things about this church. We love having people over. We love getting together. But the challenge for us is when we do, when that bread is served and when it's broken, when the drinks are poured, it is right and good and obedient to pause and to pray and to say, Jesus, thank you that you are this bread. Thank you that you are this drink. Thank you that you make tonight possible and that you make our relationship with you possible. We're having fun here tonight, Jesus, but we want to pause and we want to say thank you for making this possible and we want to remember you because that's the instruction of communion. Not once a month when you're in church, come to the front and take the bread and dip it in the wine. That is a shadow. That is a mimicry of the actual communion. And it is right and good to do it in church. But it is forgetful and wrong if we don't do it together in community. So let the challenge be to grace as we commune, as we gather, as we express hospitality and we all begin to fling our doors back open and have people over. Can we please take a moment in those times and do things in remembrance of Christ and make communion more a part of our community. Finally, the seventh distinctive is that this church had a contagious joy. I want to read for you the last portion of scripture so that you kind of know what I'm talking about. It says, They gathered together every day. They invited people into their homes. It's not a stretch to think that they would just invite their neighbors in too because there's a meal and you should come have fun with us. They gathered in the temple courts. They pooled their resources and gave to anyone who had need. No doubt that brought people in who had need, who experienced this genuine community and love for the first time in their life. And then in all of that, as they met with glad and happy hearts, they praised their God and it said that they won favor with all the people. Not just the people of the church, but the people around them, which means that the people of Jerusalem at large began to take notice of this infectious community of joy that was the early church. And because they began to take notice of that, because they won favor with the people surrounding them simply by being an expression of the church and exuding that contagious joy, because people saw that, this passage ends with, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Their contagious and infectious joy led to the salvation of souls. It's really interesting to me that two weeks ago I talked in Acts 2 about the fundamental and foundational repentance of the church. It's a confession that I've been wrong about who I thought Jesus was and I'm going to walk in the belief that he is who he says he is. And out of that confession and repentance, 3,000 people were added to that number. And now in Acts 2, 42 through 47, we see more people being added to their numbers. And the confession and repentance is what drew people in at the beginning, but now at this point in the church, what's now drawing people in? Now what's drawing people in is the favor that their infectious joy is winning with all people. Now what we're seeing is the church cranking on all cylinders. We're seeing the results of what happens when people are devoted to the apostles' teaching and are eager learners, when they're devoted to fellowship in Christ and their time together, when they're defined by community and communion, when they're known for their generosity, when they're experiencing joy, and all of that is working together to cause the people of Jerusalem to look at the church and go, what's going on over there? That's different. I want to be a part of that. That's why when we have Grace's big night out, whenever we can do that again, I cannot wait. I always tell Compass Rose where we have them. They say, do you want to just rent it out? Should we shut it down and just invite Grace people? I always say, no way. I want the other folks of Raleigh to see our community because I believe our community is infectious. This is how the church ought to work. This is how we draw people in. And I believe, Grace, I absolutely do, that even though we are in a time of trial right now because we can't meet together, that as soon as we can fling the doors open and as we move forward, I think grace is going to be stronger than it ever has. And I think if we will commit ourselves to these seven distinctives, that if we will be eager learners, that if we will devote ourselves to Christ-centered time together, that if we will be known for our generosity, committed to spiritual disciplines, if we will be committed to the gathering, if we will see the importance of community and communion, I think if we will do all those things, it will produce in us an infectious and contagious joy that the people of Raleigh will notice and come to. And I hope that's what we will be. I hope that we will be a church in the 21st century that embodies all the distinctives of the church of the first century. And I'm so excited to see where we get to go from here when this season of quarantine is over. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so good to us. We can't fathom how you love us. We can't fathom how you look out for us. We are collectively thrilled that we get to be participants in your church, in your kingdom, in your bride that you came to rescue. Thank you for Jesus, who is the tie that binds us together and reconciles us to you. God, I pray that we would be every bit as unflinchingly the church in the 21st century as they were in the first century. Give us boldness to go where you would have us go. Give us zeal and energy to get there. Give us a devotion to you to sustain us. Give us an infectious joy to draw others in. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.