Sermons tagged with Surrender

This is good. I've been preaching to Steve for 22 weeks on Thursday mornings. This is great. This is the first morning. Jen and I moved into a new house in April, beginning of April. This is the first morning I've woken up in my new house Sunday morning and driven to church and now preach. So this is really, really great. So good morning to you, Grace. Good morning to you online. I wanted to say to those of you who are watching from home and just reiterate, you are every bit as much a participant in what's happening this morning and in this church as anybody who comes in person. And we are now in this new season of life as a church. This is the new season of grace. We are one church that meets in a bunch of different locations, both here and now, like Kyle said, all over the world online now. And this is what church is going to be for the foreseeable future. We're going to be like this for a long time. I don't know if you guys have thought that through, but this is a new season in the life of Grace as a church because we have to be one church in multiple locations. It's going to be a while before everybody feels all the way comfortable coming back. We're going to grow back into a need for children's ministry as that starts back up. And so this is the new season for Grace, which is kind of crazy to say, because I don't know if you know this, the last time we met in person, I was announcing to you the pledge total of our campaign. That's a thing that happened. And then COVID started, and here we are. So even though this plan, the way that 2020 has played out, and this new season of grace that we're facing is not our plan. God knew what was going to happen. His hand has been on us this entire time, and it will continue to be on us. He will continue to be with us. We have always said that God's hand is on grace. He's made it evident that he loves grace, and we are every bit as confident now that his hand remains on grace. And I need nothing more than this. I was talking with Joe as worship started this morning. Joe's the moderator of our board, and I went, this is great. I didn't expect this. All you brave souls to be here, this is wonderful to get to see everybody. So we are excited. And as we move into this new season in the life of grace, I did want to say just thank you a ton. There have been some people working behind the scenes, and whenever you want to call out any one individual person, it gets a little murky because so many people have been doing so very much. We've had people watching our practice online streams and giving feedback. We've had people showing up to work in the booth and help out behind the scenes. We've had Erin, her whole ministry, our children's pastor, has changed and she's just been killing it online. Kyle's switched everything to online. Everybody just up and changed their job in this quarantine and have done so much to push the church forward. But as we started this new season of grace, I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you the hard work of Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor. When we went in March, when we realized, hey, we have to go totally online. We have to find a way to record a sermon, release it online, and be totally online. And we'd like to have a virtual lobby where people can still talk to each other. And also, we need a new webpage. And we need somebody to record the sermon and edit it and upload it and be ready to go. Steve? And then when the elders, when we realized as elders that in June, we're going to have to go live. We're going to have to do a live stream. We really don't have a choice. We're going to have to be able to do this when we come back because when we begin to resume in-person gatherings, because not everyone's going to feel comfortable doing that. There's costs involved. There's technical attitudes involved. There's different things that you have to do. It's a big, huge stressor. And once again, as a church, we went, Steve? And he knocked it out of the park. So his job fundamentally changed in COVID. He has been a huge servant to the church and is the reason, the biggest human reason that we exist as a body right now because of the work that he's done behind the scenes. So we are grateful to Steve. Thank you, Steve, for that. As we jump back into the series, we are in the series called A Time of Kings. We're walking through the Book of Kings. We know it to be the Book of Kings. Our Bible divides it into two, 1 and 2 Kings, but it was originally all one big scroll that got divided in half because it was just too long of a scroll to carry around. This morning, we are in 2 Kings chapter 10. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn there. If you have one here in the service, turn to the Bible. The Bible in front of you, in the seat back in front of you, has not been touched for over like six months. So it's good. It's clean. You can touch it. But we're going to be in 2 Kings chapter 10. In this chapter, there's a principle pointed out that reminded me of a book that was written back in 2001. It's almost 20 years old. If you're a business leader, if you're in the corporate world at all, you have probably gone through this book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's a great perennial book. It's one of these wonderful leadership books. Incidentally, in these leadership books, whenever you read these leadership books, how to be an effective leader, how to grow an effective company, whatever it is, the result of it is the author will always land on, after different studies by like Duke and Stanford and Yale and whatever else, that to be an effective leader, you need to be humble and lead without an ego. You need to be a servant leader and put others first. These are the most effective leaders we see in the world. And as a believer, you just kind of go like, oh, you mean to lead like Jesus? That's what your research tells you? That's just an aside. But in this book, Good to Great, he looks at companies and he's asking the question, how do companies go from good, effective companies to really great, knocking it out of the park companies? What's the difference between something that's good and then taking it to the next level and making it great? He's got a lot of good ideas in there that stand the test of time. But the one that he leads the book with that I think is incredibly effective is this statement that I was reminded of as I looked at the story of Jehu this week. It's a statement it's in chapter one of the book. Good is the enemy of great. Good is the enemy of great. And what he means is that when we settle for good enough, that's the enemy of actually pursuing greatness. That so many people, so many corporations don't reach greatness because they settle for good enough. They get to good enough and then they go, great, that's perfect. And they don't actually get to be great. So its premise is that good is the enemy of great. And this is true in the professional world. It absolutely is. You know this to be true in your own lives. It's also true in marriage. It's true in how we parent our kids. It's true in our physical health. Settling for good enough is always the enemy of great. And the story this week points out to us that not only is that true in the professional world, but it's true in the spiritual world as well. I think when we look at the story of Jehu, what we see is that spiritually, good is the enemy of great. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn, like I said, to 2 Kings 10. I'm going to give you a little bit of the background of what's going on here with this story of Jehu. By the way, I don't think there's ever been a more redneck pronunciation of this particular king's name, J-E-H-U, Jehu, right guys? But as I looked at him this week, it became apparent to me that this is one of the more tragic figures in the book of Kings. And I would have thought that two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, if you asked me, who are the characters in this book that make you sad? I wouldn't have named Jehu. But the more I dove into his story, the more my heart broke for him and the potential that he had that he messed up. If you've been following along, you'll remember that two weeks ago, we looked at the showdown of Elijah against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. And you might remember that the king at the time was a guy named King Ahab, married to a woman named Jezebel. And Ahab, when he took over as king, for whatever reason over Israel, he installed Baal as the God. This is the God that we're going to worship. So he had 450 prophets of Baal. He had temples erected to Baal all over the country. And that was the predominant religion in Israel, which broke the heart of God because these are his people. These are his children, the descendants of Abrahamal on Mount Carmel. If you haven't seen that sermon, there's a spoiler alert. Elijah wins. God wins. And he kills the 450 prophets of Baal. He turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord, but apparently not all the way. Because when Ahab dies, Jehu is his successor. Jehu takes over as king. And he immediately, you'll see in the preceding chapters, stamps out the lines of Ahab and Jezebel, which is an uncomfortable truth, but that's just what they did in the time of kings. That was part of the deal. And the very next step he takes after making sure that Ahab and Jezebel are no longer a threat is he puts to death all the prophets of Baal and he burns down the temples of Baal. He says, no more with this religion, not in my reign, it's done. And it's because Jehu had a heart for the Lord. He said, this is wrong. We're not going to do this in the Israel that I run. He burned them all down. He ran out the prophets. He killed the ones that remained. And he said, in this country, we honor God. This is what we do. And it's a great thing. This is why I think Jehu is a tragic figure, because if you've been paying attention, you know that after Solomon, David and Solomon ruled over Israel, all of Israel. But after Solomon, his son Rehoboam was a dummy and he was so prideful that he split the nation. Now there's the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah. After the Civil War, there is a split. As you follow the history of Judah through the book of Kings, they have, depending on who you ask, either three or seven good kings. Israel had no good kings, not a single good king as it existed as a sovereign nation, if you understand good to be a king who turned the hearts of the people back to the Lord, a king that was faithful to God. Israel didn't have a single good king. And here Jehu is, at the beginning of his reign, taking this huge step, doing this really great thing, this thing that was very bold, this thing that probably would have upset a good portion of the people who followed Baal, this thing that was loud and prominent and good. And he wiped away the prophets of Baal and he wiped away the temples of Baal. And he could have been a good king that changed the course of the nation of Israel, that changed the course of history for Israel for all of eternity. But he didn't do this one thing. And that's where we pick up the story in verse 28. Chapter 10,'s good. God says you've done a good thing. You came in and with faith, because you love me, you got rid of the prophets of Baal, you got rid of the idols of Baal, you got rid of the temples of Baal, and you have followed me. And because of that, this throne is going to be in your family for four generations. This is a good thing. He is on the precipice of potential now, Jehu is, the precipice of greatness. All he has to do is finish the drill. All he has to do is take the next step. He's done the hard thing. And God says, good, I'm going to honor this. But God's not done talking to Jehu. We pick it back up in verse 31. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God nation split, everybody was still practicing Jews. And for every festival and holiday, they had to go to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, they would pay the temple tax. They would pay for their sacrifices. They would pay for a hotel stay. They'd go to the restaurants. They'd do the whole deal. It was a trip. It was a pilgrimage. And Jerusalem was getting all the tourist dollars. And Jeroboam went, this stinks because Jerusalem is in Judah. So he made up his own religion with golden calves and he put them in Bethel and in Dan and he told the Israelites, hey, good job. You don't have to go to Jerusalem anymore. You can stay right here and leave your tax and tourism dollars to the nation of Israel. It was an economic choice. And in doing so, he sinned against the Lord. And those golden calves stayed there through many kings, virtually ignored. But to the heart of God, they were offensive. And when Jeroboam took the great step of getting rid of all of the idols in Israel, he didn't get rid of these two idols, the original ones, the ones that were there from the beginning. And I don't know why he didn't do that. I don't know why. Your guess is as good as mine. He could have thought these are part of the heritage of the country. I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to offend people. People go there. They're tourist attractions now. I don't want to fool with it. I've ruffled enough feathers with the bail thing. I don't want to do this thing. He could have thought that. He could have just thought, they don't matter. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to worship these golden calves. Nobody does that anymore. It's an antiquated religion. It's part of our history. It doesn't matter now. They're no threat to God, so whatever. But for whatever reason, he left them behind. And because he left them behind, he didn't turn his heart completely to God. Because he left them behind, he didn't do his part in turning the hearts of the people completely to God. And over time, the worship of those golden calves began to creep back into the culture. And over time, the hearts of God's people were turned away from him again. And over time, it says at the end of this that God began, in verse 32, that the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. Bit by bit, portions of the kingdom were taken away from Jehu and his descendants until in four generations they were carried away as slaves because of this fundamental mistake that he made. And to me, the lesson from Jehu and his reign that echoes down through the centuries is that partial obedience leads to total failure. Partial obedience, a half measure, not quite full measure, leads to total failure. Partial obedience under Jehu led to total failure. The steps he took with Baal were big, and they were bold, and they were brave, and they were courageous. And he gets credit for that obedience. But because he didn't take the full step, because he didn't go the whole way and take the full measure, eventually it led to his total failure. And you know, the Bible is replete with these examples where half measures don't get the job done, half measures lead to total failure. The most prominent example to me is the transition between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges. The book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible that tells the story of the conquest of the land of Canaan. God brings his people, led by Joshua the general, into the promised land that's now occupied by other tribes and nations and city-states. And the whole book of Joshua is a book of conquest sweeping through the nation, and God has given them the divine instruction to get rid of everybody who's not one of my children. This is your land. It's nobody else's. I don't want them here. They're going to contaminate the holiness of my people. Get rid of them. And the whole book is about how God goes before Joshua and his armies and makes that possible. But then the next book, the book of Judges starts. And the book of Judges starts off by telling us, Joshua did right and swept through the land and cleared it out. But he left a couple of pockets of some tribes and some villages that he must have thought were inconsequential. I don't know if he was battle weary and just didn't feel like it. I don't know if he didn't see them as a threat. And so he left them. They could never oppose anything to Israel that would be bad for us. They could never hurt us, but he left them behind. He offered partial obedience. And because it was partial and not full, the author of the book of Judges tells us that because Joshua left them behind, that they were a thorn in the side of the nation of Israel. And in the book of Judges, we see those little inconsequential people groups rise up and oppress God's people in Judges. And they stay there and they remain so much so that generations later when David is in the valley fighting Goliath, he is fighting a giant that is a descendant of the tribes that Joshua left behind because he wouldn't be completely obedient. We see over and over again in Scripture that partial obedience leads to total failure. And what I want us to see this morning is that these stories, the story of Jehu and overthrowing Baal but not the golden calves, the story of Joshua not cleansing the nation like he should have. These stories are not stories about cleansing a nation. They're not stories about getting rid of idols. That's not really what they're about. These stories are about our ongoing battle with sin. They're about our ongoing pursuit of holiness. These stories matter to us deeply because what we should learn from this story of Jehu and his partial obedience is that partial obedience leads to total failure in sin and sin, in lowercase sin and in uppercase sin. For us, here's what I mean. I think the easiest application of this lesson is for us to think about that one sin in our life that just eats our lunch. That one sin in our life that over the years, decades maybe, we just have to battle with over and over again and we experience different seasons of victory and different seasons of struggle with this sin, this one big sin. Many of you, when I said sin, this one big sin, half the room and half of you guys there at home went, yeah, I know what that is for me. You don't have to do a lot of soul searching. You, in fact, think I'm preaching right to you right now that the Holy Spirit gave me a special message, and I know what your sin is. Let me tell you something, I don't. I'm so glad we're not Catholic, and you don't have to confess to me because I don't want to know. But we have those. These big sins that we struggle with over and over and over again. And if you have one of those, come on. You know what that struggle is. You've taken the big measures, haven't you? You've knocked down all the prophets of Baal. You've burned down all the temples for this sin. But you left behind some golden calves because you didn't want to admit that was tempting too. Because maybe you were a little battle weary. You were tired of fighting that when you thought, those can't possibly trouble me. And you left a little remnant. You left a little thing. You left a little window. You left a little foothold behind. And over the years, that sin evolved back into something that was more debilitating than before. You been through that cycle? Yeah, I have too. This story from Jehu is a reminder that partial obedience leads to total failure. The easiest example of this sin, I'm sorry guys, I don't mean to make us, hey, welcome back. Let me make you super uncomfortable for a minute. The easiest example of this is lust, right? It's a sneaky, pernicious sin, man. You can sneak in anywhere. Now, if that's something we struggle with, we can give in to that struggle any time there's cell phone service. And we've taken the steps and we've done the things and we've tried to move past it and we've confessed and we've done the hard stuff and we've sat there in shame and we've been met with grace and we've said, I'm not going to mess it up again. But we leave these pockets, don't we? We leave these little golden idols where we say, certainly that couldn't be what does it. And over time, it builds and becomes just as debilitating as it ever was. And it's not just true of that sin. It's true of pride, or greed,, gluttony, or sloth. So let me just encourage you. If this is you, if you've got one of those sins in your life that's just kicking your tail, that as soon as I started talking about this, you knew what yours was. If that's you, can today be the day that you draw the line in the sand and you go, God, just show me everything I've got in my life that needs to come down so that I can move past this. Show me what full obedience looks like. I'm tired of partially obeying you and then totally failing. So show me what full obedience looks like in this sin. Can today be the day you do that? If you have one of those sins, and you would honestly, in your heart, listen, you don't have to lie to me. I have no idea what you're thinking. The people around you have no idea what you're thinking. If you have that in your life right now, and you think to yourself, you know what? I know that my life shouldn't have this sin in it, but I really like it. And honestly, I don't want it to go away. I'm happier when it's a part of my life. Can you just be brave enough to pray today that God would change your heart? Can you just admit that to the Father? Say, God, I have this sin in my life. I know it doesn't belong there, but I like it there. Will you please change my heart so that I'm not happy with this being a part of my life anymore? Will you just pray that and let the Lord work through that prayer? But this lesson, partial obedience leads to total failure, isn't just true of an individual, lowercase sin, but of all sin, of the sin nature that lives inside of us, of the sin nature that Jesus died so that we might be able to put to death. We can only battle that sin nature with Christ. We can only battle that sin nature with the Spirit. So even as we talk about battling all the sin that is in our hearts, we have to first acknowledge that Jesus expunged that from our hearts and we wander back into it because we're broken creatures. But I think in a church full of Christians, this is probably the more applicable way to look at this story. For many of us here in this room and at home, wherever you are, we don't have that one big sin. Sure, we sin. Nobody's perfect. But we don't have the one thing that if people found out about it, it would just tear us down. We don't have that, but we have sin. And I think for many of us, especially church people, this is where good is the enemy of great really comes into play. Because we feel like we're good enough, right? Maybe you got saved as an adult. Maybe you came to know Jesus as an adult and you look at your life now and you compare it to your life then and you think like, man, I'm totally different. Like I cuss way less, which in Christian circles has to mean you're godly. I cuss way less, right? I don't do the things I used to do. I used to drink this much, now I drink this much. I used to party with these people, now I don't do that. I used to have those friends, now I have these friends. I go to small group, I do all the things. I'm pretty good. So you compare yourself to who you used to be, you feel pretty good about life. Or maybe you've been in church for forever. Maybe you're like me, and as far back as your memory works, church and faith were a part of it. And so you think you're pretty good. You're pretty squared away. And yeah, sure, I mean, I could read my Bible more, but come on, just pastors read their Bible every day, right? Maybe most of the elders. People don't really do that. You know that you could pray more, but you're like, I mean, come on, who has time to pray like 30 minutes a day? Isn't that for little old ladies? Like, I got things to do. And we're pretty good. We look pretty okay. We compare ourselves to the right people. We're pretty spiritually healthy. But that partial obedience, those partial measures, allowing God to change portions of your heart, and then when he shows you this part of your heart, you go, God, I feel pretty good right now. Maybe you don't say that. Maybe you'd never have the audacity to say that to God in prayer, but we say it every day with the way that we act, right? Those partial measures, they lead to total failure just as much as anything else does. And when I say they lead to total failure, what I mean is if we're just cruising along, settling for good enough, not pursuing the Father, not engaging in a relationship with the Father, not daily pursuing Him through prayer and through reading His Word, and then something happens and our life gets shaken to its core and we need our God. We have not been investing in this relationship with Him and we don't have anywhere to go or to grasp and He feels so distant when we need Him so close. Or we're called to ministry or our kids have a question or we need to pour out and we realize that we're pouring from an empty vessel because we haven't been filling ourselves up because we've been settling for good enough. We've been settling for partial measures. It can lead to total failure. But you know, you know what scares me more than that total failure? You know what scares me more for myself and more for you in settling for good enough? It's the thought of what we're missing out on if we would pursue greatness. Think about Jehu. All Jehu had to do is take the next step and get rid of two cows, man. Get rid of those two golden calves, take the next step, take the full measure, and he would have been the lone good king in the nation of Israel. He would have forever changed the course of that nation. He would have been held up as a spiritual hero, and now he's lost history. Many of you never even heard of him before you walked in or before you tuned in this morning. He could have had such a better legacy. What richness and blessings of God did Jehu miss out on because he was partially obedient and he settled for good enough? And for you, what blessings of God are you foregoing by settling for good enough in your life? How much better of a spouse could your spouse have if you would refuse to settle for good enough in your life and you pursued holiness as God instructed you to pursue it. How much, think of your kids. How much better can we disciple our children if we would, as parents, refuse to settle for good enough and pursue greatness and pursue holiness and always go the full measure in our lives and in our hearts and always be willing to tear down the next thing that God shows us. What richness and blessing waits for us on the other side of complete surrender and obedience? We're told that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence there are fullness of joy, that Jesus himself came that we might have life and have it to the full. And I am convinced that the only thing that is keeping us from not experiencing those pleasures and experiencing those joys and experiencing the full life that God has for us is our offerings of partial obedience rather than complete surrender. So look at the story of Jehu. Don't be scared of the consequences. Be aware of what he missed out on. And let's be people who determine, God, I don't want to miss those blessings that you have for me. I don't want to miss that richness that you have for me. I don't want to miss the relationship that you have waiting for me. I don't want my marriage to miss out on that. I don't want my kids to miss out on that. I don't want my next decades to miss out on that. And let's be people who learn from Jehu and apply it to sin and sin. And let today be the day that we say, I'm tearing down all the idols and getting rid of that big sin. And let today be the day that we say, I am going to stop offering partial obedience and start being willing to tear down everything that God shows me in my life so that I can experience all the blessing and all the joy and all the peace that he has for me. Let's do that together as a church. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. God, I think about maybe some of the things that I've missed, some of the experiences that I haven't had or some of the joys that I would have loved that my half-hearted devotion to you has cost me. Father, may we not be a people of regret. May we not be a people of fear, but may we be a people with an anticipatory joy of what is waiting for us when we will simply surrender ourselves to you. And whatever situations we find ourselves in, whether it's facing a big sin that we're just so scared of, that's just so pernicious, or whether it's facing that sin monster in our life and the temptation to settle for good enough and not tear down the next thing. Wherever we are, God, would you give us the faith and the courage and the desire to take that next step? For those of us who are entrenched, admired in sin, would you simply change our hearts to not be happy with that anymore? Would you help us as a church walk in a pursuit of holiness towards you? Thank you for this morning, for this new phase of grace. We pray that your hand would continue to be on us as it has been in spite everything around us and sometimes in spite of us. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

So this Sunday we're talking about parenting. We're in the middle of a series now called I Want a Better Life, and we're focusing on four elements of our life that I think that we would all agree that we want to improve upon. Last week we said I want a better schedule, so we talked about some biblical principles to build our schedules in such a way that we'll invest our time in ways that are beneficial, that we don't regret, that really get accomplished what we want to get accomplished with our time and with our days. Next week, we're going to say, I want a better marriage. And so we're going to look at some biblical principles around building a strong marriage, which I know that, again, no one in this service needs, but the second service is desperate for this message. So we're going to go ahead and move forward with that next week. And then the last week of the series, in the end of January, we're going to say, I want a better me and look at mental health. I've been diving into some research on that already, talking to folks, and I'm excited to share with you whatever it is I learned between now and January 26th. I think that's going to be an important Sunday. But this Sunday, we want to focus on parenthood, and I want better kids. And we all know, fundamentally, that if we want better kids, that we need to be better parents. I used to watch that show, The Nanny, or The Nanny, I don't know what it's called. The one with the lady that would like swoop in and fix your broken children, whatever show that was. And what I found when we watched that show, Super Nanny, what I found when we watched that show was it was never the kid's fault. Like you watch the previews, kids are disasters. And then the nanny would come in, she's supposed to talk to the kids. And what she would do instead is talk to the parents. And it was always the parents that needed to change the way they were approaching parenthood. And so when we say, I want better kids, what we mean is we want to be better parents. And the temptation is that when this is the topic, that for those who are not in the throes of parenthood, currently in the trenches, it's kind of for us to take a step back and say, well, maybe this one's not for me. But I would say if you don't yet have kids, then having children is like this great unknown in the future. We have no idea how it's going to go. So maybe this can help to orient you so that we have some good principles as we approach parenthood. If you're in the throes of it, hopefully you're locked in. You would readily admit, I don't know what I'm doing. I heard people, I heard multiple people in the last couple of weeks when asked, and this is not because I asked them, it just came up in conversation, when asked, you seem to have good kids, what do you do with them? They would say, we just make it up as we go along. Like to be in the throes of parenthood is to kind of not know what we're doing. We've never done this before. And then a lot of us are facing parenthood with having adult kids, kids who are out of the house. And now you have to walk through this transition of how do I support and encourage and advise them as parents without trying to be tyrannical or controlling or dictatorial to them and allow them to be the adults that God created them to be. So I hope that the principles that we talk about this morning can help us no matter where we are on the spectrum of parenthood. And when you think about being a parent and how to be a better one and where we get our information, it's true that a lot of us Google and that there's not a handbook out there. And what we as church people do and what I do is turn to the Bible. God invented parenthood. What does he have to say about it? But here's one of the little secrets of the Bible that all family pastors, senior pastors, children's pastors, and student pastors know, and parents if you're diligent, the Bible really doesn't have a lot to say about raising kids. The Bible really doesn't have a ton to say about parenthood. It's difficult to turn to a passage. If you think about marriage, you go to Ephesians 5, and it's a seminal passage on marriage. This is what marriage is all about. We don't have that for parenthood. We get bits and pieces throughout Scripture, pieces of advice or commandments or encouragements. In Deuteronomy, and this one's profound, so we're going to come back to it later in the sermon. In Deuteronomy, we're told that we need to teach the Bible to our kids. We need to write it on the walls of our house and instill it into our children. We're told several times throughout the Bible, namely in Proverbs and in Hebrews, that a loving parent disciplines their child. Proverbs tells us that we should make punishment a part of our house and a part of our culture, that punishment should be a thing that's a good idea. There's one spot, and it's interesting to me, apparently this was an issue in the early church, but it says, parents, you should not intentionally tick off your kids. So if any of you are out there just really just putting the screws on them just to watch them squirm, knock it off, all right? The Bible says to quit it. So we're not supposed to do that, but there's not a lot of, hey, this is how you raise kids according to God's standards. So as I thought about this topic, and of course my desire and belief that it's my job to approach it biblically, I just began to think through the relationships that we see in Scripture between parent and child. We don't get a lot of glimpses of parenthood in Scripture. So without an idea, sometimes you come up with an idea, I want to talk about this thing. Let me go to the Bible and see what it says about this thing or see if it confirms what I'd like to say. This time I didn't do that. I try to never do that. I just went to the Bible open-handedly. I thought through the relationships that I see in Scripture between parents and children, and I thought, I wonder if there's a theme that we can pull out. I wonder if there are principles that we can see. I wonder if there's some commonalities between them. So the first one I thought of was Abraham and Isaac. God made promises to Abraham. Those promises were going to come through his son. He gives him a son named Isaac. And when Isaac is somewhere in his adolescence, God comes to Abraham and he says, hey, I want you to offer Isaac to me on this mount that I'm going to show you three days journey away. Certainly what Abraham was expecting. It's certainly not what he would have chosen for Isaac, but that's what God asked him to do. So he takes him three days journey and he goes to offer him to the Lord and right at the last moment, the Lord intervenes. But the exercise for Abraham was to trust God's plan with Isaac. Then I thought about Moses. Comes a little later in the Bible. Moses was born as a slave in Egypt and Pharaoh was killing all of the firstborn sons of the slaves, the Hebrew people, Abraham's descendants. And so his mom hopelessly, perilously puts an infant baby in a basket and literally floats it down a river and hopes for the best. She just has to say, I have no control over this boy's life. Here we go, God. I hope that it works out. That's a picture of parenthood we get from Moses. Fast forward a little bit in the Bible, you see Hannah. Hannah's a woman married to a guy named Akina, and she wants a baby really badly. She can't have one. We've walked through that. Some of y'all have walked through that. That's a hard season of life when you want to experience parenthood, and that's being withheld from you. She's praying so intensely for a child in the temple that Eli, the priest, thinks that she's drunk and gets on to her. And she says, no, I'm not drunk. I'm just praying intensely for a child. And the Lord's good to her and blesses her with a son and she names the son Samuel. And as soon as Samuel is old enough to eat solid food, she takes him to the temple and drops him off with the priest Eli and says, here, this was a gift from God. He's not mine, he's yours. I want him to serve God with his life. That's a picture of motherhood from Hannah. Fast forward a little bit further, there's a guy named Jesse. He's got eight sons. And one day, that same kid, Samuel, shows up at Jesse's house and he says, hey, I need to see your boys. And he goes to the youngest son, David, and he says, Jesse, David's gonna be the next next king of Israel. God said so. He's going to be a man after God's own heart. And we don't know what Jesse's profession was. We know that David was watching the flock, so we can guess that it was agrarian. Maybe they had some fields and maybe a farm, maybe a couple different types of livestock. And David was doubtlessly supposed to be a part of the family business. But Samuel shows up as a representative of God and says, hey, Jesse, I've got to change the plans with David. Here's what he's going to be. He's going to be the king. Then you think about Mary in the New Testament. And God didn't waste any time with Mary. As soon as she got pregnant, an angel shows up and talks to her and says, Mary, you're pregnant with a baby boy. The boy is from God. His name is gonna be Jesus and he is the Messiah. Mary, don't make any plans for this one. I got my own plans for this one. And as if to drive the point home, when Jesus was 12 years old, his family was in Jerusalem for the holidays and they leave leave to go back to Bethlehem. And Mary and Joseph, his parents look at each other and go, where's Jesus? Is he with you? They go back and they find him in Jerusalem in the temple asking the rabbis questions, which is another way to say already teaching the rabbis. As if to drive home the point, this boy's got his own plans. God's got an agenda for this one. And so if you look at those models of family dynamics in the Bible, if you look at those models of parenting in the Bible, to me, there is a clear theme. For parents, it may be a disturbing one. It may be one that we don't want to think about. But I think that the biblical model of parenting is releasing your children to God's plan. I think the biblical model of parenting is to release your children to God's plan. What does the Bible have to say about parenting? What are the examples of parenthood that we have in Scripture? I think over and over and over again, that's why I chronicled five of them and not two of them, over and over and over again, we see this model of God's expectation of believing parents to be releasing your children to God's plan, not your own plan. And this might not seem that profound or insightful to you. It might not be much of a surprise that you show up at church and the pastor says, hey, if you want to raise kids biblically, you got to raise them according to God's plan. You got to release them to God's plan. But I think that's a much more difficult challenge than we realize at first. I think that's a more profound command than we understand. And I think that because of this. In our culture, we've kind of all agreed that stage moms and over-aggressive sports dads are not good elements of the culture, right? Like we don't, we've agreed that we don't really support that. When an overactive stage mom gets like super involved and begins to live her life through her daughter, we all agree like, come on man, knock it off. That's not fair to that kid. When a dad does that, when there's a stage dad or a sports mom or a sports dad, and he does that to his kid, we all agree like,, come on, don't do that. You're damaging that child. I read a couple years ago an autobiography by Andre Agassi. He's a professional tennis player in the 90s and the early 2000s, one of my favorite athletes growing up. He grew up in Nevada, and his dad was an over-aggressive sports dad. And when he was four years old, his dad got a ball machine and souped it up so that it could shoot balls at 90 miles an hour. I'm not making this up. And he put it on legs and stood it up at the net so it could fire balls at his four-year-old's feet. Not like easy ones where you can hit here like you're supposed to, would fire them at his feet and then yell at him to return the balls. Like, it was nuts. And he forced tennis onto his kid. He forced him to do that. And what Agassi says in his biography is it took him into his adulthood to realize that he didn't even like tennis. In fact, he hated it for everything that it represented to him. So we all agree that's not who we want to be as parents. Is the over-aggressive stage mom or the sports dad or however it works out. We don't want to do that. But here's what we need to understand. We all have a little stage parent in us. We all have a little bit of an over-aggressive sports parent in us. Because what is the sports parent doing? What is the over-aggressive helicopter parent doing when they decide that this is what my child's going to be? All they're saying is, this is what I want for my child, these are my plans for my child, and this is how I'm going to bring it about. They have the kid, they go, this is what I want for the kid, and this is how I'm going to bring it about, and they force it upon the kid. And the truth of it is, we all have some of that in us. I was just talking to some parents that recently had a child, and they made the comment that a lot of parents make. They said, you know, I thought that I understood what it meant to love a kid, but then as soon as I held them for the first time, I could not believe how much I loved them. I could not believe what it felt like to hold a kid. I could not believe that my heart had that much space for love. And when that happens, when you love somebody that profoundly, you begin to want things for them. It's a very natural part of parenthood. You want for them. You want them to be successful. You want them to be good people. You want them to make you proud. You want the best for them in life. And so without even realizing it, we by default begin to make plans for our kids. And our plans almost always include wanting our kids to be successful. And every house, every family, every little ecosystem, there's small tweaks and small differences. All of our families with all of our different last names, we all have different versions of success, but we all want our kids to be successful. And so we try to put them on a path towards success as we've defined it. We all want our kids to be happy, but each one of our families and our different ways, we define happiness according to our own ecosystem, and we drive our kids, we plan for our kids to find the happiness that we want for them or to find the goodness that we want for them. Each of our families, we have our own moral codes. We have our own set of values where we champion this value over this value in our house. In our house, the debate is which value or character trait is more valuable. One of us says that the most important thing for our children is to be kind, and the other one says the most important thing is for them to be intellectually independent. You guys can try to figure out which camp we are in on that. But we all have that. And what we do when we have kids is we push them towards our definition of success, towards our definition of happiness, towards our definition of good, and that's the plan that we make for them. And we're not, most of us know better than to be the over-aggressive, dictatorial, Andre Agassi's dad firing tennis balls at their feet. Most of us don't slide that far, but to some degree or another, we all have plans for our kids. We all have hopes and dreams for them. We all have definitions of success and happiness that we're chasing. And that's why this is so difficult. Because biblical parenthood is to release your children from your plans to God's plans. The picture of Moses' mom releasing him down the river and hoping for the best is a picture of biblical parenthood. God, I don't have control. Anyways, I'm trusting them to you. And it's not just whatever you want for them in their life is good with me, God. I release them from my definition of success to God's. I release them from my definition of happiness to God's. I release them from my definition of good to God's, which I think is a big deal because a lot of us say, and I'm not thinking of anybody's kid here now, but a lot of us say, oh yeah, so-and-so's a good kid. And when we say that, what do we mean? We tend to mean that they get good grades and don't do any dumb stuff. That's a low bar for good kid. Isn't it? Everybody's a good kid then. He's a good kid. Why? Well, he's still in school. He's managing not to fail out. Great. We release our children from our definition of those things to God's definition. We release them from our plans and hopes for their future to God's plans and hopes for their future. And it is a much more profoundly difficult thing because suddenly we're not shaping them into being replications of ourself and what we want. We are freeing them up to be who God created them to be. To be a biblical parent is to have the mindset and the understanding of God created them and one day they're going to up, and hopefully they'll come to know God. And when they do, they're going to be my brother and sister in Christ, and they're going to be an adopted son or daughter of the Creator God. And it's up to Him to decide what He wants to use these children for. And my job is to steward them until they're ready to be released. So if that's what we're supposed to do, how do we do it? I think there's two foundations for biblical parenting that I wanna share with you this morning. The first is consistently prepare. We have to consistently prepare. I think in your notes, there's a word prayerfully. I just like the word consistently better because I feel like it makes a better point. We have to consistently prepare our children. Listen, if the goal is to raise a child that is released into the wild, to walk in God's identity for them, to be the person that God created them to be, to execute the plan that God has for their life, which I believe he has a plan for everyone's life. If that's what we're supposed to do, to release them to walk in God's plan, how can they walk them. That's why I think this verse in Deuteronomy is so important. I alluded to it earlier. In Deuteronomy, at the beginning of the Hebrew people, God is saying, this is what I want your culture to look like. This is what I want my people's society to look like. And he's talking about his word and how valuable it is. And he says this, verse 18 of chapter 11, you shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. Listen, you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in rarely try to use this stage to try to say like, hey, you need to do this. But this is an instance where Scripture gives me a foundation to say, parents, your children's spiritual health is your responsibility. Your children's discipleship is your responsibility. God set up His culture, He set up His people, and He decided it is your responsibility. God set up his culture, he set up his people, and he decided it is your responsibility to teach your kids God's word. The temptation is to say, well, I'm gonna join a good church, and the good church is gonna teach them God's word. And that's true, but here's the thing. If your kid comes to everything we offer, everything, some are extreme and they never miss a week, ever. We get them 58 weeks a year. There are 58 hours a year. 58 hours a year. That's what we have to impact your children. The best programs in the world aren't going to make a big, huge dent. 58 hours a year. If your kid is in middle school or high school, it's even less than that. We are here not to fulfill Deuteronomy 11 for you, but to echo what is happening in your home. Parents, it is our responsibility to train our kids to follow God. It is our responsibility to disciple our kids. It is our responsibility to teach them a word. And listen to me, listen. I'm sorry that this is gruff. It's not optional. We don't get to say, oh gosh, you know, that sounds like something I should do, but I just don't know God's word well enough. Listen, I'm sorry. Then figure it out. Learn it, knuckle down. We've got to. It's our responsibility. No one else can fill that void for you. If you feel inadequate to it, guess what? So does everybody else in the room, including me, but we gotta figure it out because it's on us. And I'd rather just know the truth than try to soft pedal it and make us all feel better. Listen, parents, it's our responsibility to train our kids in the word. Dads, your sons are watching you. They're watching you to learn what it is to be a godly man. They're watching you what it is to love people well. Like it or not, step into that or not, assign yourself as a role model or not, to have kids is to sign up for that. They're watching you at every stage of your life. Moms, your daughters are looking at you. They want to know what godly womanhood looks like. And they're watching you to define it for themselves. That's reality of being parents. So for grace, I want us to step into that responsibility, not shy away from it, and definitely don't say, gosh, I just don't feel adequate to it. Listen, nobody here does, but that doesn't mean that we can step away from it or shy away from it. We do our children a disservice by not stepping into that. If we want to teach our children the word, then we have to learn the word. If we want to teach our children how to follow God, then we have to follow God. If we want to teach our children how to walk in the identity that God has created for them, then we have to walk in the identity that God has created for us. That's why I say we consistently prepare, because it's a daily, hourly effort to follow God and to model that for our children. So that's what we do. And the good news is, if you're sitting here going, geez, Nate, I don't know how to do that, there's a parenting small group. We're starting it up. Harris and Aaron Winston have perfect children and made no mistakes, so we thought that they were the best ones to do it. They're the good ones to do it because when I asked both of them to think about leading something like that, both of them went like, why? We don't know what we're doing. I'm like, you're perfect then. You're perfect. Figure it out together. You can sign up for that. It's going to be Sunday afternoons. If you're in the middle of parenthood and want some help and some other people around you to help figure this out and step into the responsibility you have, that's a good way to start. We consistently prepare. And then the second foundation, I think, of biblical parenting is that we continually release. We continually release. I say continually because that release isn't just one moment. As we walk through those stories in Scripture, Abraham and Isaac, he released him to that sacrifice. Moses' mom released him. Hannah released Samuel. It's not just one moment, though. We're building towards a moment of release when we admit I have no control over this life anymore. But it's also a continual release. In every instant and in every way, at every crossroads in their life, what we're asking is, Father, how do I prepare this kid for your plan? How do I release them to what you want, not what I want? I even think about moments of discipline. I've already learned as a parent that when it comes time to discipline, when your kid is acting in ways that are shameful, I haven't seen Lily do this, but I've definitely noticed with other people's kids, that the temptation, the temptation is to begin to discipline them in such a way that doesn't embarrass you. The temptation is to grab them and to get onto them and to tell them things that you need to act in this way. And really what's going on in your heart is because when you don't act in this way, it causes me shame and I feel like a terrible parent. So I really need you to get right so that I'm not embarrassed in front of my friends. That's one reason to discipline. Another reason to discipline is, this is what I think is going to be best for you. But the best reason to discipline is to say, God, when they act that way, I see this trait in them. And I believe that it's possible that you may have instilled that trait in them because one day it's going to be a great strength. How do I fashion that strength so that they can walk in the identity that you've created for them? How do I discipline them according to your plan, not my plan? How do I advise them to go to college according to your plan, not my plan? How do I advise them to invest their high school hours according to your plan, not my plan? God, when they're old enough to pursue a career, how do I encourage them to follow your plan, not my plan? God, when they're old enough to have kids and they begin to lead their family, what can I do to pray for them and rally around them so that they follow your plan for their family, not my plan? It is a continual, perpetual release where we acknowledge these children are not our own. They are from God and we are stewards of them. So I believe if we want to follow the biblical model of parenthood, we have to consistently prepare and continually release. Because that's such a challenge, because those feel like high bars, I thought it would be helpful for us to have a prayer together. So I'm going to put a prayer on the screen. I would encourage you to write it down. I would encourage you to pray this weekly, if not daily, for yourself as you pray for your kids. But the parent's prayer simply goes like this. Father, give me the faith to see your plan for my child, the consistency to prepare them, and the courage to release them. Father, give me the faith to see your plan. Help me know. We see for our kids the next couple of days, God sees the next several decades. God, help me see a glimpse of your plan so I know I can keep them on the right track. God, give me the consistency in my own walk, in my own character, in my own discipline, in my own pursuit to be the model that they need. And give me the courage when it comes time, Father, to release them to your plan, not my own plan. Father, give me the faith to see your plan for my child, the consistency to prepare them and the courage to release them. I'm going to pray for us. I'm going to pray that prayer, and then we're going to transition into a time of communion. Father, we love you. We thank you for the gifts that you give us and our children. God, I pray specifically for those in this room who really want kids. Will you just give them some? Will you just let them experience that part of what it is to be a human? Bless them in that way, God. God, for those of us who do have the privilege of being parents, give us the faith to see your plan for them. Give us a consistency in our walk and in our devotion to prepare them for your plan. Give us the courage, Father, to release them when it comes time. Help us raise kids that are good, successful, and happy according to your definition of those things. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. But thanks for being here on this September Sunday. I'm excited to be back in the fall in two services and to be in our new series called Feast. What's going on here is that God, using Moses, carrying the Israelites out of Egypt. They were a nation of slaves. The Israelites are God's chosen people. They're living in the desert. And we see this in the first five books of the Bible. And the books of Leviticus and Numbers really kind of give us the details of God's effort to help Moses kind of construct a civilization or a society. If you think about it historically, it's about 500,000 people coming out of slavery. It's all they've ever known. Now they're an independent nation or group of people, and they're trying to figure things out. So God gives them laws and the Ten Commandments. He gives them religion. They assign a priestly class, the Levites, to set up the tabernacle and put expectations and provision around how these people are supposed to interact with their God. They install a government. Moses names elders and everybody looks out for their tribes and it works kind of like that. And one of the things that God does for this new society is he gives them six festivals or six holidays, and he says, every year I want you to celebrate these six events. And last week we talked about this idea that really what a holiday does is it stops us in the midst of our year, in the midst of our crazy life, as everything just kind of gets going and blowing and we focus on all these other things. What a holiday does is it stops us and it narrows our focus in on things that are important to us. And so to me, it's really interesting to look at the six holidays that God installed in the Old Testament for his chosen people and ask ourselves, what is it in these holidays that God wants us to remember? What is it that he wants us to celebrate? What was it that he wanted his chosen people to stop and slow down and focus on for a little while? And so as we approach the holiday this week, last week was Feast of Trumpets. It kicks off the Jewish New Year, and I had a good time. We kicked the service off with a shofar. I thought it was a really fun service. I really went home last week going, man, this fall is going to be really, really great, really, really fun. As we approach this week and the festival that God had, I wanted to go back a couple of weeks to a podcast that I was listening to. There's a guy that does podcasts. I think it's called Armchair Expert, a guy named Dax Shepard. He's an atheist. He's not a believer. It is not a church-friendly podcast. I'm not like, go listen to this and you'll be spiritually enriched. But what he does is he talks to other people and he has these actual meaningful, vulnerable, deep conversations. And I've found in my life that conversations like that, where you can just really get down to things that matter and learn about people and be honest and vulnerable with people, those kinds of conversations really kind of give me life. I like those. And so I like listening to his podcast. And he had a guy on named Danny McBride, I think. He's an actor, comedian, whatever. And they're talking, and they were talking about growing up being forced to go to church. Danny grew up in the South, I think maybe even in North Carolina. And he was forced to go to church, but he never wanted to. And so as soon as he was old enough, he quit going. And he really doesn't claim to have much of a faith now. Dax grew up, sometimes his grandparents would make him go, but he is a devout atheist now. He's very open about his atheism. But they got to talking about going to church when they were young. And then one of them made the comment when they were old enough to not have to go anymore. I think it was Dax. He was like, you know, I kind of missed it. I liked having to do something, being made to do something that I didn't want to do. And Danny said, yeah, you know what? I found that I kind of missed it too. I wonder why that is. And Dax said this thing that I thought was incredibly interesting coming from an atheist. He said, I think that there is a human need to repent, a need to make ourselves right with our Creator. There's an author named C.S. Lewis who was around in the early 1900s, World War II. He was an English professor at Oxford and was an atheist as well. But he made this intellectual journey from atheism to theism to eventually Christianity. And he wrote a book that chronicles that journey called Mere Christianity. It's a Christian classic. If you've never read it, it's absolutely worth the time. The language is a little bit tough. It's hard to understand. Sometimes you're going to have to reread passages. If you're like me, you're going to have to really reread them a lot. But eventually when you understand it, man, it is one of the best books I think ever written. And in his argument for God and explaining how he arrived at a belief in the Christian God, the first thing he does is talk about, lay out some proofs for God for himself. Not trying to convince you, and I'm not going to go through those proofs this morning, but he starts making the case for why he came to the conclusion that there has to be a God. And then after he concludes that there has to be a God, he makes a reasoned argument that he has to be a perfect God. And then he says this, and it stuck with me. I've always thought it was so interesting. He said, and since there's a God, and since he is perfect, we have no choice but to conclude that he is offended by us, that he's angry with us, because we're not perfect. And we know intrinsically that there's a God who created us and that we have displeased him in the way that we've acted because we haven't lived up to his standards. And I just think that these two different thought processes by people who were or are atheists coming to the conclusion that, you know what, and they wouldn't say it like this, but I say it like this, written on the human heart is a longing to be made right with our creator God. I think it exists in each one of us. I think if you're here this morning and you're not even a believer, somebody drug you here or you're kicking the tires, I think that you might even agree with me that there is something that wants us to be right with God, right with the universe. If you're a believer, you know this feeling very well. And it's for this need, it's to address this feeling, this thing that was written on us, this need to repent that God placed on the calendar the holiest of holidays that we now know as Yom Kippur. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. Now, Yom Kippur is what it's called in the Hebrew culture. And those words together, Yom means day and Kippur means atonement. So it's become known as the day of atonement. But Kippur can also be translated as covering, the day of covering. And so it's the day on the calendar that God provides for his people so that you can be sure, so that the Hebrew people, the Israelite people can be sure that they are right before their God. It addresses this intrinsic need within us to repent and know that we are right before our creator God. And so it's on this day that all of the sins of the priesthood, of the high priest, and of the Hebrew people are atoned for in a ceremony that we're gonna go through that occurs at the temple in Jerusalem. It's the day of atonement or the day of covering. It's the provision that God makes so that his people can be right before him. And to me, it's a remarkable day. Most of you have probably heard of it before. Most of you who pay attention to cultural things probably know that it's a Jewish holiday and it's the holiest, it's the highest of the holidays. It's celebrated so reverently that every 50 years, the day of atonement becomes a year of Jubilee. And on the 50th year, on that year of Jubilee, all debts are canceled and all land is given back to the family. It's a really important holiday in the Hebrew calendar. And on this day, everybody went to the temple. So to help us as I kind of walk us through what happened at Yom Kippur, we have to kind of have a working knowledge of the temple. So I actually found this picture that I wanted to show you. This is the temple. If you go to Jerusalem right now, in the city is a museum that I've been able to go to. And in the middle of that museum is a replica that's probably about as big as this room of ancient Israel at the time of Solomon and immediately following. And in the middle of the city is the temple complex. And this is the temple complex. And so what you see here, I just kind of want to walk us through there for a couple of things. That big building in the middle, the tallest part of it, that is the holy place and the holy of holies. We're going to talk about it in a second, but that building was basically divided in two by a curtain. The front portion of it was the holy place. The only people allowed in the holy place were Jewish priests. And then the other side of that is the holy of holies. The only person allowed there is the high priest. And then outside of that through the door, you see the inner courtyard. The only people allowed there are Jewish males. And then outside of that building and more of the space is the outer courtyard. Only Jewish people are allowed in the outer courtyard. And then this roofed area to the left of the screen, that's where the Sanhedrin met. That was like their senate. That's where the government met. All the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Zealots, their representatives would meet there and decide on things. So that's kind of, when I talk about the temple for the rest of the morning, this is what I'm talking about. And it's important for us to know that on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, the focus of all of God's people was on the temple. On the Day of Atonement, on this day, on the holiest of holidays, the focus of all of Israel, of all of God's people scattered wherever they were, was on the temple. And so what they would do is they would come from all over the country. And having been there, it's not super far. You can get there in a couple of days if you're walking from the top of the country to Jerusalem in the center or from southern Israel to Jerusalem. So everybody has the chance to come and gather in the holy city at the temple, the holy place where the presence of God is. The presence of God was said to be in the holy of holies. And so on this holiday, the highest of days, all of Israel would gather and clamor into Jerusalem. And then on the Day of Atonement, as many people as could fit into that temple complex would fit into that temple complex and wait for the priest to perform the ceremonies and the rites and the duties that went along with Yom Kippur. And the priest was also a focal point of this day. And as I learned this stuff, I'm going to walk you through kind of what that day looked like. I was fascinated by all of these things. I hope that it doesn't bore you, but for me, I'm kind of a history nerd, so as I was reading this stuff, I really, really ate it up. But the priest would come out. First of all, he would start to fast the day before. Everybody would fast the day of. Every good Hebrew would fast the day of Yom Kippur, but the priest would fast a day early, and then he would stay up all night. Members of the Sanhedrin were assigned to watch him and make sure he didn't fall asleep, because he was likely an older guy, and our population of people who are the age of what the high priest would have been know that it's kind of hard to stay awake during one of my sermons. So I can't imagine staying awake all night. So the Sanhedrin would kind of watch him and poke him and make sure he didn't fall asleep. And then after that, they would hand it off to the priestly elders and they would make sure that he would stay awake. And then very early in the morning, the ceremony would start and he would go into the temple, I would assume surrounded by thousands of people, and he was wearing his traditional priestly robes, which were laced with gold as is detailed in the book of Leviticus. And he would go behind a curtain to like a bath and he would ceremonially bathe himself, which I'm guessing wasn't awkward for them. They would have been like, yeah, I mean, he's just taking a bath. For us, that's weird. But for them, he would take a bath behind the curtain and it was fine. And then when he was done, he would put on white priestly garments specifically for Yom Kippur, for the Day of Atonement. And he would begin to perform the ceremonies and the rituals of the day. And the first one was he would go to the altar in that outer courtyard in front of the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, and he would take a bull. And he would place his hands on the head of the bull, and he would repeat this prayer of repentance because this bull was dying for the priest and for his family. This was his personal atonement and the atonement for the rest of the priesthood for all of the sins that had been committed in that year. And so he would atone for his sins, and his sins were symbolically transferred from him to the head of the bull, and that bull would die in his place and in the place of his family. It's a sacrificial system. And then the blood of the bull would drip into a bowl, and he would hold that, and that would be prepared for something in a second. Then, in this really kind of interesting ceremony, there would be two goats that were brought to the high priest. And he would take one goat, they would draw lots, which was their way of playing paper, rock, scissors. And he would decide which goat got designated as for the Lord and which goat got designated as the scapegoat. And the one that was designated for the Lord, they put a white cord around its neck. And the one that was designated as the scapegoat, they put a red cord around its neck. And then after doing that, the priest would then say a prayer. And in this prayer, the name of Jehovah was elicited. And I think it happened like eight times throughout the day. And every time the priest would say the name of Jehovah God, the entire assembly would fall on their face and worship God. And then stand back up and he would continue. to God, and then you would walk through this curtain. And this curtain I always heard about growing up separates the Holy of Holies from the holy place. And I always heard in Christian school and in Bible college that if you put a team of oxen on either side of that curtain and they pulled against one another, that they would not be able to tear that curtain. It was an impenetrable layer. And in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a box that you weren't allowed to touch. Inside this box was the stone tablets that God gave Moses the law on and the staff of Moses. On top of this box were two golden angels. And it's thought that their wings were pointed out and their heads were bowed and that their wings were touching each other at the tips. And where they touched would create what was called the mercy seat. And it said that the very presence of God rested on that mercy seat. And there was only one person alive allowed to go in there, and that was the high priest. Because it was the very presence, the holy presence of God. And if you went in there and were impure, anything about you was imperfect and not worthy of God's presence, then you would fall dead in an instant. They were so worried about this. This was so sobering and such a concern that in the white priestly garments of the high priest, they wove bells into the hymns so that when he would move, you could hear him moving. And before he went into the Holy of Holies, they would tie a rope around his ankle so that if the bells stopped, they'd just start pulling. That's how serious it was. Can you imagine being guy number two? And they had to pull him out and be like, well, you've got to put on that robe now. That would be really scary. But that was the seriousness and the sobriety that surrounded going into the Holy of Holies. And it's only the priests that even saw the high priest enter. The Jewish males are outside. Maybe if they have a certain vantage point, they can peek in and see. But the other, the people, the throngs up on the walls and on the roofs, they can't even see him going into the Holy of Holies. And that's where the presence of God rested. And when he got in there, he would take the blood of the bull and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat and he would sprinkle it on the curtain and he would say a prayer and that was for his family and then he would step out. And when he stepped out, he went and he took the goat that was designated as for the, and he sacrificed that goat. And this was the beginning of the atonement of the sins of the people of Israel. He would take the blood of the goat, he would pray a prayer, he would read a scripture, people would fall on their face and worship God, and then he would go back into the Holy of Holies, and he would sprinkle the blood of the goat on the mercy seat and on the curtain, and this was the atonement for the people. Then he would step back out and he would take the scapegoat. And there was a designated priest in a particular causeway of the temple. And he would send the scapegoat to that priest. And that priest would then walk that goat out of the city limits into the wilderness, traditionally 10 to 12 miles. I don't know how long this took, but I do know that if I were an ancient Hebrew person, that waiting for the goat to get to the place would be my least favorite part of Yom Kippur. I'm not a man of a lot of patience, and that's 12 miles away with an old priest. I would get pretty bummed out about that. All along the way, there was 10 stations, 10 booths where they would eat and drink and then move on. And once the scapegoat got far enough away, the priest would then sacrifice that goat. And then he would camp there overnight and not come back into the city until the morning. And it said that that scapegoat is the goat that died for the sins of the people of Israel. And it would cover over the sins of Israel. That's where we get the kippur, the covering. It would serve as the covering of the sins of Israel so that when God looked at the people of Israel, he didn't see their sin. He saw the covering. And this particular death was for sins of omission because all of these people, listen, if you're at Yom Kippur, if you've got prime seats and you're watching this, you probably have been going to temple every week and you've been doing your sacrifices every week and you've been making sure that you and God are good throughout the year. But this particular sacrifice were for the sins of omission of the people of Israel throughout the year. And we can relate to this. Those things that you didn't know were wrong until later, that thing that you've been doing for years, and then you find out like, oh my goodness, I shouldn't do that. That's not really pleasing to the Lord. I guess I should stop. Sorry, 2012. Like we know those things, or maybe those little like attitudes that show up, the little flecks of racism that we find in ourselves. And we go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I used to think that way. These things where we've displeased the Lord and we don't even realize that we have. That's what the Day of Atonement was for, was to say, hey, everything is covered. Everything is taken care of. Once the goat had been sacrificed, there was a series of flags that would be waved by centuries all the way back to Jerusalem. And then once the word got back to the high priest, he would burn the remaining parts of the bulls and the goat that were sacrificed earlier. He would read three scriptures and say eight benedictions. He would invoke the name of the Lord and the crowd, the thousands of people would worship along with him each time. And when he was finally done, after a whole day's worth of ceremony late in the afternoon, he would ceremonially bathe one more time and put his personal clothes back on. And tradition says that he would go home and have a feast with his family to celebrate surviving that day because it was a stressful time for his family. And I do think it's interesting that after the high priest performs all of these duties on a somber holiday, the first thing he does is he goes home and he has a feast. So even on a holiday that's dedicated to fasting, there's still a feast to cap it off at the end. And so as I learned about these things this week and this process and this ceremony, I just began to think, man, what would it have been like to have been in the ancient Hebrew world? And watch this. What would it have been like to grow up with this tradition? What would it have been like to bend one of the throngs of people in the temple watching or listening or waiting and seeing the reaction of everybody else? At a time with no internet, at a time without published books, at a time where the only way you learn is through rote memorization, whatever the previous generation tells you, that's what you retain, and then you teach it to the ones who follow you. And for thousands of years, that's how it worked. What would it have been like to take in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as an ancient Hebrew person? What would it have been like to just be surrounded, to be from the countryside of Galilee and to come in and be surrounded by all these people? To have grown up and have your grandpa or your grandma explain to you every year, Grandpa, we know the bull, like we get it, we know what it means. What would it have been like when you came of age and it was your responsibility to explain it to the younger generation and keep them along? To have grown up seeing this every year, to watch the same high priest perform the same rites every year. What would it have been like to have fallen on your face? Really picture it and worship at the name of the Lord every time. How totally separate and other must the high priest would have been? Don't think about it from the perspective of the Sanhedrin looking down from their VIP seats or from the other priests who would watch the high priest and think that might be me one day and kind of peek out of the holy place and watch his back as he performed in front of the crowds. But what would it have been like to be in the crowds, to be separated and other, to even be a Hebrew woman and not even be allowed in the part where you can see the priest and all you can do is listen. How distant would the priest have felt to you? I know over the years I've gone to different Christian conferences and in Christian world there's these celebrity pastors that write books and do podcasts and have thousands of downloads and tens of thousands of people that go to their church and they feel like little celebrities and you them down there on the stage, and you're like, oh, that's so-and-so, that's so neat. I'm really glad that I'm here, and that's as close as I'll ever get to them. And I imagine that at the best, that that's how the high priest felt, is so different and so other and so separated from you. What would it have felt like to know that he was going into the Holy of Holies on your behalf? To know that in the Holy of Holies was the presence of God, and we're so fearful of the presence of God that the holiest man among us, the most righteous among us, the high priest, is fearful that he might die. He's barely qualified to walk through that curtain. I know that I could never walk through that curtain. What kind of mystery surrounded the holy of holies? What kind of separation must they have felt from the high priest who was arguing to God on their behalf, who was interceding for them, who served as their intermediary? What kind of separation must they have felt from God? What kind of fear must have surrounded what they interpreted as the presence of God? Can you get yourself into the mystery and the wonder and the pageantry of Yom Kippur and what it must have been like to take that in as an ancient Hebrew person and pass that down from generation to generation? And I ask that because I wonder what it would have felt like to be one of these people at the time of Jesus. And to be a devout Jew, to celebrate Yom Kippur every year, it's the highest, the holiest of holidays. And the temple, the focus of all God's people is on the temple, and that's where the presence of God rests, and that's where his people work, his representatives, the priests work and intercede for us and serve as intermediaries for us. What must it have been like to be sitting there and to be a devout Jew and to watch this man who claims to be the Son of God die on the cross, and the moment he dies, you can look across the valley there from the eastern side and see into the Holy of Holies and watch that veil tear from top to bottom. Which is what the Gospels tell us happened when Jesus died. That veil was torn in two. How earth-shattering must that have been for a Hebrew people who grew up believing, rightly so, that the presence of God was on the other side of that veil. Something that was different and other and we're fearful of it and we're separated from it. How earth shattering would it have been for that veil to tear as the Son of God dies on a cross. What I want us to see is that Jesus' death on the cross was the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. Jesus' death on the cross, our God sending His Son to die for us, who lived a perfect life, who died a perfect death on the cross as our eternal sacrifice, is the final atonement. They needed this atonement every year. They needed the high priest to go through it all every year. They needed all the pomp and circumstance and pageantry and majesty and mystery every year to make sure that they were right with God. And then Jesus dies on the cross outside the city as a final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. And what I want us to see here is, I said that for all of history up to the point of the death of Christ that the focus of Israel had been towards the temple. Did you know that even all the synagogues built in Israel are built so that they are facing Jerusalem, facing the temple? And that all the synagogues throughout the world and whatever other nation that exists, they are built facing Israel, facing Jerusalem, facing the temple. All of the Hebrew world, their focus is on what happens at the temple. But at the death of Jesus, at the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur, there is a seismic shift in focus. There is a seismic shift in the focus of God's people because the focus of God's people no longer needs to be on the temple and what happens there. There's actually several shifts in focus and I want to walk us through them very quickly. Maybe the most significant one is there is a shift in focus from the temple to the cross. All of Israel, all of God's people, all of those who would declare faith and believe in God the Father are to shift their focus from what happens at the temple to what happens on the cross. And the cross becomes our focus. That's why we don't place any priority on the temple. That's why we don't have to go there because of what happened on the cross. That's why our church doesn't face Israel. It faces the parking lot. Because the focus is on the cross. So we shift our focus, God's people, from the temple to the cross. We shift our focus from an annual sacrifice to an eternal sacrifice. The book of Hebrews tells us that in this ceremony, in Yom Kippur, that all of the sacrifices are shadows that are cast by Jesus on history. That the bull represents Jesus and the goats represent Jesus. And particularly the scapegoat that was led outside the city into the wilderness to die for the sins of the people. Jesus, thousands of years later, was led outside the city on a hillside in the wilderness to be crucified for all the sins of the people. He is the scapegoat. He is the goat that is for the Lord. He is the bull. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. And so our focus shifts from annual temporary sacrifices to eternal ones, we're told in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews also tells us that Jesus is now our high priest. And so we switch our focus from a human priest to a holy one. We had a human priest who was fallible, who had ego to deal with, who had all the sins that we have to deal with, to a holy priest who is divine, who intercedes for us. And what I think is amazing about this priest is he's not other. He's not distant and far. He holds us and he weeps with us. And the Bible says he stands at the door and knocks and waits to come into our life. He dies for us. He serves us. He washes our feet. He walks amongst our poor. The high priest that we have doesn't sit and wait for us to come to him at a temple. Surrounded by all the other priests in the pomp and circumstance, he comes to us and he beckons that we come to him. And he offers us an intimate relationship. Not only that, but he advocates to the Father on our behalf. No longer is there this wall of separation between us and God, where the only way to approach the presence of God is to go to the priests, his intermediaries, other people who are our peers. You guys get to bypass me entirely and go right to God, which is good for you because I've got my own issues to deal with. We go right to Jesus and he advocates to the Father on behalf of us. So our focus shifts from a human priest to a holy one. Maybe most interesting to me is our focus shifts from covering to cleansing. Do you realize that in the Old Testament, all the language used to talk about us no longer being guilty of our sin is covering language, that the blood of the sacrifice covers over our sin. It makes us outwardly appear righteous as God looks at us. Even as we go back to the very first sin, the sin in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve. What is God's response to that sin? What does he do? He takes animal skins and he fashions them and he covers over their shame. He doesn't cleanse them. He covers it. But in the New Testament, there's a shift in language. He cleanses. He removes it from us. Because when it's just covered, it's still there. We're still sinful. If you get up on a Saturday and you go out and you work all day and you sweat in the yard and you're gross and you come in and you take off your yard clothes and you don't shower and you put on your nice going out clothes, you'll look nice, but you stink. When our sin is covered over, we are acceptable to God, but we are still sinful. And the miracle of Jesus on the cross is that he cleanses us. This is what Hebrews says. This is why the author writes this. Chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews are really a statement on Yom Kippur. And what they're saying, what the author is saying is that whole deal was a big shadow cast by Jesus on history. It was a road sign pointing to our need for Christ. And what Hebrews 9 and 10 tells us is that Jesus is the sacrifice. He is the high priest. He is, like I said earlier, the final atonement and the perfection of Yom The Bible tells us that he removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. We are clean and invited to walk with the Lord. And finally, and I love this one, our focus shifts from separate to intimate. Again, take yourself back to the place where you were the Hebrew person and you're watching all of this take place and you see the very holy priest, very pompous and pious, and I'm sure he was a righteous man, but he must have felt just very separate and other. You could never even approach him. And then he would walk into a holy place and then a holy of holies and you're three layers removed from the presence of God. And it's only once a year that you go into God's presence. And it's a fearful thing and an awe-inspiring thing. And then in an instant, the veil tears. And when that veil is torn, the separation that was felt between the people and God goes away. And the very presence of God rushes out of the Holy of Holies and into the lives of those of us who would believe. And Jesus becomes our high priest who begs for intimacy with us, who wants to know you. This presence of God that feels different and other and fearful and unapproachable, now we're told he knows the very numbers of hairs on our head. We're told that he weeps with us. We're told that he touches us when we are sick. And I don't think we have an adequate appreciation for what it must have felt like to feel so removed from God and his people to immediately transition into this intimacy that we're invited in so that this God that we would die if we went into his presence undeservedly because Jesus' blood now cleanses us. Romans tells us that we call that same God Abba, Father, Daddy, or Papa. The kind of intimacy that we are invited into. And so as I looked at Yom Kippur and just kind of reflected on what it means, it became very clear to me that what Yom Kippur really is, what we're really celebrating, what God is really doing here, Yom Kippur is God's ruthless and relentless effort to remove all the barriers that exist between He and us. You see? In the Old Testament world, there was priests that existed between us and God. There was sins that existed between us and God. There was sins of omission that we didn't even know about that existed between us and God. And Yom Kippur is when he gets everybody together and he says, look, look, everyone, I am putting things in place so that there is nothing between me and my people. I'm putting things in place so that you know that I want to be with you, so there is nothing that can separate us. There are no barriers between us now. And then when he sends Jesus, who is the perfection of Yom Kippur, he removes all of the barriers and his presence rushes into the lives of those who would believe. And Yom Kippur is God's relentless and ruthless effort to remove all barriers between you and him. He wants nothing to exist between you. And knowing that we are impotent to remove those barriers ourselves, he installed a celebration once a year to tell us, hey, there's nothing between me and you. There are no barriers. There's nothing keeping you from my presence. You are welcome here. And then by sending his son the perfection of Yom Kippur, he says eternally once and for all, you are invited into my presence, so much so that I am preparing a place for you in my very presence for all eternity. And as I thought about the spirit of Yom Kippur and this God who ruthlessly removes every barrier between he and I, what I realized is I am impotent to remove the barriers that are placed between me and God, but I am very capable of putting them there. And as I reflected on myself, it occurs to me that any barriers that exist between me and God are ones that I put there. They're man-made. I built them myself. Sometimes with doubt, because I walked through that. Often with faithlessness and inconsistency. The feelings of guilt that he's ridden me of that I still cling to. Because I can't understand how he could still love me. Oftentimes it's my sin that puts a layer, puts another veil between me and God. And then I got to thinking about you as your pastor and would submit to you. If you feel like there are barriers between you and God, things preventing you from being as close with him as you would like and he would like? I think it's very likely we put those there ourselves. I think based on the heart of God, I see in Yom Kippur that any barriers that exist between us and God are ones that we built. Because he removes all the ones he can. So maybe we have doubt. But we haven't asked God to remove that. So here's what I want to do. In a few minutes, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band is going to be playing through a song. And I want to invite you while they play to just stay in your seat and be quiet and pray and reflect. And invite you to pray a prayer for yourself that I've been praying this week. And ask God, are there any barriers between you and I? Ask for the faith and the courage to see those. And then if he's gracious enough to point them out to you, maybe you know them right now, maybe they're blaring in the back of your mind, then pray that God would give you the courage to take the steps of faith to remove them. And so, as we pray together, I want you to have this opportunity to ask God, God, are there any barriers between me and you? Have I hung any veils in my life that need to be torn down? And give him permission to do that. Give him permission to bring down those barriers. Maybe you came today and you don't know Jesus. Maybe you wouldn't call yourself a believer. And so the barrier between you and God is faith. If you're here today and you want to become a believer, you want to accept this atonement, you want to be made right with your creator, that human desire to repent and be made right resonates with you. Then maybe today is the day that you become a child of God. To be a Christian, all you do is admit that I've sinned. I've acted in ways that have displeased my creator. And my sin has placed a barrier between God and I. And because of that, I need the death of Jesus on the cross to atone for me. It's not just cover over my sins, but cleanse them. You pray and you tell that to God. And then you say, from this point forward, I'm no longer the Lord of my life. I'm no longer the decision maker in my life. God is. And I'll do my best to do what he says. Many of us in here have been Christians for a long time, but over the years, we've allowed barriers to develop between us and God, and we don't have the intimacy with him that we want. Take a few minutes and have the courage to allow God to point those out, and have the faith to ask Him to remove those, whether they be doubt, bitterness, or sin, or habits. And on the day that the church looks at Yom Kippur, God's visible effort to remove barriers between he and I and restore the intimacy that we both long for. Take a minute and approach God for that intimacy as well. I'm gonna pray and then you guys sit and pray. And when Steve thinks it's the right time, we'll all stand and we'll finish singing together. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are floored and humbled that you have so intentionally removed all the barriers between us and you. God, we thank you for the day of atonement for Yom Kippur and all that it represents, for all the symbolism there. I ask that we would be touched by it, that we would be moved by it. God, I ask that for those of us who came in this morning with a veil that we hung ourselves, with a barrier that we built ourselves between you and us, God, give us the faith to see it and the courage to ask you to remove it. It's in your son's name we pray.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the lead pastor here. I don't think you guys got the memo. It's Memorial Day weekend. You're supposed to be like at the beach and stuff, and here you are. So this is fantastic. I'm super encouraged by our Memorial Day crew. Just for the record, to throw this out here before I get launched into the sermon, if you are ever here while a staff member falls off the stage, the appropriate response is laughter. Don't feel bad about that. Don't feel like you have to wait and see if we're all right. Even if it's Aaron, you just laugh, all right? That's funny. And if you had fallen off the stage, that would be the best. That would be amazing. Actually, they're all rooting for me. Now they're all like, they're not even going to pay attention. They're just going to root for me like to fall off the stage. I'm going to stay right here. This is the third part in our series called The Forgotten God. For the unindoctrinated, for those that may not be as familiar with Christian theology, we believe that the Bible teaches that our God exists as a trinity or the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And the idea is we talk a lot about God the Father. We pray to him. We hear about him. He's all over the Bible. We talk a lot about God the Son in the form of Jesus. We see Jesus a lot. We just did a whole series on his life for 12 weeks. But sometimes we forget about the Spirit. We know he's there, but we don't familiarize ourselves with him or his roles or his influence in our lives. Last week, we said we've been talking about that what the Spirit does is he continues Jesus's ministry both through us and to us. This week, we're going to look at how he continues Jesus's ministry to us and the roles that he plays in our life. Last week, we looked at his continuation of Jesus's ministry through us and the spiritual gifts. And I brought up that there was two spiritual gifts that are often misunderstood, tongues and prophecy. And I promised that I would write up a little something to help you understand it if you're curious about my stance, not our stance, my stance on those gifts. So that's actually typed up and printed out and on the information table if you want to grab one on your way out. To the five of you that read it, I hope that it's good. They'll be there as long as there are copies, so for eight months. This week, I want us to look at the roles of the Spirit. How does the Spirit continue Jesus's ministry to us? And when I say Jesus's ministry to us, one of the things that Jesus was doing with the disciples is he was showing them how to become more like God in character, more like him in character and in disposition and in love and in heart. And so now the Holy Spirit does that in us as well. We're taught that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment or a guarantee on our salvation. So we believe that if you are a believer, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then you have the gift of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit does certain things for you. I saw one author, he listed out 50 things that the Holy Spirit does. We're one service now, so I've got extra time. So number your paper, one through 50. No, I'm just messing around. I'm going to do five, but there's more than what we're doing this morning, right? But the Holy Spirit plays roles for us. And as I was thinking about how do we understand who the Holy Spirit is for us and what he does for us and how he helps us, as Jesus talked about, I was reminded of this clip of the 92 Olympics in Barcelona. This is, we're going to watch in just a second, this is my favorite Olympic moment of all time. Number two, for those interested, is Carrie Strug in the 96 Olympics when she does the vault with her sprained ankle. But this is my favorite one of all time. I watched this as an 11-year-old boy, and even in the moment, I thought, my goodness, something really neat is happening here. And I thought it was a really good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. So I wanted us to take a second here at the onset and take a look at this video. Storbritannia Terima kasih telah menonton! That's his dad. Terima kasih telah menonton I'm going to make a small tree with a small tree. Stenbergsforskning I love that clip, man. It's great. First of all, I mean, if you're blessed to have a good dad, like, that's what they do. And so now as a dad, like, I understand that even more. But every time I watch that clip, I cry. I get a little misty. And so I was in my office this week trying to find the right version of it on YouTube. And so I was watching it, and it finishes, and I'm in my office crying by myself. And then I start laughing at myself for crying by myself. And so if you'd have walked into my office at that moment, I would have looked absolutely hysterical. Like, you probably just would have slowly shut the door like, Nate's lost it. This is terrible. And going on with your day. But I love that clip because dude's running. He's trained for the Olympics. He's poured his life into it. And he tears his hamstring, right? And I can appreciate the heart of the dude that says, no, forget this. I'm finishing this thing. And he gets up and he goes and he's going to finish this thing. And then here comes his dad fighting off people. And I love, you guys giggle both times, I love when some other guy comes over and tries to help. He's like, get away from us. Get out of here. I've got this. I'm taking care of him. I love that. And I think it's a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. And I think about us that we can all relate to that sprinter. That sprinter's name is Derek. I think in our life we've all felt like Derek. When we didn't know what to do or where to go, we felt like we were all alone, that we were just limping through life, trying to get this thing figured out. And darn it if we couldn't just use a hand. I sat with somebody this week. We have the young girl Molly that sometimes plays the violin for us. Her father passed away this week far too early. That's a heartbreaking thing. And I was sitting with somebody from our church this week as we took them lunch. And we were talking about, his name was Mac. We were talking about Mac passing. And she just brought up that there's just been a lot of people in the last couple years in her life who have passed away. She knows a lot of widows who are widows far too early. And she kind of broke down. She said, I don't understand. It's been really hard for me. I don't know how to make sense of this. I believe in my God, but I don't know why these things happen. She felt like Derek. And sometimes that moment is deep and it's grievous and it's intense and we just don't know what to do. We feel like him. We're all alone. Other times we just kind of look around and we're like, gosh, I've been carrying this weight for a long time. Goodness, it's felt like it's been all on my shoulders to lead this family, to lead this business, to decide on my career, to raise this child, to be in this relationship. Sometimes it just feels like it's all on us and that we're just limping through life. And if we're being really honest, we just wish sometimes we could have a hand. And this is true even of the toughest sons of guns in here. Because some of us are wired in such a way that you never ask for help. You never need anything from anybody. You're quick to help other people, but if other people offer to help you, no, I'm good. I'm fine. And I know that mentality. But let me tell you something. Even the toughest, most independent people in here, you have moments in your life, if you're being honest, where you feel like Derek, and you could really use a hand. That's why I think Jesus' words in John 16 should comfort us so much. And let me just say, if you're sitting here going, I've never felt like Derek, boy, you need to feel like him more than anybody in this room. And I think that's why Jesus' words bring us so much comfort. We started the series with this verse in John chapter 16 where Jesus says, it's better for you that I leave so that you can receive the comforter. And we talked about that's an absurd statement because wouldn't it be great to have Jesus right next to us all the time? But Jesus says it's better that I'm not here because if I don't leave, you can't receive the comforter. And we just talked about how can that statement possibly be true. But this week, I want us to actually look at a different portion of the verse. So come back to it, but zero in on a differentper, and that's capitalized, and some of your Bibles may say Comforter, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And this is going to be important later. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. I say that these should be words of comfort to us because of what that word helper means. The word helper or comforter in your Bible, and I don't do this a lot because normally I think it's pastors just showing off, but in this point I do think it's important. The original word there is parakletos. parakletos, which literally means to come alongside. And that's the word that Jesus uses to describe the Spirit. It's all through the book of John. It's alternately translated as advocate, helper, comforter, or teacher. It can mean all those different things, but sometimes we see it helper, sometimes we see it comforter. But what he's saying is, if I don't leave you, then the one who's going to come alongside you will not come. And that's why I say that clip was a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is, because what did that father do? He came alongside his son, and he helped him through the race. And this is the picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. When he rushes into our life, he comes alongside us, he fights his way to us, he picks us up, and he stays beside us through life. He is our ever-present helper. And so it should bring us great comfort. And as I was doing the research on this sermon, I realized that there's a lot of different roles that the Holy Spirit plays. There's a lot of different things that he does for us. I said that one author listed as many as 50. But what I realized as I looked at this is, wait a second, Jesus calls him the comforter. Jesus calls him the helper. So the Holy Spirit's role is to help us. The Holy Spirit's role is to come alongside us. That's his big umbrella role. And then underneath that umbrella, sometimes he takes on different shapes or different forms, depending on what we might need most. And the Scripture kind of tells us or shows us the different forms that he takes on for us. So we're going to talk about the roles of the Spirit, but his role is to help us. And that role looks differently depending on different seasons of life and different wiring. So one of the first ones I want us to look at is that sometimes he's the comforter. Sometimes the role that that takes on is that the Holy Spirit is the comforter. And this is easy to see that when we're grieving, the Holy Spirit is there and he is with us. And the Bible says that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. We know that when we are grieving and when we are hurting that the Lord is near to us. But to be honest with you, this was a hard one for me to relate to. I've not walked through a lot of tragedy in my life. There's not been many times where I was so broken and so grieved, maybe once that I can think of, where I felt like I needed to run to God. But I also felt like the role of comforter in our life is more prevalent than that. The other thing I know about myself is that I'm kind of emotionally broken. Like I don't really like feel emotions to the same degree that other people do. Like I'm a little bit weird in that way. And one time I was really sad about something and I called Jen and told her I was down. And her response was, Nate, those are feelings. And I said, well, you can keep these. These are terrible. I don't like feeling this way. I don't get down a lot. I probably should. I just don't get affected by much. I get grumpy about things, but I don't get sad about things where I feel like I need comfort. I don't feel like my life calls for a lot of comfort. So I actually went to some people on staff. I went to Aaron, our children's pastor, and I went to Steve, our worship pastor, and I said, hey, when you hear that the Holy Spirit is your comforter, how do you relate to that? How does that strike you? What does that mean to you? And they both gave me the same answer, and I thought it was a great one. They said, when I think of the comfort of the Spirit, I think of peace. And I thought that's so true. And often the comfort that the Holy Spirit offers comes in the form of peace. Often the comfort that he gives us is not patting us on the back and saying, hey, it's going to be okay, or giving us the plan like, hey, I'm going to comfort you by showing you exactly how it's going to work out. Sometimes that's not it. Sometimes it's just the peace that he offers us. I got to participate in the funeral that happened on Friday for Mac McElroy. And I peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That peace of God is delivered to us through the Holy Spirit. And the comfort comes in the form of, I think, the Holy Spirit getting near us, putting his arm around us, and saying, I know that you don't know how this is going to work out, but I do. And saying, I know that you don't know what you need to do in this situation, but I know. I know that this doesn't make sense to you right now. I know that you can't make heads or tails of this. I know that it feels like a loving God wouldn't allow this to happen. I know that this feels confusing and it doesn't fit into your theology. I understand that. But I understand it. It makes sense to me. I know that you don't know how this is going to be okay or how life will ever be okay, but I think the Holy Spirit, as he comforts us, whispers into our ear, but I know how it's going to be okay. And I know how this is going to work out. And the Holy Spirit is what enables people, those Christians, to face the unknown with certainty and with peace. One of the greatest blessings of my life has been the privilege of watching my grandma, my mama, walk to death with perfect peace. She was diagnosed in February a couple years ago with ovarian cancer. It was advanced stage, and she said, you know, I've lived a long life. I'm pretty good. My husband's in heaven. My kids don't need, like, my support on a day-to-day basis, so I can pray for them. I can pray for them from heaven, so I'm just going to refuse treatment and live out the last couple months of my life in peace. And she walked. I had coffee with her every other week and talked to her about it. And she walked to death with perfect peace and no fear. You know how she did that? The Holy Spirit whispering in her ear, Linda, I know that you don't know how this is gonna work, but I do, and I've got you. So sometimes the Holy Spirit helps us by taking on the form of a comforter. Sometimes he's the illuminator. This may be the most important role of the Spirit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is the illuminator. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, I've got it there on your notes, verses 13 to 14. Paul writes this, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Okay. What this means is, if we want to understand spiritual things at all, it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand those things. Do you understand that the Holy Spirit is the activator of your faith? That if you would call yourself a Christian, that in the days and weeks and years before you were a Christian, you were wandering around, the Bible says, blind, unable to see the truth. And the only way you can see the truth that it takes to become a believer is for the Holy Spirit to illuminate that truth in your life, to do the work in your heart so that you'll be turned on to the things of God. None of us comes to faith because we sit down and intellectually pursue faith. We come to faith because the Holy Spirit, in whatever way he works, illuminates for us our need for God. That's how we come to faith. None of us has faith without the Spirit. And then as we walk through life and we seek to understand spiritual things, the Holy Spirit explains them to us. He directs our paths in such a way that spiritual things make sense to us that beforehand they couldn't. That's why I truly believe if you're not a believer and you're trying to come to grips with Christianity, but the deal for you is I have to understand everything about what I'm getting into to be able to take the step of faith to be a Christian. You never will, because the Holy Spirit has to act in our life to bring that about for us. I think it even works like this. The Holy Spirit, part of his role is to illuminate God's Word. I have notes in my Bible where I was reading a passage, and I went, gosh, I don't understand what that means. And I wrote down and dated it. Father, please show me what this means. Spirit, please help me with this one. I don't understand this. And I wrote it down and I dated it and I just made it a prayer. And I can tell you that there's been a couple of times when I come back through my Bible, I'm reading it again, and I read a passage and there's a note off to the side of it that just says, Lord, please help me. And I go, oh, I understand what that means now. Because the Holy Spirit was good in answering the prayers and showing us what Scripture means. I would just tell you this. If you're having a hard time understanding some things about God, if you're having a hard time understanding some things about theology, if you're having a hard time understanding some of the things that you may read in Scripture sometimes, have you prayed to the Spirit and asked Him to illuminate for you what it means? Have you asked Him to show you? I would challenge you to pray that prayer and see what happens because sometimes the Spirit is the illuminator and he shows us spiritual truths. Sometimes he's our leader. Sometimes he shows us where to go and what to do next. I love the moment in that video when Derek is limping down. He's limping down the track, and his father fights his way to him, and he grabs him, right? And Derek at first looks at him. If you go back and you watch it again, he looks at him with some apprehension. He thinks it's another guy in a suit who's trying to help him, and he kind of looks at him like, no, get away from me. But then he realizes who it is. And when he realizes who it is, he breaks down crying because he realizes it's not all on him anymore. And he turns and he buries his face in his dad. And at that moment when he's burying his face in his dad, he's still moving down the track, but he's no longer looking where he's going. And that's a picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. His dad has his eyes down the track. His dad hasn't. His dad says, you don't need to worry about where we're going. You don't need to worry about where we're stepping. You don't need to worry about staying in your lane or avoiding all these camera people or crossing the finish line. You don't need to worry about any of that. I got you. I will take you across. And all of his concerns and all of his worries went straight into just focusing on his dad and the comfort that his dad offered. And sometimes this is what we need to do with the Spirit more than anything, is just bury our face in Him, focus our eyes on Christ, focus our eyes on God, and allow the Spirit to lead us into the decisions that we need to make. Because sometimes we don't know what to do. Do I take the job? Do I not take the job? Do I put my resume out there? Do I not? Do I stay in Raleigh? Do I move somewhere else? Do I go to this church? Do I go to that church? We have a dynamic in a relationship that's hard and sticky and if we address it, it's going to blow it up and it's going be really difficult to talk about it, and maybe it's best just to let it lie. What do I do? Do I stick my face in the wood chipper, or do I step back and hope it works out? How do I discipline my kid? What do I say in this particular instance? How do I handle this situation? Oftentimes, we're in a place in life where we could go this way or that way, and we're not sure what to do. I was in a conversation with somebody in my family a while back, and she was in a very stressful situation, and a lot of things had fallen on her that were not typically her responsibilities. And she was really struggling with it and having a hard time with it and was ill-equipped to handle it. It was really very stressful for her. And I spent some time on the phone with her. And I tried to lovingly tell her, hey, where you're at right now in life, the things that are being thrust onto you are too much for you. They're too big for you. You're not wired to handle these things. So you don't need to continue to feel encumbered with all the decisions around the situation because you have a couple of people around you who are smart and who are level-headed and who are thinking clearly and who are capable of helping you carry that burden. So the only decision that you need to make is to trust the people around you who love you enough to make those decisions for you. How does that sound? And she said, that sounds pretty good. I think I can do that. Some of y'all came in here this morning and this is what you need to hear. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have been leading the company or the family or the dynamic or the department or whatever it is, and it has felt all on you for a long time. And you're trying to decide between this and that and what's the best way and what do we do. The only thing you need to do is turn and bury your face in the Spirit and trust His leadership and trust His guidance and say, listen, God, I'm just going to focus on you and you just take me where we need to go. Sometimes the Spirit helps us by leading us. Sometimes the Spirit is the convictor. This is what Jesus says in John, that the helper is going to come and his role is going to be to convict the world of sin. And I feel like this gets a bad rap. This idea of conviction kind of gets, especially now in our culture, it really gets a bad rap, right? We are so touchy about telling anybody that they're wrong about anything. We could hear, man, this guy, he murdered his wife. And some of us would go like, I'm sure he had his reasons. Like we equivocate everything. We won't judge anything at all. We're so scared of it because we don't want anybody to feel bad about anything that they may have done, God forbid. And so when we hear that the Holy Spirit is the convictor, we kind of immediately be like, I'm not into that. Because we feel like that the Holy Spirit is the voice in our head that's shaming us for our sin. The one that's getting on to us when we look in the mirror and we say, look at you. Look at who you are. If everybody knew what you know about yourself, they would not be your friends anymore. She would not be your wife anymore. He would not be your husband anymore. They would not respect you as a parent anymore. And some of us sometimes think that the Holy Spirit is that voice in our head that's shaming us into obedience. But I really feel like that's not how the Holy Spirit works. Have you ever had, I feel like the Holy Spirit works like this. Go with me. I know this is kind of a leap, but just hang with me. Have you ever had those days when you overeat? I never have. I'm assuming that you guys have. But those days when you overeat. Gosh, I've had so many lately. The other day, this happened. This was Thursday night. Thursday was a really busy day. I got up. I had something early, so I left before Lily woke up. I had the whole day. I saw her really quick for like a minute in the afternoon. I snuck up on her at a park and said, hey. And then I went back to work. And then I had meetings that went until like 8.30 at night. And so I was trying desperately to wrap up the meeting and rush home so that I could hug Lily before she went to bed. That's what I was trying to do all day. And I get there and I walk into the room. It's right before she goes to bed. The lights are down. Jen's sitting on the bed. And she says, Daddy. And I'm like, oh, this is the best. And so I hug her, and then I decided to push my luck. I said, can Daddy snuggle with you for a minute? And she said, no, I want Mom to. Dang it. Which is, that's Lily. I mean, she loves her Mama. And so we kind of negotiated. I'm like, well, maybe mom can do it for a little bit and then daddy can. And she goes, okay. I'm like, all right, good. So long story short, I tried to lay down next to her and snuggle with her for a minute, and she just bawled hysterically. The way that any of you would react if the same thing were happening in your life. She just bawled hysterically, right? And Jen's kind of looking at me, and now I realize I'm the selfish 38-year-old jerk that's making this poor girl cry because I want her time and this is really not good fathering. So I relent and I get up. And I'm not messing around. My feelings were legitimately hurt. I was sad when I walked down the stairs. And so I drove to cookout and I ate my feelings. I did. We had decided that week we were on a diet. We were going to be strict. And I had been good that week. I really had. And then I walked down those stairs and I was like, forget this. So I get in the car, I go to cookout, double cheeseburger, onions, mayonnaise, mustard, onion rings, chicken quesadilla, Coke. All of it. All of it. I wasn't even, stop it. You've done it too. I get back to the house. I ate the cheeseburger and like two onion rings and I was like, I'm full. But I am not a quitter. So I finished it. And I'm sitting there, right? And like ten minutes after I'm done, I do not feel good. I'm having some serious indigestion. And what's the indigestion telling me? Hey, pal, that probably wasn't a good choice. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice that talks back to you in the mirror after you overeat that says, look at you, you man, it stinks that it's getting hot. It's bathing suit season and you are not ready. Like that's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the indigestion that you feel that says, hey, that decision that you just made, that's not what's best for you. The Holy Spirit is the heavy breathing at the top of the stairs that lets you know like maybe a walk would be good sometimes. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice trying to shame us into submission. He is looking to love us into health. He's the voice that whispers in our ear, hey, that thing that you're doing with your life, that's not what's best for you. When you feel bad after you overeat, that's the Creator whispering to you going, you were not designed to eat cookout. When we sin and we mess up and we feel this voice in our head telling us, you were not designed to do that. That's the Holy Spirit. That's the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The conviction of the Holy Spirit never induces shame because our shame hung with Jesus on the cross. He took that from you so that you don't have to feel it. But it is a voice telling you, hey, that thing that you're doing in your life, that's not what's best for you. The conviction of the Holy Spirit loves us to health. And for some of us this morning, he's been whispering to us for a while. And we should listen. I like to say that you win every argument you ever get into with God. The Holy Spirit can whisper to you and say, hey, that's not good for you. And you can go, yeah, it is. I think it's fine. And he'll go, okay. You do not want to win that argument. Listen to him. Listen to him. And I think it's important that we understand that the Holy Spirit is never seeking to shame us in this conviction. He's only seeking to love us because it plays into the last role I want to cover today. Sometimes he's the identifier. Sometimes the Holy Spirit identifies us for who we are. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are, get this, children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs to God and co-heirs to Christ. So the Holy Spirit's role is to identify you for who you are. And I think that this, to me, as you become a Christian, is maybe the most persistently needed voice and role of the Spirit that we have. Because I'm convinced that most of us, when we think about standing face to face with God, feel far more like an indentured servant than we do a loved child, right? I feel like most of us just assume, think about the way that you pray, think about the way that you worship, think about the self-talk that you feel when you even try to do spiritual things. Don't most of us in this room just assume God's disappointed in us? Don't we just assume that if we were gonna be face-to-face with God, that his first primary emotion towards us would be disappointment? We think God's love is for everybody else, God's forgiveness is for everybody else, but not me, I know better. I've been in church for a long time. I know better than what I have done. Doesn't everybody in this room feel like, if you've been a believer for any time, don't you feel like, if you're being honest, gosh, I should be so much further along in my spiritual walk than I am. God has to be disappointed in how little ground I've covered in these last 10, 20, 30 years. Don't we feel like that? Like we're somehow God's indentured servants and we owe him. We need to get better and that his primary emotion towards us is disappointment. To that voice, the Holy Spirit whispers in our ear, you're not an indentured servant. God is not ashamed of you. He is your father, and you are his daughter, or his son, and he loves you, and he is proud of you. When that dad rushed onto the track and grabbed Derek, the sprinter, and picked him up, did you read anything on his lips about him being disappointed for not properly stretching before the race? No, he just picked him up and he said, I'm here. I'll help you. I feel like we have this picture of God that's gonna be disappointed in us for not stretching or eating right the day of race, when all God wants to do is rush into our life and pick us up and help us. What I want you to see is that God's primary emotion towards you is not disappointment. It's delighted love. And the Holy Spirit's role in your life is to identify you as an adopted son or daughter of the King and to constantly remind you God loves you. God delights in you. God is proud of you. And some of you just said in your head, God's not proud of me. Yes, he is. He's proud of you. Some of you just said he doesn't delight in me. Yes, he does. He delights in you. He loves you. He's proud of you. You're his children. And the Holy Spirit's role is to remind you that the Creator God looks down on you and smiles and takes delight. Those of you who have children, you know that your primary emotion towards them is not disappointment or frustration. It's love. Why would we think our perfect heavenly Father is any different than that? So sometimes the Holy Spirit serves us as the identifier. I would ask you this question. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which good on you for being church at a holiday weekend and not even signing up for the whole deal yet. But if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, don't you want that? Don't you want the helper? Aren't you tired of running the race on your own? Aren't you tired of it all being on you? Aren't you ready to let the helper come alongside you and serve you in whatever capacity you need? For those of you who are a believer, I want to encourage you today to lean into the roles of the Holy Spirit in your life. I don't know which one that we covered today resonates most deeply with you. But when I pray in a second, you might spend some time praying and ask God to just help you lean into that part of his spirit. You might ask God to help you trust him as your comforter and as your helper. You might ask him to lead you and to show you. You might ask him to remind you. All you need this morning is a reminder that you are a beloved son or daughter of the King. I don't know which role resonates with you most, but the encouragement this morning is to lean into it and allow the Holy Spirit to be in your life who he is and to do in your life what he's come to do. And let's embrace this idea that it's better for us to have the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit continues to bring you closer to God and draw you into the Father by coming alongside you and being your helper as you move through life. All right, let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for your spirit. Thank you for how he helps, how he comforts, how he illuminates and leads. We even thank you for the gentle conviction of the spirit. We thank you that he identifies us for who we are. God, I pray that we would leave, those of us who are believers, knowing that we are adopted children that you love. God, if there's anybody here who walked in this morning not knowing you, I pray that they would be your child before they leave. Let us give proper weight and value to your spirit and his ministry in our lives, God. Give us the faith to lean into him and to trust him. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.