Sermons tagged with Perseverance

Good morning. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If I didn't know any better, it would seem like your senior pastor guilted you into attendance this morning. This is great. Thanks for being here. I hope we keep it rolling. We are resuming our series today called One Hit Wonders, where we're looking at different passages in the Bible that we don't often get to stop at or pause at or focus on. And this morning, we're going to be in a passage at the end of Habakkuk. We'll be right back. Habakkuk. Very few people know where it is. You're probably going to have to get your table of contents involved. There's no shame in that. It's one of the minor prophets towards the end of the Old Testament. So join us in Habakkuk. What we're going to find there, I think, is a passage that is tucked away and little known, but it really brings to me a lot of hope and a lot of faith, sometimes when we need it the most. But as we approach that passage, I'm reminded of these rites of manhood that I would hear of as a kid growing up. You hear about these different tribes across the globe that have different tests for children to become adults. They throw you into the wilderness for a few days, and if you come back with like 10 beaver pelts, then now you are a man. There was the Maasai tribe I was reading about this week out in Africa. They don't do this anymore because it's illegal, but for generations, what they would do is on your 10th birthday as a little boy, they would send you into the savanna with a spear, and you had to kill a lion and bring back proof of this kill, which is an insane test for a little boy. But in the Messiah's defense, if a 10-year-old can do that, dude's a man, okay? I believe them. That's a legitimate test. But you've heard about these rites of passage and these tests of manhood or adulthood before, right? And I actually think, I bring that up because I think that there is a test for our faith in the Bible. I think that there is actually a test that all believers at some point in their life must go through, must experience, and must come out the other side as proven and mature. And I'm arguing this morning that we find that test in the end of Habakkuk chapter 3 and verses 17 through 19. So read them with me, and then we're going to talk about why I think this really is suchber verse. This is a difficult thing to be able to say. So I'm going to contend with you this morning that being able to authentically claim this passage is the mark of mature faith. Being able to authentically claim this passage, Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19, to be able to say this out loud to one of your friends, to be able to say this out loud to God himself, To me, to be able to authentically claim this verse, claim this passage, to say it out loud and to mean it, is the test of a sincere and a mature and authentic faith. And if we look at the verse and the context in which it comes, I think you'll see why I think this. Because the picture that Habakkuk is painting here follows three chapters of devastation. Three chapters of the nation of Israel being laid low. Three chapters of the consequences of their action resulting in poverty and death and famine. Three chapters of hopelessness. And so here at the end, he's saying, even in light of all of that, in light of all the devastation that we just experienced, in light of where I find myself now, and listen to this, even though the fig tree will no longer produce and the olive crop fails and there are no herds in the fields, what he's saying is, even though the present looks bleak and the future looks bleaker, even though today stinks and tomorrow looks worse, I don't find any good reason to hope in a good and bright and hopeful future, even though that's true, yet I will choose to find my joy in the Lord and find my strength in him. Do you see the power of that statement? And for many of us, we know what it is to feel like the present stinks and the future doesn't look much better. We know what it is to look around and think to ourselves, though the fig tree does not blossom, though the olive is not going to produce a crop, though the things that I relied upon are no longer there. We've walked through those moments, right? And I'm not talking about small disappointments. I'm not talking about little fissures in our life that upset our otherwise peaceful existence. I'm talking about the hardest of times. I'm talking about my dear friends in the church who they have some good friends who are in their early 30s, I would presume, and have young children, and she has been battling cancer for months, if not years, and has recently found out that her body is so riddled with it that she will not survive this. That's today stinks and tomorrow's not looking good either. That's hard. That's what Habakkuk's talking about. I've mentioned before my friend Carla Gerlach who lost her husband at the age of 30, my college roommate to a widow-maker heart attack with three children under the age of five. That's sitting in the middle of a present that stinks and looking towards a future that doesn't feel very hopeful. We know what it is to walk through these difficult times. That's raising a child and then watching them make decisions that hurt us so much and not knowing what to do. That's experiencing a parent with dementia or with a difficulty that has now been imposed upon you and you have to love them and carry them through it. I've seen that happen over and over again in our congregation as some of us age and take on the role of caretaker of our parents, that's a difficult spot. That's in the middle. What Habakkuk is talking about is how we feel in the middle of a divorce, in the middle of finding out about infidelity, in the middle of getting the call about the difficult diagnosis, in the middle of the difficult relational thing that we don't know if we're going to see through it. It's how we feel in the days and months after we lose our job or after someone hurts us deeply. That's what Habakkuk is talking about. And so what he's really saying in this passage, to put it in our language, is that even when God disappoints me, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. Even when my God disappoints me, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. I debated on that word disappoints because you could say, even though I'm disillusioned by, you could say even though I'm confused by, even though I'm let down by, even though I don't understand my God right now, I will choose to find my joy and strength in him. And where the rubber meets the road on that is when as a believer, you know that God is good and you know that he is sovereign and you know that he is loving and you know that he is all powerful and you know that he could have stopped this thing if he wanted to, but he didn't and you don't know why. You know that it's in his power to cure that cancer. You know that it's in his power to prevent that heart attack. You know that it's in his power to heal this person, to mend that relationship, to see this thing through. You know he can do it and he didn't. And you're left with, but why, God? Why didn't you do that? It's a feeling we feel whenever there's another shooting. God, you could have stopped this, and you didn't. Why didn't you? It's a feeling that Mary felt when Jesus let her brother Lazarus die. And she wept and she said, why didn't you get here sooner? And in that moment, when we're disillusioned by our God, when we don't understand why he let this happen, and there's no words that anybody can say that can comfort us, to choose in that moment to say, God, I don't understand you, but I trust you. God, I don't understand you, but I find my joy in you. And God, I don't understand why you let this happen, but I'm going to lean on your strength to get me through the season of disillusionment and confusion and disappointment. To be able to do that, to be able to choose that despite the confusion and disappointment that we're walking through, to me that is the test that produces a mature and authentic faith. To me, when you've been forced into making that choice, is when your faith becomes sincere and mature and authentic. And listen, there's some middle ground there. I've talked to people walking through this season. There's some middle ground there. There's some people who will say, yeah, life stinks and it's really hard right now. And God, I don't know if I trust you and you could have fixed this and you didn't and I don't know why. And they, even though they love God, they trust God, they still follow God and believe God, they are not yet prepared to say, and I will find my joy and my strength in him. They're not there yet. There's a middle ground where you don't understand what God has allowed, where you know you trust who he is, but you're not yet ready to fully embrace the reality of it. You're not yet ready to fully say, even though I find my joy in you, I rejoice in you, and I find my strength in you, and I know that you will make me walk in high places. There's a middle ground there. And if you are in that place, that middle ground, between God, how could you let this happen, and not quite ready to say, I want to rejoice in you again, this sermon is specifically for you. And the reality is we all face these tests. We, all of us, if you are a Christian, at some point or another, is to be disappointed or disillusioned by God and to feel that he has let you down. It's to go through this test. And the Bible is very clear. It's very open with us. We should see it, right? This shouldn't be a surprise to us. The Bible is honest with us that this test is coming. I could share with you myriad verses, but I've gotten just three here for us to consider this morning. In Proverbs, Solomon writes, He speaks of this test that's coming. The fire burns the gold and the purity rises to the top and there's something to this in the way that the Lord tests us as well. Peter writes famously, 1 Peter 1, verses 6 and 7, He says, on the vine, that today looks bad and tomorrow looks worse. And even though that happens, I will rejoice in the revelation of my Savior, Jesus Christ. I will look forward to the day when he returns and he makes the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. I will cling to that, even though I don't understand God, even though he doesn't make sense to me, even though I would do it differently if I were God. I will choose to trust that in eternity I will understand him, That if I ever possess the capacity to understand what God's doing and why he allows things to happen in this way, I'll sit back and I'll go, you're right. You were good. And I love you. He allows these tests to produce in us a perseverance that will result in glory and honor, praise and the glory and honor of the revelation of Jesus Christ. And then Peter writes at the end of that same book, 1 Peter 4, verse 12, I kind of like this one a lot. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. Don't be surprised when we walk through the test. Don't be surprised when life is hard. Don't be surprised when there's a season and you look around and you go, God, where are you? When you relate to the Psalms where David writes, how long, O Lord, will you hide your face from me? Where are you, God? I cry out to you, and I do not see you. Don't be surprised when those trials come, and we look around, and we say, this isn't right. This isn't fair. God, you could have done something about this. He says, don't be surprised as if this is something unexpected. The reality is the test happens. And I want you to know this too about the test. Our father doesn't delight in testing his children. He simply knows that a fallen world will test us. Our God in heaven, our good father in heaven is not up in heaven looking at your faith going, hmm, they seem to be doing pretty well. How can I tighten the screws to see if they really mean it? What can I do to make them to kind of poke and prod them and see if they really mean this or if they're going to fade away? He's not up in the heaven tightening the screws. He doesn't take delight in watching you squirm. That's not what he's doing. He simply knows that in a fallen world, his children will be tested. And he weeps with us. And he offers us his presence. And he offers us his hope. And we're told that those who hope in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and not be faint. We're told things over and over again. We're told that God is our refuge and our strength. We're told that we can trust him, that he is our ever-present help in times of trouble. We're told that he is close to the brokenhearted, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. We're told blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We're told over and over again throughout Scripture that God is close to us in our brokenness, that when we are in the middle of this test is when God is closest to us if we will only be able to feel him, if we'll only have the ears to hear him and the eyes to see him and the heart to know him. We're told that the test comes. And it doesn't come because our God delights in testing us and watching things be hard. The test is coming because this world has fallen. Because in a fallen world, people get cancer. In a fallen world, sin begats abuse, begats divorce, begats pain, begats generational scars. In a fallen world, people die too soon. In a fallen world, people get addicted. In a fallen world, we have to watch our parents become people who no longer know us. And those things will test our faith. Those things will make us look at God and say, couldn't you have done something about this? Because of that, I think it's important for us to think, I actually think it's important for us to remember the story of John the Baptist who had this very moment. John the Baptist was this great prophet. He was the last of the great prophets. And he was the one to announce Jesus as the Messiah who was to come. He was the one to introduce Jesus to the people of Israel. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. And subsequent to that, John the Baptist is arrested. He's being held in prison by Herod, and he is going to die. And he sends one of his disciples to Jesus. And he asks Jesus, are you the coming one? Are you the coming one or should we hope for another? And we have no reason to know this, but this is a reference to Isaiah 35, which is a messianic prophecy, a prophecy about the Messiah that is to come. And he calls in that, in Isaiah 35, Jesus is referred to as the coming one or the one who is to come. And it says that when he arrives, that the blind will see, that the deaf will hear, and that the lame will walk, and that the prisoners will be set free. John the Baptist is a prisoner. And he sends a messenger to Jesus to say, hey, are you the guy? Because your word promises that when the guy shows up, I'll be let out of prison. Or should I hope for another? And Jesus tells that disciple to go back to John and say, go and tell John that the blind do see and the deaf do hear and the lame do walk and the prisoners will be set free, but you won't be set free, John. And then Jesus says, blessed are those who don't fall away on account of me. Blessed are those who have expectations of me that I don't meet. Blessed are those who are confused by my actions and my choices, and still choose to trust that I am sovereign and that I am good and that I love you. John the Baptist walked through this very test. All saints walk through this very test. Because of that, I think it's important for us to think of our faith as a clay pot. Think of the faith that you have as a clay pot. If you grab clay and throw it on the pottery wheel and start to form it, you can make it into a thing. I don't know anything about pottery. I've seen it in enough movies and TV shows that I feel like that's what you do, right? You slam it down and you press the pedal and it spins and you can make it into a thing. You can make it into a bowl or a pot or a vase, right? And if you just take the wet clay and you form it into a shape, it's there and it's real and it exists and it's not not clay. It's not not pottery. And you could probably even hold stuff in it if you wanted to. It could probably even serve a purpose. But that piece of pottery is not finished until it goes into the kiln and it comes back out of the fire. That pottery is not hardened. It's not mature. It's not ready to serve its purpose. It's not ready for use. It's not trustworthy until it comes out of the kiln formed and fashioned and fired. And after a couple decades now of being in ministry and being in church my whole life and watching people's faith and watching how it grows and how it fades and how sometimes it seems to go away and sometimes it seems to come back and then sometimes it seems to move into maturity. I am certain of this. Our faith isn't as mature as it could be until we walk through that fire. Our faith is most trustworthy when it's put into the kiln and it comes out the other side hardened and authentic and mature. Our faith, to me, isn't yet mature, isn't yet strengthened, isn't yet completely trustworthy until we've been put in the fire and we've been forced to choose God when sometimes it doesn't make sense to choose Him. And say, but even so, in the words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we trust that God will protect us from this fire, but even if he doesn't, we will declare his name. Please understand that the test is not, the fire is not the circumstances that we find ourselves in because those will come and go. To me, I firmly believe that the fire is that moment, it's that season when we question, can I really trust this God? It feels like he let me down. Can I really trust him? Can I choose? When faith isn't easy, when faith doesn't come naturally, when faith isn't fun, when faith is a choice, will I then choose God? When it doesn't make any sense to me, will I trust his wisdom over my own? Will I trust that in eternity, when I can look my Savior in the eye, that I will understand the way that he ordered his creation? I really do think that that's the test of genuine faith. And there's something to that fire, too. And that picture of gold being purified through it. You know, the reality is, as hard as it is to hear, the fire burns off the impurities, right? And so what we find usually when we go into these crucibles and we go into these tests, and the real test is not the circumstances around us, but having to choose God in spite of our confusion. The real test is choosing Him anyways. And allowing some of our impurities to be burnt off. Acknowledging I've been carrying expectations from God for a long time that he never gave me. I've lived, and I know that this is hard, but I've watched it happen. I've lived in myopic faith where my assumption is that by my actions I can control him. And God, I've been good, so you should order the universe to not harm me. That person was so good. They were such a good man. They were such a good woman. They went too early. God, how can you let that happen? That assumes that God pres think the fire forces us to see that maybe we've built a myopic faith. Maybe he's opening our hearts to a grander vision of eternity in his kingdom. Maybe we open ourselves up to God, what did I bring into this test that doesn't belong here? So that when we emerge from the other side, we can authentically claim Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19. This is why James writes in the first chapter of his book, Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you endure trials of any kind. For we know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance, when it takes its full form, will leave you perfect and complete, not middle space. When you find yourself in the fire, take heart in knowing that your Father is shaping you into a saint who can claim Habakkuk 3, 17 through 19. If you find yourself in that sacred middle ground and that land between God, you've disappointed me. I believe in you. I want to. I want faith, but I can't yet find my joy in you. If you find yourself there in that fire, take heart. You are in the midst of your test. And when you grab onto God and you choose faith, you will come out the other side persevering. You will be perfect and complete, not lacking anything. You will have a fire-tested faith that was hardened through experience, and you will be able to use your faith as a blessing and beacon to others. To this day, the people whose faith I respect most are the people who have walked through this fire and chosen God anyways and now use that to help walk other people through their test. So if you've been through the test, if you've been forced to make that choice, forced to choose faith, you know how formative that is. You know how solidifying that is of your faith. You know that that season of life, no matter how difficult it was, if you have a sincere faith now, is one that you look back to and flag as the time when I really moved into maturity. You know that that instance, that season of life, anchors your faith now and now so that when things happen around you, they are not near as difficult to deal with. Those of you who have not yet walked through that fire, you will. And when you do, remember those words of Peter. Don't be surprised by this. We all walk through this. Choose God. Choose to find your joy and strengthen him. And for those of you in that middle ground right now, who know God and trust him, but are not yet in your heart at a place where you feel like you can worship him, where you can find your joy in him. God has grace for that. God doesn't rush that. God loves you and is closest to you as you walk through it. My hope and prayer is that we will be heartened by that, that we will be encouraged by that, and that we will be a faithful of people who have chosen God and have mature, authentic walks with him that will stand the test of time, that will be perfect and complete, not lacking anything. Let's pray. God, you're good. Even when we don't understand how you're good, you are. Even when we can't see a hopeful future, God, we know that you do. Lord, I pray specifically this morning that you would be with those who are in the fire. I pray that they would feel your comfort, that they would feel your presence, that they would feel your peace, that they would feel your love. God, fill us with your spirit so much so that even though we don't understand how or why, God, that we would still trust in you. Give us the strength of faith to find our joy and strength in you. Be the one who strengthens us even as we walk through the fire. It's in your son's name we ask all these things. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning, Grace. I am Erin, as Nate stated earlier, and I am humbled and honored to actually stand up here to kick off this fabulous new series that we have on some of these really cool ladies of the Bible. I need to give a quick shout out, however, to Caitlin Resar. She did the voiceover for that. She is one of our Grace students, and she is pretty amazing, and I think she did an awesome job. So shout out to Caitlin, and thanks for helping us to kind of give life to this series. For those of you guys that might know me know that I adore a really good story. And one of my favorite stories, and yes, I sounded just like Nate right there. This is my favorite of all the favorites, right? But the book of Esther really and truly is one of my favorite stories from the Bible. Y'all, if you look at it, it has all the good things that you would want in a story. There's a king. There's a couple of queens. We've got some trusted, loyal advisors. We have a villain that you just absolutely love to hate. And we have a couple of plot twists, and at the end, the good guys come out on top. So like really, what more could you ask for? And I might have to pitch this idea to Disney as their next blockbuster. It has the potential. Just wait and see. But as I was preparing to do the story of Esther, I kept looking back and talking about it, and I was like, there's just no way that you can do justice to Esther by diving in and picking just a book or a verse out of her story. So if you will indulge me, I'm going to give you like a 10,000-foot flyover of the book of Esther so that we're all kind of on the same page. So sit back, relax, enjoy. And here, let me introduce you to Esther. This starts back in 483 B.C., so a really, really long time ago. And you'll find historically that the people of Israel are coming out of exile. There's a group that have moved themselves into Judah, but then there's another group that have scattered. And they have scattered in the Persian Empire, which, mind you, is the ruling empire of the time. This is where we pick up the story of Esther. The capital of the Persian empire is a place called Susa, and living inside of that capital is the king. The king's name is Xerxes. Y'all, these names, bear with me today. His name is Xerxes. He's three years into his reign, and the thing that we know about Xerxes at this point is that he loves to be king. He loves the power. He loves the opulence. He loves the wealth. He loves all things that come from being king. He's at the end of a 180-day banquet cycle. Okay, 180 days worth of parties, basic and simple, that he has given for all of his officials from all over the empire, just to show everybody how cool he really is. But because he's Xerxes, this is not quite enough for him. So he decides to hold a seven-day blowout of a party, for lack of a better way to word it. It is seven full days. He hires the best party planners. They decorate the entire courtyard in all of the finest things that they can, the best food, the best wine, and then he invites all of the people of the Capitol to come join them. So he can show off how really cool and powerful he is. Well, here we go. At the end of seven days, you can only imagine with all of the food and all of the wine that you could want what condition King Xerxes may have been in. And I'm just going to call it for what it was. He wasn't in the best state. Most likely he was very drunk. And he decides one last thing he wants to do is he wants to show off his crowning jewel, which is his king or his queen. And her name is Vashti. Now Vashti's on the other side of the palace. She's giving a party for the ladies. Messenger comes over and says, Hey Vashti, Xerxes wants to see you and all your queen finery. And Vashti says, no. Now, scripture doesn't tell us why she says no, but y'all can only guess. They've been over there for seven days doing all things around this food and drink. And now I'm going to put on my crown and my royal robe and I'm going to go parade through a bunch of basically drunken men. No, no, thank you. I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll stay right here with my ladies. It's a little safer here. So Vashti says no. Message gets back to Xerxes. We find out Xerxes has this crazy temper, and he makes this quick flash decision and says, I'm sorry, you're no longer my queen. You're done. So now he's King Xerxes without a queen. A couple of years pass because he's out doing whatever you do to run the kingdom, right? And his advisors come to him and say, it's time for you to have a queen. Now we know that King Xerxes loves all things beautiful. And so his advisors develop this beautiful idea to hold a beauty pageant. There's really no other thing that you would want to call it. It's a beauty pageant. Please go collect all of the beautiful young virgins from all over the empire and bring them to us. And then we're going to parade them around in front of the king and he gets to pick his queen. So that's exactly what happens. Research that I did said somewhere around 400 ladies end up back at the capital of Susa. They get dropped into the harem of the king, and they get to spend the next 12 months, y'all, 12 months, getting themselves all primed and pretty and beautiful before they can go before the king. So stop there for a second. We're right there at the edge of the harem. Let me introduce you to our next two people. The first one is Mordecai. Mordecai is one of the Jews that chose not to go back to Judah. He's living right there in the middle of Susa. And he's raising his cousin as his daughter. Her parents died at a very young age. So she's orphaned. Her name is Hadasha, or as we know her, it's Esther. And so in Scripture, Esther is described as being lovely in figure, or beautiful in figure and lovely to look at. So you can only guess what happens to Esther now, right? She's a lovely in figure and beautiful to look at. She becomes part of that 400 that end up inside of the harem awaiting their parade before the king. The only thing Mordecai can say to Esther before she goes in is, Hey, Esther, just do me one small favor. Don't let them know who you are. Don't let them know that you are a Jewish orphan. So Esther, because she loves and adores her Mordecai, she keeps her mouth closed. It goes on to tell us that once she gets into this harem, she finds favor with the person that's in charge of all the girls. She gets the best of everything. She gets servants of her own. It is an okay time, I guess, if you're going to be caught in a harem. I don't know. But yeah, I guess it's an okay time. She's kind of up there in the top of things and all is good. The 12 months pass. It's time to basically parade the girls out in front of Xerxes. And because this is the story of Esther, you kind of guess what happens. The parading happens. They get to Esther and it all stops. Because the king takes one look at Esther, is bowled over by her beauty. And lo and behold, he walks up and he puts the crown on Esther's head. And she is now the queen of Persia. And they hold a huge banquet to celebrate all of this. So just to make sure you're with me, we have King Xerxes. We have King Xerxes who basically says bye-bye to Queen Vashti because he can, right? And then we now have Esther who is queen, and we have Xerxes who is absolutely smitten with Esther. I like that word. That's why I used it. Smitten. It's just kind of a good word. And if you don't know what it means, for those of you in here that are younger, go look it up because it's fun. It is. It's just a fun word. And then we have Mordecai who is hanging out outside of the king's palace at what they call the king's gate because he wants to check in periodically on his Esther and make sure she's doing okay. And it's at the king's gate that we meet our final character in the story of Esther. And his name is Haman. Haman is the king's right-hand man. He is the top of the top. He has got the king's ear. And if we go back to Disney references, for those of you guys that are familiar with Jafar, he is Jafar. He's going to do everything in his power to keep his power and to manipulate the king. Now, inside of the story of Esther, there's another little story that runs in the underneath side between Haman and Mordecai. I don't have time to go into that, but I suggest y'all read it because it's great. It really is. It's worth your time, I promise. But let us just suffice to say that Haman did not like Mordecai, and Mordecai did not like Haman. And actually the word here, which, you know, in my house when my kids were growing up, we always said we don't use the word hate. Like it's not a good word. In this case, that's actually a good descriptor of the relationship between Haman and Mordecai. They just despised each other. And so what happens in this moment is we have years that passed, and somewhere in there, about five years into Esther's reign, this ongoing feud, for lack of a better term, between Mordecai and Haman comes to a head. And Haman just decides that it is time for Mordecai to go. I'm done with you. But the thing is, is it's not just Mordecai. He decides that because Mordecai is Jewish, it needs to be all Jewish people that go. And remember I said he has the ear of the king. And so lo and behold, Haman goes into the king and he says, Hey, king, there's this group of people that live in the empire. They're not like us. They don't follow our rules. They don't do. And they're going to be a threat to us here before too terribly long. So we need to get rid of them. We need to annihilate them. We need to take them out. He wasn't talking about just slavery. He was talking about killing all of them. And so he says this to King Xerxes. And remember, King Xerxes is like, Haman's his right-hand dude, right? Oh, sure, go ahead. I'll even pay for it. Go on. So this decree is drawn up. It's sent out to all of the Persian Empire, and it states that on a specific day in time coming forward, they are going to kill all of the Jewish people living in the Persian Empire. Done. Well, the people living in the Persian Empire, the Jewish people living in the Persian Empire at this point in time had kind of assimilated into the culture. And so they hadn't been causing any trouble, really. This is because of Mordecai. And so they get this information about the fact that they're soon to be killed and they don't know what's going on. So there's a whole lot of weeping and a whole lot of lamenting. And if you know anything, tearing of clothes and wearing of sackcloths. This is the picture we get of our Mordecai standing outside of the gate. And the message gets in to Esther that Mordecai is in bad shape outside of the gate. And so she sends a messenger and says to Mordecai, hey, Mordecai, what's wrong? What's going on? He sends in a copy of the decree and he says in his message to, it's time for you, Esther, to go speak to your husband on behalf of your people. Well, then Esther sends a message back out to Mordecai and says, hey, Mordecai, I'm not sure if you've heard this or not, but anybody who happens to walk inside to speak to the king and doesn't have permission gets killed. And my husband and I have not spoken in like 30 days. So I'm not quite sure he wants to see me at this point. And so then Mordecai hears this and sends back a message to Esther. And y'all, by the way, offside here, would you like to have been that messenger? Like back and forth. Could they not have figured out how to talk to each other? Oh, well. But here they go. So here goes this messenger, goes back into Esther with a message from Mordecai. And the message from Mordecai is basically, and y'all remember, this is my paraphrase, but he's like, hey, Esther, you know that crown and those beautiful robes you have? Well, on the day of annihilation, that's not saving you. It's not. You are still a Jewish woman. You're going to be killed. And have you not thought about the fact that somehow, someway, you are the queen for such a time as this? There's something in those words from Mordecai that prick Esther's heart. And Esther stops in her tracks. And her response back to Mordecai is, I will, basically. And her whole thought process on this one is, I need you to do something for me first. I need you to gather all of the Jewish people together, and I need you to fast. And I'm going to fast for the next three days. And I'm going to get my ladies around me, and we're going to fast. And at the end of those three days, I will go see the king. And if I perish, I perish. Y'all, this is one of the reasons why I adore Esther so much. Like here she is, she's at this moment of time, she's made her decision, and she just says it. If I perish, I perish. It sounds like something out of like Gone with the Wind. Do y'all remember the end of the something about, yeah, it doesn't matter. But it's all, there's so like, here she is. It's this moment in this story of being this heroine. And she's like, if I perish, I perish. So at the end of three days, she gets dressed in all of her royal garb and she goes to the edge of the king's court and she stands there. Zerch sees at the other end of the court, he looks up and he sees his beautiful queen and he immediately hands her the golden scepter, which allows her to walk in and to speak to him. And he says to her, my queen, what is it that you want? Up to half of my kingdom I will give you. And so here you expect her to say, hey, save my people, right? This is the expectation. It's time. Like she's there. It's time. No. Her response is, I want to have a banquet. What? Food, drink, what? But she says, I want to have a banquet with you and Haman and me, just the three of us. King says, okay, fine. Next day, there's a banquet. The king, the queen, Haman, everybody eats, everybody drinks. It's a great time. At the end of it, though, Xerxes looks at her again, and he's like, hey, queen, what can I do for you? If it's, you know, up to half my kingdom, it's yours. It's her moment to shine again, right? It's here. And what does she do? She asks for another banquet. Again, just her and Haman and Xerxes. And her beautiful husband obliges her and says, sure, so here we go. 24 hours later, it's another banquet. This time around, it's just, again, the three of them sitting around eating, drinking. And y'all, I can imagine Haman at this point, right? Our power-hungry little villain. He's sitting back going, this is banquet number two. Just me and the king and the queen. Like, how cool am I? How powerful am I? This is the best of the best. And I can almost imagine that he's like at the end of the meal sitting back. Maybe he's got his feet up on the table because that would be a Haman kind of thing to do, I think. Feet up on the table, rubbing the belly like, I'm good, y'all. I'm so good. And somewhere in this moment, though, King Xerxes says to Esther, again, what is it that you want? Up to half of my kingdom, and it's yours. And this time, this time Esther responds and says that she wants her and her people saved. Okay, Haman's feet just fell off the table, by the way. Because all of a sudden, Haman is exposed for who Haman is. Because guess what? He knows what's coming next. The king gets furious. Who did this to you? And the queen's response is Haman. And so lo and behold, because this is one of those really cool stories where the good guys win, right? What happens? Haman is executed because of his crimes against the queen. And then all of his things are given to Esther. Esther gives all those to Mordecai. In turn, Mordecai then gets elevated to Haman's position. So he's now second in command in the kingdom. And all is right in the world, except for one thing. Unfortunately, when the king makes a decree in Persia, it's irrevocable. So that little decree that says that the Jewish people are going to die is still sitting out there. And so Esther comes to her king again and says, hey, what can we do? And he says, you and Mordecai figure it out and fix it. And so Esther and Mordecai come up with this brilliant idea that says, guess what? On that day, the Jewish people, y'all can defend yourself. So if somebody comes after you to kill you, you can defend yourself. So kind of think about that one. If you're a Persian person, yeah. So needless to say, the day comes and lo and behold, there is unfortunately bloodshed on both sides, but the Jewish people are far from annihilated. And I can honestly say that all was right in the kingdom at that point. So, wow. That was a lot. Thank you for hanging in there with me as we tried to do the flyover. And didn't I tell you all a whole lot of mystery and intrigue and suspense? And it's all good. It's one of the things that I love about it. But if I were to say to you what was missing from that story, or better yet, who was missing? Y'all, this story is in the Old Testament, and it sits right in between Nehemiah and Job, if you're flipping through pages. But guess who's never mentioned in this story? It's God. It's the only book out of the 66 books of the Bible that God has never mentioned. But in my opinion, God's fingerprints are all over this story. I see him as being a master weaver of the story of Esther into his story. Now, I am a needle pointer, not a weaver. And so the idea of master needle pointer didn't work in this example. So we're going with Weaver, but I'm going to use needle point as an example. So just bear with me. It's one of those days, y'all. It's just one of those days. So in needle point, you start with a piece of canvas and it's blank. And then you have all of these different threads of different colors that you use in your picture, in your needlepoint. And they get woven in. And so you start with one color, and you start it on its path. And then you add another color in, and then you add another color in. Each one of them has their own path, has their own pattern. Well, each one of them individually is a different color. And so like if we think about the story of Esther and God's blank canvas, you know, you've got Queen Vashti, and you've got, oh who, Xerxes, and Esther, and Mordecai, and Haman. And they all have their different colors. And we start this process of weaving them into this canvas. And then all of a sudden, they start to overlap. And they mix together. There may even be moments when you see knots start to form in this story. But the thing is, is that these seemingly unrelated, meandering lines and threads of different colors are really the master weaver putting together Esther's story and weaving it into his story and the story of his people. So give me one second here and let's go back quickly and look at the Esther story, but using the lens of having the master weaver attached to it. You have King Xerxes, who we know loves all things beautiful. We have Haman over here, who we know hates the Jewish people. We know what his plan is, right? We know he wants to annihilate God's people. We have a queen in place, but we need a different queen in order to make sure that God's people get saved. So what does God do? Well, Vashti disappears. There's a beauty pageant of all things that happen because we know Xerxes loves beauty. There's a beauty pageant that happens which then gets our orphaned Jewish girl to be queen of the large ruling empire of the time. Y'all, there's no other way but God that that girl would have ended up as queen of Persia. Esther is beautiful. Esther finds favor. Mordecai sits as her trusted advisor, loving on her, and is there as the person who actually gets through to her about what her purpose is. And her purpose at that moment is to stand before her king and plead for her people. And you know, throughout all of this, Esther has not known what her purpose is. And even when Mordecai says to her, oh, by the way, you need to go in and you need to plead for your people. Esther's only response to that was what? We're going to fast first. And I don't want you guys to miss this because this is the part to me that was so very cool as well in the Jewish faith when you fast what else do you do you pray so to me that said Esther is this sweet Jewish orphan who's now queen who doesn't know what her plan nor her purpose is, but she does know who her God is. And she trusts in him. Sorry. She trusts in him. She prays, and then she takes that step of faith, even if it meant the end of her life. So the other thing to see here too is I look at that section with the whole interaction between the king and the queen and the banquets and y'all seriously we know Xerxes had a hair-trigger temper. We know all those things about him, and yet he indulged Esther. And then he comes back and three different times asks her, what is it that you want? And she says, a banquet. But he could have just given up on the first one, and it would have been done. But no, God is in this moment prodding and pushing and saying, ask her again. There's something important coming. So God just continues to take what we think are these seemingly unrelated moments and weave them together to create these beautiful stories. He does it for Esther, but y'all, he does it for us too. Harris and I got married. There were three guys in our wedding that we knew in high school, which doesn't seem like a big deal, except if I were to tell you that I didn't know Harris when I was in high school. Think about that one for just a second. We went to the same school, and I was actually a year in the class ahead of him, so we were in different classes. Went to the same school, in different classes, but we somehow had a lot of friends that were similar, but we never met each other. I graduated. I went off to the University of Kentucky. Harris graduated. He came back here, because North Carolina is home for him, and went to East Carolina. I took a little detour and went to South Carolina. And thankfully, God showed me that, y'all, South Carolina, for those of you that like it, I'm so excited for you, but I hated it. I made it six months. That was it. I was like, I'm done. I am done. I am going home. And so I went back to Kentucky, and I'm there. And about a year after I had returned to Kentucky, one of those mutual friends from high school found it fit to introduce Harris and I to each other. And two years later, we're married, and somewhere in there made the decision to, as Harris would tell you, move back to the promised land. To him, this is the promised land. This is where family was, etc. I, on the other hand, was like, I kind of like Kentucky. My family's here, et cetera. But I stepped out in faith and went. Harris's family enveloped me as their own. Harris's mama, who I can't look at, she's sitting in the front row, and I didn't know that when I was doing this. But Harris's mama was very, very instrumental in my faith walk. And so then from there we find grace. And then from there our kids are raised here and you know, so on and so forth. And I'm now standing here before you guys, but there's a whole lot of meandering threads in mine and Harris's story that if those hadn't, if God hadn't been weaving in them, we wouldn't be, this wouldn't be our story. I wouldn't be standing here before you today and Zach and Zoe wouldn't be around. So like God is in the middle of all of these seemingly unrelated moments. He's building a beautiful, beautiful tapestry. And then your tapestry becomes part of his huge tapestry, his big story. So don't ever forget that. Yours is part of his. And so if I were to say to you guys, what is it that you do when you feel like God is absent? When you feel like you're in the middle of Esther's story and you're just reading it and God's name's not mentioned, what is it? When you're in the middle of a pandemic, or maybe you're in the middle of the season of life where you're caring for a bunch of young kids, young children, or maybe you're caring for aging parents. Maybe you're in the middle of a loss. Maybe it's just a dry season for you for whatever reason. What do you do? I want to ask you to ask yourself two questions. Question one is, are you willing to trust? Are you willing to trust him in even those darkest moments like Esther did when she walked into that harem? Because scripture tells us that he will never leave us nor forsake us. Do you hold on to that and do you trust in that? And the other one to ask is, are you willing to step out in faithful obedience? Even when you cannot see that big picture. Like what Esther did when she said, if I perish, I perish. And she walked in to see her husband. That, y'all, was that step of obedience. And she did it because she knew her God. And she trusted him. So, in this beautiful tapestry that has its chaos and its knots and what looks like seemingly unrelated threads, do me a favor. Turn it over and see it as your God sees it, as he has woven it together to tell his story and your story. Will y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you that you have given us these spectacular ladies of the Bible and stories like Esther that just show us that even when we feel like you aren't there, if we feel like we can't see you, that really and truly you are there. You're in the background. You're taking what we feel are just these random moments in time and this chaos that can be our lives, but you're taking it and you're molding it and you're weaving it together for your good, for your purposes, so that we, as your kids, can bring you glory. And so we just ask that in those moments that we trust you, that we walk in faithful obedience to what it is that you would have us to do. And most of all, Lord, we just thank you for loving us. And it's in your son's mighty name that we pray. Amen.

Thank you, guys. Thank you, band. Thank you, Jordan, for the scripture reading this morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. It's so good to see everybody. You know, normally I've been making a very intentional choice to try not to differentiate between the in-person crowd and the online crowd, because I want folks who are not able to attend in person to feel no guilt or feel like second-class citizens for choosing to watch online, because I understand that's a necessity for a lot of you. But I will make an exception this morning and say that if you are here in person on Time Change Sunday, showered and attractive in appearance, you are a better Christian than the people who are at home watching. That's just how it goes. And I want you to know that. That's an encouragement to you from your pastor. This is week two of our series called Greater as we move through the book of Hebrews together. And it's called Greater because the author of Hebrews approaches the book through a lens of comparisons, of four main comparisons. Last week was a comparison to angels. We didn't get there. I don't regret it. You can read it in the Bible yourself. I think where we ended last week was more necessary and effective for the church. And this week we arrive at this comparison with Moses. And because of the way I'm wired, once I finish one sermon, I immediately begin to think about the next one because it's just, that's the life of the pastor. It's coming up in a week. You better get it together, pal. You got this many days to do the next one and do your thing. And so normally I finish prepping a sermon on a Wednesday or a Thursday, which means Thursday afternoon of last week, my mind immediately starts to work on this sermon that I'm giving you this week. And I know that it's on Moses. So I'm working out in my head this comparison to try to help us understand how important Moses was to the Hebrews in this culture. You'll remember that the letter of Hebrews was written to Hellenistic Jews who had converted to Christianity. So remember, a Hellenistic Jew is a Jewish person who grew up practicing Judaism or the Jewish faith, and then at some point or another converted to Christianity. And they're called Hellenistic Jews because they live outside of Israel. They grew up in a Greek context while being practicing Jews and then converted to the faith. And it's important that we also remember from last week that the recipients of this letter were undergoing persecution from without and within, from the Roman Empire violently persecuting them for declaring their faith, and from within, from their own Jewish communities that were trying to lull them and lure them back into a Jewish faith to walk away from this new radical Christian faith that they were claiming. So as we approach chapter 2, he makes a comparison that we're going to read in a second of Jesus to Moses and makes the point that Jesus is greater than Moses. And to help a 21st century American church understand the weight of this comparison. I was working on an illustration in my head that had to do with the framers of the Constitution and the original document of the United States and trying to figure out which founding father is Moses most like, which I've landed on George Washington, even though that is a perilous stance, I understand. But this is where I am. So I'm working all this out in preparation for the sermon. And then I sit down on Tuesday and really start to get into the text to figure out how I'm going to marry all the pieces together. And I read through chapters 3 and 4. And I realize the comparison that the author of Hebrews makes of Jesus to Moses is an important one, and we will look at it. But it's really a jumping off point to another comparison that he makes of the people of Hebrews to the ancient Hebrews in the desert. And that comparison actually allows us to apply this text to our lives today and is going to give us today a plea and an encouragement about our faith that I hope will inspire us and help us walk out the door more determined than ever to continue to walk in our Christian faith. And what I found in these chapters is actually this beautiful message of encouragement that I hope inspires you this morning. But to get there, we need to start where the author starts at the beginning of chapter 3 and look at the comparison that he makes between Jesus and Moses. And then I think what we'll do is we'll find something unexpected in the following text. Look with me in Hebrews chapter 3, verses 3 through 6. If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to be all over chapter 3 and a little to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope. So let me explain what's happening in these verses as he begins this comparison to Moses. He brings up Moses because, again, the audience is trying to be lured back into their old faith, into their heritage. And the author of that faith is presumed by the Jewish people to be Moses. He's the founding father of their faith. You can make a good argument for Abraham, but Moses is the one that wrote the first five books of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible are called the books of Moses, the books of the law that were authored by him. He's the George Washington. To a Hebrew person, Moses is what George Washington is to an American, like the founding father. This is the guy. That's how we understand him. We still look back on him. He was one of the framers of the Constitution. He helped with all that stuff. And like Thomas Jefferson, he's like a combo platter there. But that's the reverence that they had for him times like 10. He's the framer of everything that they believe. They would have said that Moses was the framer of the religion that they practiced. And what the author of Hebrews is saying is, no, no, no, no, no. He didn't frame this house. He didn't start that religion that they're trying to lure you back into. He didn't write those rules himself. That came from God. God built that house. He gets the honor from that. And the house isn't even the laws that you follow. The house is you. The house is the church. We are the kingdom of God and the body of Christ. The house persists now, 2,000 years later on a whole different continent. That's the house. And Moses wasn't the builder of the house. It's actually kind of shocking that he would say this. He's a servant in the house. But the beautiful part is, if Moses could be there in the audience hearing this read aloud, because that's what they would do with these letters, is they would, the pastor, the equivalent of the pastor would stand up and read the letter to them. And if Moses were in the audience hearing that letter, he would go, amen, I'm just a servant, you guys make too big of a deal out of me. I was just doing what God asked me to do. Jesus is the one that we should focus on. And so he sets their expectations from the very beginning by saying, it's not Moses that we should focus on. It's Christ. Christ is the framer of the house. You are the house. And Moses is no different than you. He's a servant within the house. We're cut from the same cloth. Peter tells us that you and Abraham, you and all the heroes of our faith are hewn from the same quarry by God. We all have the stuff in us of Moses. There was nothing special about Moses. Moses murdered a dude, went and hid out in the wilderness for 40 years, and then was called by a bush that wouldn't stop being on fire. And he argued with God five times until God finally says, just go do it, man. It says the wrath of the Lord was kindled against Moses, so then he went, okay? He stepped into the role that God asked him to play, but there's nothing fundamentally different about Moses than you. He was just obedient. He was a servant in the house. And this is what the author of Hebrews is setting up. But after he sets this up, he pretty much leaves the topic of Moses. It's kind of dumbfounding if you think about it. You think you're about to enter into this discourse about Moses. I've got this whole thing in my head about, okay, yeah, good. Let's dive into this Moses thing more. And I'm trying to figure out why does it matter to the American church, to the 21st century church, that Jesus is greater than Moses? Because listen, you all know that's not a new thing for you. You're not having a problem about which one to prioritize like they were. But then as you read the rest of the chapter, the comparison of Jesus to Moses is really not his focus in these next two chapters. He really jumps to another comparison that encourages them in a unique way and I think encourages us today. And so what we see is that Hebrews 3 and 4 are designed to be an encouragement by comparison. And not by comparison of Jesus to Moses, but by a comparison of generation to generation. He's not really going to belabor the point about Jesus being superior to Moses and all the ramifications of that. He jumps right from Moses into talking about the perils that were faced by the generation of Moses and the perils that are being faced by the Hebrews in this generation that he's writing to now. And I think that if we pay attention, then we can be encouraged in the same way the Hebrew audience was encouraged. He jumps right into this discourse that's summed up at the end of chapter 3. Chapter 3, verse 16 through chapter 4, the first verse. Chapter 4, 1. When we look at this verse, this is a good summary of what's going on in these two chapters. And I'm going to read it, and there's a good chance that a lot of us won't really know what any of it means. But then I'm going to explain it for several minutes because I really want us to understand what's going on here. In the time of Moses, you guys are probably familiar. If you go all the way back, second book of the Bible, you can read through the story of Moses. It is one of the most prolific stories in the Bible. If you've never read it, I would highly encourage you to do it. At my house, we have gotten into the habit of telling Lily a Bible story almost every night before bed. Before you go, oh man, that's impressive. We just started it like three weeks ago, okay? Because I realized I am way behind the eight ball in teaching the Bible to my own kids, so we need to get this started. And we started into the story of Moses, and I told it to her in like six parts, and she loves it. And it's really hard to tell the story of Moses to a five-year-old dodging, dancing through, like there is the inconvenient part about God killing the firstborn of all the Egyptian people. Probably not going to cover that with a five-year-old yet. So you kind of pick the parts that you can share, but we've walked through the story of Moses and she's compelled by it and I think you would be too. So if you never read it, you need to do it. And in the story of Moses, what we find is that after his time in the desert, God tells him, calls him through the burning bush, go back to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. The Hebrew people had lived as slaves in Egypt for 400 years, generation after generation of slaves. They never knew what it was to be free. And so Moses takes his brother Aaron, goes back to Pharaoh, insists that Pharaoh lets his people go. Pharaoh refuses. Then we have the 10 plagues that culminate in Passover that we still celebrate to this day. And Pharaoh lets the people go. The armies of Egypt who are in pursuit of the people perish in the Red Sea. And now they are in the desert and they're wandering through the desert for 40 years. And they're wandering through the desert until God feels like it is time for them to enter into the promised land. You've probably heard that phrase, the promised land. We throw it around in pop culture meaning different things in different places. But it really means the land that was promised to the descendants of Abraham. Back in Genesis 12, God makes three promises to Abraham. One of them is land. Your people will inherit this land on which you are standing, which is the land of Canaan, modern day Israel. And so they are working their way back to the promised land. And the way that it's phrased in Hebrews chapters three and four, the author talks about entering into that land as entering into rest. Because it's this idea of when it was Abraham and his family, they were nomads. They didn't set up permanent camp. They didn't have civilization to set up camp in Israel then. And eventually they had to move down to Egypt because of famine. And then in Egypt they lived as slaves. And now they're wandering around in the desert for 40 years, unpacking their stuff, setting up their tent, doing life for a couple of days, and then packing everything back up and moving down the road. Can you imagine trying to do that with elderly people and with children and how difficult that way of life would be? So 400 years of being slaves, 40 years of living in the desert, these people were not a people who knew what rest was. And so he says you're going to enter into rest because now you can finally, you can cross over the Jordan River, you can go into the promised land, you can build a permanent home, all the women can nest and do the things. I'm sure there was ancient Hebrew Kirklands where you could go buy all the clutter that you wanted and put it on your shelf, and now my house looks great. And they wanted to do this, and the men could go outside and work in the yard and all the stuff. Now we can set up camp, and we can do life, and we can just rest. And that's good. But all of that, while it was literally going on for the Hebrew people at the time of Moses, they were wandering through the desert, and there were struggles in the desert, and they were anticipating entering rest, entering into the promised land, and when they got there, they could finally rest. All that was literally true, but it's also one big, long metaphor for your salvation. The time in Egypt under slavery is when we are slaves to sin. It's a part of our life when we don't know Jesus. When we don't know who it is, we have no choice but to sin. Romans at length, in Romans, Paul tells us about how we are slaves to sin. We have no choice but to do evil, even when we want to do good. And then once we come to know Jesus, we're freed. We skip like a calf loosed from its stall, says Malachi. We're free to walk in the freedom of Jesus and to follow him. But in that freedom, we're in the desert. We're in life. We're going to face trials and struggles. We just talked about that in Ecclesiastes. But if we persevere, we will enter into the promised land. We will enter into God's rest. If you were here or paying attention in January, you'll remember that we did a whole week on Sabbath and what it means. And that this Sabbath rest is really a picture and a reminder of the eternity that waits on us after death, this eternal rest that we enter into with God. And I even in that sermon referred to Hebrews 3 and 4 and talked about the rest that this author describes. And so it's important to understand as we think about that story of Moses, they were intentionally taken through those seasons to mimic the seasons of your life, your time before Christ, and your time with Christ in this life in the desert when we're still not in eternity yet, and then entering into God's rest in eternity, spending eternity in heaven with God in the promised land. It's a metaphor for you and me. Do you understand? And it's important to understand that because one of the things that happened in the desert was that people would groan and complain. They were fed every day by manna. They would wake up in the morning and manna had fallen from the sky and that's what they ate. And the word manna literally in Hebrew means, what is it? We don't know what it is. It's just this nutrition brick that sits on the ground and everybody eats it. And as I was telling this story to Lily, she said, what's manna? I said, it's just a thing. Like we don't really know what it is. And she was like, I would get tired of that. I would want God to give me other food, like chicken nuggets and goldfish. That's what I want. And I thought, well, that's what the Hebrew people wanted too. They got ticked. God gave them quail and it made them sick. It's a whole different story. We didn't get into it. But they started to grumble, as would be natural. They were really thirsty sometimes. And they weren't being led to water. They're following a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and they're just hoping that maybe tomorrow is the day that we get to the oasis of the river and we can finally drink some more and we can fill our vats again. Maybe that's when that will happen. We're sick and tired of man and there's all these struggles of living out in the desert and if you put yourself in that life, you can understand very quickly why people would complain about that. But in their complaining, they began to betray God. In their complaining, they began to say things like, Moses, take us back to Egypt. We would rather be slaves than live in the desert with you because at least there we had access to water every day. At least there I could cook, like, I don't know, a radish. Like, at least we had options back in Egypt. This stinks. One time they got so fed up with life in the desert that while Moses was away, they pulled all the gold that they had stolen from the Egyptian people and melted it down and fashioned it into a golden calf because they thought maybe this God will take better care of us in the desert than our current God. And they began to betray the very God that brought them out of slavery. And so this is what the author of Hebrews is referring to. When he talks about the people in the desert that failed because of unbelief, what happened was because they didn't believe, because they grumbled, Moses' generation that were the chief grumblers passed away. That's why God kept them in the desert for 40 years because he was waiting for that generation to go away so that the following faithful generation would be the one that would enter into the promised land. Those who grumbled and fell away and cursed God and built the golden calf and walked away in disbelief, those who walked away from their faith in the desert, they didn't enter into God's promised land. They never entered into God's rest. And so he's using that to encourage the Hebrew people in the first century A. Because they know the story very well. They know what happened in the desert. They don't need the robust explanation of these tight verses. Because they know good and well what happened to those people. They know what the author of Hebrews is referring to. And remember that they're facing persecution. They're facing violence and threats. If you proclaim Christ, they could take your life. They could arrest you. They could throw you in jail. They could harm your family. It was a really perilous time to be a believer. Their culture is ostracizing them and trying to woo them back to their old way of life, to what they would consider their heritage. You had to really, really want it to be a Christian. And you get the sense that there were some people within these churches to whom the letter was written that were falling away. You get the sense that these churches were going through a season of contraction, not expansion. You get the sense that it would have been really, really easy to just kind of quietly walk away from the faith and embrace an old way of life. And remember I told you last week that Hebrews is written to compel a persecuted church to persevere in their faith. And so in these chapters, he's trying to convince them to persevere by saying, remember the generation that came before you. Remember the story of your forefathers in the desert and how the ones who fell away, the ones who walked away from their faith, never entered into the promised land, never entered into God's rest. Well, now the same is at stake for you. Stay true to the faith, Hebrews. Don't walk away from the faith. Don't give in to persecution. Don't give in to ostracization. Don't give in to isolation. Stay true to the faith because there is a rest waiting for you. There is an eternity waiting for you. And he warns them at the end. He's imploring them and pleading with them. Hang in there. Don't give up on your faith. Don't walk away from God. I know it's hard. Stand firm in your faith. Look what happened in the previous generations. Don't you want to be the people who entered into the promised land instead of the people who perished in the desert, never experiencing God's rest. Hang in there. And I think that that's a remarkable message for us. The thing I love about that point, about what the author is doing here in chapters 3 and 4, is that it doesn't just apply to them. It doesn't just apply to this generation of believers. It applies to every generation of believers. This message echoes throughout the millennia since it was first preached to hang in there, to persevere in our faith. It applies to us as well. As a matter of fact, the biggest thing I take out of these passages is that your faith will never face a storm a previous generation hasn't weathered. Your faith, as you walk through this life, as you in a sense wander through the desert waiting for your turn to enter into the promised land, to enter into God's rest, your faith will not face a trial that a previous generation has not weathered. It is not unique to you. Consider the ones who came before you who persevered. If you have a godly parent or a grandparent, you stand on their shoulders, you watch them persevere. Do you think that their faith was always easy to them? Do you think that the spiritual heroes that you have in your life, that they didn't at some point in their life have a crisis of faith where they felt like walking away? I think now, as much as ever, there are those of us in our church. I mean, with the size church that we are, which is totally uncertain to me right now, there has to be people who feel like they're on the brink of just giving up on their faith. There has to be some of you here or watching or listening later in the week where 2020 has been really hard on your faith. I know that I had my own crisis of faith this year. I didn't realize it at the time, but when we had to go dark and only pre-record messages, and there was no people in the room when I would preach. At first, it wasn't that big of a deal to me because in my previous context at my old church, we used to pre-record our messages for our other campuses on Thursday every week anyways. We couldn't live stream. That was in the early times of live stream, and we just couldn't do it. And so it wasn't a big deal to me to come record a message in a room. That was fine. But it came to begin to feel like a performance instead of a spiritual exercise. And what I realized is when there's people in the room, when I get to look you in the eye, when I get to see head nods, when I get to sometimes see tears, when I know that the things that are connecting with me are also connecting with you, I feel like a pastor. I feel like I'm helping. I feel like I show up on Sunday morning, and maybe this isn't for everybody, and maybe everybody doesn't walk out of here going, man, Nate pitched a fastball today. Maybe you walk out going, that was terrible. That was the worst one he's ever done. But maybe for somebody else, it connected in such a way that was incredibly spiritually encouraging. And that's so much fun for me. That's so nourishing to me. And so in the week when I'm prepping and when I'm searching and when I'm praying, it's so helpful to me to know that when I get up and preach, it's going to be a spiritual exercise. If I've seemed more emotional since we've come back and began to gather again, that's why. Because when I just record onto a camera on Thursday or show up on Sunday with no one in the room, it just becomes a performance. And it was sucking me dry of anything spiritual that I had. And I don't say that for your sympathy. I say it so that you know I can offer you mine. So that if you've walked through a crisis of faith this year, that you know that you have company. The isolation that we felt this year, it would be really easy to fall away from faith. Matter of fact, my biggest fear in preaching this is that the people who need it most have already wandered off and are not going to hear it. And I would just say, if this is the first message you're listening to in a long time, this is why, pal. I'm glad you're here. I have spent a lot of time this year concerned about the people of our church beginning to drift away from God because the regularity of schedule hasn't been there that continues to draw us back into him. The meeting every week I think is powerful and effective. That's why we're told in Hebrews not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. There's an efficacy to that that I don't think we all the time understand on a head level. It's more of a soul thing. And the ease with which we could just simply drift away. Stop watching on Sunday and no one will know. Stop paying attention to small group because we're not meeting in person and we can't go anyways. Just how easy it would be to drift away from faith this last year has made me think that these chapters should resonate with us more deeply than maybe they ever have. And maybe some of us have walked through grief. Grief is always this big crucible of faith. I'm inclined to believe that faith isn't really mature and hardened and steadfast until it's walked through some sort of grief that makes you question the foundation of it. But then when we come through the other side of that strong, that's good, but some of us find ourselves in the middle of questioning. Some of us have doubts that we just continually push away and we never confront out of fear. And those work to weaken our faith. And you may be thinking, Nate, listen, man, yeah, sure, there's temptations to fall away from faith, but gosh, it's kind of difficult to compare us to those generations. Like, we're not wandering through the desert eating nutrition bricks every day, and we're not facing death and persecution for coming here on a Sunday morning. So take it easy on comparing us to that generation, and that's fair. But I actually think that all of us face a testing of our faith that those people never had to encounter. And I would actually argue with you that atrophy may be the biggest test of our faith. I think the atrophy of our faith may be the actual biggest test of our faith. I've been talking with some folks recently about sometimes I develop theories on life that are not really worth public consumption. But for the sake of an illustration, I'll share this one. I have this theory that our ability to handle stress and manage tasks atrophies as we get older and life doesn't require us to do as many things. So I think that if we go through life and we don't have daily demands on our schedule, we don't have problems that we have to solve, there's not stress that sits on us, that eventually what happens is our ability to manage tasks and to manage having full days and our ability to manage stress actually atrophies. So that when you get older, and I'm sorry, I'm going to get blowback from the generation that is my parents' age and older. I'm sorry. But what I've noticed is that sometimes you'll ask folks like, what are you doing Wednesday? And they're like, well, I was a kid. It's a busy day. I'm like, oh yeah, what are you doing? And they're like, well, you know, I gotta take my friend to the doctor at two. Okay, and then what? They're like, well, I'll probably just pack it in after that. All right, yeah, no, that's, get some good sleep on Tuesday, you know. And I think to them it feels full, but it's because for a long time they haven't had to have the fullness of schedule that I think, I would argue that when you have little kids and when you have kids in middle school, life demands a lot of you. Your capacity to handle stress and tasks is as high as it's going to get. But if you don't flex that muscle, it goes into atrophy so that taking a friend to the doctor at 2 o'clock feels busy. And that's fine. But it happens. I think our faith works the same way. I think when we're not forced to exercise our faith, it begins to atrophy. So that little tasks, little things that require little amounts of faith feel like these huge hills of godliness that we have to climb. Their life, the life of the people in these chapters, they required faith. Those people wandering through the desert, they don't make it through the day without faith. God literally lands food on their front yard every day. That requires faith to be hungry at night and believe that it's going to be there when I wake up in the morning. They're literally, they're formed in the desert. They're following a pillar of cloud by day and a fire by night. They have to trust that that pillar is actually God and is actually taking them where they wanted to go. At one point or another, there was snakes in the camp and if they would bite you, you would die. And the only way to not die was to look at a cross with bronze serpents on it and know that that was God's blessing to you. You had to look at that cross in faith. It's the only way to heal you from death. Every day of their lives required their faith. Some of them got tired of that exercise and walked away. For the Hebrew people, every day of their lives required that faith. God, I am going to go walk in your presence today. I'm going to go proclaim your name today, and I'm trusting you to protect me and to protect my family. And if you don't, I trust that's okay too. It required faith. It is entirely possible to be a good Christian and yet have a life that requires very little faith. Parents, you want your kids to be Christians. And here's the good news. Statistically speaking, kids that grow up in a Christian home with a mom and a dad who both love Jesus, they're going to love Jesus too. The statistics are on your side that that child will accept Christ as their Savior. And that's a good thing. That's the most effective plan for evangelism that's ever existed. I love that truth. But I would also argue that because that's true, it doesn't really take a lot of faith on our part, a lot of hitting our knees and pleading with God to reach the hearts of our children and to enliven them to him. Because if we just bring them to church and put them around other people who love Jesus, they're probably going to get on board too. Raising good kids doesn't require a lot of faith. But if you want to release adults into the world, unleash disciples of Jesus who will impact their community and draw others to faith like a magnet and go and spend the rest of their lives making disciples. If you want to release eternity changers into the wild, then you better hit your knees. You better pray over that because that task is too big for you. We need to live lives that require faith of us. We need to set goals for our children that aren't easily attained by just coming to church every week, but by requiring us, by compelling us to get on our knees and pray for them and pour over them during the week while they sleep in their beds. Let's go into their rooms and let's get on our knees and let's plead with God to make them exactly who he created them to be and let's plead that they're better than us and that we don't get in the way. That takes faith. You want to go to work? Be a good worker. Be a good employee, employer. Have a good influence on the people around you. That's great. You don't really need faith to do that. You can figure that out all on your own. We know how to play the game and say the right things and not cuss when we're not supposed to and not get mad when we want to be mad. We know how to do that. You want to be a pastor and evangelist in your workplace? You want the people who work around you to come to know Jesus because they see him shining through you? You want that person that when you started that job who is very far from God, who is a militant atheist, you want them to come to faith? You better do more than just show up and be nice. You better hit your knees and pray for them. Grace, listen, American Christians have this unique privilege of living lives that look like good Christianity that really require very little soul-searching faith of us. And I'm deathly afraid that because of that, our faiths have atrophied to a place where one task, where one little thing seems like a mountain climb of faith. I would implore you this morning, not just to persevere in your faith, but to choose to live lives that require it. To dream God-sized dreams about, not about things that you will accomplish, but about people that you can impact, about things that you see happen in the lives of those around you. Let's begin to live lives that require faith. Anybody can lead a small group by just showing up and having a discussion and being nice. It doesn't require any faith. But what about if you decide that you want to disciple these people and see them have vibrant spiritual lives and vibrant marriages and see them disciple their children and see them radically reprioritize your lives? Then we need to pray. Let's choose to live lives that require faith of us. The other encouragement that he gives is the one that we actually started with today that Jordan read for us. It's the lone encouragement he gives in the chapter or piece of advice he gives in the chapter. He basically says, hey, hang in there. Stick with it. Don't fall away like the people in the desert. Be like the people who entered into the promised land. Persevere in your faith. He givesverance is virtually impossible without community. Perseverance is virtually impossible without community. And I just included that word virtually there because I was scared to say totally impossible without community, but that's really what I think. And I love it. Brothers and sisters, encourage one another in your faith today as long as it is called today. Every day, encourage the people around you. You may be listening to this sermon and think, Nate, you know, listen, I know other people are faltering in their faith. I've certainly moved through those seasons in my life, but I feel good right now. Me and God, like I'm walking with God and there's things I need to improve on, but like my faith is strong and that's great. Use that faith to encourage the people around you every day as long as it's called today. If you're struggling in your faith, if it feels like I wrote this sermon for you, then I did. I'm just kidding. If it feels like I wrote this sermon for you, if you feel weak in your faith, then draw on the strength of others. Look at other people who might be weak and say, listen, we don't have this all figured out, but let's encourage each other. There's practical ways to encourage each other. I don't want to get caught up in doing that because you're smart adults and you can figure that out. But I will say that one of the things that I'm in the practice of doing when I'm really focused on God and when I'm pursuing Him well is in my quiet times and in my prayers, He will always bring people to my mind. Oftentimes it's folks I haven't thought about in a number of months or a year or more. And I try to be obedient to sit down and to text them or to sit down and write them an email and just let them know I'm thinking about them and I'm praying for them. And you'd be surprised the number of times I get an email back that says, man, I can't believe the Lord put you on my heart this morning. This is what I'm dealing with. So I would leave you today with two encouragements. Let the message from Hebrews 3 and 4 echo down through the millennia to you and hang in there with your faith. Persevere. Don't walk away. Face your doubts. Face your fears. Face your grief. Persevere in your faith. One of the ways we can do that is to live lives that require it. The other way that we do that is to encourage those around us to live out their faith today as long as it is called today. This is something I think that grace is so good at. Let's lean on our community and use our community not just to make people feel welcome, not just to make people feel loved, but let us use and leverage our community to encourage one another in our faith. Let's infuse our friendships with spiritual encouragement. And let's be obedient and inspired, obedient to and inspired by the message of Hebrews 3 and 4. My prayer for you this week is that if any of you are on the brink of walking away, if any of you have been struggling in your faith, that this would be a week that encourages you to hang in there. And that the people around you would come around you even without you saying anything to them and they would encourage you in your faith today as long as it's called today. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful for you. We are grateful for how big you are. We are grateful for how much you love us, for how much you strengthen us. God, I pray that we would see the shoulders that we stand on, the generations that come before us and the storms that they have weathered, that we would be heartened by that and that we would stand firm in our faith lest we fall away. God, for those of us for whom our faith is in atrophy, which is such an easy thing now, would you help us and show us how to choose lives that require faith? That force us to lean on you, knowing that if you don't come through, we will fall. God, we thank you for your son, Jesus. We know that it is in him that we can hope, that that is the hope that will not put us to shame, that that is the faith that we can have. I pray that if anyone doesn't know who he is, that they would today. For those of us who do know God but are tempted to walk away, would you help us to stand firm, pick us up by attending angels and draw our souls near to you even as we sing here in a minute. It's in your son's name that we pray these things. Amen.

Well, it's good to see everybody here. It's good to see or thank you for joining us online. I don't know why, but I feel compelled to share this with the church. Every week, I thank folks for joining us online, and I think that this is actually pretty fun. So, I think it was Christmas Eve. It was either December 23rd or 24th. I got an email from a woman in Chicago named Heidi. Good morning, Heidi. Thank you for watching. And she said, I've been wanting to write this email for a long time. It's about time that I tell you that you're my pastor. She said that somehow or another, she found us online in the summer during quarantine and started watching sermons and watching worship and things like that, and told me that this had been her church for a long time. She is a partner of Grace. She lives in Chicago. She watches online every week. We are now multi-state, so no big deal. Yeah. So thanks, Heidi. If we could all long-distance high-five you from a safe social distance, we would, but we're glad that you're a part of the family. This morning, we are starting our new series called Greater. It is a study through the book of Hebrews, and it will surprise you to know that I am particularly excited about this series. I love the book of Hebrews. I have an adoration for this book that I've always wanted to cover it, and it just hasn't worked into the rhythm of our series, and now here we sit, and I'm so excited to do it. I've been planning this one since the fall, even in how we would approach it. And in Hebrews, what we find, and we'll talk about this more, but what we find in Hebrews is this soaring picture of Christ. What we see there in the book is this high view of Jesus, where the author goes through a very carefully crafted argument and presentation to share with us exactly who Jesus is and exactly why he's worthy of our dedication. And he does this through the lens of really four big comparisons. He compares Jesus first to angels and then to Moses and the law, and then he compares Jesus to priests, and then he compares Jesus to sacrifices. And his conclusion in each of these comparisons is, this is why Jesus is greater. And so we're going to move through those comparisons. And then we're going to take two extra weeks to pull out two big themes, one big theme in the book of Hebrews, and then we're going to end in what is one of my favorite passages that I circle back to, both in the way that I pastor and in my private life all the time. So I'm really thrilled to get into this series with you. And as I approached the series and did the requisite research that, you know, half-decent pastors are supposed to do before they just get up here and wing it, as I dove into the research, it became apparent to me that there was really kind of two ways to approach this series and this book. And they're this. We could choose to mine Hebrews for application for ourselves, or we could make it our goal to understand the book of Hebrews. We could make it our goal to simply mine applications from the book, to open up the book and read it. Or we can make it our goal to understand the book of Hebrews, to be inspired by the book of Hebrews, to really let it move us and shape us and articulate our view of Christ. And hopefully, hopefully, and this is where we'll spend our time today, it will leave us with this soaring majestic picture of who Jesus is and who we serve. And it's okay to mine scripture for meaning sometimes. It's okay just to, when you mine it for application, what you do is you just, you grab a verse, you pull it out, we read it together, we look for application to us, something that can help us in the moment, we apply that and we go on. And we really don't have a working knowledge of the book of Hebrews, but we are inspired to move closer to God and he's exalted and that's all right. But sometimes it's worth it to do the work to understand what we're doing. And to do that work, you've got to understand the context and the background of this letter. You have to know who it was written to. You have to know the best you can the intention of the author when they wrote it. We've got to understand some cultural things going on around the recipients of this letter if we're going to begin to appreciate the message of this letter. And so I think it's worth it for us to take a morning and dive into understanding the background to this book and the thrust and intention of this book so that we can appreciate it as we move through it together. My hope is that you wouldn't just hear it from me on Sunday mornings. My hope is that maybe you'll talk about it in your small groups. My hope is that you'll read along with us. If you've been a part of Grace for any time at all, you've heard me about a year and a half ago, and I preached on reading the Bible, and I kind of issued a challenge. I said, you know, it should be a rite of passage for every Christian to have read the Bible cover to cover. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time, I know that feels intimidating. I know some of you are like, oh gosh, I could never do that. But listen, I'm just telling you, set it as a goal to work towards. And if you've already done it, do it again. It should be a rite of passage. I met a guy for drinks this week and we were talking and he was talking about how he makes his steak and I was talking about how I make my steak. And we said, what was the deal? And listen, my dad's going to watch this and whatever. But I said, what was the deal with our dads growing up that thought you made a steak by just throwing it on a grill and charring it and then slapping some A1 sauce on it? Like, steaks in the 80s were terrible. I don't know what was wrong with people and why we didn't take more pride in how we make steaks. But he said, man, making a good steak, that's like part of your man card, right? Like, you need this. That's something every man should be able to do. And it's true. I see some young fellows over here. Learn to make steaks, boys. It's going to serve you your whole life. It's the same with reading through the whole Bible. It should be a requisite for every believer that this is something that we have done. And so he responded to that challenge, and he emailed me, and he said, Nate, it's been, I was trying to read it through in a year, but it got to the point where I realized I was just doing it to check a box and not to really understand what was there. So I slowed myself down intentionally, but it's been about a year and a half, and I've read all the way through it, and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. So I would encourage you to begin a practice, to take back up the practice of reading Scripture every day and praying every day. We have a reading plan online, graceralee.org slash live. If you're watching online on our webpage, it's just down at the bottom of that page. It's a reading plan through the book of Hebrews. I would encourage all of you to be reading along with us as we pace it through the series. But we're going to this morning, as we approach this book, make sure that we understand the context and background of what's going on here. And so the first thing that's important to know is who it's written to. This book is written, the recipients of this letter were Hellenistic Jews under persecution. The recipients of this letter, this book is a letter, just like a lot of the New Testament, it's a letter, and it is written to Hellenistic Jews who are enduring persecution. Now, that may be the first time some of you guys have encountered that phrase, Hellenistic Jews, or maybe you're in a Bible study where somebody who was fancy used that term, and you just nodded your head like, yes, the Hellenistic Jews, and you had no idea who they were. Well, I'm going to help you out, okay? Hellenistic Jews are simply Jewish people who live in a Greek context. So it's basically, at this time, it's Jewish people who weren't from Israel. Okay, they were born in the surroundings. It's called the diaspora or the diaspora, the cities surrounding Jerusalem. There's Jewish communities in these cities or surrounding Israel. So as far over as Rome and even over towards Iraq, there's different cities. And inside those cities, they were all Greek-speaking cities because of the preponderance of the Roman Empire, and these Jews grew up in these Greek-speaking cities. So they're already a little bit out of place. They have their own religion. They are practicing Jews. We call that faith Judaism. That's them, okay? So it's just Jews outside of Israel, and they were believers. And so it's the case for most of these Jews that they grew up as practicing Jews. They grew up practicing the faith that is detailed for us in the Old Testament. And then right after the death of Christ, were compelled to believe in him and have now transitioned to becoming Christian Jews. We call them now in our culture Messianic Jews, but that's what they were. The only ones who didn't have this experience were maybe some of the younger bucks in the different tribes and in the different groups who were actually born into a family of Christian Jews. But for the most part, these are people who have all had a conversion experience in their life from Judaism to Christianity. They're also under intense persecution from within and from without. Now, I'm going to tell you why I'm saying that in a second, but they were under intense persecution. In the first century AD, in the years immediately following Christ, the Roman Empire was particularly hostile to this new faith. They were violently opposed to it. We've heard the terrible stories of Christians getting thrown into the arena and lions eating them. There was one emperor that used to tar Christians and use them as torches to light the path into Rome. Nero persecuted them heavily. They were a heavily persecuted church. In fact, the author of Hebrews gives us some insight into what it was like to be a believer at this time and even addresses some of the persecution that they were receiving from the Roman Empire. He writes this in chapter 11. He says, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. This was their experience. That first sentence, it says that they were flogged, they were beaten and tortured, and then they refused release because they wanted their torturers to just kill me now so I can go to heaven. They were stoned. In that culture, when you got stoned, what it meant is they tied your arms behind your back and pushed you off a cliff and dropped big rocks on you until you died. That was getting stoned. They were sawn in two. Did you catch that part? That's what it was to be a believer then. To publicly profess a faith in Christ was to invite that violence on yourself and your family. To do what I'm doing this morning is to invite this kind of violence on yourself. To do what you're doing this morning, to attend a gathering where we're going to preach and honor and worship Jesus, and by gathering, implied in your attendance is your approval of the message that I'm giving you, you now are at risk for persecution. I have a tremendous, that word doesn't even really cut it, admiration for the Christians in this time. Because if you ask me, Nate, would you continue to preach the gospel? Would you still have your job if this is what was at stake to have your job? If you might be tortured like this, would you continue to preach the gospel? And I could play you the tough guy card and say, yeah, bring it on. This is my calling. He is my Jesus. If I need to die for him, I will. And I don't even know if that's true. It's probably not. I would probably cower like a sissy. I would probably run away and hide. But then you start to threaten Jen and Lily if I do this? No. No, I'm not doing that. But they did. That's what it took to be a believer. That was just the persecution from without, from the Romans, from the Greeks that surrounded them. But they were persecuted from within as well because they've converted away from their Jewish community. So now the people that they grew up around, to the eyes of their family, they have betrayed their faith. To the eyes of their childhood friends, they have betrayed their heritage. And now they're ostracized within their own community. They have a hard time getting jobs. No one's going to come to their shop. No one's going to want to hire them. They have just their Christian brothers and sisters. So please understand that in this time, to choose to be a believer was to invite violence on you and your family, and it was to choose ostracization from your culture and choose a life of poverty and loneliness. That's what it took to be a believer. It's worth noting, and you can Google this, this is a tracked fact, that the church thrives the most when it is under the most persecution. Within a couple hundred years, Christ was, he was the center of the Roman Empire. Constantine ushered him in, made it legal, made it the predominant religion, and over half of all Romans worldwide claimed to be Christians within a few hundred years of this. It's amazing how the gospel exploded out of this environment. Under the most intense persecution, the church always does the best. Why? Because the barrier of entry is so high. There's no room for casual Christians in this time. If you're kind of on the fence, if you're not really like on fire for Jesus, if you don't have this thing that burns within you to love him and to obey God, then you're not going to church. The church actually historically does the worst. Grapples for power, becomes hypocritical, gets infiltrated by people who don't really believe, lets the doctrine wander in their heart for Jesus, wane when it's in positions of cultural prominence and the barrier of entry is incredibly low. That's when we begin to invite corruption and ego and everything that's so far from the Spirit of God. One of the things that we fight in the American church is that the bar of entry is so low that you can come to church for decades completely casual in your faith. I wonder what would happen to our churches if we began to be persecuted like this. We've heard cries over the last couple of years that the church is being persecuted. No, it's not. That's dumb. We're not being persecuted. And if we were, we'd shrink. I don't know if you guys would have a pastor. I don't know how many folks we'd have coming in if we were under this kind of persecution. But they were. And their faith was strong. This is the audience that the author addresses. This is the audience that he's writing to, this beleaguered and shrinking church. And I say the author because the reality is that no one knows who wrote the book of Hebrews. No one knows who wrote Hebrews. The early church, the very early church began to attribute it to Paul, but as early as 135 AD, we see record of those pastors and leaders beginning to question that. Because basically, if Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, then for just this letter, the Holy Spirit inspired him to write 400% better and more eloquently than he had in any of his previous writings. So it's probably not the case. Most scholars today no longer believe that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews. Whoever it was, was very likely a Hellenistic Jew, which is important because it gives them an intense knowledge of the inner workings of the Jewish faith because you cannot begin to understand this book unless you have an intimate knowledge of the Jewish faith. Unless you know the practices and the beliefs and what they hold dear and what they hold sacred, then this book really doesn't hit you like it should. It's a very good argument for why it's important for Christians to also study the Old Testament. It's a very important argument for why it's worthwhile to spend five weeks in the book of Ecclesiastes or four weeks in the book of Ecclesiastes, why we go back to Elijah, why we study the festivals in the Old Testament for a series. We need to do it so we can understand our New Testament better. And so the author was likely a Hellenistic Jew who had a good working knowledge of these things. They were very likely someone who was referred to as a second generation Christian, meaning they didn't receive the gospel from Jesus himself. They would have interacted with Jesus at some point in their life if their book is included in the canon, but they received their faith from somebody else. Somebody told them about Jesus. So it's actually one of the first products of witnessing and evangelism, which is pretty cool. And we don't know who wrote it. There's different theories out there. Some people say Priscilla, which I think is a pretty cool option. Others say Barnabas, which I think is just thrown in there because his name happens to be in the Bible. And so we say Barnabas, but there's really no compelling evidence to suggest Barnabas. Another one is Clement of Rome. And then I would put my money on Apollos when I can't wait to get to heaven and for Jesus to tell me that I am wrong and that my dad is right. I can't get my dad off of believing that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews. He will die in his ignorance one day and then in eternity it will be Apollos. But we don't know who wrote it. We don't know who wrote it. And if we read it, what we find is that there is a sweeping, soaring view of Christ. It's the best picture of Jesus, of the majesty of Jesus that we find in the whole Bible. The only thing I think that even compares is a little bit maybe John 1 and then some pictures of Jesus in Revelation, but Hebrews on the whole paints such an incredible picture of Jesus. And it's interesting to me that it paints this picture of Jesus because you would think, as you read it, and I have for years, that the reason for writing this book is to give the early church a solid picture of who Jesus is. Because we've talked about this a little bit before in here, that in these early years, before the Old Testament was done and in every church and everybody had access to it, the New Testament rather, there was some murkiness around Jesus and what to believe about him and exactly who he was. And so it would make sense that he wrote this letter, that the author wrote this letter to the Hebrew people in the diaspora to give them a more accurate view of who Jesus is. And it's true that that was in part his point. He did that. He does write to give an accurate view of who Jesus is, but that is just something that is serving the greater intention, which is this. The author's intent is to compel a persecuted church to remain true to their calling and persevere in their faith. He doesn't write just to give them a good picture of Jesus. He writes to compel a persecuted, beleaguered, shrinking church to remain true to their calling and to persevere in their faith. The church was shrinking. There were people who were looking around at what was happening to their friends and loved ones and going, I don't want that for me or my family. And so they would shrink back. Maybe they shrunk back and embraced Christ privately. Maybe they devoted themselves to him in secret and not in public. That would be very easy for us to do if we were faced with these choices. But they were falling away in numbers because of the violence that was being enacted on them. And their Jewish teachers, their old rabbis, and their families were continuing to make arguments against this Jesus and for the old way, for the old faith. And so they're being tempted not only to escape violence, but also tempted by being welcomed back into families and embracing an old faith. And they're receiving these arguments against this Jesus guy. And so the author of Hebrews writes to compel them, to compel the Jewish audience, no, no, no, no, no, please understand. This faith that they're trying to get you to come back to, this Judaism that they're trying to lull you back into, you need to understand that Jesus is the right and good fulfillment of all the things that you were taught when you were growing up. You need to understand that it's not a different religion, it's a continuation of the same one, that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the things you were taught growing up. Let me show you how. And then he makes those comparisons. And then for those tempted to fall away from persecution, he just exonerates Christ and continues to hold him up. It's actually pretty amazing to me how he chooses to start this letter in an effort to compel them to stay true and to stand firm. If you were tasked with writing that message, understanding what those people were going through at the time, I wonder how you would start your letter. I wonder what you would lead with. I wonder how you would form it. I'm not sure how you would. I'm not sure how I would do it. But he begins by painting one of the most sweeping pictures of Jesus I think I have ever read. And it feels different than the rest of the New Testament. The only statement I can think of that kind of compares is the way that John opens his gospel. I think it was last spring or spring before last, we went through the gospel of John. So you might remember that the gospel of John opens up like this. He says in John 1, in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made. It's this assertion right out of the gates that Jesus is God. He is king of the universe. He is part of creation. Without him, nothing was made. Through him, all things were made. He is the very word of God. It is this really bold assertion at the beginning of John's letter, but yet it, to me, pales in comparison to how the author of Hebrews opens up his letter. Listen to these words with me the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels, Man, I love that passage. Every time I read it, I get the chills. Every time I read it, I just kind of want to put my Bible down and let it kind of wash over me. When I sat down to begin to prepare for this week, as is my habit, I open up the Bible on Sunday afternoon or Monday and read the passage that I'm going to preach on and go ahead and get my brain kind of working on it a little bit. And when I read it this time, I just sat it down on my desk and looked out the window at the sky for a little while. I love this picture of Christ. And I think that one of the things that we do when we think of Jesus that does him a huge disservice is we think of Jesus like this. This is, I think, the image that we usually think of when we think of Jesus. This white dude with well-conditioned brunette hair and a well-trimmed beard and blue, compassionate eyes who was just meek and mild. Looks like he was just kind to everybody. That guy, by the way, was incapable. The way that that goofy guy looks, he's pretty incapable of fashioning a whip and clearing out a whole temple. But, you know, whatever. That's usually how we think of Jesus. Or we think of him maybe as beaten and bloodied on the cross for us. But we don't think of him as the author of Hebrews describes him. We don't think of him in those grand terms. And I love that sentence in the third verse. I love it so much. It says, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. He's the radiance of the glory of God? He's the exact imprint of His nature? I wanted to do some work this week to help you better understand what that meant. To come up with a metaphor or a way to explain what it means to be the exact imprint of the nature of God. To be the radiance of his glory. What is that like? How can we wrap our brains around that? And so to try to unpack that a little bit more, I started opening up the commentaries and read what people smarter than me wrote about it. And they wrote pages on these sentences. And I get into one of them and there is, he writes five pages alone on just verse three. And there's like this comparison chart of parallels with words that are used in other places in the Bible and cross references and dissecting out the Greek words and the tenses and the participles. And it's just all these pages of systematizing this great sentence. And man, it was gross. I hated it. I shut my commentary. I put it on the shelf and I thought, why do people read these dumb things sometimes? It was gross. This is maybe the most well-written book in Scripture. The author said what he meant. And he doesn't need my help explaining it to you. And it wasn't meant to be systematized like that either. We shouldn't write four pages on it to try to understand all the nuances of it. We should just let it wash over us. And so when he writes that Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, that may not be something that our minds can fully wrap themselves around. That may not be something that our mind adequately comprehends, but I've decided that that's okay because our soul does. Our soul feels the weight of that glory. Our soul knows that that's our Savior, that that's our Jesus, that our Jesus gave up the radiance of that glory for a little while to come, and it says there in verse 3, to make purifications for our sins, to come die on a cross and cover over us. And then he went back to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, where he sustains the universe with the power of his words. The only thing close we get to that version of Jesus is in Revelation 19 when he comes crashing down out of heaven on a white horse with fire coming out of his eyes and righteous and true tattooed on his thigh and he's coming back to wreck shop. It's the only thing close we get to that picture of Jesus that the author paints in Hebrews. And I think that we need to start thinking about Jesus more like that than like the Burnett ski instructor that we put in all of our pictures. And it's interesting to me, the centrality of Christ in Hebrews. It's interesting to me that this is what he chooses to hang his hat on as he tries to compel the church to stay together, to hold the line, to persevere. He doesn't have this, he doesn't guilt them into it. He doesn't try to win them over with this starting off with these sound arguments. He doesn't start off by threatening them. He just shows them Christ right out of the gates with who this Jesus is. He is the radiance of the glory of God that he holds up the universe with the power of his words. He is the imprint of his nature. He starts with Jesus. How does he compel and inspire a shrinking and fatiguing church to come back to faith? By showing them who Christ was. By painting for them the best picture of Christ that may have ever been painted. And it speaks to me a little bit about folks in our life. If we want people who we know and love to come to know Jesus, then maybe we should simply show them who he is. If we have people, neighbors, family members, friends, coworkers, and we want them to know Jesus too, maybe we should simply show them who Jesus is. That's what the author of Hebrews does. Maybe we should show them in our words and in our action and in our spirits the majesty of our Savior. Maybe we should compel them with the picture of Christ that our life paints so that they're as compelled to follow Jesus as these Hebrews were. And it begs the question, how, and this is me included, this is a very intentional we here. How can we compel people with a picture of Jesus if our picture of him is so very impoverished? How can we compel others with the majesty of our Savior if we aren't swept up with him as well? How can we compel others with the majesty of Jesus if we're not reading through the Gospels every year? How can we compel others with the majesty of Christ if we don't know it ourselves, if we don't pursue it ourselves, if we aren't enlarged and fulfilled by Jesus ourselves? If we only think of him as the meek and mild teacher that broke bread and handed it out to people, and we don't think about him as the radiance of the glory of God. And I don't mean to demean the person that Jesus was. I'm just saying that that's a limited view of who he now is. He came and he did what he came to do. He purified your sins. And then he went back to be who he is. And we forget about that Jesus. How will people ever see him in our lives, in our words, in our actions, in our thoughts, in our spirit, if we aren't swept up with who Jesus is too. So that's my prayer for you. It's my prayer for me. That as we go through this series, as we look at the book that paints a soaring picture of who Jesus is. That we, like the Hebrews, would be compelled by this letter. My prayer for you is that your view of Jesus is enlarged this spring. My prayer for you is that by the time we get to Easter and we talk about him as the greatest sacrifice, that your heart is soaring knowing that that is your Savior and that that is your Jesus. My prayer for grace is that the book of Hebrews would work in us to so enlarge in our view of Christ and our desire for him that we will be different for having gone through this book. And I've got more points to make in the sermon, but I don't want to make them. I just want to finish there. Let's make that our prayer for ourselves. That like Hebrews, like the author intended, we would allow this portrayal of Christ to so enlarge and enliven our hearts that the people around us would see him in us and that they would be compelled to look towards him as well. Will you pray for that with me? Heavenly Father, thank you for your son. Thank you for who he is. Thank you for what he did. Thank you for the purification of our sins, Jesus. Jesus, we repent of our paltry view of you, of our limited view of who you are and what you did and what you're doing. Father, if there are Christians wandering from you who for different reasons entirely, but much like the Hebrews, are tempted to fall away from you, are fatiguing in their faith, would you use this exploration of this book to draw them near to you? Would we be compelled by the picture that is painted of Christ on these pages? And Lord, would you give me the words and the wisdom to do justice to such a great letter? Enlarge in our hearts towards you. Change us forever. And it's in Jesus's name that we pray. Amen.