Sermons tagged with Promise

Merry Christmas everybody! My name is Fort and I'm a junior partner at Grace. Now come and join me. This is going to be the best Christmas Eve service ever! I can't wait! I know because I've been here at Grace for my whole life. Thanks for watching. Merry Christmas, everybody. Bye. Well, Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope that you'll stand up and join us as we sing. guitar solo joyful and try Oh, come ye to Bethlehem Come and behold Him Born the King of angels Oh, come let us adore Him Oh, come let us adore Him Oh Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation. Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above. Glory to God all, oh Oh, come let us adore Him. Oh, come let us adore Him. Christ the Lord. Every nation will bow down before You. Every tongue will confess You are God. We worship and adore you. We worship and adore. this happy morning Oh oh Let's birth. Oh, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. In a lonely manger, the humble Christ was born. And God sent a salvation, the blessed Christmas is born. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on new content That Jesus Christ is born. Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. That Jesus Christ is born. is Hark the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn King. Peace on earth and mercy mild. God and sinners reconciled. Joyful all ye nations rise Join the triumph of the skies With angelic hosts proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem Hark the herald angels sing is Lord in time behold him come offspring of a virgin's womb veiled in flesh the Godhead see hail incarnate deity pleased as man with men to dwell Jesus our Emmanuel Jesus But him, born Prince of Peace, hail the song of righteousness. Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. While he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth, Bye. to the newborn king. Hark the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn king. The first Noel the angel did say Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay. In fields where they lay keeping their sheep. On a cold winter's night that was so deep. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel. They looked up and saw a star Shining in the east beyond them far Into the earth it gave great light and so it continued both day and night. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the king of israel is to our heavenly Lord that hath made heaven and earth of naught and with his blood mankind has brought Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the King of Israel Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the King of Israel In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place. While Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to their hometown to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea. To Bethlehem, the town of David. Because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary. He was pledged to be married to him. And was expecting a child. While they were there, the time out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths. Suddenly a great companion of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God, saying, Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God in the highest heavens and on His mother Mary laid down his sweet head. The wise men were led. Come see the baby and worship him. His name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel, Holy One, Son of God, Savior of the world Come and adore Him On bended knee He came to ransom Someone like me What could I offer? What could I bring? Come and adore him. King of kings, his name is wonderful. Counselor, mighty God. Prince of peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel. Holy One, Son of God, Savior of the world. And the greatness of His reign will never end. Let there be peace on earth and all good will to men. Come, us worship him. Wonderful counselor. Mighty God. Prince of peace. Everlasting father. Emmanuel. Holy one. Son of God, Savior of the world. His name is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Emmanuel. You're the Holy One, Son of God, isn't a store-bought gift under the tree that we are waiting to open. We've been waiting. Waiting for something much more important. For hope to rise up. For love to embrace. For peace to invade. For joy to bubble up. In the midst of our waiting and longing, the prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament tells us, For unto us a child is born, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. When we see it like this, we should remember that in our turbulent world, the government is on his shoulders. For he is our love, our highest governing power. And so right now, we light the central Christ candle because we have found our hope. We have discovered our love. We have realized our joy. We have encountered our peace. Today we celebrate joy to the world. The Lord is come. Choose today to step out of the darkness and into his marvelous light. And as we light this final candle, we ask you, light of the world, to light a fire within us, to burn this a part of your Christmas Eve. You know, earlier, the kids did a great job of reading the traditional Christmas story, and that's a great story. That's the big story. That's the one that we all care about on Christmas. That's what Christmas is all about, is the gift of God's Son, Jesus, the greatest gift that was ever given. But one of the things I like about that story, as we retell it over the years, is that we are actually in the habit of placing people in that story who were never a part of that story to begin with. We see this in our nativity scenes all over the place. If you go through your house or your mom's house or the front lawns of churches, we see these nativity scenes. And in those scenes, we see, of course, baby Jesus. We see Mary and Martha or Mary and Joseph, his parents. And then we see angels and we see shepherds. There's usually a donkey involved, and inevitably there's three wise men, right? And those nativities in symbol tell the story of Christmas. And it's always been interesting to me that we place the wise men at the manger of Jesus as part of the Christmas story, when in all actuality, they had nothing to do with Christmas. Not only are they not a part of the Christmas story, but they never even saw Jesus on a Christmas, let alone the first Christmas. And this is something that's always been interesting to me. It's kind of one of those little Bible facts that I've always thought was kind of neat, but I wasn't sure that it was very significant. But this year, as I was thinking about the Christmas message and rereading the Christmas story, I was reminded of this fact that we always place the wise men at Christmas, even though they weren't even a part of Christmas. And I began to reflect on that, and it became evident to me that there is something in the Christmas experience of the wise men that speaks absolutely to us and is representative of us. And so I thought we would take this Christmas Eve service, this Christmas Eve message, and focus on what Christmas meant to those wise men. I would almost say those three wise men, but we don't even know that that's true. We just traditionally say that there was three wise men because there was three gifts, but there could have been any number of wise men who came from the East. So let's look at the story of these men who came to fall on their face and worship Jesus. The only place we see the wise men is in Matthew chapter 2. So let's look at the beginning of this chapter when we miss all the time. Something that just tradition just glosses over. It's right there in the passage. It says, now after Jesus was born, this was years after Jesus was born, they come to Herod and they're looking for him, which means they were journeying to see him for a while. And it also tells us that unlike our nativity scenes reflect, they weren't at Christmas. And it's interesting to me that they weren't a part of Christmas, but that they came in later to find Jesus because for them, Christmas invited them to Jesus. They weren't a part of the first Christmas, so they didn't get to participate in seeing the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. No, they weren't participants in the first Christmas. Rather, Christmas for them was an invitation to Jesus. From the east, from very far off, from Iraq, Iran, India, China, somewhere in that region, Christmas, when Jesus was born and the guiding star over Bethlehem appeared, Christmas was an invitation to the wise men to come and find Jesus. They weren't there, but they were invited by Christmas, and in that way they represent all of us. And that way they represent all of who we are. I see the wise men now as representative of the rest of the world coming to Christ after he was born. We couldn't be there for the birth. We couldn't be there to celebrate the first Christmas. But the same invitation that the wise men received is the one that we are offered, an invitation to come and find Jesus. And I think in this story, they represent all of us. All of us who couldn't be there at that very first Christmas. All of us for whom Christmas is an invitation to our Savior to come and to find Him. And so if that's true, if the wise men in the Bible represent us, and Christmas is an invitation to us that they received as well, then what can we learn from their pursuit of Christ? Well, one of the first things we see based on clues in Scripture is that they searched for Jesus for nearly two years. We see that once they got there that King Herod was an evil king and he was afraid that Jesus would be the king of the Jews and take his throne away from him. So he had all the firstborns, all the sons ages three and younger killed in Israel. Which means that their journey was at least two years long before they found Jesus. Do you understand that that means the wise men searched for Jesus for two full years at minimum before they really experienced him? Before they really were able to worship him? Before they really were able to find him? I wonder how arduous that journey was. I wonder how many times they wanted to quit. I wonder how many nights the storms that came blocked out the light that was guiding them. I wonder how many conversations they had about turning around and going home. I wonder how many people called them ridiculous for their pursuit. I wonder how long it took them to work up the courage to leave and to go. Two years is a long time to search for one thing. But I love that they had to do that. I love that they searched for Jesus for two years before they experienced him. Because that search and the arduous nature of it and the necessary persistence of it is so true to life. Some of us experience Jesus like the shepherds did that night in the meadows. In the Christmas story that the children read, we're reminded that the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night. And then the angels appeared in the sky and sang to them and ushered them over to the manger so they could see this baby Savior. And for some of us, our experience with Jesus is like that. We're minding our business, tending our flocks in the fields, and angels appear to us and they sing from on high and we're whisked into the presence of Jesus and we experience it right there in that moment. And some of us have stories like that where our experience of Jesus and our understanding of him and being swept away by him was just instantaneous. But for many of us, our stories with Jesus are a lot more like the wise men. We had to search, and we had to persist, and we had to overcome discouragement. And there were times when the storms of life might block out the light that is guiding us. There may have been times where we have wanted to quit. There may be times when we wanted to walk away. We may have had discussions with those around us about just going home and saying, this is too difficult. The truth of it is, we are told in Scripture to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We see in Scripture that there is this process where we grow closer to Jesus and that sometimes finding him is difficult. It's not that he's not there. It's not that he hides himself from us, but it's just more true to life that the search for Jesus is arduous, that it requires persistence. And it also makes me wonder about these men. How did they know to follow that light? How did they know that that star in the sky right there, that's the one, and we're going to follow that for two years. The only answer I can come up with is that to recognize the star, they had to listen to the voice of God that was in their lives. It's interesting to me that Herod and the men and women in his court could see the same star that the wise men saw. But when the wise men know that that was the star and the people in Herod's court didn't? I think the only difference is that the wise men were listening to the voice of God. I believe that Scripture teaches us that God has written himself on our souls. That our Creator God breathed in us spirit. He breathed into us the breath of life. And he gave us souls that yearn for him. He gave us souls that pine for him. He gave us souls that year. They listened to that yearning. And so they had the faith to follow the guiding light. And I'm comforted by the fact that that same yearning is written on our souls. Our souls were designed and intended to be united with Christ. Our souls yearn to be united with our Savior. And because of that, God always provides guiding lights. God always provides a flicker of hope. He always maintains a course of direction. He always beckons to us. He always invites. He never shuts the door. He never gets stamped out. His invitation never goes bad. He always shows us guiding light, sometimes in stars, sometimes in a flicker, sometimes in a pillar of fire, sometimes in a voice in our ear. But make no mistake about it, God? What did the wise men do when their journey was done and they're experiencing Jesus? Well, look at what offered Him themselves and they offered him their treasures. They immediately, haphazardly, without hesitation, offered themselves and their treasures to this baby Christ. And it wasn't, it's important to note, it wasn't out of the sense of ought. It wasn't out of obligation. It wasn't, well, I guess this is what we need to do now. It wasn't even out of a desire to placate this deity or to get God on their side or to endear Jesus to them. It wasn't for any of those things. It was this spontaneous and natural response to fall on their face and worship the creator of their soul and to rejoice that they had been united with their Savior and to offer everything that they were and everything that they had. That's the natural response when we encounter our Savior. I believe that so ardently that I would even say this. If we feel like we've experienced Jesus and our first inclination in that moment isn't to fall on our face and worship his majesty, isn't to be overwhelmed by his goodness and to celebrate his kindness, if our first response isn't to fall on our face and worship him and offer all that we have and all that we are, then we haven't yet fully experienced him. Maybe we have a notion of who he is. Maybe we have an idea or we've heard a teaching or we've seen a glimpse and our soul has lurched and responded. But if it's not this full, submissive worship, then we haven't yet experienced who Jesus is, and our search continues, and we have to keep looking for him. But I think it's interesting that we exist in this culture that ebbs and flows and is progressive and is conservative and cares about Christian values over here and over here, not so much, and sometimes it's hard to tell what those Christian values are, and we all experience this culture in different ways. But amidst all the changes in our culture over the years, Christmas stands as this guiding light every year. Every December, our culture stops and we focus on Christmas. It starts as soon as Halloween is done. Things get swept aside and we throw up the Christmas decorations and we start to decorate our house and we start to do all the things and we look forward to celebrating the holiday and Christmas music started in my house very early this year because I think 2020 needs a little extra Christmas. But if we'll sweep all the extra things away, what we see is that we live in this culture that has exalted Christmas, that God has strategically placed in the middle of our joint attention as this guiding light, as this beacon calling our souls home to Jesus. And what we have in Christmas is the same invitation that was offered to the wise men. We can't participate in the first Christmas. It's already happened, but in that light, in that star, in that very first Christmas was an invitation to come to their Savior. And the same invitation that was offered to the wise men is offered to you. It's offered to you right now, the opportunity to come and sit at the feet for whom your soul was created to desire. Now some of you have been looking forward to this all year. Some of you make it a habit to regularly sit and worship at the foot of your Savior. Some of you have been looking forward to Christmas because it allows you to celebrate the one that created you. It allows you to celebrate the one that saves you and who conquers death for you. It allows you to celebrate the one who loves you. You are already like the wise men. You have made your journey and you are experiencing Jesus and you are sitting at his feet and worshiping. And for you, I hope that this service is only a help in doing that. For others, we've tasted and we've seen. We've experienced Christ. Maybe even got glimpses of who He is. Maybe felt His warmth from time to time, but for one reason or another we've wandered off. And maybe we're a little bit further away from Him at the end of this year than we have been in previous years. Maybe we haven't paid attention to that light in a while, even as it beckons us back. My hope and prayer is that this Christmas you'll hear that invitation anew. And you'll turn and you'll take a step back towards your Savior. And you'll begin that search again. Or maybe we've never begun our search. Maybe we're like Herod in his court. And the light is there. The invitation has been extended. But we haven't been listening. So we don't hear it and we don't heed it. My prayer is that this Christmas would be the first time that you open your eyes to the beckoning of God. That you would listen to Him calling to your soul. That you would acknowledge that He is the one who created it. And that you would begin your journey towards Christ and experiencing Him. The great news is, if we seek him, we are promised that we will find him. We are told that if we ask, we will receive. That if we seek, we will find. That if we knock, the door will be opened to us. That's Jesus himself speaking to you. So my prayer this year for all of us listening is that we would heed the invitation of Christmas to come to our Savior. That this year we would take a step further in our journey. That we would take a step closer to Christ. And that all of you, whether it's right now in the service, whether it's this month, whether it's in months to come or years to come, but that all of you within the sound of my voice would have a moment where you fall at the feet of Jesus and you offer all that you are and all that you have and you worship him because you are experiencing your Savior. I hope that you know that Christmas is an invitation to do that. In just a few minutes, our great children's pastor, Erin Winston, is going to come with her family, and they're going to light the Christ candle to close out Advent. And when that flame lights on the wick, I hope that you will look at that and you will see that as God's guiding light. That you will see that as his invitation that he offered and extended to the wise men that he is extending to you in this moment to come and to be a part of Christmas and to come and to find your Savior and to know him and to fall down and worship him. I hope that you'll accept the invitation of Christmas this year. Let me pray for you. Father, thank you for always beckoning to us. Thank you for always inviting us, for always calling for us, for never giving up on us, even when we give up on you. May we, God, all who are listening, accept the invitation that you extend through the birth of your son in Christmas. May we be guided by your light. May we have the privilege of experiencing Christ. And may we be so overwhelmed by him when we find him that we fall on our feet and we worship. Father, I pray that through song and through reflection and through communion to come in this service that the rest of our time together would be a time where we sit at your feet and we worship with grateful hearts and spirits at the miracle of the invitation of Christmas. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the greatest gift that's ever been given. It's in that gift's name we pray. Amen. are brightly shining, it is the breaks a new and glorious dawn. Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices. O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night, O night Oh truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of praise in grateful chorus raise we Let all within us praise his holy name Christ is the Lord O praise his name forever Oh is proclaim fall on your knees oh hear the angel voices When Christ was born O Holy Night O Night Divine If you have been around Grace Raleigh on Christmas Eve in the past, you know that communion is a very special part of our evening. And we wanted this year to be no different. So we're going to give you the opportunity to participate in communion at home, giving us the opportunity as a body of believers to come together in fellowship and in communion. And so if you joined us and picked up a participation bag over the last week, you received in your participation package this cute little cup. This is what we will be using during communion. If, however, you were unable to pick up a participation package or you're joining us from somewhere, a different state maybe, and don't have access, then we ask that you take a journey into your kitchen and find some juice or some wine or some bread and then come back and join us. And while you're doing that, we will walk through a little tutorial on how to best utilize these cute little cups. So first of all on our cute cups there is a pointed side and if you bend it upward you will notice that there is a piece of aluminum foil and a piece of cellophane. The first thing that we want to do is take the piece of cellophane off. Underneath there, you will find your wafer or your bread, which we will use later. The next step is to then take your edge and to pull it back ever so slowly. And I caution you to do it slowly because if you just rip it off, you're liable to baptize the person sitting next to you or end up with a beautiful grape juice stain on your pretty carpet. So ever so slowly, pull back on the aluminum foil and you will reveal the juice that we will use in communion. And so now, I hope that those who have gone to the kitchen have returned. You have had the opportunity to open your elements. And now I'd like to prepare our hearts for this moment of communion by reading a piece of scripture from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23 through 26. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is the body of Christ broken for you. Take and eat. The blood of Christ shed for you. Take and drink. And now I'd like to take the opportunity to pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for moments like this when we have the opportunity to remember who you are and the sacrifices that you gave for us. Thank you also, Lord, that you give us the opportunity to come together as a body of believers. Even though we are separated and in our homes, we still feel that communion with you and with each other. And thank you, Lord, most of all, for loving us so much that you sent us your son on this very, very special night. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your son's most holy name that we pray. Amen. And now I would like to invite my family to join me on stage as we light the Advent candle. John 1, 1 through 5. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Tonight we light the final candle of Advent, the Christ candle. This candle represents the light of life. It is the same light that we began talking about on that first Sunday of Advent when we spoke of this light crashing into the darkness of the world with the arrival of Jesus. It is his arrival, it is this precious child and the promised king that invites us to seek him, to follow him, and to become people who walk in and share his light. So therefore, go into the world with great joy, love, hope, and peace, knowing that he is with you on and go ahead and light them. Now, normally the worship team would sing Silent Night, but this year, being so strange, I thought it was fitting to show what it was like singing Silent Night last year. So here's some footage of Grace singing Silent Night in 2019, and we hope that in 2021, we can all be together again. Merry Christmas. All is calm, all is bright Round yon virgin, mother and child Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts sing alleluia. All sing hallelujah. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's pure light radiant peace from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord Merry Christmas, everyone. Heavenly Father, this has been a difficult year, a year fraught with challenges, hardships, isolation, tension, anger, and uncertainty. We know, Father, that you have seen your church and your people through more trying times, but for us, this year was hard. It was unlike any we've known. Yet in your word, you tell us to behold, for you are doing a new thing. You tell us that you make paths through the wilderness and streams in the desert. So even though at first glance it seems this year is one defined by pain and uncertainty, even though it may feel like we've been left alone to wander, God, we know that you are doing new things. You've done new things in the families of grace, allowing us to welcome new blessings into our homes. You've enabled couples to experience the life-giving fullness of holding their child for the first time. You've made it possible for children to feel the sense of privilege and responsibility that comes with being an older brother or sister. We see new things as this dark year has been brightened by announcements of children yet to come and blessings yet to experience. Even in a season of profound isolation, you've orchestrated the lives of those you love for our pleasure and your glory as parents saw the personification of years of prayers in the marriages you formed this year. We saw baptisms to celebrate and new families to welcome and small groups that tenaciously persisted. We do not deny that this year was trying and even for some of us, marked by loss. But we also acknowledge in that loss the years of profound gratitude for the time shared with those we love so much. More than that, we know that Christmas carries with it a promise that we will see them again. As this unique year comes to a close, we are more certain than ever of your presence and your goodness, bringing us together in socially distant circles and parking lots and driveways and backyards and drive-by birthday parties. Father, you've brushed away the fog of pain and uncertainty with moments of laughter and joy. We remember you on our soccer fields and baseball fields and Zoom calls and family outings and see you in the blessing of soul-warming friendships. After all that, we say thank you to our good Father. Thank you for the blessings in the midst of our struggles. Thank you for always making new paths for your children. Thank you for 2020 and all the new things it held and the future hope it has preserved. Amen. you

Advent. It means coming. And with that, a longing for something greater. With a year like this one passed, we can't help but look forward with much anticipation. Kids wait impatiently for Christmas morning to arrive. But we've all experienced that ache from waiting. Waiting for the pain to go away, waiting for that next check to arrive, for the broken heart to heal, for this season to pass because it's just too hard, or for the hospice to finally call and say, hurry now, it's time to say goodbye. Hope. From a newborn king, we've heard of how he can pull us together in unity and heal us. He is the wonderful counselor, our mighty God, the Prince of Peace. But we also know that as soon as we leave here, we will step back into our bruised and broken dark world. So we burn these candles week by week and watch them burn to build anticipation, to prepare for the coming of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah warned us about this. He said, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of darkness, a light has dawned. That is our hope. So we light this hope candle because our hope lies in you, Jesus. And so we say, come Lord, we need you to come soon. Because the coming of Jesus changes everything. Just be sure you remain open, you listen, because Jesus will whisper to us, there is always hope. It doesn't matter how dark the dark is, a light can still dawn. Well, good morning, Grace Raleigh. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy football weekend. Maybe it was a shopping weekend instead. And I also say welcome to the season of overeating and stretchy pants. It has officially arrived and we are welcoming it in full all arms. I'm Erin. I am one of the pastors here and I am so excited to be with you guys this morning to kick off our Christmas season. So thank you for joining us and for being here and for sticking around when you saw Nate introduce me. I do appreciate that. It seems like 2020 has left us in a place possibly looking for the comfortable or for that which is familiar. I'm not sure where you are in that, but that's kind of how I felt. And so as a staff, we began to talk about what Christmas at Grace this year could look like. And in our conversations, we said, what would it look like if we took Christmas and kind of stripped away the noise and stripped away the excess stuff and kind of shifted our focus and found that place that was comfortable and that was familiar? And what would it be like if our focus shifted to the Christmas story? And I don't know about you, but I am a sucker for a good story. A book, a cup of tea, a blanket, a couch, and a couple of uninterrupted hours is an absolute gift to me. And I will roll around in it and envelop it like nobody's business. And so, you know, you give me a book and give me the opportunity to dive into the characters, into the richness of who they are, they become kind of one. And so I, here's an example. The entire Harry Potter series, when my kids were smaller, we went from book one to book seven together. And it was a great adventure. And we loved every minute and every time we picked up those books and jumped into Hogwarts and met up with Harry and Hermione and Ron and all of their adventures. And we got to the end of book seven and the author did a phenomenal job of wrapping it all up. And I shut the book and then I looked at the book and went, now what do I do? Like it was this place of mourning because these characters had become people, had become part of our family. And now all of a sudden, I didn't have them anymore. So now what do I do? So as you can see, a good story for me is a gift. And so as we delved into this idea of the Christmas story and coming closer to the Christmas story by looking at Advent. I was beyond excited because Advent brings this place of depth and meaning to the season and it roots us into a story that we're already connected to, the story of the arrival of Jesus. And so for the next four weeks, we get to anticipate this arrival together, and we get to jump into Jesus's story and his arrival and what he fulfills in his arrival. Things like hope and joy and peace and love. We'll also look at how we choose to accept those things during this season. We'll also get the opportunity to look at the Advent wreath. And the Advent wreath has great symbolism. And I invite you to take the opportunity to look at what that symbolism is. Go to Google. Just Google Advent wreath and see what it says. But it's going to talk all about the circles and the different colors of the candles. But I want you to focus on something else as well. Because it doesn't matter if your Advent wreath is a circle. It doesn't matter if it's a straight line. It doesn't matter if your colors of your candles are pretty purples and pinks and whites. They could be white or yellow or green or whatever you happen to have had in your cabinet. What matters is the light that we get to see each time we light one of these candles. Because that light that comes from that candle represents the light of God that crashes to this deep, dark earth in the form of a sweet little baby by the name of Jesus. And so, oh, for the next four weeks, we get to roll around in the richness of this Christmas story, and we get to find places where we can connect deeper to Jesus. And so today, we are going to start with the candle of hope. And I think first I need to make a distinction for you as to a definition of hope. Because biblically, or in the Bible, there are lots of times that the word hope is used. But it can actually have two meanings. And the first one is, I hope that you get to feeling better. Or I hope that it doesn't rain today because guess what? On our calendar, we have three soccer games that we need to go watch outside. Or it could be also this hope that your kids right now, as the TV comes on and all the commercials roll through, or the catalog that comes in the mail and they start flipping through it and it's like, oh, I hope I get that this year. I hope that's underneath my Christmas tree. That hope is a wish. There's not a whole lot of, there's no guarantee of any kind of fulfillment. It's just a wish. But the second kind of hope is a hope that gets in us and it travels with us into these places of darkness, into these places of pain, into places of longing and waiting. And it becomes for us a place, a definition given that I hooked onto and can't get rid of. This is it. This hope is a confident expectation in something good in the future. Let me repeat that one. This hope is a confident expectation that something good is going to be in the future. So here's your distinction. You have the one hope that has no guarantee of fulfillment and is basically a wish. But then you have this second hope, this hope that says I can stand confident in the expectation that something good is in my future, that a good ending is possible. This is the hope that Jesus fulfills in his arrival 2,000 years ago. So as with every story, every good story, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end. And for those of you that are writers, I understand I just simplified that to absolutely nothingness, but don't come at me. It's just the best way for me. So beginning, middle, and end, and then sometimes we need a little extra beginning. We need a little background in order to understand the beginning of the story. And so that's where we're going to start this morning as we continue this conversation of hope, is that we're going to give you a little background. And I'm going to start with the people, or God's chosen people, the Israelites. We're picking up in the back of the Old Testament. These are God's chosen people who at this point in time are living a pretty incomplete story. They have had judges around that have given them things that they need to do and ways that they can stay connected to God. And they've listened to the judges and then they've ignored the judges and they've gone about and done their own thing, and it's this cycle, and it keeps going. They keep walking further away from God, and then they'll come back, and then they walk away again. God has given them earthly king after earthly king, and then again, they're still walking away and not happy. Their kingdom is now divided, and in this I would say that the beginning of the end of the people of Israel is at hand. But this is where God begins the Christmas story. He takes this moment to actually breathe hope into the places of darkness for these weary people. And he does it through a group of people that are called the prophets. The prophet Isaiah was spoken of actually in the video earlier, and he states, the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light, and who dwell in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shone. There's that light again that we talked about, the light of God coming into the darkness. He then goes on and talks of the birth of his government and of peace Lord of hosts will do this. Oh, the words that must have rung in the ears of these weary people. It had to have been a balm to their souls. Because guess what? He just told them that their king was coming. Their true king is coming. And with him, he's bringing all of those things that they are hoping for. Things like restoration, things like peace and prosperity. He just gave them the confident expectation that something good was coming in the future. And oh, what it had to have felt like to them to have a place of hope now in their hearts, holding on to the fact that their true king, the Messiah, was coming. Now, I don't know about you, but I noticed as I read that, that Isaiah didn't mention the timeline for when this king would arrive. And I imagine he did that on purpose, but he didn't. He just said he's coming. And so the people of Israel walked into a period of waiting. And they began to wait. And wait. And wait some more. Because you see what happened is during this period, they went from being the people of Israel to divided kingdoms, to being in exile, to being scattered, and to having God go silent. And when I state that he goes silent, this isn't the kind of silent treatment that you might get when you and your spouses have had a small argument and everybody gets really quiet and you walk to your separate corners and there's no speaking in the house for maybe a couple hours or possibly a day or two. And it's just quiet, right? Well, no, no, no. This quiet, God went silent for 400 years. So that was the major silent treatment if I've ever heard of one. But just completely quiet. And so they began to continue, well, they continued to wait. But then in the middle of this waiting, God speaks again. But this time, he speaks through an angel by the name of Gabriel. And this is, in my paraphrase, how it all went about. Is that God sends the angel of Gabriel to the city of Nazareth, very specifically to a young woman by the name of Mary. And he comes to this sweet girl and says to her, you're going to have a baby. And in the process, you're going to name this baby Jesus. And he is going to be great. And he will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom. There will be no end. The words in Mary's ears at that point. Did you hear Isaiah? She heard the words of the prophet spoken to her. It was a king. It was a king the angel told her his name was to be Jesus, she knew immediately because Jesus means Jehovah saves or the Lord's salvation. This was the Messiah. This was the promise of the confident expectation of something good in the future being fulfilled. He is coming. Remember the hope that I promised you 400 years ago? I'm delivering on that promise, and it's coming in this sweet little package of a baby, and his name is Jesus. And of course, true to his word, nine months later, the angels get to take over the heavens and to sing loudly of the announcement of Jesus and the fact that Christ the Savior has been born to hold on to. That in our places of difficulty, in our places of pain and weariness and waiting, that God is going to come to us. And he's also able to come to those places where maybe, just maybe, we've stopped believing in a good ending being possible. And I think that we actually have those places where we believe that a good ending is not possible anymore because we have somehow misplaced our hope. A.W. Tozer writes of misplaced hope as this, that misplaced hope or hope that has no guarantee of fulfillment is a false friend that comforts us for a little while with all kinds of flattery, but then leaves us to our enemies. So leaves us to our enemies. Have you all ever been there? I want to invite you into a story now to kind of give you a taste of misplaced hope. Many of you know my daughter Zoe. And for those of you that don't, Zoe is funny and she is sweet and she is kind. She is very quick-witted. She's a great friend. She loves coffee. She loves Jesus, and she loves country music. So I don't think we need to describe her any further than that. She has just finished her first semester as an intended nursing major at East Carolina University. In the middle of a pandemic, she's moved a couple of times over the course of the last couple of months, but she has completed it very successfully. Now, if you had told me a couple of years ago that that statement about my daughter was true, I would have questioned your judgment. Seriously, I would have. Because you see, Zoe suffers from, or Zoe, I shouldn't say that, Zoe has anxiety. And a few years ago, her anxiety had control of her. Somewhere towards the beginning of her high school career, we began to notice in Zoe that she made excuses as to not connect with friends. Friday night football games came. She might go for a little while, but she was home very quickly. Or she'd get invited to go someplace, and if she said yes, she was there a short time and then again came home. If not, in a lot of cases, she just said no. She was not exactly happy. And so as we sat back and kind of watched all this, we're scratching our head but then saying to ourselves, oh, well, wait a second. It's just high school. She's a freshman. She's a sophomore. It's hard. It's just hard. We also began to see some of this happen in youth group as well, where she's very connected and grace students and mission trips would come along and we'd have all this buildup, and then let's just say it took an awful lot to get Zoe onto the bus in order to go wherever it was that her group was going. And mind you, her dad went every year as well as one of the student leaders. And so we just kept watching. And in this process, though, I kept justifying all of these behaviors and saying it just is because she's a teenager. I went to what I would call my Pollyanna place, thinking it was all going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. She's going to grow out of this, and it's going to be good. It is. It's going to be good. Well, as you can guess, my it's going to be good didn't change our reality at all. Zoe's path continued to go just where it was. And our situation never changed. So I decided that if the situation hasn't going to change there, that maybe I needed to do something different. And so I did. And this time, for those of you that know me, this is me in a nutshell, but I'm going to fix it. I'm going to help somehow. And we're going to make change here. And so I went into that mode of I hit Google and I hit books. I don't know what I'm going to help somehow, and we're going to make change here. And so I went into that mode of I hit Google and I hit books. I don't know what I'm looking for at this point, but I'm trying to find something that is an answer. And I started talking to people around me, and it was just what can I do? What kind of checklist do I have? How can I fix this? How can I help my daughter? And the thing is in all of this, the one really good thing that possibly came out of this moment was the fact that somebody said to us, hey, maybe Zoe should see a counselor. And so I went to her and I said, hey, girl, what do you think about this? She's like, sure. And so she goes, y'all, this was good. It was great. Because guess what? When she got to the counselor, there was a connection with their counselor. All was great. And we had a diagnosis. We knew what was going on. And guess what that means? If I know what's going on, because I can now fix it. Because I know what I'm battling against, right? So she was diagnosed with anxiety. And we started that whole process of giving her the tools that she needed in her toolbox on how to deal with her anxiety and what it looked like. And guess what? It worked. And lo and behold, she's reengaging with her friends. She's out on a Friday night. The world is great. Her smile has returned. And I sit back and I'm like, yes, we've got this and all is great. So let's now fast forward to Zoe's, the beginning of Zoe's senior year of high school. Where Zoe went to high school, one of the things that they do at the beginning of the senior year is a large trip. They take the entire senior class to New York City for four days of crazy fun with your friends, seeing New York, and doing all of the things. Now, I will tell you, one of the things that went through my head as we started into the beginning of the senior year, this is the thought. The thought was, if we can get Zoe on the bus to go to New York City, we have won. We have officially beaten the enemy, and we have wrangled anxiety, and we've won. Now, I spoke that to no one. It's just in the back of my head. And so as we walk into the preparations for New York, all is fabulous. And Zoe is excited. And we're doing the things that you have to do before a trip like this, especially if you're the parent of a girl. You know, you've got to have the right outfits for the different activities. We had to do all that. Had to get the right roommates. Had to do all of the things. And everything was so positive. She was so excited. And here we go. And so the night before the trip, Zoe's upstairs in her room packing. And I decide to go up and help because, of course, you know, I can help pack, right? So I go up the stairs. I open up the door. Zoe's in the middle of her floor, and there's clothes all around her, and a suitcase is open, and I'm like, I'm here to help, and she turns around, and she looks at me, and she has tears streaming down her face. And she says, Mama, I can't do this. I can't go tomorrow. And at that moment, my heart broke for her, for us, for this situation. And I collapsed onto the floor with her, and I grabbed hold of my girl, and I cried with her, and I told her how much I loved her, and that I had her, and that we would do this together. And at that moment, everything that I had went from, we got this, we've won, to, oh my heavens, now what? Hope to hopeless. Now what do we do? And my head's spinning and the questions are running around in my head. Even places like, is she going to be able to go to college next year? Like I can't even get her on. We can't get onto a bus to go to New York for four days. How is it that we're going to get to college next year? Like, the brain starts to spin off of the rails, basically. And then after this process, I began this process with God. We had lots of very interesting conversations. Things like, why? Why my girl? And the big question of, hey God, where are you in all of this? And you all, I'm so thankful that we serve such a loving and faithful father. Because he looked at me and he said, hey Aaron, I'm here. I've always been here. And I've been walking with you and your girl through this. But guess what? You, mama, you need to let go of your control. You, mama, need to invite me in and let me give real hope to this situation. And the real hope that Paul speaks of, he speaks of it in his letter to the Romans. And this is what it says. It says, not only that, but we rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Y'all, this real hope that is sourced and supplied by God himself, it does not put us to shame. It does not tell us that we aren't good enough. It does not tell us that we can't do it. It does not tell us that we are failures. No, no, no. It's just the opposite. And so we grabbed onto this real hope for our situation. We began believing in that good future and in that good ending for Zoe. The one thing I need to clarify here, though, is that believing in the good future and believing in the good ending wasn't saying that I was believing that she was going to be cured. What it was was for me, it was a change of posture. It was a moment that I said, no longer is it about me. It's now all about you, God. It was a moment of surrender where I said, and I knew in my heart of hearts that God loves my child more than I do, and that he had her, and he had a good future planned for her. And I needed to let go of what I felt was Zoe's story. And I needed to key into the story that God was writing in her. And so maybe this was now that ECU isn't where she's going to go. Maybe she's going to go to Wake Tech for a couple of years so she gets some security and she gets some confidence. And then she'll go off to ECU to finish her nursing degree. Or maybe she's supposed to be at Campbell where her brother is in a place that's familiar and a place that feels comfortable and secure. Or maybe, or maybe, or maybe, like all of a sudden, when I let go of what I felt her story needed to be and let God write her story, the maybes became huge possibilities that anything could happen if he writes her story. And I release control. And so through all of this story and through this place of surrender and this place of saying, hey God, you've got this. I have learned a few things. The first one is that misplaced hope trusts in me, whereas real hope trusts in God. So when my hope was misplaced, it was all about what Aaron could do to fix Zoe's situation, not what God could do. We had to trust in him and who he says he was and the promises that he's given that he was never going to forsake her, that he loves her, and that he has this confident expectation in a good ending. I also learned that misplaced hope leaves you so weary, but real hope sustains. The constant trials and guilt and sleepless nights that we had in trying to figure out what was going on and worrying about the situation left us so very tired, just exhausted, but that real hope gives us what we need to move on, to be sustained. And we know now that Zoe still has struggles, and it's okay though, because she has him to hold on to in those struggles. And lastly, I learned that misplaced hope leaves you feeling hopeless. But that true, that real hope knows the end of the story. And so with Zoe's story, yes, Zoe has anxiety, but anxiety doesn't have her. It does not define who she is. It's just there. And in August of this year, she packed up her little car and she drove to Greenville and she has not looked back. And yes, as a mama, I will tell you there are times that I kind of wish maybe she would look back and say, hey, mom, I'm coming home. But you know what? It's those moments, though, too, that I can hold on to and say, hey, God, thank you. Thank you that you provided us with this confident expectation in a good future for our girl. Thank you that she's in Greenville. Thank you that she's thriving. And so I have to also say that I am so very proud of my girl. What she's walked through has not been easy. And I'm just over the moon proud. And it is a true joy to watch where she is now and to hold on to that expectation of the cool things that she's going to do in the future. So in light of all that we as a group have been through in 2020, I know in years before we could say, you know, everybody could say they've had issues with a year here or there or otherwise. But 2020, I think, has left us all feeling a bit weary. And I look back at the Jewish people who were in their place of weariness and in their place of waiting 2,000 years ago. And I wonder if that's not us now. We're all weary. We're all waiting. Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for maybe it's something to happen good in our financial situation. Maybe it's waiting to be able to go visit loved ones again. We're waiting. We're weary. Just like the Jewish people were 2,000 years ago. And my prayer for all of us is that we get to experience the same thrill of hope that they experienced at Jesus' arrival. I want us to be that weary world that rejoices this year as we hear about the arrival of our coming King. And so, what would it take for us, Grace Raleigh, to experience that thrill of hope? What would it take for us to shift our focus and our hope from hope in us to hope in him and him alone. Will y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you. We are so beyond grateful that you loved us enough to send your son into the middle of our places of darkness and our places of weariness and our places of waiting. You love us so much that you want us to experience that thrill of hope. You want us to hold on and grab hold of this confident expectation that a good ending is possible. And we're so grateful for that. We're so, so grateful. And so, Lord, I just ask that you wrap our beautiful Grace Raleigh family in your arms and that you allow us for the next four weeks to anticipate together the arrival of your son and all that he fulfills as he comes. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your son's mighty name that we pray. Amen.

How old are you, pal? Four. Four. When's your birthday? My birthday is in October. Speaking of birthdays, whose birthday are we celebrating for Christmas? Jesus's. Um, baby Jesus. Jesus's birthday. Now, where was Jesus born? Do you remember? In the manger. In the steeple. In the steeple? Who else was in the steeple with Jesus when he was born? The animals. What kind of animals do you think? Tows and donkeys. What about tigers? You can't look to the audience for help. Was anybody else at the manger with them? God, for sure. Do you know his mommy and daddy's name? Do you know the city that Jesus was born in? Bethlehem! I just watched that movie. I watched it. That's the bright star with those two little donkeys with that bird. That Jesus was in Bethlehem with those mean dogs. But at the end of the movie, the mean dogs turn into nice dogs. That's great. That's a Christmas miracle. Is that your favorite Christmas movie? Uh-huh. I watched it when I had a sleepover with my Nana and Papa. Sorry, Kendall. I'm sick. How did the shepherds know that Jesus had been born? Because they were smart boys. Now the wise the soul of Bethlehem. The wise men. I don't know what, but I think you gotta tell me. Um, those, links and more. Kendall, you might be the smartest four and a half year old I've ever met. How many wise men were there, do you know? Two. Two? You know, that's just as reasonable a guess as any other answer. First, um, Christmas, I am going to make Jesus a tank. You're going to make Jesus a tank? Oh, a cake. It'd be way better if you made him a tank. If you got to give Jesus three presents, what presents would you give him? A chew toy for when he's a baby. Sure. I'll go with my genie cup and a baby Jesus doll. Sure. I'm sure Jesus would love a baby Jesus doll. I think those are all the questions I have for you buddy. You did so good. I think I want to do one more question. Is there anything else that we should ask? Anything else? No. to meet you. I'm so glad that you're here. And like Kyle said, thanks so much for making us a part of your Christmas celebration. I know that you have a lot of options on Christmas Eve. It's the time when you're supposed to go to church. And so we're so glad that you chose to spend that with us. When we think about the Christmas story, I think all of us probably go to a very similar place, whether we're church people or not church people. If we come to churches like this a lot, or we come a little, we all kind of know where to go for the church story, right? It's Luke chapter 2, and though we might not know the reference, we know the content. We think about probably the peanuts special, right? When Linus quotes it, I think that's the one who does it, and it's the old King James, and it's, lo, they were sore afraid, the angel of the Lord shone round about them, right? And the shepherds were in the field giving watch over their flock by night. Like, that's what we think of is the Luke chapter 2. We think of Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem for the census. There's no room in any of the hotels, so they got to stay in the manger or in the steeple, which was really, really great. We've got it that they can't stay there, and the baby Jesus is born, and we celebrate it, and the wise men come, and it's a whole party, and that's the deal. That's usually what we think of as the Christmas story, and if that's what you think of as the Christmas story, then that's right. That is the Christmas story. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. But I really think that to have a deeper understanding of the Christmas story, to really understand what's happening there, what we're celebrating, what are we all gathering here to celebrate for? What are we meeting with family and exchanging gifts to celebrate? Why did the angels appear? Why do we talk about the joy of Christmas? What's really the reason for the season? When we start to ask questions like that, I think we have to take a broader look at the Christmas story. I'm so fond of telling the Christmas story in this way that my first Christmas with Grace, I told it in this way, but I so believe in it, and I believe in it helping us see the power and efficacy of what the gift is that I wanted to tell it to you again. So if you'll indulge me for the Christmas story, you got to go all the way back to Genesis chapter one. And since this is the second service, I'm going to take my time, baby. You got to go all the way back to Genesis chapter one and understand what's happening there. God's word teaches us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, that there is a creator God and that he made this place and that he created you and I. And when he did, he said it was very good and to a good God, that means it's perfect. It was exactly as he intended. And you, whether you realize it or not, whether you've thought about it at all in 2019 or not, your soul was created to be in harmony and relationship with that creator God. And the creation was made to be in harmony with that creator God, and that's how it was perfect. Scripture tells us that lion laid down with lamb, which is a way to say that there was no violence. There was no death when God created the earth. There was no cancer. Children didn't survive. Parents didn't survive their children when God created the earth. Divorce wasn't a thing in the Garden of Eden. Abuse didn't happen. Greed wasn't there. Malice and poor intent and evil and violence, that didn't exist. Selfishness did not exist. It was perfect until sin entered in and broke God's creation. And when we think of sin, for those of us that know the Bible at least a little bit, we know about the garden and they ate the fruit and that was kind of against the rules and they shouldn't eat the fruit and she did and that's a bummer. But really what's going on there is the sin of pride. What's happening with Adam and Eve is God said don't do this thing and they said, you know what? God, I hear you. I appreciate that. But I actually trust my judgment and my own life to determine what's best for me. And right now what's best for me is to eat that fruit. So that's what we're going to do. And they elevated themselves to the position of God in their life. And that's what sin is. And sin broke God's good creation. The first thing it broke is our souls that were again created to be in harmony with creator God. And as soon as sin entered the world, their souls were out of harmony with God, and as we're born into this world, our souls exist in disunity with our Creator God. That's why if we don't know Jesus, if we're not in harmony with our Creator and with our God, in our quiet moments, we have this sense within us. There has to be more to life. There has to be more to what's happening here. This feels broken. This doesn't feel right. I would argue that if we have a soul that's not in harmony with our creator God as it was intended to be, that we will scratch and claw for that happiness and for that fulfillment in any way that we know how, and what we really need is for God to rush in. What we really need is reconciliation because we're broken. And it's not just us and our souls that got broken when sin entered the world. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the world itself, creation itself broke. Do you understand that in the Garden of Eden there was no cancer and now there's cancer? In the Garden of Eden there was no abuse and now there's abuse. In the Garden of Eden there was no violence and now there's violence. In the Garden of Eden, lion lay down with lamb and now that is not the case. So the creation was perfect too and it was broken down by our imperfect decisions. And I think, I think Christian or not, whatever your background is, to be alive and aware is to know and to feel that there's something broken here. To be alive and paying attention is to get a sense there are some things here that are not right. There's some things that happened even in this last year that we look at that and no matter what your background or your worldview, you look at that and you go, that doesn't make any sense that that could happen. That shouldn't be so. That's not right. This place has to be broken. I saw on Twitter a couple weeks ago, one of those videos, it's like those heartwarming videos, right? That you watch it and there's like a bunch of cry emoji in the comments. And normally I don't watch those. My heart is as warm as it can be. And I just don't need any auxiliary help. But on this one, I thought, let me give it a whirl. And so I watched it, and it's these two children. They were probably seven or eight or younger, and they have cancer, and they're clearly in a children's hospital. And one was better able to get around than the other. And so the little boy that was able to get around takes the little girl that really couldn't move very well and sets her in his wagon and puts blankets over her lap and makes sure that the IV thing can follow. And he walks her down the hallway so that she can take a walk. And everybody watches that and they go, oh, that's amazing. That's great. This is what the internet is for. And I watched that and I thought, yeah, that's beautiful, but that's broken, man. Life shouldn't be like that. Kids shouldn't get cancer. That doesn't feel right. Why does that happen? And we felt the same way too. To be alive and aware is to feel that at times this place is broken. And Scripture agrees with that. In Romans 8, the Apostle Paul tells us that all of creation groans for its return, for its restoration to creation as God intended. All of creation cries out from the rocks and from its core. This is not right. There's something better. This is broken. This has to be fixed. This doesn't make sense. Life shouldn't look like this. All of creation groans along with you. When you see something in your Twitter feed or on the news or someone shares something with you and in your soul, you go, gosh, this just isn't right. This feels broken. Creation groans with you. And God himself agrees with you. Which is why in Genesis chapter 12, he enacted a grand plan to fix the broken things and to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And to enact this plan, he went to a man named Abram, who would later become Abraham. And he made Abraham three promises. He says, you're going to be my guy and your descendants are going to claim these promises that I'm going to give you. And he promised Abraham the promised land that we now know as Israel. He said, your descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And then he said, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And Abraham might not have known it at the time, but we know it now. That was the promise of the Messiah, that one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That was God promising, and one day, one of your descendants is going to fix all this stuff. That feeling in your core that things are broken, that disunity in your soul that longs for me, one day I'm going to send somebody who's going to be one of your descendants and they are going to fix these wrong things. I'm going to make this right. I'm going to fix it and I'm going to reconcile your soul to me. And it's going to happen through you, Abraham. And thus began the practice of Abraham and all of his descendants watching and waiting and hoping for the fulfillment of that promise. When is this going to happen, God? And it was funny for Abraham to receive that promise because he didn't have any kids. So if he's gonna have all this land and he's gonna have all these descendants and then one of those descendants in the distant future is gonna bless the whole earth, it would be pretty good to have like one. And he doesn't. And it takes longer than he thought it should. And his faith wavers. And he gets nervous. and he makes a mistake in his 80s, and he has a kid, and that kid is not the one that was promised to him, and so he waits more, and he has another kid in his 90s, and that was the one that was promised to him. His name is Isaac. No doubt in my mind, Abraham told Isaac of all the promises. Abraham told Isaac that he was a claimant to the things that God told him. That said, Isaac, you're going to have massive descendants. You're going to have this land and one of your descendants is going to fix all the broken things and is going to reconcile us back to our God. And so Isaac is now the carrier of that promise and he joins in Abraham and watching and waiting and hoping. And Isaac has two sons, one of them named Jacob. Jacob's name is later changed to Israel, the namesake of the nation. He has 12 sons, and they make up the 12 tribes of Israel. The youngest son was a guy named Joseph. Joseph ends up in Egypt. And through a series of events that's really incredible in the book of Genesis, he ends up as the second most powerful man in the world. From an obscure nomadic tribe to second most powerful man in Egypt, therefore the world. And he is in control of all the food stores for that part of the world. No one survives the seven-year famine without going and seeing Joseph. He's estranged from his family. They don't know who he is. They don't know that he's there, but they are the remnant. They are the descendants of Abraham who are clinging to the promise of God that one day this will make sense and that one of our descendants will bless the whole earth and fix the broken things. That's what we know. And they're watching and they're waiting and they're hoping. Because of the famine, they have to go down to Egypt and they have to see the guy that's in charge of all the food. And they find out that when they get there, that that's their long lost brother, Joseph. Look at him. Look at his power. Look at how he provides. Look at how he fixes the broken things. And you have to know that his brothers and their little kids and the whole family and the whole clan wondered, yo, is Uncle Joseph the guy? Is he the one? Is he the one that was promised by God to our great-grandfather Abraham? Is he the one? But Joseph dies, and his bones are buried in the land of Goshen where his ancestors put down roots. And then as the people of God wait for the fulfillment of the promise, the Bible goes silent for 400 years. In between Genesis and Exodus, there's 400 years where we don't know what happens, where God doesn't speak, where the remnant of Abraham is left holding on to and claiming the promise, clinging to the hope of God. And at the beginning of Exodus, there's a guy named Moses who shows up. And I would imagine in the time of Moses that it was pretty difficult to continue to believe in the promise because Abraham's descendants, the Hebrew people, are now slaves to the Egyptian people. They are hopelessly in slavery. The Egyptians are the most powerful nation in the world. They are the slaves of the most powerful nation in the world. None of the nations around them care about them or are going to go in to rescue them, okay? There was no UN. They have no hope. They're just there. And I would imagine that to grow up a slave in Egypt made it pretty difficult to buy it when your grandpa told you about the promises that were made to your forefather Abraham. Hey, listen, I know it looks dark now. I know you've got to make all these bricks, but listen. God made a promise to your great, great, great, great grandfather. And we're his people. And one day, one of us is gonna fix the broken things and is gonna restore creation back to him and is gonna bring harmony to your soul. One day, that will happen, cling to those promises. I bet it was tough to cling. I bet it was difficult to have faith. But a faithful few, a faithful remnant of believers clung to the promises and held true to them and believed that God would keep his word and believed that God would keep his promises. And in the midst of clinging to that hope, Moses comes back from the desert. He had been exiled for 40 years. He comes back, and when he comes back, he's got the power of God with him, man. And he, God, through Moses, puts the 10 plagues on Egypt. They convince Pharaoh to let his people go, and now the people of Abraham go out into the desert, and they watch their savior, Moses, who delivered them from slavery and impossible bondage, part the Red Sea and defeat the armies of Egypt and miracle after miracle, day after day in the desert. And they watch as Moses goes up on the mountain and sees the presence of God and glows for days and brings down with him the 10 commandments and hands them a new religion. And they had to wonder, you can't tell me that they didn't. Is this the guy? Is this the one? He's got to be. He has to be the promised one. He's a descendant of Abraham. He's delivered us. He's begun to heal up our wounds and restore things to us. He's showing us how to be right with God, to unite our souls to him. This has got to be the one. But Moses dies before they ever enter the promised land. And he's not the one. And so Israel waits. And Israel watches. And Israel hopes that one day God will keep his promise. After Moses comes Joshua, they sweep into Israel and take it over, and that promise is fulfilled. Now the land is theirs. The problem is they don't have the infrastructure to be able to defend it, and so Israel kind of spirals down into this dark period in their history called the Judges, where all the different neighbors of Israel would come in and oppress them and take their stuff and bully them and make them give it to them, right? They couldn't keep their crops. They couldn't feed their kids. It was a tough time in the nation of Israel. And during that time, God would send judges to overthrow the oppressors and restore Israel to what it needs to be. And they had to wonder in the midst of this turmoil with every judge, is this the person? Is Gideon the one? Is Jephthah the one? Is Ehud the one? Maybe it's Deborah. Maybe it's Samson. They had to wonder, are these the people that God promised that are going to rescue us? Because it seems like they're doing it, but they weren't. The power of each judge was finite, and the timing of them was fleeting. The judges aren't the ones. And again, I wonder what it would be like to be one of the faithful remnant, clinging on to the promises that were passed down to them by their forefathers, when they can't even keep their own wheat harvest, when things feel really broken and life doesn't make sense. I bet faith was scarce in the time of the judges. Out of the time of the judges, Israel demands a king, and so they appoint a man named Saul. Saul was the guy that you would choose. He was head and shoulders above everybody else. He was very good looking. When you think of Saul, you can think of me. That's probably a good representation of who he was. But Saul was a terrible king. He was arrogant, and he used it for himself, and he wasn't the guy. But after Saul, there's a guy named David. David was the eighth son of Jesse. He was a little shepherd boy. But the last great prophet, a guy named Samuel, was directed by God himself to go and anoint David the next king. And what was said about David was that he was a man after God's own heart. And the mythology of David builds as he goes and he slays the giant Goliath. And all of Israel pays attention to him. And they make up songs about David and they celebrate him. And then he goes and he defeats their enemies. And he brings back the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant. And he dances before it and he restores Israel, brings Israel to a place of international prominence that it had never seen. David's rule was so profound that he's the greatest king they've ever had and his star still flies over Israel to this day. He wrote the largest book in the Bible, the book of Psalms. And they had to go. David's gotta be be the guy. He's got to be the one. This has to be the one that was promised to us. Look, he's redeeming us. He's saving us. He's restoring us. He's fixing the broken things. This has to be him. But David wasn't the guy. David sinned profoundly. And I wonder how much faith wavered. But God, in the middle of David's life, in 2 Samuel 7, makes David a promise. He says, David wanted to build the temple. And God goes to David and says, you're not going to be able to build the temple in your lifetime. I'm going to let your son do that, but I've got something better for you, David. I still am going to keep my promise to your forefather, Abraham. I'm still going to send the Messiah. I'm still going to send the King of Kings. And when he comes, David, he's going to sit on your throne. And then this promise is a renewal of the hope of Israel. That God has not forgotten his promise that he made a thousand years ago to Abraham, that he still remembers. He's not forgetful of the things he said he would do. He still intends to keep his word. And when he does, he's going to sit on the throne of David and the hope of Israel is renewed. And it's good that it was renewed because after David comes Solomon. And then after Solomon, the country splits into a civil war from which it never recovers. And the northern kingdoms and the southern kingdoms have bad king after bad king after bad king after bad king. And the remnant gets smaller and the faithful get fewer. And there are fewer and fewer people who still cling to the promises of Abraham and follow the religion that was imparted on them by their forefathers. And then each of the kingdoms get drug off into slavery, one by Babylon and one by Assyria. And I can only imagine how difficult it would be to grow up as a slave in Babylon or a slave in Assyria and hear your grandfather or your grandmother or your mom or your dad tell you, hey, hang in there, be faithful. You should follow these laws and these rules because they were given to us by a God that made a promise to your forefather, Abraham. It would be really difficult to not look at those promises growing up as a slave in Assyria and go, yeah, what are those promises now? Because we're not on that land and no one's coming save us, and we're slaves. I imagine faith was pretty tough in the time of exile for Abraham's followers. And because it was a hard time, because even the return and the restoration was a hard time, God spoke to them through the voices of the prophets that told them more about their Messiah. And we see these great prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Habakkuk and Zephaniah and Malachi and all the ones at the end of the Old Testament that are proclaiming the coming Messiah. And they tell us things like when he comes, he's gonna bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted. When he comes, he's going to give good news to the poor. When the Messiah gets here, the blind will see and the lame will walk and the deaf will hear and the prisoners will be set free and the slaves will be released. When he gets here, he's going to make the wrong things right. He's going to fix this broken place. He's going to reconcile your soul to your God, and he's going to fix this creation that our sin has broken. He's going to do it. Hang in there. Be faithful. The Messiah is coming. Wait and watch and hope. And the faithful remnant did. Generation after generation, voice after voice, until we get to the end of the New Testament. And in the middle of this waiting and watching and hoping and clinging to the promises made by God to their forefather Abraham, there's another 400 years of silence at the end of the Old Testament. Malachi speaks and closes out that part of the Bible. And then in this darkness and in the silence, Israel waits and they watch and they hope. And they wonder, is our God going to keep his promise? Or are we foolish for this? And in the midst of that silence, there's a righteous man named Simeon. And we meet Simeon in Luke chapter 2. The Bible says this about Simeon. It says, now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. Listen, Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel. He is the personification of all of the hope, of all of Israel, of all of his ancestors for all time up until this moment. He is representative of the nation of Israel and those who are paying attention, the rest of the world, groaning for the restoration, groaning for things to be made right and for the broken things to be repaired and for their souls to be reconciled to their creator. He is the personification of their hope. He is representative of the thousands of years of history that lead into this moment. And in his righteousness, he prays. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. How crazy do people think Simeon was? I wonder how many of his friends he told. The promised one's coming. The Messiah is going to be here. God told me. I'm not going to die until I see him. How crazy would you have thought Simeon was? And he came in the spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him, according to the custom of the law, on the eighth day of the life of a Hebrew boy, you take him to the temple and he is circumcised. And so moved by the spirit, Simeon goes to the temple to intersect with Jesus there. He took him up in his arms and he blessed God. And he said, I imagine the Simba moment as Simeon holds up baby Jesus and blesses God. And this is what he says, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. Simeon says, God, I can die in peace. I'm holding the fulfillment of your promise. Do you understand what's happening in this moment with Simeon? Do you understand that he holds the promise, the ones that the faithful remnant clung to, generation after generation after generation, all the people before him that the culture told, you're foolish, you're dumb. God's not going to do that. If he's so powerful, if he's so good, if he keeps his promises, then why is this happening? All the people that ever asked that and got in clung to faith anyways, God is, Simeon is holding the fulfillment of that promise. He is holding the gift from God that through this Messiah, he is going to live a life in such a way that is perfect. And he is going to bear our iniquities and our transgression. And he is going to take our sin and our shame and all the things that break down our relationship with God. And he is going to hang on the cross for me and for you to reconcile our souls back to our creator God. That's what this baby boy is going to do. And that's what Simeon holds. And that's what he knows. But he doesn't just know that. He knows that everything else, this broken world, all the things that hurt and don't make sense and seem like they're broken, this baby boy is going to restore those as well. And so Simeon holds him up and he says, God, I can die. I understand. I get it. You have kept your promise. So let Christmas remind you that your God always keeps his promises. He always keeps his promises. Even when our life feels like the life when we're in the judges and we're getting oppressed by one thing after another, we're getting influenced by one thing after another, our faith is getting beaten up. It feels foolish to cling to it. We don't know if it's actually true. Remember, Christmas tells us that God always keeps his promises. Even when faith doesn't make sense to those who grew up as slaves in Egypt and are told about their powerful God and they say, if he's so powerful, why am I here? Jesus is a reminder that God kept his promises to them and he will keep his promises to you. And just like Israel went through dark times and had to cling to the promise, so do we. Sometimes life erodes our faith. Sometimes life picks away at our faith. Sometimes it makes it seem pretty impossible, but Christmas reminds us that for the faithful remnant that cling to the promises of our God, that he always keeps his promises. He will never let us down. And not only does that boy come to reconcile our souls to him, but he's going to grow up, he's going to become a man and go back to heaven, and one day he's coming back to fix everything else. And Christmas looks forward to that day too. So when we celebrate Christmas, go drink eggnog. Put a little something in it. Go nuts. Open the gifts. Enjoy your family. Celebrate all the blessings that we have. But know that this is what we celebrate. Know that we give each other gifts, not just because Jesus came to make salvation possible for you, but to make it possible for everyone to reconcile the soul back to its creator and that one day he's coming again and he's gonna fix everything else. He already came to fix your soul and he's going to come back again and fix creation and we cling to that promise. So let Christmas remind us that we cling to the promises just like the ancestors of Abraham and we anticipate the promise just like the followers of Abraham and that God always keeps His promises. That's why the angels sing. That's why they showed up in the sky. That's why the wise men came. That's why we celebrate it every year. Because the baby Jesus came and he restored your soul. And the son of God is coming back and he's gonna restore all of this. And so we cling to that hope. And Christmas is a reminder of that. That's the joy of Christmas. Let's pray. Father, you are good. And we are humbled by your gift. We confess, God, that sometimes things do feel broken to us. Sometimes it's hard to make sense of things. God, for some of us, even this year, even 2019 was one that has, if we're honest, eroded our faith. May we be reminded of the faithful remnant that clung to your promises, and may we be like them and cling to you as well. God, for those who are struggling, be with them. For those for whom this season is difficult, may they feel your presence. For those for whom this season is joyous, may they see with fresh eyes your blessings. God, may we never again reduce the gift of your son to a baby and a manger, but understand him for the God that he is. We thank you for Christmas and all that it represents. In Jesus' name, amen.

I told Steve this week I wanted the full dance party intro for the sermon, so we are in a good spot. Speaking of being in good spots, before I just launch into the sermon, I just kind of felt compelled to say this. I think one of the things about church that a lot of us would agree that's tough sometimes is that when you show up, you kind of smile and people say, how you doing? And you say, good. And sometimes we mean it and sometimes we don't. And so sometimes church feels like a place where it's not okay to not be okay. And so I just wanted to tell you as your pastor, there's nothing going on with me. It's just, I feel like I need a vacation for about three weeks. Jen and Lily are sick. They're at home. I kind of feel like the weather does today. Just a little tired, just a little run down. I was praying that God would give me energy for this morning that I don't have. And so like, I'm just telling you that I've had better days. There's nothing wrong with Nate. I just would rather be at home in sweatpants right now. I'm being totally honest with you. So if you're there too, and it was a struggle to get here this morning, I just want you to know that I'm with you. And if you're listening online or watching online because you stayed in those sweatpants, I'm jealous. So here's what I want to do. I was reminded as we were singing, and I heard your voices singing out. It was one of my favorite things to do is listening to you guys, my church, sing to God. I was reminded that we're a group of people, mostly care about our spiritual health and are here for what the Lord might have to say to us this morning. That's why we've gathered. So let's pray that that would be good, and then I'll launch into the stuff that I have prepared for you. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for getting us out of bed. Lord, for those who didn't get out of bed this morning but are catching up later, thank you for that time of rest for them that need it so much. God, we just pray that you would tune us into your word and your will. We pray that you would give us energy that we might lack. We pray that you would give us the ability to tune out things that may be distracting right now, and that for a little while this morning, we would hear from you. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen. Okay. I don't normally do this, but I want you to raise your hand. Raise your hand, and I'm not going to ask you to quote it, although that would be super fun. Raise your hand if you think you know what the verse Jeremiah 29 11 says. If you think you know that, okay? It's so funny from my perspective. There's a bunch of people doing this, right? And nobody doing this. That's fine. That's fine. That's a pretty well-known verse, right? It's from the Old Testament, the book of Jeremiah. It says, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Actually, it says declares. It's a big deal. I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. And we like to glom onto that verse. We like to claim that verse. We like to go, oh gosh, it's so good to know that my God has a plan for me. And that's for the most part fun. But that verse is not for you. That verse is one of, I think, the most misapplied verses in Scripture, and it's one of the most misapplied verses in church. We look at that, for I know the plans God has for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you hope in the future. And we go, oh, God has a plan for me. This is great. Except that that's not what that verse means. With that verse, who Jeremiah is talking to is the nation of Israel. And they're in slavery. They're cast out. And they don't feel like their God's looking out for them anymore. And he says to them, listen, I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. I'm going to bring you out of this and into a time of prospering again. It's a promise to the nation of Israel. And really it has, it's multi-layers to this promise, but it's really a messianic promise. One day I'm going to send my son Jesus and he's going to rescue everyone back to me. And then there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and one day I'm going to prosper you. I'm not going to harm you. That's what that verse means. It doesn't mean, Harris is sitting in the front row, okay? Harris is my buddy. It does not mean that God has plans for you, Harris, to prosper you and not to harm you. It does not mean that. That's a promise to the nation of Israel. And if I'm breaking your heart right now, because you love that verse and it brings you comfort, I don't want to rob that comfort of you. Is it revelatory of God's character? Yes. Do I think that God has a plan for you? Yes, I do. But what I want to do this morning is give you a better verse than that to show you that he has a plan. And I want to offer you some sympathy because I think that we glom onto that verse. We grab that verse and we go, yes, this is good. This brings me peace and joy. I think it's such a well-known verse because we want to know that God has a plan for us. We want to know that in the midst of life, in the midst of all the chaos, in the midst of all the things that we can't control, that somehow, somewhere, there is a divine God who is orchestrating all of these situations and that they will work out. We need to know. We need the peace of knowing that everything's not just happening at random, that someone is orchestrating all of these events. We need that peace. And so we grab that verse and we go, yes, God has a plan for me. This is great news. And people have done this for all of history. This is a question that we've asked for all of history. Why am I here and what am I here for? How did I get here and what am I supposed to do when I get here? As a matter of fact, if you remember freshman philosophy in college, one of the things you learn is that all of philosophy boils down to those three questions of origin, purpose, and destiny. How did I get here? What am I supposed to do? And where am I going? And so it's natural if you're a believer and you've been exposed to scripture that you would see a verse like that put up on a wall somewhere or included in a devotional somewhere and that you would attach onto it and go, yes, this is great. God has a plan for me because this answers some of the basic questions of human existence. How did I get here? And what am I here for? That's why I think the book of Ephesians is so good for us to study right now. Because the whole purpose of Ephesians is to tell us our identity and our purpose. Paul wrote the book of Ephesians, and the purpose of Ephesians, the overarching purpose, based on the research that I did and the guides that I read, is to give us our identity and our purpose. It's to answer those questions for you. It's to begin to answer the question, God, do you really have a plan for me? Is there really someone to make sense of all the things that are happening in life right now? God, what is my, who am I and what is my purpose? Where did I come from and what am I here for? The book of Ephesians, scholars believe, was written to answer this question. It's also important to note, as I got into learning more about the book of Ephesians, it's important to note that this letter, this is, first of all, it's written by a guy named Paul. Paul's probably the most influential Christian to ever live. Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. There was different churches all over Asia Minor gathering in the cities, and he would write them letters to encourage them in particular. And those became known as Paul's letters. If you want to sound really fancy in your small group, you can refer to them as Pauline epistles. And everyone will go, whoa, you're really smart. So these epistles, these letters that were written by Paul, are written to churches. And here's the thing that's really important. I just, as an aside, I just want to encourage you to do this. These letters that Paul wrote, Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, that big chunk in the New Testament, when they arrived at a church, someone would get up in front of the church after the student pastor did the announcements and made fun of the senior pastor that's been going on for thousands of years. They would get up and they would say, this is a letter from Paul. And they would read it. And they wouldn't just read chapter one. They wouldn't just parse out one of the little phrases and spend the Sunday on that. They would read the whole thing, start to finish. These letters are intended to be read from start to finish. Paul did not write this with chapters. Chapters got added hundreds of years later, thousands of years later. We didn't do that. Or he didn't do that. We put those there. It was intended to be read from start to finish. So I would encourage you, as we go through the book of Ephesians, Kyle has made a reading plan for us that's going to take us through the book two times if you read every day. But I would encourage you at some point in the next now five weeks to take some time. It won't take you but 30 or 45 minutes, or if you're Doug Bergeson, about an hour and a half to really sound out the words. To sit down and read it from start to finish. Sit down at some point or another and read the whole book from start to finish. And there you'll start to see the nuances and the points and really the overarching themes of the book of Ephesians come out. So that would be my challenge to you during this series, is to sit down and read it from start to finish and see what comes out to you. It's perfectly fine, like we're going to do this morning, to camp out in one verse, but it's important that we get the whole theme. The other thing I would say as we launch into our series in Ephesians, as I now step into it, Patrick did a great job last week of starting us in chapter one. There's no way I can do all of chapter two this week. If you love the book of Ephesians and you know chapter two well, I'm going to tell you this right up front. You're going to be disappointed today, okay? I'm not going to get to the theological thing that you want me to get to. It's just, there's so much there. I can't cover it all. So I have to invest our time in this one place this morning, but you guys need to invest your time in learning the rest of it on your own. Six weeks isn't enough time to cover all the theology in Ephesians. But that's why Paul wrote Ephesians. And he wrote it, we think, to the church in Ephesus, but really it was to all the churches surrounding the ancient city of Ephesus. And it just kind of found its home base in Ephesus. And so it became the book of Ephesians, but really it's a general letter to the churches to tell us our identity and our purpose, to give us the answers to those questions we've been asking for all of time. That's why he wrote it. And if that's why he wrote it, to tell us who we are and why we're here. Really to answer that question, another way to think about this is if you were to say, God, what's your will for my life? What would you have me do? Some of us are in our 20s and we've got our life in front of us and we're going, God, what do you want me to do? Some of us have lived life and we're kind of midlife and we're kind of going, God, have I been doing what you want me to do? And am I going to do now what you want me to do? Some of us have moved into a season of life that's different. You find yourself as empty nesters or adult children or you have grandchildren and you feel like maybe part of life has run its course and now we're going, now, Father, what would you have me do? We ask this question over and over again in our life. Father, what is your will for us? What do you want me to do? This verse answers that question. This verse is the better version, I think, of Jeremiah 29, 11. It's in chapter 2, verse 10. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. It follows a discourse that's showing you how you get saved. If you need to know, if your question is, how do I get saved? What do I need to do? Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 are the most succinct explanation of salvation you can find in the Bible. And it starts off, we're dead in our trespasses. God loves us. He gives us salvation by grace through faith. That not of yourself is a gift of God, not of works, so that no man can boast. So if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, God's will for you is that you would become a believer. Once you are a believer, God's will for you is revealed in verse 10. And it says this, for we, the church, the Christians, those that call God their Father and Jesus their Savior, for we are His workmanship. His there is God. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You want to know what God's will is for your life? You want to know who you are and why you're here? This is it. You are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you may walk in them. I love this verse. As I was studying personally a couple of years ago, I came across this verse. I had never noticed it before. I had always paid attention to all the other very worthwhile things in Ephesians chapter two. And for whatever reason, when I sat down to read this verse on that day years ago, it leapt off the page. And this is one of those that I've been waiting for the opportunity to preach for a couple of years. And now that it's finally here, I'm going to pitch a dud. But we're going to do our best to make this verse matter to everybody because I love it so much. And the first thing we see is that we are God's workmanship. He created us. And just that sentence right there, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, just that phrase has so much in it. The first thing we see, the first thing that I would note is that that gives us our position in creation. I try to say as often as I can and make this point as often as I can because I think it's a salient one that the Bible starts with a very intentional sentence. In the beginning, God created. And if you were to ask, why does it start that way? You could say, well, that's the beginning of the story and that's fair. But I think there's more more going on there. When we see in the beginning God created, when we see in chapter 2, verse 10, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that immediately tells us our position in creation. God is the creator, and we are the created. God is the creator, and we are the creation. And I would submit to you that all discord with God, all sin, all disunity, even all lack of joy and happiness can be traced back to our misunderstanding this fundamental relationship. All discord we experience with God, if he is the creator and we are the created, then all discord that we experience is because in our lives we went, no thanks, I'm here. You see, all unhappiness that we experience, all sin can be boiled down to us going, I don't accept the fundamental order of creation and I want to elevate myself to my authority in my own life. Wasn't this the sin of Eve in the garden? For those unfamiliar, the Bible starts with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. There's one rule, don't eat of that tree. And Satan comes up and sidles up next to Eve and he says, don't you want to eat of that tree? And I don't know if she rejects it or not, but he says, you know that God doesn't want you to eat of that tree because if you eat of it, you will become like him. And Eve went, oh, I want to be like him. And she became God in her own life. And that's how sin entered the world. And for us in our lives, when we experience any discord at all, the root of it is we have forgotten our fundamental position in creation. If you don't think that's true, read the book of Job and tell me what God is saying to Job in chapters 38, 39, and 40. He's saying, Job, you've forgotten your place. I'm the creator. You're the creation. So that sentence gives us our position in creation. It also gives us our purpose. It lets us know that because God created us, that he can now imbue us with purpose. Because he made us, he decides what we're for and what we're to be used for. That's not up to us to decide. We don't have to figure that out. We just have to ask God what it is. It also gives us our purpose. And then another thing that we see, I think, is that God takes pride in his creation. This last week, we finally launched our new website. Okay, our new website is up and running, graceralee.org. If you have a chance to go check it out today on mobile or on your desktop or whatever, go look at it. I think it's phenomenal. I think a guy named Hugh Butler did it for us. I think he did a phenomenal job. When you go look at it, I think you're gonna be really proud of your church. That website looks way better than us. That's what I would say, okay? You're going to go, oh man, this is such a good first impression. It's a really good website. And as we were designing it, the designer, a guy named Hugh, we were meeting with him. And I told him, I said, listen, man, you're more creative than me. You're way better at this than I could ever be. I don't want my preferences or what I'm asking you to do to limit your creativity in any way. I don't want the instructions that I give you to feel like they're limiting. I want your creation to have full reign. And actually what I told him is, I want you to be so proud of this website that it's the one you use to show to future clients to get their business. Like, you do whatever you want, just make it awesome. And after he got into designing it a little bit, he said, hey man, would you mind if I put my name down at the bottom of it? If I said that the website was made by HBCO, the name of his company? I said, no, absolutely, go ahead. Because I want him to be proud of what he did. And if you go to the website and you scroll to the bottom of the front page, you'll see website created by HBCO because he's proud of what he created. When you make something, you're proud of it. You guys know this. When you make something in your wood shop, when you put something back together, you show your wife, you show people, you take pictures of it, you text it to your buddies. Look what I did. When you put together, ladies, when you design something new, when you buy a new outfit, Jen does this all the time. I think that's creation. You've created a new outfit for Lily. She brings it home and then I have to go, that's the cutest thing ever. It's just, it's way cuter than the other 20 I've seen this year. Like, that's what you have to say. Like, when we create something, we want people to notice it. We take pride in that. That's what God does with his creation. He takes pride in you. Listen, this sounds flippant. It's not. God didn't make any duds, okay? God didn't create the good ones on Monday morning when he was fresh and then like Friday afternoon just spit out Jeff Lemons. Like that's not how that works. Yeah, whatever, this will be okay. God doesn't make any duds. He doesn't run out of energy. He created you. He is proud of you. He takes pride in his creation. And so in this very first sentence in Ephesians 2, verse 10, we see some huge themes. In this first statement, we see our position in creation, our purpose in creation, and His pride in creation. From the very beginning, it tells us our identity. If you were to ask, who am I? How did I get here? You are from God. If you are a believer, you are his child. It's his will that you would come into his family. And because of that, he's imbued you with purpose and he takes great pride in you. That one sentence at the very beginning, we see our position in creation, our purpose in that creation and his pride in his creation. And then once that's established, God made us. What did he make us for? Well, the very next sentence answers that question. He created us for good works that we might walk in them. I love the idea of this sentence. We don't have to figure out, God, what's your will for me? His will for you is that you would walk in the good works that he created for you. You have to think, God, what am I supposed to do with my life? Well, you're supposed to walk in the good works that he created for you. It's super simple. We don't have to figure this out. We don't have to divine anything or read the tea leaves. We just have to say that we were created to walk in the good works that he made for us, that he predetermined for us. That's our job. That's what we have to do. And it's at this point that I think we can kind of read this in two different ways. And the two ways to receive this passage, to kind of process it, I think, are kind of, you get the two pendulum swings in my marriage. Okay, Jen's not here this morning because Lily has neon green snot coming out of her nose, but if she were here, she would nod her head in agreement. There's me, when I see this, I'm an egomaniac. So when I read that I was created for good works beforehand, that I should walk in them, I go, that's right. I have a lot of talents to offer you, God. Where would you like me to be in your church? Like, yes, this makes sense to me. How would you like to use me? And I feel this grand sense of purpose and design and calling. Now, I'm humbled by that, and that's silly, and God doesn't need me at all. There's a story in the Old Testament where God talks through a donkey, and my dad likes to remind me often, if God can speak through a donkey, then he can speak through you. So don't get a big head, and that's not the word that he uses. He uses the King James version for that particular. But some of us read this, and because we're more maybe confident people, I don't know the best way to say it. Maybe it's just we're jerks. We go, yeah, okay, God, you've given me some gifts. How do I use them for you? But I think most of us process this like my wife does, who tend to think, I don't really have anything to offer. There can't possibly be a lot of good works that matter. My good works in comparison to others are really small. Certainly this verse applies to other people that are going to make a larger impact than me. And I think a lot of us tend to disqualify ourselves from passages like this. Other people were created for the good works. Other people should walk in those. That's really not for me. And I would just humbly submit to you, if that's how you feel, that that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says everyone, we, all Christians, if you're a believer, if you know Jesus, then God created you for good works, that you should walk in them, and those good works matter. And I would further submit to you, if you feel like someone who's on the fringe, who couldn't possibly be used in meaningful ways by God, that he couldn't possibly really have a plan for you, then I would point out to you that the people that God uses over and over and over again, generation after generation in scripture, are the exact people who would feel like you do right now if they were told, God has big plans for you. David would have never believed that. the youngest of eight sons watching the sheep on the hillside. Moses would have never believed that, a shepherd of 40 years out in the desert. Rahab would have never believed that, a prostitute in a forgotten city of Jericho. So if that's how you feel this morning, you're in good company. So these good works are for everyone. And if we want to know what are our good works, what can I do? How do I know this to be true? How do I begin to apply myself? I would make these points because I think we find our good works rooted in these truths. I would make these two points. First, everyone matters to someone. Everyone matters to someone. There are people in your life that if you said something nice to them, it would lift them up. If you said something harsh to them, it would tear them down. There are people in your life, whether you know it or not, who are watching you to determine how they should act in certain situations. There are people in your job, at your workplace, and you might not even know this, but they might know that you go to church. And when something happens in the company, when an email goes out, when a meeting happens, when someone goes long or someone says something snide, there are people who are looking at you to determine how a Christian reacts. Everybody matters to somebody. And everybody excels at something. Everyone is good at something. You might not feel like you're good at something, but I'm telling you, everyone is good at something. These last two years, I've gone to Mexico. I've been to Mexico three years in a row, but the last two years, there's been a guy come on the trip named Jacob Gutierrez. Jacob is the son of one of our great grace partners, and their family comes down every year. And Jacob's 24 years old, and he struggles with Down syndrome. And so when Jacob is there, there are some things that he feels like he can't do. There are some ways that he feels like he can't contribute like everyone else. There are some things that he feels like, man, I don't excel at that. But two years in a row, we've sat around the circle at the end of the night. If you've been on a mission trip, you know the circle, man. It's the same circle everywhere on every continent. You work all day, you get to the end of the day, you sit around because you're Christians and you sing songs and then somebody shares the devotion and then you ask the question, all right, what happened today? What did you see today? Let's talk about today. Let's kind of decompress, okay? And so I've seen two years in a row with Jacob in that circle, somebody say, man, I've learned so much from Jacob being here. And I learned it too. And as I watched him interact with everybody this week, I saw a guy with unfailing sweetness and kindness to other people. I saw a guy who never ever acted like he was in a conversation he didn't want to be in. Who never acted like he didn't have time for somebody. Who was never not interested in what somebody was saying. I saw a guy who, if you asked him to stay up all night talking to you, he would, about nothing. I saw a guy that loved people really well. And two years in a row, I'm not making this up, this isn't speaker embellishment, I'm telling you the truth. Two years in a row, I've come home with this indelible impression and thought, man, I need to be more like Jacob. Everybody matters to someone and everybody excels at something. So even if you think, gosh, I'm not sure that I have anything to offer in the kingdom of God. Yes, you do. There are people watching you and there are things that you are good at. We all have our comfort zone. So the question becomes, not do I have good works, but Father, what are my good works? What are my good works? What have you purposed me to do? What do you want me to do? I think a good way to answer that question is to start with, who are the people that I matter to, and what are the things that I feel like I'm okay at? What are the things that I feel like I excel at? You could say, what are the things that people affirm in you? You could say, what are the things that you're passionate about? What are the things that tick you off that make you want to make a change? But I think the most reasonable question for all of us to ask this morning, our Father, what are my good works? What have you designed me and purposed me to do? What am I gifted to do? What am I purposed to do? And there's an answer for everybody. So I would tell you this as your pastor, or if you're visiting as just a guy, that if you were to ask me, what's God's will for my life? I would ask you, I don't know. What are your good works? What has he designed you to do? And this is a layered question because sometimes this means for all of life. This means overarching call on life. My good work, I feel right now, is to be a pastor. And I think that that's gonna be a lifelong call. I hope that it is, that that's my good work. And so sometimes when we ask that, we're asking for this big overarching question. And sometimes God gives us that answer and sometimes he doesn't yet. So the more pertinent question is, God, what are my good works right now? What would you have me do right now? Father, I'm content if I don't get the five-year answer. I'm content if you don't give me the 10-year plan. God, what would you have me do right now? What are my good works right now? And then we ask that question. Say, Father, what are my good works and how do I walk in them? What have you designed me to do and how do I walk in them? And I'm grateful at Grace that we have examples of people all over the place who are walking in their good works. I think of Cindy Hayes. She's right here. Everyone look at her. She's right there in the third row. She's super embarrassed right now. Yeah, she's the best. If you're friends with Cindy, ask her about the nickname that she got in Mexico. I will not say it, Cindy. I will not say it, but you should ask her because it's funny. For about nine or 10 years, Cindy has served on our personnel committee. Cindy has a background in HR. She's been doing that her whole career. She's sharp and smart and has kept us legal and has told me many times since I got here, Nate, you cannot do that. That is illegal. Like you will, you'll take the church down in flames with you if you do that. Do not do that. And behind the scenes has protected us and guided us and seen us through hirings and seen us through dismissals and seen us through policy changes. And she did that for about nine or 10 years and just recently stepped off. So I wanted us first to pause and say thank you to Cindy for doing that for us. But I would tell you that for that period of time in her life, that was her good work to walk in. She was doing what God designed her to do. And it probably didn't feel like that to her. It probably didn't feel, she wouldn't have said at the beginning of those nine years, this is my good work and I'm gonna walk in it, Lord. That's probably not what she would have said, but that's what she did. That was her unique talent that she had to offer to God's kingdom and she built a church that way. I watched while we were in Mexico this last week, a guy came with us named Nate, and he's a carpenter. And we went down, and Nate had, he had his wrist was hurt. It was taped up. I think he was faking it to get out of work, but really milking it for some sympathy. But he couldn't pick up things on the job site, and so they told him, man, you can't come to the job site. But back at where we were staying, there was supposedly a wood shop that was filled with clutter and filth and trash and little bits of wood and sawdust and tools that were disassembled and in disrepair. And it was a totally useless space. And Nate decided that that week, what he was going to do is turn that into a usable wood shop for those folks. And by the time he left, that space looked like a professional wood shop. He built shelves. He sorted wood. He threw things away. He assembled tools. He lined it up. He showed the guys how to use the different tools. He told them this was dangerous. You need to sell it as fast as you can. Don't do this. And by the time he left, that place looked like a professional wood shop. And what I know for sure is he had some help. He had some dummies like me carrying wood and going, where do I put it? But we added no talent to the equation. So what I know is that if Nate had not gone, that would not have gotten done. And so that week, that was his good work to walk in. And I really do think that life is just as simple as, Father, what are my good works? And how can I walk in them? And can I share with you what happens when we'll do this for a lifetime? If you'll be a person who will just ask God faithfully, what are my good works? And how do I walk in them? My mom all passed away some years ago. I'm Southern, so I have a mom all. And for the last year of her life, I had the privilege of meeting with her every other Monday to have coffee with her. And as we would meet and spend time together, I learned about who she was. She was a woman, she had an older sister named Ann. My grandma's name was Linda. And Linda was convinced that Ann was more talented than her. She sang in like the school plays. She was prettier than her. All the boys paid attention to Ann and none of the boys paid attention to Linda. My papa actually met her by hitting on Ann. Ann said she was taken and he said, do you have a sister? And she goes, yeah. She's working down the street. So he goes down the street, and they dance together. And he said the first time he felt her in his arms, he knew that this was the one, which is just great because they were together for their whole life. She always felt like kind of the fading flower, the one in the background. She felt overshadowed by her sister. She never wanted to be in the spotlight. My grandfather, Don, had a huge personality. He would fill a room. Everybody loved him, and she was always playing the supporting role to him. Her children, some of them, had a big personality. She was always playing the supporting role to them. She didn't come to know the Lord until later in life. She started having babies at 19. She had four kids. And then somewhere in her late 20s, early 30s, she came to know the Lord because one of her children started going to the local church. And she never thought she had anything to offer. This little, she's tiny, diminutive woman. But she just loved the people that were in front of her. And even though she was never in public, even though she never had the spotlight, one time I remember she felt like her good work was to take a group of teenagers to Peru. The church was taking a mission trip to Peru. She was in her 60s, and she was like, yeah, I'll take them. And she just went. Everybody was shocked. What in the world? So when I did her funeral, even though she was a woman who never had any spotlight, who never felt like she had anything to offer, there was 400 people there. There was a whole section of young families that were representatives of the girls in Peru that she took, who years later said, we want to come honor Miss Linda. She worked at First Union at the time as a bank teller for years. She hadn't been there for 15 years. There's a whole section of people that she worked with who said, we want to honor Miss Linda. There's people coming out of the woodwork saying, we want to honor this woman because she loved us well. And her family, we had no idea that she was this loved. And it made an indelible impact on me. And to me, that's the evidence of a life lived. Saying, Father, what is my good work? And how do I walk in it? And that's what I want you to do too. We don't have to know, God, what's your will for me? What are the plans that you have for me for forever? He might tell us that, he might not. But if we want to know God's will for our life, it begins with that question. What are the good works that you created me for and how can I begin to walk in them? If you need a jump start on these good works, we have sheets in your seats to volunteer here at Grace. And I want to be very careful with this. I did not preach this sermon to get you to volunteer here, okay? I didn't do that. If your vision for what are the good works that I have to walk in is ushering, then you need better vision, man. You need a bigger view than that. Don't laugh too hard, slide guy. It's bigger than that too. It's a bigger vision than that. I'm not talking about how we can all volunteer here, but I will say if you've been coming here, particularly if you started within the last 12 months and you're not plugged in yet to a service team, this is a great way to get plugged in, a great way to get your foot in the door. And if you're asking the question, what are my good works? And you're not sure, a great start is to begin to volunteer somewhere. The last church that I attended without getting paid to show up was a church called Greystone back home. And when I went, I just wanted to get plugged in. And so I said, I don't know what my good works are here, Father, but I'm going to start ushering. I signed up to do that. That led to helping with the students. That led to a small group. That led to a staff position. We never know what's going to happen. But I want you to be people who walk in the good works that God created for you. If you need help getting started with those, we have the service sheets in your seats. The things that are highlighted in red are things that we need particularly right now. I would also mention that not listed on the sheet is a missions team that you can join. So if you're interested in doing that, you can just write that at the bottom. But if you're not plugged in yet or you have questions about that, fill that out. And in a few minutes, Kyle's gonna come up and pray for us and we're gonna do the offering. You can drop that in the basket when it comes by or especially if you're watching online, you can go to our super great website and go to gracerother.org slash service teams and we have a form there that you can fill out. But let us be people who ask God, Father, what are my good works and how do I walk in them? Let's pray. Father, we love you. You're good to us. You watch out for us. You care for us. Father, we know that you have a plan for us. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that, the courage to ask what our good works are and the obedience to walk in them. God, I pray if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, that they would come to know you. Lord, I also pray for anybody here that may just be feeling a little tired, a little run down. Would you energize them? Would you let them know today in some way that speaks directly to their heart that you care about them? Father, would you use us in incredible ways to build your kingdom and serve your purpose? It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

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