Sermons tagged with Protection

Christmas is coming. The Advent candles mark this season of waiting. They help us pay attention to our longing for a Savior, for Jesus, the reason for our Christmas celebration. He gave us our first gift, our greatest gift, His love, which is perfect because we live in a world starving for love. We live lives starving for love. We're lonely, longing for a place to belong. We crave affirmation because we wonder if we really even matter. We long to be known and understood and accepted, don't we? Our whole selves, our real selves. In the midst of our shame and feelings of unworthiness, we desperately want, no, we need to be loved as we are. We long for Jesus because he loves like that. We read it over and over again in the Bible. We love because He first loved us. God is love, so you can't know Him if you don't love. And this is how God showed His love for us. God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they have done to our relationship with God. Friends, if God loved us like this, why can't we love each other? God's great miracle at Christmas was to love us up close, personally. Emmanuel, it means God is with us. So today we light this second candle of Advent as a reminder of God's love because the God who loves us knows we need his love. So he came to earth to be with us. Jesus coming means that we have that love. You are loved. Receive it. Welcome him into your home, into your brokenness, into your hurt and your shame and your sadness. Welcome him into your heart, into your places of joy and celebration and thanksgiving. Ask Jesus to fill you with the light of his love so that you can be light in a dark world. Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to get to be back with you up here preaching. Last week, Erin kicked off Advent for us. Erin is our wonderful children's pastor, and she did a phenomenal job kicking off Advent at Grace. If you didn't get to watch it, I would very much encourage you to go and do that. If it gets boring while I'm preaching, just jump over to our messages page and watch that one instead if you missed it. I wouldn't blame you. She did a great job of framing up Advent in that it's a season of expected waiting. It's a season where we as believers prepare ourselves for the coming of the Messiah and all that it means. And so every week we focus on a different thing that Jesus brought. Last week was hope. This week is joy, or this week is love. Next week is joy. The week after that is peace. And then on Christmas Eve, we get to focus on Jesus. So this week, as we settle into this idea of love, I wanted to take you back a couple of years ago. It's a Saturday night, Sunday morning, about 2 a.m., 2.30 a.m., something like that. And Jen and I are awoken by our dog, Ruby, barking. I have a golden retriever named Ruby. If you know me, you know I would like to not have a golden retriever named Ruby or any dog by any name, but Jen loves her, and so we keep her, and Ruby is about as good of a dog as you can have. I have a friend that has a dog named Rocco, and Ruby is way better than Rocco, but at about 2 o'clock, 2.30 in the morning, we were awoken by her barking, and she never barks inside. And so we were both a little bit startled, and I go scrambling down the stairs, but I fully expect I'm going to get down the stairs, Ruby's going to have her nose pressed up against the window, and there's going to be a rabbit or a deer or another dog or something in our yard. It won't be that big of a deal, but as I'm going down the stairs, Ruby's going to have her nose pressed up against the window and there's going to be a rabbit or a deer or another dog or something in our yard. It won't be that big of a deal. But as I'm going down the stairs at our old house, we moved back in April. At our old house, as you're going down the stairs, you can see the front door and then you can see like the window pane next to the front door and then the stairs going down our front porch to the sidewalk. And as I'm going down the stairs at 2.30 in the morning with no shirt on, I'm looking out that window and I see two men start to walk up my porch stairs. It's two dudes in their 20s. And I was instantly terrified. What are these guys doing here in the middle of the night? And what I should have done in the moment is stopped, turned around, gone back into my room, grabbed a gun and a phone and called 911. That's what I should have done. Instead, what I did was leap down the last eight stairs into my small foyer and press myself up against the glass panel right as they came to the stairs. And when I saw them, it was two guys and one of them was carrying a beer bottle, but he wasn't carrying it like he was drinking it. He was carrying it like he was about to swing it. And I thought, oh, it's about to go down. It's happening right now. So I thought maybe they are just trying to like sneak in and steal a couple things. So I press myself against the glass and I bang it as hard as I can. And I say, get off, get off my porch, get out of my house, get off my property. And they start to argue with me. At one point, I'm trying to get them to get off my porch. At one point, he holds a phone up against the glass and he says, is this your address? And I say, yeah, but that doesn't matter. Get off my property. By this point, Jen's at the top of the stairs. Lily's two years old at the time. She's crying in her room. I'm flipping out. I am waiting for my door handle to start jiggling. And when it does, my plan is to go to the kitchen and get a knife and come back and meet them. Like, I'm ready. But then I keep telling them to get off my property, and they go, they treat me like I was a crazy person. They walk back off the stairs. I go upstairs. I get my gun and a phone, and I told Jen, look out the window and tell me what you see. And she says, there's four men standing at the end of our driveway. And I'm like, I only got five shots, you know, so let's make sure that I'm careful. And so I call 911. They send somebody out. The guys start to walk down the street. Long story short, they were just out probably partying, got an Uber to a place they thought they were supposed to go, put the wrong address into the Uber and ended up at my house and ruined my night. Now, here's why I bring that up. I sat in Lily's playroom staring out the window until 4.30 in the morning, like not moving a muscle in case they came back. But I bring that up because I want to ask the question, what is it about us? What is it about me that when I saw a threat to my family, I jumped down the stairs and bang on the glass and have a plan to go get a kitchen knife and fight two dudes who are trying to break into a house? Like, listen, I don't want any of you to take advantage of this. I've never been in a fistfight. I don't know how valuable I would be. I know that I would fight dirty, and I know that you'd really have to hurt me to get me to stop. Other than that, I'm pretty sure I'd be terrible at it. If I started fighting these two dudes, I was going down. But that didn't even occur to me. I just instantly threw myself in harm's way because two people that I loved were upstairs. And I ask what is it that would make me do that because I am certain that any of you who love anybody would have done the same thing. Any dads who are listening would have not have hesitated to do and react in the exact same way that I did more or less. Any mamas listening would do whatever they had to do to protect their kids. We would do anything for the people that we love. And I think the reason that we do that is because we do genuinely and deeply love them. I love my wife, Jen, and I love my daughter, Lily, and I would do anything for them. Of course I would do anything for Jen. Do you realize that my wife Jen and I have been together nearly 18 years? We've been married 14 years. She puts up with me daily and weekly. You understand that? Like I'm a gross human. I have terrible manners when there's nobody around. She puts up with that. I'm a pain in the rear. She puts up with that, and she loves me, and she supports me. Of course, I'll do anything that she needs. I loved Lily when she was born, but I love her even more now. Just this last week, she's in the back seat singing along to a Wren Collective song, and I turn around. She's in a big girl booster seat now, and I start crying like a moron because I just can't believe that I get to love this girl. Like, I just love her so much. And you would do the same for your families and for the people that you love because love is this compelling thing because typically when we love people, they've done something to warrant that love, right? That's how it goes. They've showed up for us. They've listened to us. They've hugged us. They've cried with us. They've laughed with us. They've seen us at our worst. They hope for our best. Like the people that we have in our life who we love, who if you think about, if they picked up the phone and they called you and they said, hey, I need this, you would do anything to be able to provide that for them. Those people have typically reciprocated the love that you offer them. That's kind of how love works. It builds and we reciprocate it. That's what makes God's love for us so miraculous, because he didn't do that. He didn't wait for us to earn it. He didn't watch you live your life and then decide to love you. He didn't wait for you to reciprocate his love and then say, yeah, now my affection is growing for you. As a matter of fact, this is how Paul writes about God's love in Romans chapter five. I'll pick it up to deserve it. He loved us before we did anything at all to deserve it. We had never even existed. We weren't even a figment in our parents' or grandparents' imagination. God just decided that he loved us and he sent his son, his only son, whom he loved and whom he was well pleased. Jesus came down and he died for us even before we deserved it. And make no mistake about it, this was a huge sacrifice. Jesus came down and the night that he was arrested to be crucified and to die for you and I, out of his deep and abiding love for us, he prayed in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he begged God, stressed to the point of sweating blood, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please don't make me walk this path of crucifixion. I'm scared. I don't want to. And then he did because he loves us. He loves us when we've never done a single thing to deserve it. The only approximation I think we have of this love in our human experience, the type of love that God lavishes on us, is when we hold our brand new baby. If you're a parent or an aunt or an uncle, you know what it is to hold this child that is hours old and know in your soul you would do anything for this kid. For your heart to be so full of love that you can't stand it. We know what that love is. But God's love is even bigger than that because not only have we never done anything to deserve it, but he knows everything we're going to do. Imagine holding this child and knowing all the worst things that this person is ever going to do or be capable of and then trying to have that type of love well up within you. There'd be mixed emotions there, right? This is why I think God's love for us that he gives to us without ever earning it is miraculous. But the bigger miracle is that he continues to love us without borders. The bigger miracle of God's love, it's a miracle that he loves us before we deserve it, without deserving it at all, but he loves us knowing that we're never going to. He loves us without borders. This is why I know that's true. Because in Romans 8, Steve brought it up as a devotion a few weeks ago, and it rings so true this morning. Romans 8, to me, is the greatest chapter in the Bible. We did eight weeks in Romans 8 a few summers ago, and it finishes this way in what I think is the crescendo of hope. For it says, We cannot be separated from that love. And I phrased it that way, love without borders. God loves us without borders. This is a concept that I actually picked up from my counselor. And he was talking about human relationships and the borders that our love has in human relationships. And to me, it really makes a lot of sense that we love people in our life, but we love them within certain parameters, right? We love people within certain parameters. Kyle Tolbert's here this morning, Christmas Kyle, you may remember him earlier in the service. And I love Kyle. But if I'm honest, I love Kyle with some parameters. There's some borders around his behavior and around his actions. And if he ventures outside of those borders, it's going to impact my affection for him. This is how we love everybody. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a reality of life. If you think of me as your pastor, hopefully we have some sort of mutual affection for one another and you have an affection for your pastor. But you have parameters around me. You love me with borders. You give me affection with some boundaries. And if I were to go outside of those boundaries, then your affection for me would change. Just would. And it works the same way for our great partners. If I'm being honest, I love the great partners. But if I'm being honest, I love you within some boundaries. There's some things, there's some parameters around your behavior that if you were to do this thing or that thing, it would change my affection for you. And now some of these borders are necessary for our own self-protection, right? Like husbands and wives love each other, but even in those, the most intimate of relationships, there's borders around that love. Jen loves me very much, and she's offered me very generous borders for the continuation of that love, but if I begin to act in a way that's harmful to her or to Lily, well, now I'm acting outside the bounds of the love that she's offered me. So sometimes as people, we need these boundaries and these borders to protect ourselves. That's why I think God's love is phenomenal. That's why I think that's the biggest miracle of God's love. Because he loves us without borders. He puts no stipulations on our behavior. He has no expectations on us. He just says, hey, I love you. I love you so much that I've given you my son. I've given you everything. I've made a path so that I can spend forever with you. That's how much I love you. And if you really think about it, this is so powerful because we know that we love with borders. We know that other people love us in some ways contingent upon our behavior or the parts of ourselves that we allow them to see. And so very few of us, very few of us in life are fully known and fully loved. We reveal bits and pieces to ourselves. When you have an acquaintance, someone that you meet, whatever your public persona is, whatever that is, you present that to them. And the more they get to know you, the more the layers begin to peel back. And you're like, will you accept this layer? If I show you this side of myself, will you continue to love me for who I am or is that going to cause a fissure between us and now you can't love me like that anymore? And so we're very careful about who we let in and how vulnerable we become to people because we don't want to do anything to disturb the relationship that we have. And even in our most intimate of relationships, very few of us are fully known by our parents or our spouse or our close friends. There's always portions and pockets that we hide. Are these people over here who get this version and these people over here who get this version? And there's not a Venn diagram in our life of where somebody who fully knows us would intersect and know all the parts of us. And it's a sad thing to not be fully loved. It's a sad thing to pine, to be known and to be seen and to be vulnerable and yet to be accepted anyways. And it's an incredible gift that God gives us to love us without borders. Because none of those expectations are there. None of those parameters are there. Every time we realize our vulnerability to God, we are met with the warmth of his love. And so, God loving us without borders, what that means is this means that we are fully known, fully seen, fully vulnerable, and yet completely and limitlessly loved. We are fully known, we are fully seen, we are fully vulnerable, we are completely exposed to God the Father. All the things that we've done that would bring us shame. Some of the things that we have sworn to ourselves we are going to take to our graves. God knows about those things. The moments in our past that when we think of them they're painful because we don't like that version of ourself or what we did that night or that season or whatever it was. Jesus was with us in those moments and he was loving us anyways. The things in our future, the things that we're capable of, the thoughts that we have, the critical things that we think, the awful attitudes that we espouse and we continue to foster, Jesus is with us in that ugliness. And he loves us anyways. In our vulnerabilities, when life is heavy, when everyone in the world expects us to be strong and inside all we say is, God, I need you. I'm not strong enough for this. I can't do it. I can't be who they want me to be. God says, I know. I love you. I'll make you who you need to be. The miracle of God's love is not just that he loved us before we'd done anything to deserve it, but that that love perseveres regardless of what we do. And in him we are fully known, we are fully vulnerable, and yet fully accepted. And this is the thing that we all pine for. This is what we want. More than anything, that's what we want. If you think about your actions, think about your actions as an adolescent. Think about yourself in high school and then in college. Everything you did screamed, will you accept me now? Am I good enough now? Have I earned the world's affection and acceptance now? And the older we get, it doesn't change. That desire doesn't change. Am I good enough now? Am I enough now? We just learn more nuanced ways to pine for it. And I think what happens is, even though as Christians we know we are loved deeply and fully and completely and without hesitation, I think we tend to forget that. We go throughout our years, we go throughout our days, and we know that we have the affection of the Father, but for some reason we pine for it in other places, and we look to it from other people, and we put on other facades because maybe they will tell me that I'm enough. And I was trying to think about what this would be like, and I remembered one night this summer when I went over to Greg and Laura Taylor's house, and I was in their backyard. And now they have maybe the greatest backyard setup I've ever seen in my life. I was over there with a bunch of guys and we all made a pact to never show our wives this backyard because we don't want to do near the amount of work that Greg has placed into it. At the end of his yard, you go out, there's a deck and then there's like a water feature and there's like sidewalk and a garden, and there's probably like live dancing gnomes there. They just were off that night, and they were walking to the end of the yard. At the end of the yard, there's a fire pit, and the fire pit is level on the ground that you're walking on, but it's on a slope, so the end of it is about four feet high. So it's stacked up from the ground. It's stone that Greg hand laid. He probably hand hew it too out of his own rock. And he just laid it there. And then in the middle, there is a pit. It's like two feet deep. It looks like a big stone donut. And there's chairs all around it. And there's wood, like endless amounts of wood for fire. I have no doubt in my mind that Greg researched the best possible firewood and then chopped it down by hand and then brought it to his house on a burrow. And there it is. It's ready. We're waiting for the fire. And so I want you to imagine being invited over to the Taylor's house, which, lucky you, and sitting around this fire. You've got all the wood you could want. It's the perfect fire. It's the perfect environment right there on the edge of the yard and the woods. It's really peaceful. And it's cold out. And he's got drinks and he's got s'more setups. And you're sitting in there at that fire. And you get up. And you start to wander through the woods. And you're gone for a few minutes, long enough for Greg to go, hey, what are you doing? And you go, I'm just grabbing some wood. And he's like, you don't have to, man. I got all this. I brought it in last week. You're like, no, no, no. I'm going to make my own fire. He says, what? Why? I have a perfectly good fire over here. And you go, no, no, no, I'm just getting a little chilly. Just thought I'd make my own. And you just go wandering through the woods, picking up like wet twigs and a couple of leaves, and you wander out of the woods, and you've got this bundle, and you set it down, and we think, okay, they're going to get it together and come sit with us and warm themselves on this good fire. And then you start to walk back in the woods, and we go, you still going to build your fire? And you're like, yep, yep, just one second. And you just keep going back and you try to make this fire and it's never gonna be as good as the one that's in the pit. His wood's way better than yours. His fire's gonna be infinitely better than yours ever could be. And you don't even have s'mores. Like, what are you thinking? I think sometimes we forget that God loves us fully and completely, and we go pining for it in other places. I think we tend to forget, and we build our own fires. We tend to forget that God loves us, and so we wander into the woods, and we get these cruddy sticks and twigs, and we assemble our own little sad fire over here with God's got the one raging over there, and he says, just come on. I've got everything you need. Just warm yourself. It's here. Come in. He invites us into his love. And we go, no thanks, God. Actually, I do want the warmth that that fire provides, I'm just going to make my own really cruddy version of it over here. And I think that this is why we need Christmas. And this is what the Advent season does for us. Because Christmas is our yearly divine reminder that God loves us without hesitation, without borders, and without end. It's this time once a year as we observe Advent. And Advent is a time of expectant waiting where we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Messiah because so often we just flippantly say, yeah, Jesus is the reason for the season. Or we post something ridiculous. I'm sorry if this offends anybody, but it's ridiculous. Santa kneeling at the crib of Jesus as if to say like in this house, Jesus is a bigger deal than Santa. Yeah, no kidding. We do all these little things to kind of give this token appreciation of Christ. And sometimes we forget to just slow down and let the weight of the gift that he is sit on our shoulders. We say that God is love. We sing that God loves us. But how often do we sit in the reality of this love? How often do we sit and let it wash over us that God loved me before I did anything to deserve it, knowing I would never do anything to warrant it. And he loves me. He is the only being in the universe to pick up our own things and to build our own fires as a replacement for the love that God offers us. And so Christmas exists as this time once a year where God beckons us back to his love to warm ourselves at his fire and to remind us of who we are and how much he loves us. So as Christmas approaches, let's not observe it for another year, flippantly regarding giving passive intellectual assent to the love of God, but let's sit in the majesty and the miracle of it and be together grateful for it as Christmas approaches. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you so much. We love you, as your word says, because you first loved us. God, without that, we know that we never could. We could never have the slightest inclination to love you. Father, if there is anybody listening who doesn't know your love, who has not received your love, if we are out in the woods collecting our own wood, trying to make our own fire, trying to fabricate what it is that you've already created for us, God, I pray that we would drop all that junk right now and rush to you. Lord, if there's anybody who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. For those of us who, like me, move through this season with so much urgency and so much purpose and this feeling of busyness that can sometimes produce in us a flippancy as we consider your love, may we slow down and be hit with the weight of it this morning. Father, as sincerely as we can say it, we say thank you for your love and thank you for your son. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Steve and the band. I don't know if you guys realize this, but that's the first time we've had a full band since like March the 1st. So that was really great to get to have them. For those of you that I haven't gotten to meet, my name is Nate. I am the pastor here. Thank you for joining us online. Thank you for being here in person. Every week I get to see a few more new faces, folks brave enough to return, and it's always so, so good. And if you've been watching Faithfully Online, we are so, so grateful for you, and you're continuing to do that. This is the first Sunday of a new series called With. We're looking at a book called With, written by a pastor named Sky Jethani. I first encountered this book in 2013 and I have never read a book that caused me to pause, stop, put the book down, literally get on my knees and repent more than this book did. I identified with so much of it. So we've been encouraging you guys for a couple of weeks to pick it up. Normally, we'd buy a bunch of copies and we'd leave them here, but that's a lot of touching and handling of money and the whole deal, so we can't do that right now. So hopefully you've ordered your copy online. If you haven't done that, just Google With and Sky, S-K-Y-E. It'll come up. I've sent out email links. You can email me. I'll send you another link. I believe in you, okay? It's 2020. You can all find things online. Get the book. Read along with us. Speaking of reading along with us, we have a reading plan that will help pace you through the series. Kyle Tolbert, our great student pastor, comes up with reading plans for the church. If you don't know about those, they're on our live page, and we actually have new plans that are on the information table kind of spread out for you so you can grab them on the way out if you'd like to do that. Those give you a portion of the Bible to read every day. We talk about how important that is all the time, but in this particular reading plan, Kyle has paced out for you the chapters that you can read in with to keep up with and be ready for the upcoming sermon as we go through it together. This series, more than any other series I've ever done, is one that you really need to see all the Sundays. The first four weeks are going to be invested largely in talking about what we shouldn't do. And the last two weeks are going to be invested in talking about what we should do. So if today you leave and you feel beat up with no resolution, that's all right. Come back in four more weeks and we'll give you some resolution, okay? Because we're moving through the book together. So this is going to feel a little bit different. As we begin, I want to help you see why I believe you should be interested in the contents of this book. I'm going to take you through an exercise that I do with all the couples that I do premarital counseling with. When I do premarital counseling with a couple, I tell them that we're going to do three sessions of 60 to 90 minutes. They think I'm going to counsel them about their marriage. I'm not. I'm not a counselor. I don't know how to do that. I just disciple them for about three hours, talk to them about spiritual things, and try to get them prepared for marriage in that way. And so the first question I ask them is, granted, it's silly, okay? There's all kinds of theological issues with this question, but I just want to ask you to play along and play along there at home. Let me ask you this question, okay? On a scale of one to ten, one being completely apathetic or maybe even adversarial towards God, and ten being apex Christian, super spiritual, ten is Elijah on Mount Carmel calling down the fire to defeat the prophets of Baal, okay? One to 10, where are you spiritually? Spiritually speaking, in your walk with God, your walk, your relationship with Jesus, your spiritual health, however you phrase that, where are you on a scale of one to 10? Where would you place yourself right now on that scale, okay? You figure out your answer. Now, let me ask you this question. Where would you say you'd like to be five years from now? Five years from right now, today, you get to make decisions, you get to project forward, and hopefully you've progressed a little bit. Five years from now, what do you want your number to be? Now, with the couple that's going to get married, I usually at this point talk about, okay, well, what's the gap between where you are now? Most people will do four to six. No one's going to cop to a two or a three, and no one's going to claim or a seven or an eight. So most people's first answer is four to six, okay? So you're a five now. What do you want to be? And then most people say seven or eight. I've never had anybody say 10. I don't know why, nobody wants to be a 10. Nobody's like, I don't wanna be that spiritual. That's too much. Nobody wants that, I don't know why. I think that's an issue. It's another sermon that I need to do. It's probably a failing of their pastor to not paint a great enough picture of ultimate spiritual help. And I asked them, okay, how do we get from like a five to an eight? What are the gaps? What are the things in the way? And we kind of plot a course for spiritual growth for them. Really, it's an exercise to help them prioritize spiritual growth. But to you, I would ask this question. You have your answer now. Here's what I am now. I'm a five. What do you want to be in five? I wanna be an eight. Okay, great, you have your two numbers. Let me ask you this question. If I could have talked to you five years ago, how would you have answered that question? If I could right now go back to five years ago you, what are you now, what do you wanna be in five years? What would your answer have been? Probably the same as the answer you just gave, right? Yeah? To be a Christian is to know what it is to be stagnant. To be a Christian is to know what it is to see other people who seem like, they seem like they're flourishing. They seem like they know Jesus in a way that I don't. They seem like they respond to worship in ways that my soul doesn't. They are able to get up and read their Bible every day. I can't seem to do that. They pray all the time. I can't seem to pray. They have this spirituality that I'm not sure I'll ever understand. To be a Christian, I believe, is to be frustrated with our spiritual walk. It's to feel stagnant and discouraged, like we should be further along than we are. Now, some of you five years ago, you were a totally different human. You didn't know Jesus. You weren't saved. So maybe for you, the question is, where were you two years ago? But I think that to be a believer is to be very familiar with that feeling of inadequacy, with that feeling of I should be further along. Because if I asked you five years ago, what are you? And you said five, and the answer is eight, then today you should have said eight, and I want to be a 10. But I think that to be a Christian is to sometimes be discouraged about our spiritual lives. And this is directly what this book speaks to. This is why if you can relate to what I just said at all, if your answers were the same five years ago and now, then I think this book can help you tremendously. And I want to begin this series by simply making this statement for you to consider. And we're going to talk about what this means. Maybe your walk isn't what it could be because your posture isn't what it should be. Maybe your walk with God, your relationship with God, isn't what it could be because your posture before God isn't what it should be. We're going to talk about what postures are, but in this book with, Sky takes five postures before the Lord. He calls them postures. I kind of think about them as motivations. He takes five postures before the Lord. If you haven't figured this out yet, four of them are bad. One is good. If you haven't figured out what the good posture is yet, just stick around. You'll pick it up with context clues. I believe in you. So the next four weeks, we're going to go over these postures that we often assume without necessarily knowing it and try to understand why these aren't helpful. And in the last two weeks, we're going to look at what the right posture is before the Lord, and I hope help us find ways to begin walking in a depth that we've never experienced before, so that five years from now, you would answer that question totally differently. This morning, we're going to look at the first posture called life under God. Very simply, to understand this posture, life under God is this. Life under God says, I offer you obedience, and you offer me protection. Life under God says, I offer you obedience, and you offer me protection. I forgot there in your notes, there's a spot that says, what do you really want from your relationship with God? That's a good diagnostic question. If I ask myself this, what do I want from my relationship with God? That's a good way to figure out what our posture is as we go through these. But the life under God posture says, I offer you obedience and you offer me protection. This is a posture that's present in every religion ever because this is what this posture acknowledges. The world is big. The world's crazy. Sometimes there's pandemics. There's things outside of my control. There's school shootings and there's cancer and there's illness and there's difficult phone calls and there's loss and there's undue pain and there's all kinds of crazy things that happen in this world that are outside my control, that are beyond my control. This posture acknowledges that and it acknowledges and there's a God in heaven who's controlled none of these things are outside of. There's a God in heaven who's sovereign and he's in control of everything. So I'm going to figure out how to get that God on my side so that he will protect me. This is the life under God posture. I said this was every religion ever, right? This is, think about the ancient Mayans performing sacrifices to try to appease the gods to get them on their side for a good crop or for a good war or for a good rain or whatever it is. We know that things in this world are outside our control. We know that there is a sovereign God who can control them. And so we orchestrate our lives in such a way to please the God so that he will look out for us. The life under God posture assumes that if things are going well for you, if you're blessed, then you must have behaved. If you are going through difficult times, you must not be right with God. And though none of us would admit readily that this is our posture before the Father, this attitude and mindset shows up all the time in everything that we do. I hear it every time I golf. Every time I go golfing, on the tee box, someone hits a drive that is going very clearly into the woods. This is never me. I strike mine 275 down the middle every time. But if you're golfing with like Harris Winston or something like that, it's definitely going to go really far into the woods. And as it goes really far into the woods, it's clearly going to be lost. You'll hear the solid sound. It will have bounced off a tree miraculously and bounced back into the fairway. And someone will say, it's total luck. And someone will always quip. Someone's been living clean. That's clean living. Someone had their quiet time this morning. As if you have been following God's rules, so now on the golf course, he's going to throw you a bone and a squirrel's going to kick it out there for you. You're in a parking lot. It's crowded. It's Walmart. It's Sunday afternoon. In the middle of COVID, there's only one entrance and everything's so far away. And then this one spot opens up. God is looking out for me. You must be living right. That's life under God. Life under God is an exchange. It says, I'll follow your rules and you protect me. And we laugh about it, but it shows up in far more insidious ways than that. And see, there's issues with this posture, with this exchange, with this transactional relationship that we would engage in with God. And I want to point out to you three big ones this morning. The first real issue with this posture is it inevitably leads to disillusionment. It leads to disillusionment every time. If you adopt this posture and your posture before God is, I'm going to follow your rules and you're going to protect me. It's this transactional contract that we enter into with him. 100% of the times, it will make you feel like I felt standing in the middle of Papa Murphy's pizza. I went a couple years ago. A couple years ago, Jen and I decided that we wanted pizza. It was once a year that we eat pizza. We're very healthy people. We don't do this a lot. We went to Jets. There was a Jets close to our house. Love Jets pizza. Love their thick crust with pepperoni. It's so good. And so I went to Jets. I'm so excited. I was just all in on fat day. Let's just go. I'm going to have it. I'm going to eat it all. And I get to Jets and there's a sign that it's closed. They moved to Creedmoor. I like Jets. I don't like Jets that far away. I don't like it that much. So there's another place that opened up in that same shopping center called Papa Murphy's Pizza. And I'm like, all right, pizza's pizza. I'll go to Papa Murphy's. So I go over there and I'm looking at the menu and this is just like an old man, angry old man rant. It has nothing to do with the sermon. But I at the menu, and there's no like proper names. I want like, I need like Supreme and Meat Lovers and Pepperoni. Like I need just normal pizza names that we all agree on, and they're getting cute with it. It's like Papa's Favorite, Mama's Best, and I'm like, I don't want to read all the ingredients. I just want a Supreme, you know, like just name it Supreme. Anyways, I get up to the front. The girl says, what do you want? And I said, do you have just like a supreme pizza? I don't want to read all the things. And she goes, yeah, that's mama's best. I'm like, great, give me that. So she goes, okay. I said, take a large. And I said, I'm going to go get some groceries. I'll come back and pick it up. She said, that's great. So I go, here's Teeter, get my stuff, put it in the car, go back in, Papa Murphy's, I'm sitting down looking at Twitter or something like that and just messing around. And then they say, hey, your order's ready. So I get up and go, okay, I walk over to the girl and she hands me this thing. And it's cold. It's in like this foil pan with cellophane on the top. And I go, this isn't my order. And she goes, you're Nate, right? I said, yeah. She goes, mama's best? I'm like, yeah. She goes, yeah, that's it. And I go, what, do I have to cook it? What are you talking about? What? And everybody in the store turns and looks at me and starts giggling. The manager looks at me and just starts laughing. I go, I can cook this? And I'm about to say, here, you take it. Like, just give me my money back. I don't agree to this deal. You just take the chore that you just put in my hands. You take that back. And the girl, she was so sweet, she's laughing and she says, sir, I promise you it's really good. Just put it in the oven for like 12 minutes. It's gonna be great. Okay, fine. So I take it home. I'm so angry that they violated the pizza contract. I go home, I put it in the oven, I get it out. I don't have a way to remove the foil from this large pizza, so I've got like a knife and fork situation where I'm sweating now, I need a towel. And I'm trying to get this pizza out of the thing. And then I realized I don't have a pizza cutter and I don't have a stone big enough to cut this pizza. So I have to put it on the countertop with like paper underneath it with a butcher knife, like burning my knuckles as I try to cut this pizza. They handed me a chore, man. I was so angry because what they did is they violated the unwritten American pizza contract. The American pizza contract is simply, listen, I give you $12. You give me a hot pizza cut in a box. That's it. I'm going to take that pizza home. I'm going to put those pieces on paper plates, and I'm going to throw it all away, and I'm going to sit in my shame after I'm done. That's the deal. And you violated this. You gave me a chore. I don't want to cook. If I wanted to cook, I would have gone there and gotten the ingredients and cooked, but clearly that's not what I want to do. You broke the contract, man. I want my money back. When we adopt the life under God posture, we will have a moment just like that. Where we sit before God and we think, this isn't the deal. You broke the contract. I gave you my obedience. Now you give me protection. That's the deal. And God says, I never made that deal with you. I won't be reduced to that. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time and you've adopted this posture, and I believe we all have at different points, you've experienced that disillusionment. You know exactly what that is. That disillusionment almost always comes at unwarranted pain. When you experience a time in life where you feel like you are enduring unfair pain, unfair stress, you lose a loved one, someone gets sick, you get a difficult diagnosis, you face a tough loss, you watch a relationship in shambles, you don't have the job that you identified with anymore. When your life sits in shambles, that is usually when we have our moment of disillusionment and we look at God and we felt like I felt in the middle of that pizzeria that day, this isn't the deal, I want my money back. For some of you, that disillusionment wrecked your faith years ago and you're still recovering. If you haven't had this moment, you will. And the life under God posture sets us up to be disillusioned and frustrated. It sets us up to shipwreck our faith. There's no better example of someone who had this mindset and had to be set straight than Job in the Bible. Job is actually, he perfectly illustrates not only this first problem, but the second problem as well. The second problem with this life under God posture is it reduces and seeks to control God. It looks like we're following the rules. It looks like we're submitted. It looks like we're being obedient, doing everything that we're supposed to do. But in our hearts is this motivation, this murkiness that's pushing us to seek to control God. I can't control the universe, so I'm going to appease the God that can, and then you owe me. I've behaved well, now you owe me protection. It seeks to control God. And we see this posture all over the story of Job. Job is the first wisdom book in the Bible. It was the first book of the Bible ever written. The Monday Night Men's group is actually going over the book of Job this semester. So if I say something in here that interests you or that sparks you, I would encourage you to sign up for that. But some of you are familiar with the story of Job. Others may have forgotten and some may not have heard it yet. So just as a primer, I'll tell you what's happening. Job is the most righteous man that's alive at the time. And God allows Satan to torment him. And he torments him in devastating ways. Job is a very wealthy man. He loses all of his wealth. He loses all of his real estate holdings. He loses all of his servants and employees. He even loses his children. He has boils on his skin. His wife's advice to him is curse God and die. You want to talk about someone that experienced unwarranted and unfair pain? Job. And the first 36 chapters of the book are his friends giving him advice in three different cycles. And this advice is riddled with the life under God posture. They come to him and they say, Job, what have you done? What have you done to deserve this kind of punishment from God? You've lost your real estate. You've lost all your buildings. What did you do? Certainly you are hiding some secret sin, Job. And Job says, no, I'm not. Like, I'm not doing that. I promise I'm not. And then they come back a second time. They're like, no, no, no, Job, you're not listening to us. What is it that you're doing? What have you done? Because clearly you have sinned against the Lord, and that's why you're being punished in this way. Clearly you violated your side of the contract, and that's why God's not keeping up his end of the deal. It's this life under God posture. And after three cycles of this, where they become really pointed with him, Job still refuses and says, no, that's not what I'm doing. I don't have some secret unrepented sin. So he demands an audience with God. And he goes to God to shake his fist at him and to say, hey, this isn't fair, man. This isn't part of the deal. I've always honored you. I've always worshiped you. I raised my kids to follow you and love you. I offer you everything and you're letting this happen to me. This isn't fair, God. And any of us that have ever experienced that moment of disillusion where we would look at God and we would go, this isn't fair. I've shared with you before, mine and Jen's struggle to have kids. With every new young couple that would so easily have two and three and five children, I would look at God and go, what gives, man? This isn't fair. This isn't the deal. I think we've all said that to God at one point or another in our own ways. God's response to Job is profound. And it is not at all what you would expect. Job asks for an audience with God to say, hey God, what's the deal? This isn't fair. And God's response is one of anger and frustration. Look at what God says to Job. This is amazing to me. It's one of the most profound things in the Bible. Chapter 38, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you and you will make it known to me. Does that sound like a God who's about to go, yeah, my bad, I didn't keep up my end of the deal. Here's why I broke contract. Sounds like God is angry. I had a professor one time say, Job wanted a man-to-man conversation with God. The problem was he was one man short. God says, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? You want to talk to me like a man? Okay, dress yourself like a man. It angers God. And then God, for two chapters, proceeds to ask him questions. He says, where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the world? Surely you know. Surely you understand, Job, the inner workings of the universe. If you're asking me this question, you want to understand how I orchestrate everything, how I run the universe, you're questioning my leadership, then maybe you can explain to me how the Leviathan and the behemoth came into being. Maybe you can explain to me how the world works. Surely you were there when I told the oceans that they can go this far and no further. When I drew the boundaries of the continents, surely you know Job. And God's response is very clear to Job. Job, most righteous man to ever live, who in the season of his life adopted the life under God posture. God says, hey man, you've forgotten your place. I'm the creator. You're the creation. I won't be reduced to your contracts. I will not be reduced to your control. You don't get to follow the rules like I'm some pagan God and then hold my feet to the fire about the contract that I didn't enter into. That's not the deal. I'm God. You're not going to understand me. And I think one of the most difficult things about the Christian life is to understand there are going to be parts of God that we can't understand. God's point here with Job is, even if I explained it to you, even if I set you down and told me everything that I was thinking with what's going on in your life, even if I told you everything that I could, it would be like you trying to explain yourself to a six-month-old. It's just not going to work. We don't have the capacity to understand. And when we adopt this life under God posture, it seeks to reduce God to our level and it seeks to control him and it angers God because he's not gonna enter into our contracts with us. The last problem is highlighted by Jesus himself. The last problem with this posture that we wanna look at this morning is that it turns us into legalistic hypocrites. If we adopt this life under God posture, I'm going to obey you and you protect me, it turns us into legalistic hypocrites. Because in this posture, what we assume is those who are blessed are obedient and those who are struggling are disobedient. This attitude was around when Jesus walked the earth. They came upon a blind man one day and the disciples, his disciples looked at him and they said, what did he do or his parents do that made him blind? What's their sin? That's life under God posture. And what this does is it reduces relationship to a set of rules. It takes the relationship that Jesus wants with us, that he created us for, to be in relation with him, and it reduces it to a set of rules. And it makes it, this posture makes it entirely possible to appear outwardly spiritual because you follow the rules and your life seems blessed when inside you're rotting away because there's no relationship at all. It robs the relationship of all emotions and the actual relationship that it should be. It's kind of like church over the summer. The thing that broke my heart about church during COVID is that church is a fundamentally communal institution. And I had to get up in this room and preach. And it felt like a performance to an empty room. And hope that you guys would watch it three days later. And I don't know about you. But church got to feeling pretty empty for me over the summer. Because there was no community in the church. And that's what makes the church the church. From a human standpoint. And we do the same thing with our relationship with Jesus. If we reduce it to a set of rules, things I have to do to be right with God, we remove the relationship from it and it becomes empty. There's no better example of this than the Pharisees. The religious leaders in Jesus's day were experts at this. Outwardly, they looked great. They were living the blessed life. They were good. Everyone looked to them and tried to get on their level. If I asked the Pharisees, where's your relationship with God and where do you want it to be? They'd be like, I'm currently at a 10. I would like it to remain at a 10. That's the Pharisees because they have it all together on the outside. But here's what Jesus says to this group of people in Matthew 23. In Matthew 23, verse 27, he says, you're like a dirty cup that's been cleaned on the outside, but inside you're filthy. He looks at the religious leaders of the day, the ones who are supposed to know better. And he says, you're hypocrites. You're whitewashed tombs. It's a pretty tombstone with a rotting carcass underneath it. When we adopt this life under God posture and we reduce our relationship to a set of rules, it turns us into legalistic hypocrites who on the outside can look like they have their life together and on the inside are rotting away. This incidentally is how someone can know more Bible than anyone you've ever known in your life and be a jerk. So I would ask you as we finish, and I warned you, I'm not giving you a resolution here. I'm not saying, so this is the right way to do it. I'm just saying that's bad. And I would end this week by asking you this question, and this is what caused me repentance. And if this resonated with you, I would really encourage you to read the chapter and follow along with it. But I would ask you this week, as you're introspective and look at yourself, how much of this posture do you see in you? How much of this do you see in you? How much over the years have you followed God because somehow by following him, I'm going to appease him and win favor? Have you ever had something big in your life coming up and so all of a sudden you get real spiritual? You ever had something super bad happen and then you get really spiritual? I don't want this to happen again. That's a life under God posture. And when we adopt this posture, it will lead to disillusionment. We reduce God and we try to control him. And ultimately, we end up legalistic hypocrites who have removed the relational part from the relationship with Jesus and replaced it with rules. And we become whitewashed tombs. So how much of this exists in you? Let's pray and then Steve's going to come and introduce to us a new song for the series. Father, we love you. We're grateful for you. Lord, I know that within us, those of us who know you, is a desire to know you more. I know that within us is a desire to grow. Within us is a holy dissatisfaction with where we are and a divine yearning to know you better. God, I pray that you would make a path for us. Would you give us the honesty in our hearts and in our minds to be honest with you and with ourselves about where we stand and how we've approached you? God, if we have come to you simply because we want you to protect us, simply because we want you to bless us, and not because we want you, would you convict us of that? And would you show us a better way? It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. I'm so excited to be with you in this way for the last time. God willing, this is the last time we will pre-record this message and show it to you this Sunday morning. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't figured it out yet. We've been pre-recording these messages. This is Thursday morning as I'm talking, and then we release them on Sunday. That's been the best way to skin the cat since we haven't yet had the ability to live stream our services. However, next week, August the 16th, is the first time we're going to live stream our service, and I'm super excited about that. It's when we're going to resume our in-person gatherings. We're having church in our house or yours. So next week's going to look totally different. We're going to have full worship. We're going to have announcements, a sermon. It's going to feel more like a grace service. So whether you consume that here in person or at home, or I've seen people watching in the car with me up on their dash, if you consume it in that way, it's going to feel different and hopefully it will feel more like grace. And honestly, you know, that's been a tricky decision. As we approach that, there's been a lot of things to think through. What kind of precautions do we want to take as we come back? What are we going to do in here to make it safe? What are we going to ask you to do to make it safe? So if you're interested in returning next week to in-person gatherings, there's a video at the end of my sermon today that's going to tell you everything we're doing to make this safe, and it's going to also tell you some things that we're going to ask of you as you return in person. So stick around for that if you're interested in that. And I know that the decision to return to in-person gatherings and resume that is a controversial one. I know it's a difficult one. If we weren't going to do it next week, I'd have a group of people saying, hey, what are you waiting on? Let's go. We're ready for church. And by reopening next week, by resuming in-person gatherings next week, I know that there's a group of people saying, gosh, that feels foolish and irresponsible. And trust me, I wrestle with that every day. But there's two big reasons why we're choosing to resume in-person gatherings next week. And they're really this. The first one, and the prevailing one for me, is that, man, the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It's designed to be done together. Our souls need corporate worship. Our souls need fellowship. Our souls need to be around other people who love us and who love Jesus. We yearn for that. And to reduce church to what it's had to be for the past several months, to some video of worship that's prerecorded, and to me talking, to reduce church to that and to consume it in our homes, man, that is not the church that God designed. And so as soon as we can resume being together and expressing church in that way, I want to do that. I feel the impetus and the spiritual need to do that. I feel like some of us are spiritually wandering and this could draw us back in. And then on the practical level, one of the things that we realize as an elder board, and one of my prevailing thoughts is, listen, until there's a vaccine for this thing, we all have to do the math on the risks of what life looks like. We all have to decide how we want to live our life until a vaccine exists and is disseminated through our population. We're all, for the next several 12, 18 months, going to have to do this math on on what risks are worth it because it's not going away. And so it just made me realize that, man, we have a church full of people who are capable of doing that math. And so if in the equation you come out to, man, you want to resume in-person gatherings and you're going to be here next week and you're excited for that, wonderful. Can't wait to see you and wave at you from six feet away. If you are someone who you come out on that equation and you're not yet ready to take that risk and you don't know when you're gonna be, that's fine. I can't wait to see you. I'm glad we get to minister to you. I'm so glad that you're still connected to grace. But honestly, you know, it's been a stressful decision. I go to bed every night thinking about it. I wake up every morning thinking about it. I get people asking me, just about every day, are you sure we want to do this? How come we haven't done this sooner? You know, so-and-so thinks this about this. You know, so-and-so thinks we're running behind. We need to catch up. It has been a difficult decision because I can't remember a time in leadership when people have had to make more decisions with less certainty than what we have. And so it's been a difficult season. 2020 has been a difficult season. Listen, all of us, the stress isn't unique to me. All of us have faced uniquely stressful decisions. Some of you lead a business and you've had to decide how long you can keep people on. Some of you are an employee and you're not sure how much longer your position will be there. Or you've been furlough, or your salary's been reduced. We're all living under these different parameters. Man, my heart goes out. I mean, we're among them, the families who are sending children to school, and the math that all the parents are having to do. Gosh, should we do virtual? Should we do distance learning and just stay home and figure that out for families that have two parents that work? How in the world are you gonna keep all those plates in the air? And parents who have kids who are at these crucial points of their education where, man, your kid needs to learn to read and you know that you don't know how to teach phonics to your child. You know that you don't know how to teach these principles to your child. So what do we do? How do we not stunt the growth of our kids but also keep them safe? And is it reckless to send them back to preschool? Or is it more irresponsible to not get the social development that they need? How do we keep that in balance? My heart breaks for parents who have kids who are supposed to start kindergarten this year. Man, that's not what kindergarten is supposed to look like. That's a big moment, man. That's exciting. That's real big kid school. And they got to go and there's plexiglass and there's face masks and they don't leave their room and they eat right there and it's just they don't get to go to the playground. It's just not what it's supposed to be. My heart really does break for parents who are trying to do the mental math of, man, what do we do with our kids right now? And for the college freshmen who've been looking forward to this experience and it won't be what it's supposed to be. My heart breaks during this time, during 2020. Man, for those of us who struggle with anxiety or depression or loneliness, this year has been like a special kind of torture, hasn't it? Those who are given to depression, this is only making it worse. Those who are given to anxiety feel like they're swimming in it now, maybe about to drown. Every time you turn on the news or scroll through your phone, there's more bad news. There's more terrible things. There's more like, well, this kid got it over here and this whole community got it here and these terrible things have happened as a result of this. And that's just the pandemic, not to mention everything else that's going on in our culture right now. And what about those who are already alone, who already felt lonely before all the doors got shut and they couldn't go out anymore? What about people who just want a dang hug, man? This is a tough year. I've only scratched the surface on the things that all of us are walking through. I feel like this year has been uniquely distressing, uniquely depressing and anxiety-inducing. And that many of us, because we never expected that it would go this long. We never expected that we'd be in the middle of August still wondering when we'd come out of our houses. Still wondering when things are going to feel normal. For many of us, this year has been difficult in some pretty unique and impactful ways. And we may have at different points found ourselves pretty low, pretty distressed, feeling pretty beat up. That's why I felt that the story from Kings this morning was so appropriate. You might remember that we're in the middle of our series called A Time of Kings. That last week we talked about Elijah, one of the great prophets of God and his showdown with the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel. And this week in 1 Kings chapter 19, so if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there, follow along with me if you can. And this week we find Elijah at what I believe to be his lowest point, his lowest moment. I believe, this is speculation, I believe that Elijah was a person who was given to depression. I believe that Elijah probably struggled with clinical depression. There's different pieces and bits of evidence in his life that he got pretty low and pretty sad pretty quick. In this passage, he's asking God to kill him. He's the point at which he doesn't even want to live his life anymore. What's happened is after he defeats the prophets of Baal and God uses him to convert a majority of Israel back to him. This is the height of life. This is the apex that Elijah could have ever accomplished. This is the best thing that a prophet could ever want. He defeats the opposing prophets. He shows them to be inept and empty. He converts all the people he's been trying to reach. This is the greatest possible victory a prophet could win. He should be on a mountaintop. And yet, as a result of his victory, Jezebel the queen promises that she's going to track down and kill Elijah. And so in chapter 19, we see Elijah run off and escape and in solitude is crying out to God. And he's telling God, I want to die. He says, I alone exist. I alone stand up for you. I'm the only one left of all the prophets, which by the way, is not true. Elijah's being dramatic here. He's being over the top. His emotions are running away with him. And if he'd stop and think about it for a minute, he would know that it's not true. But he's so worked up in his emotions that he says, I alone remain. God, please just take me. Now they seek my life too. Don't let them get to me. He is in the depths of despair and distress and depression. He's in a low moment. And to me, if we'll look at how God responds to Elijah in his low moment, we can be encouraged about how he'll respond to us and ours. So let's look at what God does and how he responds to Elijah when Elijah cries out from the depths of his soul, from the depths of depression, I just want to die, God. How does God respond to his low moment? We pick up the story in verse 5, chapter 19. This is depressed, and God sends an angel. But the angel wakes him up, says, hey, Elijah, you need to eat something. He gives him food and water. He falls back asleep. He wakes him up again. He says, listen, you need more food. You need more water. You need to eat this so it can sustain you for the journey. So he eats whatever kind of superfood God gave him in the moment, and then he travels 40 days to Horeb, the Mount of God. And so what we see in this instance, in the first part of this story, in chapter 19, when Elijah's at his lowest moment, when Elijah is distressed, that God sustains him. In Elijah's distress, the Father sustains him. And I use that word sustain because he gives Elijah what he needs, not necessarily what he wants. Elijah wants death. He's praying, God, please, can I just come to heaven now? Can my job be done? I don't want to do this anymore. Will you please take me? And God comes to him, sends an angel, but it's not an angel of death. It's not to give him what he wants. It's to give Elijah what he needs. In his distress, the father sustains him. And so with that sustenance, he goes and he travels 40 days to Horeb. And when he gets there, God sends him to a cave. And he says, I'm going to speak to you, Elijah. I have something to tell you. So I want you to go to this cave and I want you to wait. And I'm going to come to you and I'm going to speak to you. It's this, I love this moment. It's one of my favorite little moments in scripture just tucked away. Jen, my wife, it's one of her favorite moments in scripture. I've been excited to share it to you and bring it to your attention. For those who aren't aware of this story, to share it with you for the first time and for those who are to breathe fresh life into it. But I love what happens here. He goes off of his distress 40 days through the wilderness. Who knows where he's at emotionally now. He ends up in the cave and he's waiting for the voice of God. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. This is God speaking. It says, Put yourself for a moment in Elijah's shoes. He's been sent off to this place called Horeb, the Mount of the Lord. And God tells him, I want you to go and I want you to stay in this cave. I'm going to speak to you. So you're in this cave, you're tired and you're hungry and you're sad and you're depressed and you're huddled up and you're waiting for the voice of the Lord. And before the cave, it says this mighty wind blew and probably shook the cave and there was rocks coming down and trees falling outside. And you're thinking in this cave, certainly this is the Lord. Now God is going to speak to me out of this mighty wind, but the Lord is not in the wind. So you wait longer. There's an earthquake, and now it really shakes, and now the rocks really tumble, and now you start to really worry, am I safe in this cave? Surely the Lord is speaking out of the earthquake, and the Lord's not in the earthquake. Then the fire comes. And you're thinking, yeah, now God's talking to me. In the same fire that he sent down on the altar to defeat the prophets of Baal, the same fire that he spoke out of when he spoke to his servant Moses, now he's going to use that fire to speak to his servant Elijah. The Lord was not in the fire. And then there came a gentle whisper. And Elijah gathered his things and he went out to the mouth of the cave and he leaned in. And God whispered to him, Elijah, what are you doing? And some instructions follow after that. But I love this passage because we would expect the voice of God to be in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, to be loud and to be filling and to be shaking and to be awe-inspiring. But God often chooses to speak in the whisper. Because if you think about it, the whisper is intimate. It's close. Everybody hears the wind. Everybody sees the fire. Everyone feels the earthquake. That's for everybody. The whisper is for you. The whisper is just for Elijah. The whisper is only heard when we lean in, when we're close, when we're pursuing the Father. The whisper is only heard when he wraps himself up and he goes out to the Father to meet him, to hear him, to lean in and hear what he has to say. The whisper is intimate. It is caring. It's personal. And what we see is that in Elijah's distress, the Father speaks to him. At his lowest moment, when he most needs God, God shows up and he speaks to him. He speaks to him in a special way, in an intimate way. And I think that the way that the Father responds to Elijah's distress in 1 Kings 19 is such an encouraging message for us in 2020 in the midst of our distress. Because it's the same God and the same truth. And the fact is that in our distress, the Father sustains us and speaks to us. In our distress, at our lowest moment, when we feel down, when we feel beat up, when we need him most, when maybe some of us have even cried out to God and said, God, I don't even feel like this life is worth living. In those moments, our Father sustains us and he speaks to us. He did it then and he does it in 2020. And that thing about sustenance, I alluded to it earlier. God gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want. I think some of us are praying for things that we want and not looking around for the provisions that we need. I remember as COVID started, as the world changed forever back in March, you know, we have a four-year-old daughter. She's four and a half. She would point that out to us if she could. And she's in preschool. And when everything shut down in March, so did preschool. And her year got cut short. Her year got ended abruptly like many of your children's years got ended abruptly. And at the end of March, we moved into a new neighborhood. So here we are with our only child, and we're acutely aware of that. Lily has even expressed that sometimes when it's just us in the house, she gets lonely. And that's hard to hear, but that's our reality. And man, our parent hearts are really concerned because here's our four-year-old daughter. She's been pulled out of school. It's so important to us that she's around other adult figures that have some authority in her life, but she can't come to church where that happens. She can't go to school where that happens, so it's just us. It's so important to us that our isolated four-year-old daughter would have social interaction with others, that she would have to get in fights and resolve conflict, that she would have to problem solve, that she would have to learn how to not get her way and not be selfish and play what other people want to play sometimes. That's important stuff. Those things that she was learning in preschool were incredibly important to us. And now we're in the middle of this schedule where there's no more preschool. She's not around those kids. We can't go to the playground. We moved into a place that has a playground 150 yards away from us that we're so excited about, but it has yellow caution tape over it. And every time we go past it, Lily asks us, how much longer are they going to tape up the playground? She can't play there either. We can't engage in our normal summer rhythms of play dates and appointments and Bible studies. And our parents' hearts are breaking, wondering, man, she needs this interaction so bad. And without us knowing, by what I believe was just God's providence, he places us in a house on a cul-de-sac that has 10 kids under the age of 10. And do you know that between 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock in the afternoon every day, one of those kids comes and bangs on our door and asks if Lily can play. And at this point, she doesn't even ask permission. She just goes speeding past us and runs out the door and is outside until 6 or 6.30 when we call her in. Every day. Every day she's sweaty and gross and stinky. She has bug bites up and down her legs. Underneath our front porch is several wrappers of those Popeye's popsicles and beads jammed down into the crevices and the remnants of kids playing and our creaking swing getting swung too hard from half the neighborhood being on our front porch. And it's God's sustenance. I'm so grateful for those things. That God looked out for my daughter and said, I know that this is going to be a difficult time, so here, here's what you need right now. And God is sustaining you too. God has provided for you in ways this year that you may not even be aware of yet. I think sometimes we have to stop and look around and say, we may not be getting what we want, but God, how are you providing me what we need? Because I think he's still doing that. And I think that God is still whispering to us. I think that if we lean in and we listen, we can still hear the voice of God. Back in 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Israel. It was an incredible opportunity. I've been saying since I got here that I want to do a year-long study through the Bible and then take that Bible study to Israel and go on a tour together, and I still want to do that. You guys need to hold my feet to the fire about that. I would love to take people from grace over to Israel. But one of the things we did when we were in Israel is we went up on the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus supposedly gave the Sermon on the Mount. And there's a Catholic monument built there. And so there's a little stone wall that you could go sit on. And I was in the habit, whenever we went to a different site, of finding in my Bible the events that happened in this place and reading through them and praying through them as I just kind of experienced this place. And so on the Mount of the Beatitudes, I went off in a corner by myself, and I was sitting on a stone wall, and I can remember looking down, and I was looking down into this valley, into kind of a plain and then the coast of the Sea of Galilee as this mountain, as this hill kind of spilled into it and I'm at the top of the hill and in front of me about 10 or 15 feet away, there's a tree over here and the branches of the tree are sweeping in front of me and I just remember looking down and grabbing my Bible and reading through the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus preached there in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. And as I was reading, I remember praying, Father, I want to see you today. I want to see you here. I want to experience you here. Help me to feel your presence, God. And towards the end of the sermon, Jesus says, look to the birds. Look at the birds. Some translations say, consider the birds. And when I read that phrase, I just kind of felt like, I felt this prompt to pause. I know this might sound funny to you. I know this might sound weird, but I felt it in my soul. Hey, just stop reading for a second. And so I read that phrase, look at the birds. I felt like I should stop reading. And I looked up and I had been hearing birds over there while I was sitting there, but none had come near me. And in the moment that I looked up, this one lone bird flew over and lit on a branch right in front of me, about 10 feet away, and looked me dead in the eye for five or 10 seconds. It felt like much longer than that. And then just flew away. And I have this big note in my Bible about that moment when the Lord whispered to me, and you will never convince me that he didn't bring that bird over to look me in the eye to tell me, I hear you. I'm listening to you. I'm with you. I'm right here. And he whispered to me. He whispered to me, I think, because it was intimate, because I was leaning in, because I was pursuing him. And I asked him, Lord, show me your presence. It was an earnest prayer. I didn't mean, I wasn't doing it to show off. I didn't tell anybody about it that day. I just kind of, I think this is the first time I've told anybody that story. I just kind of experienced it. And the Lord is whispering to you too. And it's really easy to get distracted by the earthquakes and by the wind and by the fire. It's really easy to think that the voice of the Lord is in all the huge things that are going on around us. But often what we need to do is quiet down those voices and get in a place where we can finally listen. Sometimes we produce the noise ourselves, don't we? We turn on the TV or we pull out our phone or we glance at the computer or we listen to the radio with every spare second so that there's no possible way that even if the Lord is whispering to us, there's no possible way we would hear it because we're drowning him out. In the meantime, we're distressed and we're depressed and we don't know what to do and we're just covering ourselves with all these other things that aren't the voice of the Lord. And if we would just stop and go to the mouth of the cave and lean into the Father and beg him to speak and listen, I think he's still whispering to us now. I don't know where you are. I don't know what this year has been like for you. I know for many of us, this has been a challenging year to say the least. I know that there are some of us who can absolutely relate to Elijah in this passage and just feel low. I want all of us to know and to be reminded that in our distress, our Father still speaks to us. He still sustains us. This week, let us look around for that sustenance and let us lean in for the whisper. Let's pray. Father, give us eyes to see what you're doing. Give us ears to hear what you're saying. For those of us who have clutter and noise, help us sweep it away and lean into you and hear you whispering to us. God, may those who need it most hear you this week, hear you today. God, give us eyes to see the ways that you're providing for us that we may not notice. Help us to see that even in our lowest moments that you are sustaining us. And to understand and appreciate the wisdom of even if we're not getting what we want, Lord, you are absolutely giving us what we need. God, I pray for those who are stressed about decisions. Give them clarity and confidence. I pray for the parents that face impossible choices in uncertain times, for the leaders that face difficult choices in uncertain times. God, be with us all as we try to listen to you. And let everything that's happening in this year and in this season point us back to our need for-person gatherings here very shortly on August the 16th. As we get prepared to do that, we know that everybody's not in the same place. Everyone doesn't have the same level of security and comfort as you go out and venture out into the world. And some of you may simply not be in a place where you're ready to gather in person, and that's all right. But if you are ready to gather in person, if that's something that you're looking forward to and you're considering doing, then I just wanted to let you know, first of all, some of the things that we're doing to make church as safe as possible for everyone who's going to come here, and then some things that we're going to ask you to do if you choose to come participate in the live services. What we're doing, first of all, is we're cleaning the whole church every week. We're sanitizing it, all the surfaces, every bit of it, 48 hours before anyone's going to be in this building on Sunday. So the very latest Friday morning, the whole building will be clean, will be spotless, will be sanitized, and will be ready to go for Sunday morning with kind of be sealed off so that nobody else is allowed in the building until it's time for services on Sunday. Another thing that we've done is we've mounted hand sanitizers at the entrance of every door to the auditorium. So that's going to be there, it's going to be ready for you. If you have to pull your own doors or grab a bulletin or anything like that, we're going to have that hand sander there ready for you, ready to go. Speaking of holding doors, our greeters are going to be at the doors leading to the outside and they're going to open those for you. So you won't have to worry about this. It doesn't have to stress you out. Our ushers are going to be holding open the auditorium doors. So you're going to be in great shape there. We've also mounted some offering boxes at the back of the auditorium. We understand that we can't pass baskets now so because of that there's going to be boxes at the back of the auditorium as you leave every Sunday you can put your offering in there you can submit your connection card whatever else you'd like to do we're going to have those at the rear of the room so that you can put the cards and the offering in there so that we don't have to pass the baskets. We're also going to take the bulletins and just go ahead and place those in your seats. So there's not going to be any need to grab those from an usher or for many people to touch the bulletin. Those are going to be in your seats on Thursday or Friday morning, and no one's going to touch them until you get there. Lastly, these services are for families. Everyone's invited. Kids Ministry isn't going to be open just yet. So all the families are invited to come and participate in the service on the 16th. To that end, our wonderful children's workers, our kids minister, Aaron, and our assistant, Julie, have put together some busy bags for small kids and specially designed sermon notes for some of the bigger kids to keep them entertained and engaged so that you can pay attention to the sermon and whatever else may be going on in the service on Sunday. That's what we're going to be doing for you. Now, here's a few things that we're going to ask you to do for us. We're saying on August the 16th that we are going to be meeting in our house or yours. So if you're choosing to meet in our house, then these are kind of our house rules. Our first house rule is that we're going to ask that everyone over the age of 10 is wearing a face mask inside the church. I know that's inconvenient. I know that's not fun. I don't want to preach to a room full of face masks. But for us, wearing a face mask is about being considerate of others. It's about making other people feel more comfortable in an environment. It's about taking the extra step to protect our brothers and sisters. It's really about doing the right thing. So we're gonna ask that everyone over the age of 10 wears a face mask just to take care of everyone and make church as safe as possible when we do return. Our second house rule is simply, hey, no touching please. We know that some of us are ready for hugs and handshakes and fist pounds and I get it. I am too. I can't wait until we can just act normal. But the deal is that not everybody who comes back is going to be comfortable giving a handshake or a hug or a fist pound or even an elbow bump or whatever else. So for the sake of not creating awkward situations, for not making someone else feel uncomfortable, we're just going to ask that while we're in church, we just keep our hands to ourselves. If some of you are married to a spouse where this might be difficult, let us know in advance. We'll send some zip ties to your house and you can lock their wrists down to their belt loops and everyone will be on their best behavior when we get to church. The third thing we're going to ask from everyone is to maintain a two-seat gap minimum between you and the next family, between your family and the next family over. We've removed every other row in the auditorium to maintain some social distancing as we sit, but we also know that with those rows is the opportunity to sit right next to each other. So we're just going to ask that if you didn't come with that person, if you haven't talked to them already about sitting with them, please don't sit right next to somebody. Please leave that two seat gap between you and the next family. Okay, this one's pretty simple. One at a time in the restroom, please. For the time being, all of our restrooms are now effectively single seaters. All right, that's what we're going to do. I know that some of our restrooms have more space than others, but just for the sake of clarity, just one person at a time, let's be respectful of that, should be pretty easy. Fifth, B-Y-O-C. Bring your own coffee. Coffee bar is not going to be open right now. Just wanted to let you know that ahead of time. So if you like a warm drink while you participate in a worship service, then feel free to bring that from home. But we're not going to be able to provide you with any of that for the time being. Lastly, we would ask that you would help us keep the lobby clear. I know that that's a disappointing one. That one bums me out. I love the lobby. Grace loves the lobby. It's a sacred and special place for us. We love to congregate and be together. It's the whole reason why we're resuming these gatherings. But we're going to ask that for now, since our lobby is also the tightest place in the church, that we would congregate outside or in the auditorium. Laugh and giggle and catch up in those places so that we can leave the lobby clear for those who simply need to pass through without worrying about being too close to someone else as they go into and out of the doors and into and out of that space. I know it's weird to come to church with all these rules and these precautions and these things that we're going to ask one another to abide by. I don't like it any more than you do, but I tell you what I really don't like. I really don't like preaching to an empty room. I really don't like experiencing church from my couch. I really don't like not getting to see any of you. So for those who are ready, we're excited to come back. I'm really, really excited for corporate worship to do that together and just to live stream it. So even if you're at home, you can worship with us from your house. I'm really looking forward to kind of re-engaging in what feels like a more normal church. And I appreciate those of you who are willing to abide by these things and take those baby steps with us as we inch back to something that feels like normal. For those who are willing, I can't wait to see you that Sunday.

Good morning, Grace. I hope that you're having a great Memorial Day weekend. If you're one who has the opportunity to be watching from the beach or a mountain cabin or a lake house or something like that, good for you. I hope that you've had a good, restful weekend. For the others of us, I hope that you enjoy this unique Memorial Day weekend. And thanks, as always, for watching this morning or this week. This morning, we continue in our series called Still the Church, where we're walking through the book of Acts and looking at some of the practices, philosophies, and principles from the early church that still apply to us today. And hopefully we're getting a sense of the shoulders that we stand on and the roots that we share in common as the book of Acts details the beginnings of this fledgling church trying to find its way and figure out who it is and what it is going to do. And that was 2,000 years ago, and here we are 2,000 years later, and the church has looked very different over the years, has it not? Over the years, the church has changed in dramatic ways. And historically, there have been churches where people, the pastors would dress in robes and wear fancy hats. And then in other churches, you wear suits and dresses. And then in other churches, you wear jeans. And now in isolation, we wear sweatpants. As we watch this together, there is about a 98% chance I will be in my sweatpants as the pastor. And so church has changed a lot. There's churches that are high church and are in cathedrals and ornate buildings shaped like crosses and everything has a meaning. And there's different conclaves and there's different areas and there's different prayer centers and then other churches are in places that are next to aquarium stores and in warehouses with a pole in the middle of them. Some churches are highly liturgical, meaning they observe this order of service that was passed down generation after generation and do the same chants and the same verses and the same songs and they stand together and they kneel together and they pray together and they cry out together. And other churches don't have any liturgy whatsoever. We just do whatever we want to each week. Some churches observe the Lord's Supper every day or every week and others a couple times a year. In some churches, there's no microphones at all. And in others, there's a light show and laser show and smoke machines and everything else. And it just kind of makes you wonder over the years as we've adapted and adjusted and evolved and changed from this early church in the book of Acts and all the different iterations and expressions of church over the years, it makes you wonder how we even know we're doing it right, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but I've wondered a lot if Jesus or Paul were to walk into the doors of grace on a Sunday morning, would they look around and go, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what we intended to start. Would Jesus go, yes, this is exactly what my bride should look like? Would Paul say, yes, this is what I gave my life to begin was what's happening here at grace. I kind of do wonder if we're doing it right. It reminds me of a story as we think about how do we know if we're doing church correctly. I've told this story before. It's a short fictional story. It's a parable that's made up, but I think it helps us make a good point this morning. The story goes that there is a man walking along a country road, and in the distance he sees a barn, a red barn. And on the side of this barn, there's a bunch of different targets. And in the middle of every target is an arrow just in the dead center of the bullseye. And then he sees a young boy with a bow and a quiver of arrows who's been apparently hitting these bullseyes with remarkable accuracy and consistency. And so the man goes to the boy and he says, listen, you're incredible at this. Can I watch you fire these arrows? Can I just see how you do this? I want to watch you do what you do. You're so good at it. And the boy says, yeah, sure, if you want to. And so the boy takes an arrow out of the quiver and loads it up into the bow and just kind of haphazardly aims towards the barn and fires away. And the arrow just lands in the middle of a sea of red. No target in sight. And the man feels badly. He says, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to mess you up or mess up your system. And here you've missed the target. And I feel bad. I feel like that's my fault. And the little boy says, oh, no, no, no, no. It's no problem. And he walks over to the barn and he grabs a can of paint and he starts to paint a target around the arrow that he just fired. And I think so often in life, we start things or we do things or we try to execute things without a clear target painted for us. We just charge forward. We just charge ahead. We just do what it is we think we're supposed to do. And then when we get to the end of the road, we paint a target around wherever it was that we landed and we go, success. And sometimes I wonder if we're doing that with church. Sometimes I wonder if we just all get together and we preach the word and we sing together and we pray and we do what we think we're supposed to do. And then when we get to the end of a year, the end of a decade or the end of an era, we go, did we do a good job? And we go, well, yeah. And then we just paint a target around whatever it was that we did and say that was the goal. And so as we think about that, are we doing this right? Would Jesus and Paul show up and look at our church and say, yeah, that's the target that we painted. You're nailing it. How do we know if we are? How do we know if we're aiming for the right target? How do we know if we have the right bullseye in mind as we do church together as grace and as we pursue God as individuals? I think it's an important question to ask because we arrive at a passage in Acts chapter 2 that effectively paints the targets for all churches for all time. I think it's an incredibly useful and helpful passage. I'm going to be in Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47. It is the description, the quintessential description of the early church. If you want to know what should the church look like, what should characterize and define the church, what did God design the church to do, we find it in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. If you want to ask a question like this, what target was painted for us as a church by Jesus and by Paul? It's this. We find it here. And in this passage are some distinctives that we want to pull out. I'm actually going to pull out seven distinctives. We're going to look at three this week and four next week. I've expanded the Acts series by a week so that we can just sit in this passage, in this text, and walk through and look at the different things that define the early church and should therefore define us as a church. So this is early church distinctives. Look at what we find here in Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47. By way of reminder, what's going on as we enter into this passage is in Acts chapter 1, Jesus has been alive for 40 days after resurrecting from the dead. He goes up into heaven, and as he goes up into heaven, he tells the disciples to build the church, to go into all the world, spread the gospel, baptize them, make disciples, build the church. And then he says, wait for the Spirit. Wait for the gift of my Spirit and then go out and build the church. And so they sit around in the upper room waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 2, they receive the gift of the Spirit. They walk out on the porch and they preach. And the results of that message that they preach about who Jesus was and about, hey, you, the crowds, killed the Messiah, the Son of the living God, their response is that they were cut to the heart. They said, what do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. And last week we talked about that repentance as repentance of who we thought Jesus was. That's the foundational repentance of the church. And about 3,000 people, the Bible says, repented that day and joined the church, became Christians. And so now we have this church of about 3,000 people in Jerusalem. And what do they do now that they're a church? Now that there's this infant organization, what do they do? We find exactly what they do in these verses, 42 through 47. And in these verses are the distinctives or the target that was painted for us that we're supposed to be hitting now 2,000 years later. So let's look at the things that defined the early church. It says in verse 42, That's the beginning of the church. That's where you and I come from, is that incredible cataclysmic time of the church's infancy where it's learning to find its footing and learning to walk and figuring out what they're going to be about as an organization. And in this passage, in those seminal verses, are some distinctives of the early church that we should seek to emulate today. And you know, different authors and scholars pull out the distinctives in different ways. I saw one person sum up everything in four basic categories of characteristics, and others might have nine or even more than that. For us, we're going to look at seven distinctives, three this week and four next week, things that define the early church and should define us. So for those of you who like listy sermons, this is good for you. We're going to have seven things. You can number your paper. You can write the thing that I say and then take notes underneath it. If you're a note taker, you're really going to love this. So the first one that we're getting to right out of the gates is exactly what they said. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. So the first distinctive of the church that we are to emulate is that they were eager learners. They were eager learners. They wanted, they wanted, anytime an apostle was speaking, they were listening. They were, they were eating it up. They were vociferous in their desire to learn more about God and his church. And this seems like something that might be obvious, that they were devoted to teaching, but it's important that we understand why they were so hungry for this teaching. We don't think about this a lot, but this was a really uncertain time in church history. We're so used to church. For those of you who are church people, even if you're not a church person, you just have a cursory understanding of church and what we believe. We're so used to having an authority. We're so used to having a Bible, to having a place where we turn to, where we go, is what you said true or false? And we can go here and we can determine if it was. We have a grid to determine truth and we have a rich history of teaching tradition. We have a rich history of theology that we walk into so that we kind of know some of the basic tenets of our faith. We know that most Bible-believing churches are going to affirm that Jesus was the Son of God, is the Son of God, that he was 100% God and 100% man. Most churches are going to affirm that God is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that the Bible is God's word and that it is inerrant and that we can trust it and that it is the authority in our lives. Most churches are going to affirm that God is the creator God and that Jesus are the very words of God. There's some basic tenets of our faith that we can agree with that aren't murky at all. But in the time of Paul, in the very early church, those things were incredibly murky. They didn't know what to think of Jesus. They didn't know for sure if he was a son of God or if he was an incredible prophet. They weren't quite sure what to believe. Can you imagine the different beliefs that existed in different groups of friends in the different communities? Can you imagine the old stubborn man who was just certain that he knew what it was that he thought he knew and told everybody that you should do this and you shouldn't do that based on nothing at all but his own presumptions. Can you imagine the difficulty of being a Jew with all the laws of Judaism and then trying to transition into this New Testament, into this new way of believing, into this new era of faith, not sure which things to leave behind and which things to bring forward with you. Can you imagine the difficulty of grafting in the Gentiles? Before this Jewish faith was just for the Jews. They grew up generationally understanding it. And now all of a sudden this faith is for everyone regardless of culture or ethnicity. Can you imagine the difficulty and the tension in grafting that in? A lot of the tension in Acts is that very tension of how do we graft Gentiles into this ancient faith? It was really murky and uncertain. It was a lot like it is now trying to figure out any truth whatsoever about COVID. As I thought about the situation that they were facing, trying to get certainty around the teachings of this new church without any written documents and void of authority outside of the apostles, I thought of us trying to figure out what's true about the coronavirus. I don't know how deeply you've delved into trying to learn the truth about even the numbers and the reporting around coronaviruses, why our cases are spiked or why they're not spiked, or if they really are spiked, or if they really are going down, or if there's going to be a surge or a second wave, or any truth at all around what's going on with the pandemic. I had a friend just this week I was talking to who read an article in one minute. At one time, he sat down, he read an article, and this article said that the hospitalized cases of COVID in the state of Georgia are down around 1,000 right now. And that state has a population of about 8 million, so that's a really small percentage. That's really good, right? Well, then he flipped the page or scrolled down and he read another article about a woman who's created a model online to track COVID cases who was approached by a particular state that asked her to flub the numbers a little bit to under-report the cases so that things look better so that they could open back up. Two totally different stories, and you don't know which one to believe. Who has authority? And listen, I know that that could get political about who says what about COVID, but the truth of it is we can all understand that it's difficult to know what's true. This is the era of the early church. For them, it was difficult to know what was true. It was difficult to know who to trust except for the apostles. The apostles were the authority. The apostles, the disciples of Christ, had spent time with Jesus. They had face-to-face interaction. They were the carriers of the keys to the kingdom. They had the authority. If there's somebody over there in Bible study or small group or after church who is teaching something about this new way of faith and it contradicts what the apostles said, then that person's wrong and the apostles are right. The apostles had the authority. They were the truth tellers of the early church. So people clamored around them every time they opened their mouth to hear what it was they had to say and had to teach because they were the authorities that brought clarity around this new faith. And over time, these apostles wrote down what they were teaching in the form of letters to other churches. And then they wrote down what they were teaching in the form of the Gospels, the account of Jesus' life and his ministry and what he came to do and accomplish and everything that he taught and what was meant. And over time, these writings were compiled together and they became known as our New Testament. And so now, as a modern church, if we want to be committed and devoted to the apostles' teaching, if we want to be eager learners, if we want to hit that target that's painted for us, what that means is we are eager learners of the New Testament. That the New Testament, the books from Matthew to Revelation and our Bible are the ones that we would pour ourselves into, that we would pour over, that we would learn from and pull out from. And it might sound to you like I'm downgrading the Bible or I'm downgrading the Old Testament, and I'm not doing that at all. I love the Old Testament. And as a matter of fact, it's impossible to understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament. You can forget understanding Acts, Galatians, Romans, Hebrews without an understanding of the Old Testament. You can forget understanding the Gospels if you don't know the Old Testament. You can forget understanding Revelation if you don't understand Daniel and Ezekiel. But if we want to be committed to the apostles' teaching like the early church was, that means we're committed students of the New Testament, that we are eager learners about God's Word, that we are never satisfied with it. That's why, that we're never satisfied with what we know about it. That's why on Sundays, as long as grace exists as a church, that preaching and teaching will be a centerpiece of what we do together. Not because the pastor is someone special, but because we are collectively devoted to the apostles' teaching. Because we are collectively eager learners. That's why I believe it's my responsibility not just to provide biblical knowledge and insight for people who might be new believers or non-believers or not as biblically literate or experienced as others. Hopefully, if that's you, then you get something every week from what we're teaching. But I also firmly believe that my job as your pastor is to give you things from God's word, is to teach you from God's word a different perspective or a different insight or a different teaching that you may not have heard before. My hope and my prayer is that even if you've been walking with the Lord for years and years and years and have a very good depth of knowledge of the Bible, that at least more often than not, you're walking away from the sermons of grace and you're going, I didn't know that, or I hadn't thought about that, or I hadn't considered that before. I hope that we all continue to learn together. So as a church, we hit that target by being committed to teaching God's Word. But as individuals, we can continue to hit this target in our own life and be the right version of the church now by continuing to be eager learners, by pursuing other avenues of learning about Scripture. And as I thought about this, I realized that we live in an unprecedented time of availability of the apostles' teachings. There has never in history been a time where we had more information at our fingertips. You can listen to podcasts where people talk about God's Word, where people talk about scriptural things. You can go get a book for very cheap. You can listen to a book. You can play the Bible on your earphones or over your car stereo as you drive down the road. You can listen to the Bible on a greenway as you take a walk or ride your bike. There's so many churches and so many good pastors and so many effective teachers. You can find any of that material online. There is an online conference on church stuff just about every week of the calendar year that you could participate in if you wanted to. We have so many options to dive deeply into the apostles' teaching and to learn more and more and more about God's Word. So my challenge to you in this distinctive is to continue to be an eager learner. Don't be satisfied with what you know about God's Word. Don't be satisfied with what you know about the New Testament, but dive more deeply and with more curiosity and urgency into the depth of God's Word. And let's continue to be eager learners together as they were in the early church. Another thing that I wanted to pull out this morning, the second distinctive that I want us to look at is that they were devoted to spiritual disciplines. They were devoted to spiritual disciplines. We see in this at the beginning of the passage that they were devoted to prayers, it says, plural. Not prayer, but they were devoted to prayers. And as I read and researched this, a lot of people like to go off on what it meant to be devoted to prayer. And that's an important investment of time. However, I suspected that there was more to it than that because it's plural, prayers. And it turns out that it was, that this Jewish audience was in a habit of observing three times of daily prayer. To be a devout Jew at the time was to pray three times a day on schedule, in the morning and in the afternoon at the ninth hour, which is 3 p.m. And let me just, as an aside, if you want to go down a fun Google rabbit hole, Google all the things in the Bible that happened at 3 p.m. It's amazing. I think that there is something significant about that time that we don't even understand yet somehow, because so many things happened at that time in Scripture. They prayed in the morning, they prayed in the afternoon, and they prayed in the evening, three times a day. And different rabbis and different synagogues would have different programs of prayer, different things that you're supposed to focus on during that time of prayer. But what they did is they were a Jewish people who were devoted to prayers, this rhythm of prayers. And then when they converted to Christianity, they continued with that same discipline. They continued with that same rhythm. And I'm calling this a spiritual discipline because they didn't have scripture to read. They had it memorized. They could recite it while they prayed. They could pray it back to God, but they didn't have a Bible to open. And so their version of spiritual discipline was to be praying three times a day. This devotion to spiritual disciplines is why you will always hear me say that there is no greater habit that any person can develop in their life than that of getting up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer. A distinctive of the early church was a church that was devoted to these spiritual disciplines, that was devoted to studying God's Word, that was devoted to prayer. They were disciplined to do that in that way. So if you want to be spiritually disciplined, if you want to be like the early church and be hitting that target in your life, then you need to be committed to prayer. You need to be committed to reading God's Word. Maybe pick a time of the day where you say, this is when I'm gonna read the Bible. I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna have coffee, I'm gonna read the Bible. I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna go to work, and on my way to work, back when you used to do that, on my way to work, I'm not gonna listen to anything else. I'm gonna listen to the Bible app and let them read the Bible to me as I go into work. On my lunch break, I'm not gonna talk to anybody. I'm pull out my app. I'm going to read the Bible. Pick a time to make that a part of your daily discipline. And I would encourage the same thing for prayer. And maybe the best way to think about it is like this. A couple months ago in our Grace is Going Home series, we talked about discipleship at Grace and how we're going to define discipleship moving forward as simply taking our next step of obedience. So in regards to spiritual disciplines and prayer, I would just ask you, what's your next step of obedience? What's your next step of obedience in reading the Bible? Is it to be more consistent? Is it to start at all? What's your next step of obedience in being more obedient in prayer, in being consistent in prayer? And listen, you may not pray at all. And that's all right. I mean, you're there by yourself or maybe you just have family around you. You don't have anybody to impress. You don't need to lie and pretend like you dive deeply into the ocean of prayer every day. Like, it's okay if you're just sitting there right now and you're going, honestly, I don't really pray very much. That makes your next step pretty easy. Pick a time at all to pray. If the only time you pray is at meals, pick one of those meals and pray about something besides the food. Intentionally pray about friends or family or loved ones. Intentionally thank God for things that he's placed in your life. If you already have a habit of prayer in your life, think about what it would take to go deeper in that prayer. Can you come up with a prayer plan where on certain days of the week you pray for certain things or certain people? Or could you develop multiple times of prayer during the day? I know there's a season in my life when I set an alarm on my phone, and every day it would go off at three o'clock, and I would stop whatever I was doing every day and set things aside and pray. And sometimes I would dive deeply into prayer. Other times it was a quick cursory prayer, and other times I just skipped it and then felt like garbage the rest of the day for skipping it. But it was a good season. I did it for about a year, and as I've been preparing this sermon and thinking through things in my own life, I've been convicted to start that practice again. So for some of you, I would invite you, set an alarm on your phone, and at three o'clock, let's pray every day. Let's just stop what we're doing and refocus ourself on God, and let's pray. And like the early church, let's be devoted to these spiritual disciplines. As I think about prayer for grace, one of the things that we're going to do moving forward and I'm excited to share with you is beginning this Wednesday, the 27th, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., we're going to fling the doors open of the church and invite you to come and pray here. Whoever wants to come can come and pray. We'll pray together. We'll pray separately. We'll pray socially distant. If you need prayers, you want people to pray over you, come here and I, along with others, will pray over you. If you just want to pray together with others, come here and we will pray together. And as long as we can sustain it, we will continue to do it. We're going to do the first one this week. on the 27th. I'll open the doors at 7 o'clock. We'll see who shows up and we'll pray together. And we'll be a church that is devoted to prayer and spiritual disciplines. The last distinctive that I wanted to focus on today, the last thing that I see in this church that we need to be emulators of is that they were committed to Christ-centered time together. They were committed to Christ-centered time together. It says that they were devoted to fellowship. And you know, over the years, that word fellowship has taken on a lot of different meanings and been applied in a lot of different ways. And it's become distorted to just mean anytime Christians are together, they're fellowshipping, right? But fellowship really isn't just people getting together who also know Christ. But the idea of fellowship is to get together to celebrate the thing that you have in common, to allow something that we hold in common to bring us together and then to spend time focused on that thing. When I think of fellowship, I think of a time that I spent with Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor, and a guy named Keith Cathcart, one of our great church partners. If you've never had the experience of going to a team bar for a game, I would highly recommend it. I am of the conviction that going to a team bar is the best way to consume a sport. It's super, super fun. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, all over the country in different cities everywhere, there will be fans that are fans of a particular team. And when that team is playing, they will gather in one place and watch it together. And this happens here with Steelers fans because Steelers fans are prevalent. They are everywhere. The Steelers are like a religion to them. To some of them, it is a problem that deserves some good and right conviction. And in a state like North Carolina, where there's really no other decent team to speak of, it is ripe for Steelers fans to blossom here. And so the Hibernian over on Falls is actually a Steelers bar. All the Steelers fans come out of the woodwork and they go there decked out in their gear and they watch the games together. And so one Sunday, I decided that I wanted to go with Keith because I love going to team bars and watching sports with other people who are celebrating that. And we even invited Steve. Steve's not a sports guy, but he's a friends guy. And so he came and he enjoyed it with us. And I love the experience because I go to this team bar and I don't know anybody there. I don't have anything in common with them. I don't know what their names are. I don't know what their week was like. I don't know what they did that morning. That morning I was preaching. They probably weren't. I don't have a lot in common with the folks there that I know of. But man, when those Steelers score, I get to run around and give high fives to strangers. I start hugging guys I've never even met in my life. When there's a fumble, we erupt. When the ref makes a terrible call, we boo him and deride him and have the best possible time. And you get to get fully into it. And I don't even really care about the Steelers or the game. I'm just having fun celebrating them with other people. That's fellowship. This thing that they have in common, their affection for the Steelers, brings them together. And then the time that they spent together is spent focused on the very thing that they share in common. That's what fellowship looks like. Fellowship isn't when Steelers fans just get together and talk about business or talk about the stock market or whatever else. It's when they get together and they celebrate the very thing that gives them something in common. So for us, for believers, Christian biblical fellowship is when we come together acknowledging that Christ is what we share in common and the time that we spend together is focused on him. Fellowship looks a lot like Sunday morning church. Fellowship looks a lot like coming here on Sunday mornings like we used to in the old days, saying hey in the lobby, celebrating triumphs and comforting one another with tragedy in the lobby, coming in, sitting in these seats, singing together, proclaiming to God together, listening, learning about God together, being convicted or motivated or inspired together, and then leaving with a sense of camaraderie as we spent time here in the service celebrating the very thing that brings us all together, which is Christ. This is why we will always meet on Sunday mornings. This is why we will get back together just as soon as we possibly can. This is why community is so important to us at Grace because we want to come together and be focused on and celebrate the very thing that we have in common, which is Jesus. And so I want to challenge you in your small groups. Make sure your small group time is fellowshipping. Make sure that's Christ-centered time. In your circle of friends, it's not fellowship just because we get together and we all believe in Jesus. It becomes fellowship once we're focused on him for a portion of that time. So let's begin to think of intentional ways that we can fellowship with one another when we're spending time together. To help us begin to dip our toes back in the water of community and fellowship, we're actually going to begin to support watch parties. We've moved into this weekend, phase two of the governor's plan officially. So we can do this now. We can have watch parties on Sunday morning. I think it would be great if we would invite people over to the house and say, hey, I'm going to be watching my church's service this morning. Why don't you come with me? Or hey, I know that you guys watch it. Why don't you come over here? Let's watch it together. This is a great opportunity to reach out to your neighbors. I know a lot of us in this time of isolation have grown closer to our neighbors, have met them and interacted with them and spent more time with them than we ever have. What a great vehicle. What a great way to say, hey, this Sunday I'm going to be watching our service. I'd love for you to come over and join us. Let's have a watch party together. I've reached out to the small group leaders and asked them to help facilitate some of these, those of them who are willing. And that's certainly a way to begin to frame up who we would watch these with, but I would just encourage you to watch these sermons with other grace people or other people that you want to invite into your home. And I know that not everyone's going to feel comfortable with this yet. I know some of us are hesitant about that, and that's all right. I don't want you to feel pressure like you have to, but for those of you who are ready to dip your toes back in the water of community, for those of you who are ready to pursue and experience fellowship again, I think the way that we can begin to do that for the next several weeks is to invite people into our homes or to go into the homes of others and watch these services together and begin to experience this community again. And if you want to go early and have breakfast, great. If you want to stay late and do lunch together, great. And if there's kids involved, maybe one parent can take the kids out back and run around with them while the rest of the parents focus on the message. However it is, you figure it out, and however it breaks down, however you're able to accomplish it. I would love to hear more about these watch parties springing up all over the Raleigh area as we experience church together again and begin to dip our toes back into this idea of fellowship. Those are the three distinctives I wanted to look at this morning, to be eager learners, to be devoted to spiritual discipline, and to be devoted to fellowship, to Christ-centered time together. Next week, we'll look at the last four distinctives that I'm excited to go through with you, and hopefully you'll watch this and then watch next week's together, and it can be one concise lesson on who we are as a church, on what we're supposed to pursue, and really answer the question, hey, how do we know if we're doing this right, if we're doing this well? All right, I'm going to pray and let you guys continue on with your Sunday mornings. Father, you're so, so good to us. Thank you for who you are and how you love us. I pray that we would be eager learners. That for those of us who may have set that torch down a while back, maybe you can inspire us again. Maybe you can impassion us again to want to understand more of you and your word. Give us paths and avenues to explore that. God, help us be disciplined in our prayers. Give us the willpower, give us the strength, give us the desire and the earnesty to maintain and to foster these spiritual disciplines. And God, I pray that we would fellowship well, that we would come together and celebrate you, that we would be more intentional about making you the center of our time. And as we consider watch parties, Lord, I just pray that you would watch over us, that you would protect us, that you would bring wisdom there as we begin slowly to experience your community again. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Happy Easter, Grace. This is the weirdest Easter ever, isn't it? None of us have ever experienced an Easter like this before, and I don't think we ever will again. It makes me so sad because Easter is my favorite holiday. I love Easter. I love getting to see everybody. I love the energy in the lobby and in the auditorium. I love getting to hug everyone's neck and seeing how everyone is dressed and meeting children and parents and grandparents and family. It's just, it's such a great holiday. And Easter is a boisterous holiday. It's celebratory. It's exuberant. It celebrates the victory of victories. But it just doesn't feel like Easter right now. It doesn't feel like Easter at this time in our culture and in our community. We don't feel exuberant. We don't feel boisterous. We feel anxious. We feel unsure. For many of us, it's hard to see a path forward on the other side of COVID and quarantine and economic depression. To have a job right now, if you have one at all, is to have done the mental math of how long can my company continue to pay me? And once that money runs out and they have to make cuts, where do I sit in the spectrum of people in my office? We look over the cubicles and think I'm more valuable than that person. That person's probably going to have a job longer than I do. I think to be employed is to have had to have done that math. I talked to a buddy just last week who said, yeah, man, I have a job now, but I really don't know how much longer they can continue to pay me. That's a difficult stress to be in. And then I think of the people on the other side of that stress, the folks right now who own businesses, who are running companies. And I think, gosh, that's a difficult decision that they have to make. They're walking down that path as well, trying to figure out who can we keep and how long can I keep them and how long can we keep things afloat. Others are furloughed and that's fearful and that's fraught with uncertainty. We may not see a path forward there because will the job that we were relieved of be there when things go back to normal and what will normal look like? Or if you're just unemployed and you're facing the idea of trying to get a job once the economy can get turned back on, man, we're facing job loss at an unprecedented rate. The unemployment rate is close to that of the Great Depression. So a lot of us are thinking, even if I can get back into the job market, what is the competition for those jobs going to look like? These are very real stresses. These are very real fears and sources of anxiety. And then if we think about a path forward, that's uncertain too because what does it look like when we just turn the spigot back on and we can all come out of our caves and get haircuts and see each other and not wear sweatpants anymore? What does that look like? I've talked to parents that are concerned about how this is impacting their kids. I know for me, my daughter Lily is asking questions like, Dad, what is a virus? What do viruses do? There's caution tape over our neighborhood playground right now and every time we go by it, she says, it makes me so sad that the playground is closed. And she doesn't understand, and she's sad that she can't see her friends. I'm sad I can't play with my friends. And what's it going to look like when things are normal again? I think a lot of us are facing the reality that the impact of COVID and what we're walking through right now is going to be more protracted than we ever anticipated. And so the truth of it is right now we don't feel like Easter. It doesn't feel like spring. We feel a lot more like the people of Israel that Isaiah is talking to in the book of the Bible that he wrote. In the Old Testament, there's a book called Isaiah. It's one of the greatest books of prophecy ever written. It's a phenomenal book. And he's writing it to an Israelite people who are God's chosen people. They're God's children. They're his chosen ones. And they wear that like a badge of honor. And they should because God has promised them His protection. And in those promises, He's also promised them that He would grant them land, that it would be what we know of as the modern nation of Israel. That would be theirs forever. Yet in the time of Isaiah, several hundred years before Jesus comes on the scene, they do not inhabit the land of Israel. They're actually enslaved by the Babylonians. They're enslaved, they feel abandoned, they feel forgotten, and they're abused. And for many of them, they were hopeless. They're thousands of miles away from the land that was promised to them. Many of them feel abandoned by their God. God, if you're so good, if you're so real, if you're looking out for us, then why are we here? Why are we growing up as generations of slaves? They felt hopeless. They felt anxious. They were very unsure of their path forward and they didn't even know what normal could potentially look like. And so as I thought about the Easter message, I thought it was more appropriate to look at this verse in Isaiah than it was to start off with the resurrection story and the victory that it celebrates because we feel a lot more like the people in Israel or like the Israelites than we feel victorious right now. And it's to these people, these people who felt hopeless, these people who didn't see a path forward, that God gives this great chapter in Isaiah 43. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter of Isaiah 43 and see the heart and the promises of God brought forth in that chapter. But in the 19th verse, God makes this promise. He gives His children this assurance that I think is so comforting and so powerful and so wonderful that it's where I wanted to land for us this morning. And I can't speak to the posture of God during this passage. I can't speak to his emotions because the scriptures don't reveal much about it. But if you'll allow me the license to make a guess, I picture God in this passage as a good and kind and loving father. I know that when I comfort Lily, I bring her up into my lap and I bring her close to me and I tell her that everything's going to be okay and I try to, I use a calm voice and I try to reassure her and I kind of picture God collectively doing that with his children in this verse. In Isaiah 43, verse 19, God says to his children who are hurting and broken and scared and unsure. He says, behold, I am doing a new thing. Even now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make paths in the wilderness and streams in the desert. I love that verse. What a wonderful verse of comfort to his children. To bring them up onto his lap, to comfort them, to embrace them, to bring them into himself and say, I know that you feel hopeless, but I'm going to give you hope. I know that you feel forgotten, but I see you and I remember you. I know that you feel abandoned, but you're not abandoned. Even now, even though you don't see it, I'm working for you. Don't you see it now? If you look carefully, can't you see the work that I'm doing for you? Even in a very practical way, they were surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness. There was all this uncharted territory between them and the land that God had promised to them. And God says, I will make a path through that wilderness. And even though that wilderness is surrounded by desert, I will make streams in that desert to sustain you. I love the message there in Isaiah 43, 19, where God says, hey, I'm doing a new thing. I'm going to make a path for you. I'm going to make streams in the desert. I'm going to make the impossible possible. I know you don't see a way out. I know that you feel forgotten. I know that you even feel betrayed by me, but I have not forgotten you. I remember you and I see you. And I think it's important to note that these people have every right to wonder, man, has God forgotten about us? Has God forgotten about me? He made me these promises. I've done all the right things. Is he still looking out for me? And God in Isaiah 43, 19 says, yeah, I am. I still care about you. And I heard one time that a good book or a good verse is 50% content and 50% timing. It depends on when it encounters you in your life, what's going on in your life. And that's maybe why this verse is so powerful for me because I remember when I encountered this verse and when God made a new path for me in my life. I have proof that this verse is true and that the heart of God stays true for His children. In October of 2014, and I've told this story to grace people before, so I won't belabor it, but for those of you who may not be aware of this part of my story, in October of 2014, Jen and I found out that we were pregnant. And we had struggled for many years to get pregnant. It was the prayer and the cry of our heart that God would allow us to be parents. And we had people and communities praying around us. It was an incredible movement of God and always encouraging to know that these people were looking out for us. And in October of 2014, we found out that we were pregnant. And we were exuberant. We were so happy. I can't remember joy like that. But in early December of 2014, we learned that we had miscarried. And in our life, the way that things have gone for us, that was the deepest, most profound sadness we'd ever had to walk through. I felt broken. And even though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, I was mad at God. I felt abandoned by him. I was looking at all these other people who had kids and had families, and I would think arrogantly, why did they get a family? What have they done? I've organized my life around you, God. This isn't fair. But I was just mad at God, and I was just flailing and thrashing. And in the midst of that, I got asked to preach a sermon. I was on staff at a church, and the new year was coming, and that was typically a time when I got asked to preach. And so I got asked to preach in the beginning of January. And I wanted to be a good soldier. I wanted to do my part, and so I agreed to do it. But I didn't want to preach. I was mad at God. I don't want to get up there and start talking about his truths. And so in all that, I went to Jen, my wife, and I said, hey, I have to preach in a couple of weeks. What should I preach about? And she showed me this verse in Isaiah. She pointed it out to me in her Bible. And she said, I need you to preach on this verse. I need you to preach on a new thing because that's what I need. And I said, okay. And I wrote her a sermon. And it's the only time in my life that I can remember writing a sermon for one person where I thought, I hope the rest of you get something out of this. But for me, I just hope that this encourages my wife. And I wrote it for her. And even, can I just tell you, even as I preached it, I didn't believe it. I didn't, I didn't, I was preaching about God doing a new thing and I didn't want a new thing. I wanted my old thing back, that baby that we had. I was convinced it was a boy and his name was going to be Sam. And I didn't want a new baby, I wanted Sam. But I preached it. And I got through it. And we just kind of muddled on. But around Mother's Day of that year, we found out that we were pregnant again. It was joy of joys. And that pregnancy is what gave us Lily. This is my daughter Lily right here. This week, I taught her to ride a bike. She looks amazing in that helmet. I wish all of you could have heard her screaming and laughing and exclaiming and giggling at her ability to ride a bike. It was incredible. It was one of the gifts of this COVID time that we have that part to ourselves where she can learn. And you know, every time I look at Lily, I'm reminded that she's my new thing. She's my new path. Every time I hold on to her, every time I help her fall asleep, every time I pray for her, I remember how I felt in December of 2014, and I hold on to this new thing that God did for us. I hold on to this new path that he made for us that I would never not choose, that I'm so grateful for. Lily is my reminder that God continues to make new paths. And it may seem weird that this is what I'm talking about on Easter, that it's some obscure verse in the Old Testament, but I wanted to help you see how Lily is my reminder that God still makes new paths because I believe that Easter stands out throughout all of time as God's yearly reminder that he continues to make new paths. Isn't that what Easter is? Isn't that what the disciples stumbled upon? The story of Easter is that Jesus was crucified on Friday and he was put into a grave And as the body of our Savior went into that grave, all hopes of a future went into it with him. That grave, that tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea was a dead end. There was no paths out of there. It was it. There was hopelessness in that tomb. And as the disciples sat around quarantined, ironically, on Saturday, they had no hope. They sat in the middle of a dead end. They were anxious and unsure of a path forward, just like us and just like God's children of Israel in the nation of Babylon when Isaiah was writing. And then on Sunday, on Easter morning, Mary goes to the tomb and she hears maybe the greatest sentence that's ever been uttered in history by the angel of God who is at the tomb. And he says to her, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Jesus is risen. And in that moment, what we see is that all of history turns on its axis and God has won the victory of victories. He has conquered death and hell with the resurrection of his son. He has restored us to a relationship with him. What our sin broke, that death and resurrection repaired. And because of Easter, there are no dead ends. Because of Easter, there are always new paths. Easter itself is a new path where Mary walked into that tomb feeling as if she was entering into a dead end, into a hopeless situation with no path forward. And God, in that moment, I can almost hear Him whispering, Behold, the new thing, the new path, the stream in the desert. And because of Easter every year, we're reminded death has no sting. Because of Easter, we have my favorite quote that says, for we are not given to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. There is no pandemic. There is no death. There is no disease. There is no bad news. There is no tragedy that can overcome the victory and the joy of Easter. And isn't it great? Isn't it remarkable? I wish that we could be together for Easter. I wish that we could celebrate this as a family. But isn't it wonderful that in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, in the middle of isolation and global uncertainty and anxiety, God has placed this most holy and high of holidays to remind us, I still make new paths. I still do new things. You may not see a path forward, but I do. You may not know what's going to happen next, but I do. You may feel abandoned by God. You may feel let down by God. You may be looking around going, God, I've done all the right things, man. I've tried to be nice to my wife. I've tried to be nice to my kids. I've tried to support my husband. I've tried to give when I can. We try to be generous people and my life feels like it's falling apart. And where are you, God? And Easter is his reminder for us that he's right here. Can I also tell you that that message, that simple message that God still makes new paths, he still makes old things new, he still makes beauty out of ashes is why we're filming here in this place. It's why we've chosen this park, not just to make it springy for Easter, not just to remind us of the promises that nature brings in at the end of every winter, but because this park used to be a city dump. This is the park that used to be the landfill for Raleigh. This place, where I am, everything here used to be filled with trash and fire. It was undesirable. It was the last place anyone or anything wanted to end up. This place was one big dead end. And God, in His goodness, has made it beautiful again. He has literally laid new paths in this place that families walk on and enjoy. There's a playground that children play on. This has become one of the prettiest places in the whole city. And to me, it's a reminder and a symbol of the fact that God still makes new paths. So if you need a reminder, if you need some encouragement during this Easter season, come out here, walk around, look at the greenery, experience the beauty, and be reminded this Easter that even as you sit at home, even as some of us are fraught with uncertainty, even though it might feel silly to be all dressed up for Easter and still sitting on our couch, just remember, God still makes new paths. The same God that made one for Israel, that has made one for you in the past, that has made this place beautiful, will make a new path for you too. And isn't God good for placing that yearly reminder in the middle of our uncertainty? Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good even when we don't know how. Even when we don't know how everything's going to work out. Even when it's hard to see that goodness sometimes. We know that you're good. Father, thank you for conquering death for us. Thank you for conquering tragedy for us. God, I lift up anyone who feels uncertain, anyone who feels anxious, anyone who might be saying, I don't want the old, I don't want anything new, God. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I pray that we would take solace and comfort in your word. I pray that we would take solace and feel peace from your promises. And that in the gentle way that you do it, that you would draw us into you and you would remind us that you are still the God who makes new paths. It's in your son's name we pray, who died and was risen for us on this day. Amen.