Sermons tagged with Truth

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

Well, good morning, Grace. It's so good to get to be with you in this way again. You know, I was thinking, typically in the summer, attendance and engagement in church, particularly in Grace, will fall off a little bit because we're all over the place. We're going to the beach, we're going on vacation, we're visiting people, and that's great. We love that we have the opportunity to do those things, but watching sermons this way and having church this way is actually kind of a nice thing as we get into the teeth of the summer that we can all come together from wherever we are. I know that by the time we are previewing this or premiering this, Jen and I are going to be at the beach watching it. So it's fun that we can all kind of scatter but still participate together as we come back for this moment. Last week, we took a break from our series in Acts, and we addressed the issues of racial inequality and racial injustice that we believe are still existent and pervasive in our culture. I can't imagine that you're watching this sermon and participating along with us at Grace and somehow missed that one last week, but in case you did, I would appreciate it if you would watch that. It was a special thing for me to share and a direction that I felt compelled to go. This week, however, we jump back into our series going through the book of Acts together called Still the Church. And the idea is kind of twofold. It's to help us understand where we came from. It's to help us understand that these are our roots, that we stand on the shoulders of this church, that these are our origins or our genesis, that the book of Acts depicts for us and details for us in a beautifully written letter by Luke. The activities and the behaviors and the events of the early church. I kind of picture a baby deer learning to walk as we watch the machinations of the church in Acts and we see it come to fruition and become the institution that we know it as today. But also as we go through Acts, we become familiar with that story and we see our roots and our heritage as people, members of the church, the body of Christ, children of God. So we're reminded that that's our heritage, but we are also extracting from it practices and principles and philosophies that still apply today. And we're saying that the church that we see in Acts is still the church that we should emulate now. What this church looks like is what grace looks like or should look like. And so when we started, we kind of have moved through the narrative. This is one of the narrative books in the New Testament. And it starts just so we can kind of orient ourself in the story today. Jesus goes to heaven. He leaves behind the disciples. He says, wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit and then go and share the gospel in all the corners of the world. That's your job. Go and build the church. That's what he leaves them there to do. So they go into this upper room and they wait for the gift of the Spirit. While they're waiting in this upper room, thousands of people in Jerusalem are clamoring around to see what they're going to say and what they're going to do and what's going to happen next in this great movement. And they receive the gift of the Spirit like flaming tongues on the day of Pentecost. And they go out on the balcony and they preach. They preach the gospel. They tell the story of who Jesus is and who he was. And the people hear it and they're moved and they say, we want in, what do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. And we talked about that repentance being the fundamental repentance of the church. That before we can become a Christian, that the very first thing we must do is repent of whatever we thought Jesus was and accept that he was who he says he was, that he is who he says he is. That's the repentance on which the entire church is built on. And then after that, we saw that after that repentance, 3,000 were added to the church. The church is now a mega church. It's's booming in Jerusalem. It's this movement. And then in Acts 2, verses 42 through 47, we have the quintessential passage that describes the early church. And we spent two weeks in that passage pulling out what we refer to as early church distinctives. What are the things that characterized the church then that should characterize our church now? After that in the story, as Luke, the author of Acts, shares, Peter and John are called into the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is the religious ruling body of Israel. They're called in and they have to give an account for what they're doing. This movement is getting traction and they're put on trial for it. And at the conclusion of that trial, we see one of my favorite bits of advice in the Bible. This is a freebie. I can't go through Acts without bringing this up. I wanted to do a whole sermon on it, but it just didn't work out. But it's this advice from Gamaliel, one of the rabbis, one of the Pharisees, who is speaking to the Sanhedrin as they're trying to decide what to do about this movement. Do we quell it? Do we stamp it out? Or do we let it breathe? And Gamaliel says, if this is for man, then it will fade. But if it is from God, then there's nothing we can do to stop it anyways. And so they relent, and they watch, and they see this movement of the church begin to take off. And soon it's not just the disciples who are teaching, but it's others around them who are hearing and learning and who are being moved and who have the gift to teach. And so they're going out and they're doing that. And one of the people who's going out and teaching is a man named Stephen. It says that Stephen was teaching around the synagogue of the freedmen, which was a group of Hellenistic Jews. The synagogue of the freedmen, we assume, were former Roman slaves who had been freed. They were likely Greek-speaking Jews and not Hebrew-speaking Jews. And so they got together in their own synagogue and they met there, the synagogue of the freedmen. And apparently Stephen was working some signs and wonders that were having an impact on them. When we see Stephen in Acts chapter six, he's doing these things, he's performing signs and wonders, legitimate miracles that are drawing people into his ministry. And we assume based on their reaction that he's drawing people away from the synagogue of the freedmen. And so some of the leaders within that synagogue, we assume, it just says people in the synagogue, but we assume that they were the leaders, begin to get offended. They begin to get upset. They begin to get resentful of Stephen and his witness and his ministry and the power and efficacy of what he's doing. So they, we think, a lot of scholars think that they probably had a formal debate, a dressed debate where people came and attended and they argued back and forth with each other. But we know whether it was formal or informal that they debated and that the power of his words and his wisdom blew them away, that there was nothing they could do to touch Stephen. Everything they threw at him that he had an answer for. Everything he said they could not refute. He was leading this new church in this new way towards Christ away from what they were teaching at the synagogue of the freedmen. And when they couldn't defeat him in debate, they decided that what they would do is just levy false charges against him. That they would drum people up, that they would stir people up. Basically, what they did is they went to the Sanhedrin and they went and they told the principal. They told the teachers what they did. They were having a quarrel. They were having a spat with Stephen. They couldn't win. Stephen always got the better of them. And so they took their ball and they went home. They went, well, we're gonna go tattle on you. And so they went to the religious establishment and they told on Stephen. If you have a Bible with you this morning or wherever you're watching this, you can turn to Acts chapter 6. That's where we pick the story up. Acts chapter 6, I'm going to start reading in verse 12 and go all the way through 7-1. This is what the people from the synagogue and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council. And they set up false witness who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like that of an angel. And the high priest said, are these things so? So his enemies, the people who opposed him, can't beat him in debate. They can't put down his movement or the movement that he's shepherding and participating in. And so they drum up these false charges and they stir up the people and they go and they throw him in front of the Sanhedrin, in front of the ruling body. And they levy these claims against them that are so funny and I think easy for us to understand. I think one of the big issues going on in our culture right now is the lack of nuance in our discourse. We don't know what news sources to trust. We don't know what tweets to trust. We don't know what Facebook posts to trust because what we do inevitably is the opposing side puts out a message or shares a thing or there's a speech or there's a statement or there's an action or an event. And then what the opposite side will do is pull the different things out that will fire up the base of their side and say, hey, this side said these things. When it's not an accurate picture of everything that they said, it's the worst possible picture of these little things that they said. And this is exactly what the synagogue of the freedmen is doing to Stephen. They're not giving the whole picture of what he's been teaching to the Sanhedrin. They're pulling out these little things that they know will be most offensive to them and accusing him of those things. They're saying he's claiming that Jesus of Nazareth came to overthrow the laws and the customs of Moses. Now that's an audacious claim because the laws and the customs of Moses, that's our Old Testament. That's what they refer to as the law and the prophets. That's their law. That's their Bible. That's everything that they know and cling to. And so for them to accuse Stephen of teaching that Jesus came to overthrow those things and to change them, that's a bombastic claim. That's salacious. That's a difficult thing to defend if it's true. And then to say that he intends to tear down the temple. That is the most holy place in Israel. That is the seat of power. It represents the very presence of God. It is the center of Hebrew worship. And to say that Jesus intends to tear that down, it's a big deal. And they get fired up too. The Sanhedrin hear this, they're upset, they're fired up, and they look at Stephen and they say, is this true? Is that really what you're teaching? Now listen, Stephen knows what's at stake with his answer. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, he's going to die. And he knows that it's not an easy death. He knows that if he navigates this poorly, that they are going to kill him and they're going to kill him by stoning him. And just so we're all clear on what stoning is, they tie your hands around your back and push you off a cliff and drop big rocks on you until you die. It is death by blunt force trauma. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, that that's what's waiting on him. When they ask him, what do you say, Stephen? He knows that if he answers poorly, he's going to pay with his life. And so I wonder, at this moment, if we put ourselves there in Stephen's place, how would we respond? What would we expect of Stephen? I wonder how I would respond. I think that I would expect Stephen, and I'm pretty sure I would want to calm everybody down. It's happening in a whirlwind. Emotions are there. They've misrepresented my story. I would want to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, let's just take it easy. Let's just take a beat. Let's talk about this. And if you're Stephen, you can correct how they've been misled. You can say, yeah, Jesus is going to change the way that we adhere to some of the laws of Moses, but he said himself that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He's the fulfillment of those customs. Yes, Jesus did say that he's going to tear down the temple, but in a way that he makes the need for it obsolete because the temple is the very presence of God. And now in this New Testament, in this new way, since the righteous one has died for us, we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts and we are now the new temples of God. That temple is good and we should respect it and it is wonderful, but it's no longer needed. If I were Stephen, I would want to show the Sanhedrin, listen, we're on the same team. We follow the same God. The things I'm preaching are a continuation of the things that you believe and have taught. I would want for them desperately to see that all I was doing is teaching a continuation of what they've always believed. And I would want them to see that Jesus was actually the fulfillment of all the things that they hold dear. I would want to throw the temple of the freedmen under the bus and say, they're just mad because they're losing people. They're just mad because they can't beat me. They're just upset. This is just sour grapes. Let's just calm down. And if that wouldn't work, because maybe the Sanhedrin would be resistant to that defense anyways, maybe that would be blasphemous, I can make a pretty good argument. If I'm in his spot, and I've got this successful ministry going on over here, people are being added to the church day by day, people are believing me, I'm working signs and wonders, and we see this movement happening now that's spreading out of Jerusalem, and I'm a vital part of that, I can totally see the validity of the thought process of just thinking to yourself, I'm going to say whatever I have to say to survive this day. I'm going to just do whatever it is I have to do to live through this. Whatever they want to hear from me, whatever I have to admit, whatever I have to confess, I'm just going to get through today. I'm going to tell them what they need to hear, and then I'm going to continue on with this ministry because it's valuable ministry. And honestly, if that's what Stephen did, I'm not sure that I would judge him. I would understand it. He's doing good things. Shouldn't he want to preserve those things and not die right here on the spot? That's what I would expect of Stephen. That's what I would do. But for the rest of chapter seven, we see Stephen's response. He goes on for a long time, 53 verses. And Stephen's response is not what I would expect. If you look at chapter seven of Acts, it is the best summation of Genesis and Exodus that exists. It is an incredibly succinct summary of the events that unfolded that led to the nation of Israel. If you're unfamiliar with that portion of Scripture, if you've never read through Genesis or Exodus, I would highly encourage you to read the cliff notes that we find in Acts chapter seven. It's a very good read. And so in the midst of these false accusations, in the midst of the stress, in the midst of the urgency, in the midst of the anger and the Sanhedrin, pressing upon Stephen and saying, hey, is this true? Are you really teaching this? Stephen, knowing that he was facing death, tells them their own story. He tells them a story that they all know. And he starts with their father Abraham, the one from whom all Jews have descended. And then he moves through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph. And then he fast-forwards the 400 years to Moses. And he talks about different events in Moses' life where he murdered the Egyptians and he has to flee to the wilderness. And he comes back 40 years later after being moved by the burning bush, compelled by God in the burning bush. And he frees the people and they move through the wilderness and he installs the law and they get to the banks of the Jordan River and Moses passes away and Joshua leads them across and they move into the promised land where they all now, Stephen and the Sanhedrin and the synagogue of the freed men and all the people watching where they all now sit. And he tells them a story that they already know. He tells them their story. And it's a story that they could all tell. Every one of the men sitting there judging Stephen, assessing the situation, they know the story. They know their Bible. They can all tell it. And so it makes you think that Stephen's building the case to do exactly what I said I would do, to say, hey, we're on the same team. Listen, I know all your history. I share it. I'm with you. And you feel like as he's saying it that he's going to end up making the point of we're all on the same team. Listen to this clarity. But he finishes telling the story and he punctuates it like this. It's unbelievable to me the confidence and the boldness that he has in this moment. Stephen finishes telling the story and then he says these things, beginning in verse 51. Yo, he stuck his face in the wood chipper, man. He just put it right in there. He tells the story. He brings everyone along. He shows that he has an understanding and a grasp of the scriptures like they do. And then he calls them uncircumcised of heart and eyes, which flares up the whole room. Because you have to remember in this context, circumcision was a sign of the covenant. If you were a Jewish circumcised male, then you were saved. You were in. You and God were good. That was the sign that your parents had committed you to the same God that was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of their forefathers. It was the visible sign that you are in, that you are what we would refer to as a Christian or saved, that you and God are good. And Stephen says, no, forget it with your circumcision. You're uncircumcised in the heart and of the eyes. You're uncircumcised where it matters. You think you're saved. You lean on this tradition that you have, but that's not it at all because you don't mean any of the things that you teach. You've missed the point. You've gotten it wrong. You're not even a Christian. You're not even a believer. You don't even preach. You don't even live out the stuff that you preach. He's calling them hypocrites and false teachers. And then he associates them with the people who killed the prophets. The very prophets that they uphold, the very prophets that they teach, they consider the prophets their fathers. And Stephen says, no, no, no, no, no. You're not descendant from the prophets. You're descendant from the ones who killed the prophets. And then he goes to the last prophet, John the Baptist. You even killed him when he came and was preparing the way for the righteous one, for Jesus. And when he showed up, when God finally sent his son, the promised Messiah that you're supposed to have been looking for, you know what you did? You murdered him. He says, you've received the word of God from angels and you did not uphold it. Stephen, with boldness and audacity and faith, blasts the Sanhedrin. He spoke truth defiantly and righteously to power. And they respond exactly how you think they would. They rush him, they yell. It says that some of them covered their ears, a bunch of drama queens the Sanhedrin were, and they run at Stephen and they seize him and they carry him outside the city and they stone him. They bind up his arms, they bind up his legs, they drop him off of a smaller cliff so he's incapacitated and then they drop big rocks on him until he dies. And it says that in that moment Stephen looked up and he saw the Son of God at the right hand of the Father and that he prayed for them because they didn't understand what they were doing. I've read this story a few times in preparation for this week. And every time I read it, I've had to just kind of put my Bible down and sit there for a minute and marvel at the boldness of Stephen. Marvel at how brave he was. And note that what Stephen did in that moment was Stephen chose the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. He chose the consequences of action. He knew that what he was going to do, he was inviting it. He stuck his chin out. He said, let's go. I know what's going to happen, but you need to know the truth. He invited it in. He chose action and invited the consequences of those actions rather than sit in comfort and inactivity. He could have placated. He could have lived to fight another day. He could have chosen comfort. But he stepped away from comfort and into fear. And it is a profound story. I'm honestly tempted to just leave it here because that's in some ways what Luke does. He just tells the story, sits it in the middle of the narrative. We don't come back to Stephen. I'm not entirely sure why he shared it with us, except to let us be moved by the boldness of Stephen, except to allow us to be inspired by the faith of someone who was facing certain brutal death. And part of me wonders why he did it. Why didn't he try to convince the Sanhedrin that he was right? Why didn't he try to convert the Sanhedrin? Why wasn't he more gentle with them? And I think that the answer is because when Stephen said those things, when he called them uncircumcised of heart and he said that their fathers were the ones that killed the prophets, that they murdered the Son of God, that they received the Word of God and that they did not hold it up. When he says those things, he's looking at the leaders, but he's not talking to them. I think he's talking to all the people who can hear him. I think he wants to inspire all the listeners, all the other young pastors who are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment, all the people that he preached about the goodness of God to that are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment. He's not talking to the Sanhedrin. He's talking to everyone around him. He's talking to the crowds because they needed to hear the truth. I think he knew that the truth was going to land on deaf ears when the Sanhedrin heard it, but he also knew that what they need, that what the crowds need, because it matters, is to hear the truth. And the truth to the crowd is that your leaders have let you down. They are false teachers, and Jesus was not. And so he chose boldness for their sakes. And I think all of this presses a question upon us. What is worth our boldness? What's worth our boldness? What in life is worth choosing the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction? What in life is worth stepping into that fear of the unknown, of giving up our comfort and our safety and security and saying, no, this is actually a place I'm willing to plant my flag and I will not be pushed off of this. Hopefully we all have things in our life that push us to boldness. Hopefully we all have things in our life where the comfort of inactivity is just simply no longer attractive enough to not choose the consequences of action. But as I thought about this question, we have different answers. But one answer that we can and should share in common is that if it matters to God, it is worthy of our boldness. If it matters to God, it's worthy of our boldness. If God says, hey, this matters to me, then it should matter to us. If God says this matters to me, then we should be willing to run from the comfort of inactivity towards the consequences of action. That's why last week I felt like I had no choice but to be bold. I would have much rather preferred to just stay comfortable. Not risk ruffling feathers, not risk being divisive in a church that I love so much. But I meant what I said when I said that oppression and injustice matters to God, that it breaks his heart, and it should break our heart too. So we step forward as a church in boldness, choosing the consequences of action. What matters to God is worth our boldness. And what matters to God more than anything else is the souls of men. What matters to God is that people would become his children. So your neighbor, the one that you've been getting closer to in quarantine, the one that you've had more conversations with in the last three months than you have in however many years you've lived there prior? Jesus died for that person. He was so bold that he faced death for them. They matter to God. They're worth your boldness. Have the uncomfortable conversation. I know it feels weird to start talking to people about faith. I know it feels weird to ask them what they believe. I know it's uncouth. I know it's uncomfortable. I know we have to leave the comfort of inactivity to do that. I know that we have to choose some consequences that might scare us, but I'm telling you, be inspired by Stephen. It's worth it. Be bold for the sake of your neighbor. Be bold for the sake of your children. Fight for them. Don't let things slide. Impress upon them the good news and the love of God. Be bold for the sake of your Christian brothers and sisters. Do you know somebody who might be sliding into sin? Do you know somebody who might be making choices that are leading them on a path that doesn't have a good ending? Do you know somebody who's dropped their guard a little bit? And you're seeing some things begin to leak out of their life that aren't good, God loves them. God wants that person near to them. They're worth your boldness. Have the conversation. Invite them to coffee. Invite them to the back porch. Talk to them. They're worth your boldness. Your marriage is worth your boldness. Your marriage matters very much to God. God designed marriage to be a picture, to be a manifestation that people should be able to look at and say, that's the way that God loves the church. And that's the way that Jesus loves us. That's why our marriage should be a picture of the gospel. And if it's sliding, and if it's unhealthy, if it's rocky, if it's murky, if it just feels distant, be bold for your marriage. Say the hard thing, have the hard conversation, Choose the consequence of action. And be bold for your marriage. The things that matter to God are worthy of our boldness. Listen, I mean this. Write the book. Start the ministry. Have the conversation. Send the email. Say the prayer. Open yourself up. Let us be inspired by the boldness of Stephen who in the face of certain death told the defiant and righteous truth. And let us, like Stephen, in the places where it matters most and the things that matter to God, choose consistently the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you so much for your servant, Stephen, and for his story here. Thank you for moving Luke to share it with us so that we could see it and revisit it and marvel at his sacrifice. Thank you for his boldness, for wiring him in such a way that he did not lilt or fade away from that moment, but that he leaned into it. Give us a little bit of that fire, God. Give us the strength to lean into things. Give us the faith to know when we ought to do it. Give us the courage to face consequences of necessary action. Make us a church full of Stevens. In Jesus' name, amen.

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.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. I'm thrilled to be here this morning to be able to kick off our joy series that we're going to be going through throughout December. To start out, we're going to be in John 1. And so I tell you that right now because I would love for you to be able to open up your Bibles with me if you've brought them or if you can get the one out of the back of the seat. We're going to be reading out of John 1. And as you're turning to that, I wanted to make a quick shout out to my younger brother, Jay, who's also a student pastor and who is also preaching at his church this morning. And so I say that one to say, Jay, we're thinking about you and we're praying for you. But also as a public service announcement to you that if you leave and you say, man, that sermon was not good, then I assure you, you can go to his church's website and listen to his recording tomorrow and it will be much better than what you have this morning. Anyways, let's go ahead and let's jump into scripture. We're going to be reading that light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. Let me reread 6 through 8 real quick. Let's pray real quick. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you for allowing me to come and just get to share my joy in you. Allow that joy to radiate through me, and please speak through me this morning and into the hearts of the people who are here. God, we love you so much. Amen. So just a quick background before we really jump in and before we really dive into these verses, I want to give a little background behind the John that is being talked about in here. This is not the titular John of the actual book. This is talking about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is someone who's also referred to as or known as John the Forerunner. He was basically the forerunner for the Messiah that he was actually prophesied about saying there will be a man who comes. He will come and he will make way for the Lord. He will make way for the light for Jesus. This man, he's going to come and he is going to make it known that Jesus was on the move and that Jesus was on the way. He lived in the woods. He was kind of a gross dude. He ate bugs. His entire purpose, his entire life's mission and life's goal was just preaching to these people. What was he preaching? He was preaching, get ready, get prepared, repent, because the Lord is coming, Jesus is on his way, and he is about to rock everyone's world. He was Jesus' cousin. He had a similarly miraculous birth, just as Jesus had. He had all of this awesome stuff. He had these things that made him special, so he should be in the Bible, right? He had a miraculous birth. He was prophesied for that literally people hundreds of years before had said, this guy is going to come, and he's going to signify the coming of Jesus. And all of these things are incredible. Maybe more notable than all of those things is that Jesus himself said, John is the greatest of any man who's been born of a woman. That there is no one greater than John. And that is high praise. That is the highest praise. That is coming from Jesus' mouth. And you think about it, it's like, that makes sense, right? There's a lot of special and there are a lot of miraculous things. But what I think is that Jesus said that not simply because he was somebody who was prophesied about, not simply because he was one who came and fulfilled a prophecy and had this miraculous birth and experienced these miracles, but because he was someone who understood his calling and understood his life and how he stacked up against Jesus and his entire life was motivated by that. I think what made him so great and why he was so notable and noteworthy and standoutish in Jesus' eyes was because he understood the claims of seven and eight. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. And so I stand here this morning with my ultimate goal and my ultimate message being that I think that it is attainable for us to be seen in the light and to be seen in the light of Jesus' eyes as the same type of person as John the Baptist. No, we are not going to be the named fulfillment of prophecy. And no, we are not. Most of us probably didn't have this miraculous birth, but every single one of us can live that passage out. Every single one of us can live the calling of John's life, of that we realize and we understand that we are not the light. But boy, do I know the light. And I think why John stood out in this time was because I think better than any person who walked the earth prior to Jesus's death and resurrection, I think John understood why Jesus was there. And when you understand why Jesus is there, how could you do anything but proclaim what he was coming to do? This man that you've been looking for, that you've been searching for, this king that us Israel Jews, that we have been searching for and that we've been excited to come and so ready for so he can come and save us. I'm here to tell you that he's here. And I think John knew that he wasn't meant to be an earthly king like a lot of people thought. I think John understood that it meant that he was going to solidify our eternal home in heaven. And that meant that he had this joy in Christ and this passion for Christ that allowed him to preach in such a way that as he preached in the back of these woods and ate these things that all of these people, thousands of people in Israel had to come and hear what he had to say. Because he had a message worth hearing and he was preaching it out of the joy that he had found through knowing and understanding that message. And so when he was asked, when people came to him and he said, are you this person? Are you this light? Are you the savior that is coming and the king that is going to come and save us? He said, no. There is one that's coming that is far greater. And I guarantee you, I promise you, he is going to be far more than anything that you could ever understand. And so now, repent, give way to him. John was a huge deal. He was a biblical hero. But what I'm here to tell you is I think at his base, he understood that he wasn't the light and that he understood who the light was. And because he came in contact with him, it changed his life forever. And it built up this joy in him where he had to let it out to everyone he possibly could. As I was thinking about this, and as I was thinking about John and his life and what that looked like, and as I was thinking about how that connects to our life and maybe what it looks like in our life, I was reminded of an episode of one of my favorite shows. Now, if you ask any of my students, if you ask any of my friends, if you ask my small group, if you ask my family, hey, what do you think the over-under for how many sermons it'll take Kyle to come to a TV or to a movie reference? Every one of them would say probably one, and it'll be within the first two minutes. I love TV. I love movies. I watch it all the time. I make way too many quotes and references. I've got students up here laughing because they know it. I've got small group people that I see in the back laughing because they also know it. Yeah, hey, I got a fist bump in the back, so I know I'm saying something that someone agrees with. They would all say one, but hey, I'm here to tell you. I mean, hold your applause, but I'm here to tell you that it is now my third sermon here at Grace, and this is only going to be my first TV reference. But I just think it's perfect. This reference is going to be from a show called The West Wing. I don't know how many of you guys have seen it or know of it or whatever. It's an older show. It's a show that's on Netflix that I have watched. I'm actually currently re-watching it on Netflix because I just think it's that good and because, as previously stated, I love watching TV. In this particular, well, let me give you a background behind what the West Wing is. If you don't know what the West Wing is, it is basically giving a peek behind the curtain at what the West Wing of the White House looks like, of the offices and the president and the president's staff and them working and running a country. And this particular episode that I'm thinking about is actually a flashback episode. And so we know that these people are in the White House, that there's a president,b Bartlett, and then he has this staff that is working, and they've done this. This episode in particular is a flashback that talks about how the staff came to be on staff for President Bartlett. And so it opens up with this guy named Josh Lyman. He's basically, he is running the campaign for this other presidential candidate named John Hoynes. They basically have it sewn up. This guy is going to be the next Democratic presidential candidate. He's got the whole thing sewn up in the bag. Everyone else is a far distant second, and they know that it's going to happen. It opens up, though, not really as exciting, as joyful as that sounds. This opens up. They're sitting in a circle, and Josh is going off and arguing and fighting against all of the other people that are at this table. And it ends with John Hoynes. The candidate walks him out and says, Josh, dude, you've got to chill out. You've got to get off of my back. You've got to get off of these people's backs. To which Josh says, sir, I don't know what we're about. I don't know what we're for. I don't know what we're against. I don't know what we believe in. All I can really tell is that we're for winning and that we're against losing. And you see the guy who is destined to become the chief of staff to the president, one of the highest jobs that you can hold in this country, and yet you see in his face, you hear in his voice the discontent, that it's not enough because he's working for this guy that he doesn't see is the real deal. That conversation ends, and one of Josh's dad's old buddies comes up to him. His name is Leo. He says, Josh, can I talk to you for a minute? So they walk outside, and Leo says, Josh, I'd like for you to go see a guy named Jeb Bartlett speaking in Nashua in a few days. Josh is like, why would I do that? Like, not only, like, I know that he is a presidential candidate, but I'm already working for a candidate. And not only am I working for a candidate, I'm working for the candidate, right? I'm working for the candidate who is about to win. Why would I go and check out this guy who has absolutely no way of winning? And Leo says, I just think you should check him out. If not for me, just do it because I'm an old friend of your dad's. And he walks away. And you see in Josh's eyes, and you see this glimmer of hope that this is probably a task that is not going to produce any fruit. He's probably going to go, be like, all right, I did it. You're welcome, sir. But you can see that there's some type of intrigue because what you realize is he realizes this could be the real thing, that just in case I want to go check it out. And so he books a trip to go there. On his way there, before he goes, he hits up New York City. He hits up this guy named Sam, one of his buddies who's working in this law office. Basically, Sam is this brilliant lawyer that what he does, in probably his words, he works for the bad guys and makes sure that he insures the bad guys to where they don't lose money if they skimp in ways when they buy boats and ships in case they have some type of oil spill or whatever. Like, not good dudes. Like, can we all agree? Nods all around the room, not good dudes. And so you can see within Sam's life before Josh comes into it that Sam is pretty discontent as well, right? He's not happy there. He doesn't really want to be there. It's basically just a job. It's a law firm that's about to make him partner. Josh shows up. They go get a hot dog, 9.30 a.m. I don't know why I said that, but it's a funny fact, and so I said it. They go, and basically Josh says, man, I'd love for you to come work for us. You're a great writer. Come write some speeches. Come be a part of our campaign. Make it better, and you can work for the next president of the United States. Sam pretty quickly turns him down. And you understand that, right? Like, you understand, like, he's got a life in New York. He's got a job who pays really well in New York, and he's happy, and he's satisfied there. Or he may not be happy, but he's satisfied there. And that makes sense until you see, until you peel back the curtain as to why he really turned him down. He says, Josh, Hoynes isn't the real thing, is he? The guy that you're working for that's about to be the president, he's not the real thing, is he? Josh stumbles and he fumbles around for his words until finally Sam cuts him off. He's like, dude, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? And Josh, I don't know. Before he leaves, Josh says, hey, Sam, I'm going to see this guy speak in Nashua. If I see the real thing, do you want me to come and tell you? Sam says, you won't have to because you've got a terrible poker face. So Josh heads over to Nashua. He listens to this man. He's sitting in this like half-filled VFW room with these old families that are there, and he's giving this speech. Josh is chilling, whatever. At the end of the speech, they take questions. Someone raises his hand. He stands up. He says, Mr. Bartlett, I voted for you three different times. And you have continued to choose to hurt me and my family and my crops and what I do. You are taking money out of my pocket. How whatever he can to where even if he's lying, he's telling them what they want to hear because he needs their vote to win a presidency. But instead, he stands up, he says, you know what, you're right. I got you pretty good there. And I'm sorry that you lost money, but I am standing here and telling you that I did what I think is right. My goal was not about the money in your pockets, but to make milk more accessible to all people. He stands in front of these farmers and tells them, yes, I have made movements that have hurt you, that have taken money from your pockets, but I'm telling you that I stood up and I did what I believe is right. And if you're asking me to tell you something different now that I'm standing here in front of you, I'm not going to do it. And if you don't think that that's a value that you want in your presence, then do not vote for me. He stood up for what he believed and for what he knew was right in his eyes instead of telling these people what they wanted to know. He wasn't running an election. He wasn't being a politician. He was just being someone who said, I want to stand up for what I think is right. And it pans to the back of the room to Josh. And he doesn't go and talk to anyone. He doesn't go and talk to Leo who invited him. You instead just see a guy who just looks up and you see just this wonder and this awe in his eyes as he's listening to this president talk. And he's like, are you kidding me? This is it. This is the real thing. This guy's not trying to win an election. This guy's trying to do the right thing. And if he can do that, he would love to win an election so he can continue to do what he thinks is right. He realized that he had spent all of this time with John Hoynes just trying to win an election. And now here is this guy standing up for what he knows is right. Speaking truth to that power, standing up for his convictions. And you can see in his face that his life is about to change. Just in his face and just in the joy of his face, you can tell this guy's all in. So what does he do? He goes right back to New York. He's so excited that he forgets where Sam works and he forgets the name of the law agency. And so he's standing out in the middle of the pouring rain on this payphone and he's talking to the operator saying, ma'am, what are some of the law agencies? I don't know how to call. I want to call ahead, but I can't remember his law agency because he's freaking out because he's so excited. He goes, but ma'am, you've got to help me out. I just saw this guy and I just, you got to help me. He can't get the words out because he's so overjoyed that he's finally found the real thing. When he finally finds Sam's law office, Sam is sitting there with his clients and he's sitting there with the rest of the people that are on the staff. Josh comes up to the window. He knocks on it. Sam looks up and you see Josh grinning ear to ear, soaking wet, doesn't say a word, points at his face. And Sam knows that is joy. That's what I'm looking for. That's the face I was looking for. And that's how you're going to get me to come with you. He stands up. He walks out of the room. And that is that for Josh and Sam working for President Bartlett. And this was a flashback episode, so we already know how it goes. We know that their life becomes fixated on getting this guy elected. And that once he becomes elected, you're able to see over and over again that because they love this man and because they believe in this man, because he's the real deal, they are happy and proud to say, I serve at the pleasure of the president. Now this is a human and worldly example, but is that not what it looks like to be someone who believes this passage? This is the real deal. I've experienced this, and because of that, I am overwhelmed with joy and excitement. And I'm so passionate about this now that I have to let people know. Josh had seen the real thing. And because of that, his joy was uncontainable. He had to let it out. He had to let his buddy know. He had to let the world know of who this guy was because this guy was the real thing. And it was unmistakable. There was no way to of passion and the type of joy that John had experienced and why he had made such an impact in Israel. Oh my gosh, look at this Jesus that I get to tell you about. I cannot wait to tell you what he's going to do for you. And I think that is where the impact came from. Because he himself was not the light. He came only to be a witness to the light. And I believe that this is what our lives are meant to look like. Not only do I believe it, I think that throughout the Bible, everybody is caught like there's just this huge, giant call of your life should reflect Christ. Your life should build up Christ. Your life should make Christ known. Your words, your actions, everything should make Christ known. In John 20, 21, Jesus says to his disciples, one of the last things he says before he's raised up to heaven, he says, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. The Father has sent me. I'm going back up to heaven. You are now my body. It is now your turn to go and be a witness to me. Unlike John, guess what? We've got the rest of scripture. Unlike John, who is so overjoyed and so impassioned by this is the Jesus that is coming, this is the Jesus who's coming to win, this is the Jesus who's coming to save, we have the joy and the passion of this is the Jesus that we live in. Not simply the expectation of the light that is to come, but as the result of the light that has come. The joy that John was promising through Christ has now been seen. It has been delivered to us and we live in a time where we are able to point to Christ in all of who and what he was and is. We're able to see his life on earth and be able to read and say, oh my gosh, look at the way that he loved. Look at the way that he served. Look at the way that he healed. We look at his death and we realize that this death, that his ultimate reason for coming was to die for us, that he took our sins and he said, I am making a way for you to enter into eternity with your father and with my father because I'm going to die for you. He was raised to life signifying the end of death for anyone who would believe. And he was raised up to heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, constantly, every day, every minute, every hour, interceding for us with the Father, that we forever have access directly to the Father because of Jesus. This joy is no longer living out of the expectation of who will Jesus be, but the reality of who Jesus is forever. And so I ask you, how much worse should our poker face be? How much harder should it be for us to contain this joy? John the Baptist was called to witness, and he witnessed the light. Not in the way of Josh going to Sam in the first time, where he knew it was out of obligation. He knew it's what he should do. Sam immediately saw through that. He could tell that Josh didn't truly believe what he was asking him to do. No. How did John the Baptist do it the way that Josh did it the second time where all it took was one look to see that something about Josh was different because he had encountered the light. John the Baptist encountered the light and he was never the same because of it. And just as he was called to witness to the light, so are we. And so this Christmas, I urge you to seek after this joy. If you just started coming to church or if you've been around church for a while but you've never truly found or experienced this joy, I ask that you would pursue that over anything else this Christmas. Pursue the real thing. And if you have found it, allow this to serve as a reminder to how good, how great God is, and allow this Christmas season that every time you think about, you get so overjoyed at the fact that we are celebrating not only that Christ is coming, but that Christ has come. And let this joy radiate from your lives in a way that is unmistakable. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for all that you are. God, the more I learn about you, the more overjoyed I am because I just realize how far from you and how distant from you that I should be, but because of all that you've done, because of your love and because of your sacrifice, that God, I'm able to have access to you and to your Father. Lord, I pray that our lives radiate your joy, that as we witness, it's not out of obligation, but it's out of a joy and a passion of something that we cannot hide. God, we love you so much. Amen.

Well, hello. This is the last part of our series in Ephesians. We've been going through Ephesians now for six weeks, so this week we arrive at Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6 is a famous passage. It's got the armor of God starting in verse 10, and that's where we are going to land this week. I've been excited to get here and have thought a lot about the best, most effective way to approach this passage. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 6. If you don't have a Bible, I would encourage you to grab the one in the seat back in front of you and go ahead and turn there so that you can be looking through the text as we go through it together. I always think it's helpful if we look at it and we process it at the same time in the same way. So as I approach the text this week, I actually, I did the normal research that I do, but I wanted to call a buddy of mine who has some experience in combat. This particular guy did what we see on the movies. He's a special forces guy over in Iraq, Afghanistan. And they would do night raids every night where you drop in, you go into somebody's home or a compound or a building, you have a target and then you have the secondary targets and you try to either eliminate or obtain them. That's the technical term for kill or kidnap them. So you go in and you do that, and that's what they did every night. And then for part of the career, they watch on the screen as the rest of the team does it. It's like the stuff you see in the movies. And so I thought, I want to know what his perspective is on this text. And so I gave him a call, and we talked it through, and I love military stuff. I am too feeble of body to have been effective in it, but I like to hear about other people who are. And so we talked at length about things, and he shared with me two things that I thought would be really helpful for us as we approach this passage. He told me that in a good raid, when you would go in and you've got your target, he's in the house or he's in the compound or whatever it is, and you're bringing these special forces operators to bear on the target, you're trying to obtain the target. I think we kind of picture that in the movies as depicted as a firefight, like you drop in from a helicopter and like everybody's, they're armed and you're armed and you fight your way into the compound and you get the person. But he said really and truly what they would try to do rather than just landing close and letting them know, hey, we're here and inviting the conflict, that what they would try to do whenever they possibly could is drop about six kilometers away from the target and then sneak in, walk in under the cover of night without being detected. And what he told me was an effective raid would end with no shots being fired. That they would get into the compound, into the home, into the building, into the area, and that they would have their primary target and the secondary and the tertiary targets, and everybody would be at gunpoint before the lights would get flipped on, and then the lights get flipped on, and everybody surrenders and go home. His words were, actually, if they decide to resist at that point, that's on them. I thought, well, gosh, I would not resist. But he said those were the best raids, was when there was no shots fired at all, when the enemy didn't even realize that they were in a conflict until they were already captured. I thought that was interesting. I'll tell you why in a minute, but I wanted to talk about this other point that he made too. He said the most dangerous time for him and his teams was actually not the firefight. It was not when they were engaged in combat. They were prepared for that. They had a plan for that. They knew where everybody was going to be. They knew where all the targets were going to be. If the enemy did something, they knew how to counter that. They were ready. They're not worried at all about once they're engaged in conflict. The most dangerous point of any raid for them was actually the approach to the target. Because you don't know while you're approaching the target if they can see you. You don't know if they're about to open up machine guns on you. You don't know if you're about to be under attack. You don't know if you're about to be ambushed. The most dangerous time, he said, was as they were approaching the target. And he actually noticed in his early years of doing this, in the early months of doing this, that as they're approaching the target, he's not really aware of what's around him. His head is already in the compound. He's already at the plan. He's going through, when we get here, I'm going to go to the eastern wall, and we're going to breach this door, and there's going to be this many people, and yada, yada. He's going through this in his mind, but he noticed that the veterans, the guys who had done dozens if not hundreds of these, seemed to be almost talking to themselves the whole way up, concentrating on other things. And he learned that what these guys are doing is they're constantly assessing their surroundings. They're constantly preparing themselves. If we get attacked now, I can duck behind that wall. I can go behind that rock. That car will provide cover. We can return fire from here. They're constantly, every hundred feet, redoing their attack plan and their defense strategy. If we get attacked, if they throw it open on us here, then I'm going to go here, and my men can go here, and we can attack, and then we can counter like this. And in both instances about the plan and the strategy of these raids and the danger encountered in these raids, it occurred to me that the most dangerous time of any conflict is when you don't realize you're in one. The most dangerous time of any conflict is when you don't yet realize that you're in it. Those guys sitting in the compound getting raided, they were trying, the strategy of the U.S. military is to avoid making them aware that they're even in combat until it's too late. Do you see that? A good raid is when there's no shots fired. It's when they don't even know that they are under attack until it's too late for them to do anything about it. They wanted to withhold that information from their opponent for as long as possible because the most dangerous time in any conflict is when you don't know you when you're in it. And then walking to the target. The most dangerous time was that they might be in a conflict before they're ready to be in a conflict. They might be in an ambush. They might throw it open on them before they're ready to be in that conflict. And I thought, oh, how interesting as we think about spiritual warfare, that the most dangerous time of any conflict is when we're in one and we don't realize it. And this, I think, is what Paul is trying to open our eyes to in Ephesians chapter 6. And it's why he writes what he writes. At the end of this letter, he's written this letter to this church, not necessarily to Ephesus, but to the churches surrounding Ephesus, and it ended up camping out in the church of Ephesus. But to many churches, to many early churches, he writes a letter. He describes what salvation is. He says what we do because we're saved. How should we live and how should we live in the home and in the workplace and with our children? And then he finishes up the letter with a warning followed by an encouragement. And the warning has a lot to do with the point that we just made about being unaware of the conflicts that we're in. Look at what he says, beginning in verse 10. We're going to go 10 through 12 right now. Paul writes, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God. We're going to talk about what that is in a second. That you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. This is such an important verse. Listen to this verse. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul is saying, listen, listen, listen, you need to know this. Listen, hey, pay attention. We are in a conflict. We are in a battle. To be born into the world is to be born into the midst of an eternal struggle of good versus evil over God versus Satan. To be born into the world is to be born into a conflict where there are elements warring against and for your very soul. So wake up. We're in a battle. And if the most dangerous point of any conflict is to be in it and not be aware that we are in it. Then what Paul is doing is he's grabbing the church in Ephesus and he's grabbing our attention 2,000 years later and he's going, hey, listen, you need to know. Everything's not okay right now. Everything's not safe right now. You are in a conflict. Whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not, whether you feel it or not, you are in one. And we don't like to talk about this a lot. We don't like to think about this a lot. I certainly don't like to preach about it a lot. But if we believe that the Bible is true, then we have to believe this uncomfortable truth about our reality, that Satan is real and that he is against you. We don't like thinking about it. We don't like talking about it. No one comes to church going, you know what I hope Nate talks about? The devil. But here's the truth. Satan is real and he is against you. And I would add, he is smarter than you, he has more energy than you, and he is more passionate than you about his goal. And his goal is to hurt God any way he can by tearing people away from his eternal love. And then once you are signed up for his eternal love, once you have received salvation and you have God's love, then his goal is to tear you away and to ruin you from being effective at all at bringing other people into a knowledge of God. It's to make you so ineffective in your faith that you have no impact whatsoever in the kingdom. He is at war against you. This is why Peter says in his letter, 1 Peter 5, at the end, he writes a letter to the church as well. This is just a general epistle that floated around to all of the churches in the ancient world a few years after the death of Jesus. And he finishes his letter the same way. Verse 8 in chapter 5, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. We've all watched those nature shows, right? You've seen the gazelles out on the Serengeti? They're just like chilling out, munching on grass or whatever it is. And there's a pride of lions in the bushes waiting for the one that they're going to devour. Those gazelles are in a conflict and they don't know it. And their adversary is prowling around waiting to find someone to devour. Incidentally, this is not the point of the sermon, but it's too important to pass up here. Who are the ones that he always gets? Who are the ones that the lions always get? The ones that wander away from the herd. Church, a small group, consistency, and a family of faith, it's important. The further away we wander, the more vulnerable we become. But I thought it was interesting that the two fathers of the early church, I mean the two pillars, the guys, if you were in the early church a couple years after Jesus passed away and then goes back up into heaven, If you're in the early church, you know that Peter's the guy. There's the apostles, but Peter is the leader. He is the leader of the church in Jerusalem. And if you go outside of Jerusalem to any of the churches, Paul is the guy. And both of these pillars of the church wrote a letter to the general churches. And at the end of both of their letters, they both said, wake up. We are in a conflict. We don't like to talk about it. We don't like to think about it. But we exist as physical people in a spiritual realm and there are spiritual forces that are against us. Satan is real and he is against you. And he is smarter than you and he is more dedicated than you. So make no mistake about it. We are in a conflict. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, and this is for Christians and non-Christians alike. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, try to choose purity in this world. Try to choose sexual purity in this world. And tell me that you don't every day feel forces pressing against that. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, try to raise a kid. For these boys that were up here, those of you who have kids who are grown, as you look at the Janczewskis who are up here with their two little boys and all the triumphs and all the trials that are in front of them, try to tell them that they're not in a conflict for the souls of their boys. Listen, when I talk about passages like this, when we encounter passages like this, there's kind of two ways to respond to them. If we believe in that fight or flight doctrine, some of us have in us fight. That when you start talking about conflict, you start talking about fight, you start talking about spiritual warfare. I open up a sermon with talking about special forces in Iraq. Some of us in the room are like, I'm in, let's go. What you got? Some of us like that stuff. There's others of us in the room who are a little bit more like my wife. She's sweet, man. Fighting, that's not her thing. Conflict, that's not how she does. I start talking about spiritual warfare, she's like, nah, you have fun with your warfare. But here's the thing. She's in just as much of a conflict as I am. This isn't just for a select few. Whether this passage speaks your language or it doesn't, whether you are fierce or whether you are timid, whether you fight or whether you would choose flight, wherever you are on any of the spectrums, be very clear, we exist in a conflict and Satan himself is warring against your marriage. He is warring against your children. He is warring against your friends. He is warring against your family. He is warring against the things that you love the most and his goal is to steal your life from you and to make you as ineffective as possible by catching you up and all the entrapments of the world so that you do nothing for the kingdom. If you hear nothing else this morning, please don't leave here. Wandering through the field, eating grass like a gazelle, unaware that you're in a conflict. As I thought about this passage as your pastor, I wondered, including me, how many times do we sit at home flicking through our phone while there is a night raid being planned against us? We are in a conflict. And because we are, Paul finishes the passage. What do we do? Because we're in a conflict, because it exists, because Satan is real and he is against us, because he's prowling about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, what do we do? Well, the rest of the passage gives us the answer. In verse 13, he starts it out. He says, therefore. Now, hopefully you've heard me say this before. A little bit of biblical interpretation. This is high-level graduate school stuff. Whenever you see a therefore in Scripture, you have to ask, what's it there for? I know, it's very technical. What did he just say that allows him to say what he's going to say? So what this therefore means is, because you're in a battle, here's what you need to do. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand therefore. Having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, He finishes by saying, praying at all times. So if we're in a battle for our marriages, for our families, for our children, for our friends, for our very souls, if we are in a battle, what do we do? We put on the whole armor of God. And I've seen a lot of people go through and break down each element. What's the belt of truth? And what's the helmet of salvation? And what's the shield of faith and the breastplate of righteousness? And we could do that, but I would just make two points about that. It's boring. And ultimately, it's not super helpful. What we need to know, those are the defensive elements of God's armor. And what we need to know about them is that the defensive elements, the armor that we put on to protect us from the onslaught of the devil is essentially salvation. It's the idea of clothing ourself in salvation. If you want to look back at each one of the elements, they're an element of salvation or something that comes to us as a result of salvation or something that is required so that we can receive salvation. But it's this idea of if we are going to stand firm, because we are in a conflict, what do we do? We clothe ourself in the salvation that God offers us, and we stand firm. I love at the beginning it says, when you have done everything you can to stand, stand therefore. Stay. And I've always pictured in my mind, I don't know how your mind works as I've thought about this passage, I've always pictured this weathered soldier as I think about a mature believer who just stands there with the shield of faith decked out in armor and the evil one is sending the flaming darts towards them and they just weather it. They're just a bulwark in the storm of conflict, and they will not back down, and they will not retreat, and they just stand there, and they take it. That's what I've always pictured. And then I talked to my buddy about this passage, and I said, when you read this passage as a soldier, what do you see? And he said, you know, it's interesting as I read it this week that the only thing I was really interested in was the weapon. He said, as a soldier, when he looks at this and it gets to the armor part, he's like, yeah, that's great, that's great. What's my weapon? What can I fight with? He said, in the special forces, they keep talking about building these like Iron Man suits that make you like impenetrable or whatever, like a juggernaut on the battlefield. And that nobody in special forces is really that interested in these because they don't care. That's not about defending ourselves. It's about what's my weapon and how do I attack the enemy? And he went through a couple of doctrines of attack of the United States military. And the commonality that they had is when you get in a conflict, the best defense is a good offense. When you get in a conflict, the thing you're trying to do as quickly as you can is attack, attack, attack. We do not stand there. They're not just standing there taking it, just weathering the storm of bullets. They attack as quickly and as forcefully as they can. So when he reads this, he wants to know, what's my weapon? How do I go on offense? How do I attack the person who's attacking me? I loved that. That changed my paradigm for me. Because so often I had this picture of the Christian life of somebody who just stands there on the hill, weathering the throes of the evil one, weathering the battle, just standing there as a bulwark and being defensive in this posture of, I will not move, waiting on Jesus. But that's not the picture that the word of God paints. And that's not the picture that my military friend has in his head because there's a weapon here with which we can attack and beat back the attacks of the evil one. It's similar to the wording that Jesus uses when he announces his church. When Peter says, you are Jesus, the son of the living God. And Peter says, yes, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church. And we know that part, but what comes after that? And the gates of hell will not overcome it. The gates are not offensive, they are defensive. Jesus paints this picture of his church forcefully attacking the powers of evil. And so for me, it changed the way I think about what a successful soldier looks like. A successful soldier in this conflict is not one that just sits back and holds up the shield of faith and weathers the storm. It is one that presses forward and attacks. So he wanted to know, in this armor, what's my weapon? What do I get? Our weapon, according to the text, is God's word. The sword of the spirit, which is God's word, is what Paul says. Our weapon, what we use to beat back the attacks of evil against us and our families and our loved ones? Our weapon is God's word. And so to me, the question becomes, why is this the weapon? What's so effective about God's word? And so you can look at the claims that God's word makes about itself. In Hebrews, we're told that the word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, that it penetrates soul and spirit, bone and marrow. Jesus tells us that God's word will not return null and void. There is this power and efficacy to it. But as I thought about it on a practical level, there's plenty of reasons why God's word is the most effective possible weapon against the schemes of the evil one. But there's two that I wanted to highlight this morning. The first is that God's word speaks eternal certainty, eternal truth into temporal uncertainty. God's word speaks eternal truth into temporal uncertainty. If there are forces working against us, then one of the things that they want to do is to shake our faith, is to make us feel like the world is spinning around and there's nothing that can be done about it. Everything's going to hell in a handbasket. This place is getting worse and worse. This is spiraling out of control. I don't know how this just this last week. Last Friday, we had our very first parent-teacher conference. Lily, our daughter, is going to turn four in January, and she's in preschool, and we had our very first teacher conference. Jen was very excited to go, and she said, I'm so nervous about what they're going to say about Lily. I'm like, she's three. I can say anything that matters. Like, it's whatever. And so she goes, and she's got this sweet teacher named Michelle. And Michelle has really, really short hair because we learned that Michelle is a cancer survivor, and now she's fighting cancer again. And so when Jen went, she shared with Michelle that she was about to run home. Michelle says, oh, why are you doing that? And she said, well, my dad has cancer and he's going to get a scan and I want to be home for that. And so then Michelle shared her story. And as Michelle shared her story and empathized with Jen and understood in this unique way what her family is going through, they began to cry together. And into those tears, Michelle began to share verses off the top of her head that had helped her in her journey and that strengthened Jen in that moment. She spoke eternal truth into temporary uncertainty. And then, as they began to talk about Lily, which it turns out that Lily excels at most things that preschoolers should excel at. She has a hard time holding scissors. So if you see her trying to hold scissors, please don't make any jokes. She's very sensitive. But then they started talking about Lily and all the things where she, all the ways that she's good and all the ways where she can grow. And for everyone, Jen told me as she was recounting the conversation to me, she said, Nate, for every one of these, Michelle, she had a passage to go with it. And she wasn't looking at notes. She was just speaking truth out of God's word over Lily and what was going on. She just breathed scripture. She said, Nate, I want to be like that. And as a dad and a husband, I'll try to keep it together and not get choked up. I am so grateful that there is a woman who is in the conflict, who has sharpened her sword, and who is swinging it on my family's behalf. She's speaking truth into my wife and strengthening her against the enemy. She's speaking truth over my daughter and protecting her against the onslaughts there. Because at some point in her life, she has dedicated herself to sharpening her sword so that it's ready for the battle. At one point or another, she realized that her battle is not against flesh and blood. It's against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places that would seek to tear us away from our God. And so she's awake, and she's standing firm, and she's swinging her sword in that instance for my family. And I'm grateful for that. That's why it's the best weapon. It's also the best weapon. We see this in the life of Christ. I'm gonna get my act together now. It's the best weapon because it overpowers the strength of temptation. I believe that there is something supernaturally powerful. I think that there is something supernatural that happens when we speak God's word into temptation. When we face these moments of trial where we want to go one direction and we can call up a portion of scripture that encourages us to go in the other direction. Jesus exhibited this in his 40 days of fasting at the beginning of his ministry. He fasted for 40 days in the desert. At the end of those 40 days, Satan, the adversary, appeared to him and tempted him in three different ways. And all three times, based on my old understanding of the passage in Ephesians, I would expect Jesus to clothe himself in his own righteousness and just stand there and take the temptation as the onslaught comes. But that's not what he does. He returns, he attacks with the sword of the spirit with God's word in all three instances. Rather than standing there and taking it and weathering it, he returns fire with the word of God that overpowers the strength of that temptation, and the enemy goes away. He quotes scripture to temptation. I've seen this in my own life. I don't very often like to set up myself as the example, but I saw this in my life when I was going through memorizing Romans chapter 8. A couple years ago, I just decided that I wanted to memorize Romans chapter eight. And so by God's grace, I was successful at doing that. But when you commit yourself to memorizing an entire chapter of God's word, it runs in your head all the time, whether you want it there or not. The way that I did it is I used my car rides. I had YouVersion up on my phone and and then at stoplights, I would read as much of the passage that I could, and then in between stoplights, I would try to say it back to myself. So it was playing all the time in my head. And during that season of life, I can't tell you how many times something came up, and I went, that reminds me of verse 13. That reminds me of verse 27. That reminds me of verse 39. I can't tell you how many times it came up where that was all of a sudden relevant again to what I was dealing with in life. I can't tell you how many times I was able to speak the truth of that passage against temptation so that I was no longer interested. And with God's word rolling in your head and in your heart all the time, you become far less easy to tempt. That's why we're told to hide God's word in our heart that we might not sin against God. And I love this truth because you've heard me many times as your pastor say that the most important habit any of us can develop in life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And it is just reinforced all the more this week as I encounter this text. The most important habit we can have is to spend up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer, clothe ourself in our salvation, ground ourself in our salvation, focus on God in prayer, and sharpen your sword. Because you don't know when you're going to have to swing it. You don't know what conflict is coming. There's no announcement about, hey, there's going to be a temptation today. Hey, you and your wife are going to get into a fight today. Hey, your kid's going to deal with something tough today. Hey, you're going to get a really hard phone call today. We don't get warnings about those. And we don't know when the onslaught's coming, but there is a night raid being planned. So we sharpen our sword. So I want to finish with the encouragement today. Threefold. Wake up. We're in a conflict. It is happening all around us, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're even comfortable with it or not, it's happening. Stand firm. Persevere. Why do you think at every turn in scripture that the encouragement of the apostles is to persevere, persevere, persevere, persevere? Why do you think that they hold up perseverance as this great thing to be attained? Why do you think that when Paul is ready to end his life, he says, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. Why do you think we are told to run the race to win it? Why do you think it says, once you have done everything you can to stand, then stand some more. Stand firm. Persevere in your faith. Life is long. Cling to your salvation. And then sharpen your sword. Be a student of this word. Swing it for the people in your life. Know it well to keep yourself clean. And then go fight for others as we advance as God's army. And here's the promise. Here's what I love. This is not fatalistic at all. We don't just stand there and weather it. We push forward and we fight. And if we do this faithfully, if we stand firm, if we wake up and we stand firm and we sharpen our sword and we swing it when life requires it of us, we will win this battle one day because in Revelation chapter 19, Jesus is coming back. And when he comes back, he's not coming as a lamb of God. He's coming as a lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop and he's gonna win this conflict. And so we fight until he gets here. Wake up, stand firm, sharpen your sword. Let's pray. Father, you're a good God. You love us so much. God, I pray that we would feel you empowering us. I pray that we would allow you to wake us up to the reality of what's happening around us. Give us the strength to persevere, to stand firm, to cling to our faith and our salvation. Give us the discipline to sharpen our sword. Help us be ready to swing it when we need to. God, I just pray over all the conflicts and all the battles and all the fights that are going on in this room, all the raids being planned and all the places that Satan is prowling. God, I pray that you would help the people in this room fight, that we would fight for the people around us, that we would feel the strength of your salvation and the joy of your spirit.