Sermons tagged with Blessing

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Nice. All right. Good morning, everyone in the room. Good morning, everyone online. My name is Kyle, and I am the student pastor here. And as you can probably tell, I am not Nate, who is our head pastor. For any of you guys who are new, who are like, I don't know who Kyle or Nate are, I'm just a student pastor. And I'm thrilled to announce that the reason that I am on stage preaching this morning is because Nate and his wife, Jen, have just welcomed their new son, John, into the world. And so, yeah, let's get a little, yeah, let's get some cheers going for that. I mean, absolutely incredible blessing. I'm not exactly sure of the birthday, but I know I got a text with a picture on Friday, so we're going to go with the 30th and just, if I'm wrong, then we will correct it next week. But I mean, just such an incredible blessing. Like it has been such a celebration on our staff group text, just of celebrating Nate. And on Facebook, you'd think Nate's about to go like Facebook famous with how many people have commented and liked the pictures of his son. And it has been awesome. And honestly, too, guys, just to be aware of it for a second, it doesn't, or I guess to put it differently than that, it's not lost on me the fact that the last time that I was asked by Nate to step in and preach for him was when he had to take a little bit of time off because he and Jen were basically spending their last few days with Jen's dad, John, and dealing with that loss of a father and of a grandfather far too early. And how beautiful and how incredible is it that this morning, that the next time that I was asked by Nate to step in and preach so he could take a little bit of time off to be with family, that it is because they are celebrating the new life and the birth of their son, John. And so real quick, I just wanted to take a second and just pray for them real quick and just thank God for his blessings. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you just so much for Nate and for Jen and what they mean to our hearts and what they mean to our church and to all of us here this morning. God, I just pray that you are just showering them with joy right now as they have welcomed in John, this beautiful baby boy. And God, we just pray that in the midst of probably a lot of sleeplessness and a lot of unrest, God, that they find places where they can rest, even if it's not physically, where they can just rest in you and in your blessings and in your joy. Amen. So anyways, so with that being said, here I am this morning getting to go through another incredible woman's story within the Bible. And I love the ability to do that. And this morning, we're going to go into the book of Ruth. And one of the things that I think is incredible about Ruth and is noteworthy about the book of Ruth is that you could make a sermon, or excuse me, you could make a series that is called Faithful about the book of Ruth. When you go through Ruth and you see the way that these people live their lives, see the unbelievable ways that Ruth steps out in faith, looking at fear, looking at terror, looking at loneliness, looking at loss, and at every moment choosing to turn to faith. And this morning and next week, we get to spend two weeks talking about the faithfulness of one of the most faithful women and one of the most faithful people in all of the Bible. Before we get going, I do want to mention that in my just imminent and unbelievably high amounts of wisdom, as I thought about the fact that, you know, at some point I'm going to preach this series, these two weeks in Ruth and, you know, John's due date is May 17th. And so that's a few weeks away. And so in my wisdom, I was like, you know what I'm going to do? Because I know how babies work. And I know that sometimes people have babies early. I'm going to start on May 3rd to just get ready. You know, I'm going to be fully ready. That way, if John comes early, Mother's Day, I'm all in. I got it. I'm ready to go. Well, here we were on Friday when I got a text with a baby's picture. And I'm like, this is Nate messing with me. Turns out it wasn't. It was John in the flesh. And so I say that not to give any excuses or not in any way to say anything, except for the fact that this sermon might be a little bit less dialed in. It might be a little bit less polished than sermons you're used to. I know that anybody who's heard me preach before is probably laughing at the fact that I would use polished in my sermons in the same sentence. But I do say that to say that this story, as we read through Ruth 1 together, and we talk through Ruth 1 together, that regardless of how well or how poorly I speak or how polished this sermon is this morning, the truth that is found in Ruth 1 should speak for itself. And so I ask for grace, and I also ask for the fact that even if I am spitting absolute nonsense, that at least this story you will let resonate in your hearts and hopefully walk away learning something by simply hearing this passage of scripture. And so this morning, I actually, I wanted to start off by telling you guys the backstory of actually how I ended up making my way to grace. It's a story that I don't really think I've told that many people. I mean, not for like any reason. I'm not hiding it or whatever, but, you know, I figured it'd be something that would be worth talking about. And it's a story that I love because when I think back on it, it's just pretty wild that it worked out this way because, as a lot of you know, I was working as a student pastor in Atlanta at a church called Greystone. And I was actually working underneath Nate, who was also at Greystone. He wasn't the head pastor, but it was a, you know, it was a bigger staff. And so, so they were like, I guess, levels to the staff. And so I was actually directly under Nate. Well, we left Greystone at about the same time. He came up here, obviously, to enter into being, becoming a head pastor. Woo, exciting. That's us, yay. But I left to kind of go into school and to do some seminary stuff. Well, after about a year of doing that, I realized that as someone who was so used to being in full-time student ministry that when I'm sitting in classes listening to ministry and talking about student ministry, I realized how bored I was and how little I enjoyed learning about these things and talking about these things when I wasn't able to be a part of them. Ministry was great and talking about ministry is great, but doing ministry and actually having interaction and actually having students that are in my life that I love and that I get to be in their lives, when I was missing out on that, I was just like, dude, I don't even know if this is worth it. And so I decided, you know what? I'm going to try to get back into the church. We'll figure out what exactly it looks like and with school and all this stuff, but I'm going to try to get back into the church. So, you know, I tried to explore some avenues. I found that some churches were doing stuff. Nothing really worked out well. At about the same time, one, I texted Nate. I said, yo, you're a head pastor and head pastors know things. So if you hear of anything, I'm trying to get back into the game, baby, basically is what I said. And at the same time, my dad's first pastor that he was a student pastor under reached out to me. He was the head pastor at this Baptist church that was right outside of Athens, Georgia. Now, Athens, Georgia is where I lived. I went to UGA, Go Dawgs. Yep, we all agree. Tons of people are nodding in the building. I know you're all nodding at home for the good dogs. But I was living in Athens at the time. My brother and sister-in-law lived in Athens. I was hanging out with them most every day. A lot of my friends still lived in Athens. My parents even, even though they were in South Carolina, only lived about an hour and a half, two hours away. Everybody was in Georgia. Everybody was very near Athens or Atlanta or somewhere around there. And so when someone calls and says, hey, we have a job available doing student ministry where you don't have to leave this place you love and you don't have to leave these people you love, well, then you listen. Especially when it's a pastor who you know and who you already know, this is a man that I would love to work for because I know that my dad loved working for him. And so as I'm talking with Nate, because Nate texted back and said, well, you know, it's funny, we actually are looking for someone as well. And so I'm kind of, at the same time, I'm interviewing in Georgia, I'm interviewing here. And obviously it progressed a little bit quicker in Georgia because I could just get out to the church. And so, you know, I was able to go check out the church. It was this beautiful Baptist church. One of those Baptist churches that, you know, it's kind of just in the middle of town where it's just like, oh my gosh, this is just like beautiful and awesome. And there's so many people who come in from everywhere. And it sounds like they have like a big thriving student ministry. And all of these things are awesome. And I got to go to a service. I was like, oh, this is cool. This is really nice. This is great. All of these things. And so I actually got a call the night before I was coming up to Raleigh to do some of those same things. And the call was to say, hey, Kyle, we want to hire you as our student pastor. They gave me an offer, and you know, it was a good offer for, I guess, like monetarily as far as like being a student pastor. So that was cool and that was great. Well, so that was what I was sitting on when I drive up to Raleigh for the weekend. And so as I drive up to Raleigh, the first thing that happens is I like meet with Nate. And I'm thinking that Nate and I are and I are just going to be like, you know, gabbing about, you know, what's been going on, all this type of stuff. And, you know, cause I'm like, well, I mean, I know I got Nate on my side. I've already worked with Nate. And then we have this like conversation where I go, oh my gosh, I don't know if Nate wants me to work here. And, and all he was doing was he was grilling me and he was saying, here are these things that I've seen in you in the past. How, like, you know, how have you been able to make strides or Or are these still things that you would consider strengths? All of those things. But right off the bat, I was pretty overwhelmed. But I spend the weekend talking to different people and interviewing and getting to meet staff and came on a Sunday morning. And as I drive up, I'm like, oh, yes, this church is in the side of a storefront. Interesting. That's cool. I like the white letters though. But so I'm like, okay, interesting. And so I come in and obviously, you know, like we have done an incredible job with this space, but obviously like it doesn't really rival like a beautiful Baptist church's sanctuary, you know? And so we're going through these things and we go through service. And then I come on a Sunday night and I get to meet some of the students. And as much as I love meeting these students, I'm kind of hearing about that while there are certainly just some incredible students in this ministry, that there have been a lot of people who've left it. And because of that, it maybe wasn't at quite the healthiest state. And so as I left, I received a job offer from Grace as well. For less money, obviously. This is a smaller church. It is a smaller youth ministry. In no way was I expecting it to be more because I was kind of like, hey, I don't think you understand that I'm young and single and a student pastor. You shouldn't be paying me this much money. That type of thing in the other place. But as I left, you know, I just, I sat there and I'm like, hey, if I made a pro-con list, it's going to be an interesting look. And I was going to bring out a whiteboard and actually make a pro-con list, but I don't know how many of you guys were here the last time we used a whiteboard on stage, but Zach Winston and I, getting it off the stage, almost knocked the TV down and broke a wine glass that was on the table for communion. So we're not going to do that this morning. So just imagine with me a pro con list being on a whiteboard here. But when you look at it, it's like coming to grace means leaving my family. It means that instead of the max distance that I am from my close personal family as being about two hours to the closest that I am to anybody, which was my parents at the time, it was four and a half hours, and then six hours if I wanted to drive to Athens. And not to mention that, but also my friends and all of these things. And I'm choosing a smaller church that seems like the youth ministry might not be quite where the youth ministry was at this other place. And I'm choosing less money. And I mean, like, honestly, like, just like the definition of conless is having to work for Nate. But, you know, so here's all of these things. And I say that to say, when you look at every single decision that I had to make, when I compared the two, and when I made a pro-con list of what it would look like to go to Grace versus go to this other church in Georgia, from every human perspective, there was literally only one decision, and it was screaming at my face saying, you've got to take this job in Georgia. But here I am. And so, yeah, woo! Thank you for the claps. That's nice and funny. And I think that this first chapter of Ruth helps at least a little bit explain why it is that I'm here. To give a little background behind Ruth, basically what is going on in this time is they are living in Israel, God's chosen people in God's chosen land. You know, Moses had brought his people out of Egypt and, there weren't kings, and so it's instead the time of judges. And so God has given his people his law. These are the laws and the commandments that I ask you to abide by. And the judges were to make sure that those were abiding. I don't know. Whatever. Not important. So because there weren't kings, because there was no earthly ruler, then God kind of reigned supreme in a way that he doesn't. We don't quite see as much now where basically because these were his chosen people and the people who were called to live out his law and called to live out their lives in faith and to trust him and to worship him, when they were doing so, then times were good. Harvests were good. If they weren't, there might be times when armies come in and take over some of the land. There may be times of famine because people aren't living for God. It was just a different time, and it was how the culture was set up during the time of judges. Well, we were in one of those times as we jump into our story. It starts out talking about this woman named Naomi, and Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, were dealing in a time of famine to the point that they realized, hey, like, this is rough. And instead of choosing, instead of making the choice to say, I'm going to trust God to provide what he needs to provide for me and for my family, they instead decide they are going to leave. They're going to grab their two sons and they are going to go into another kingdom. Well, this other kingdom, we'll call it not a friendly. We'll say Moab is like an enemy nation, an enemy country. They're continuously at war. During this time, I read somewhere, it's not actually within the pages of Ruth, but that during this time, there was no love lost between these two kingdoms to the point of like war and battle and all of these things. And so for them to leave Israel and go seek refuge in a kingdom that was not only not God's chosen place and God's chosen people, but an enemy of God, people who were so against God and his people that they wanted to kill him. And so this is where they went. They settled in and Elimelech ends up dying. So Naomi loses her husband and now all she has is her sons. Malan and Chilian, her sons, marry two Moabite women. They marry Ruth and they marry Orpah. They live there for 10 years. And in those 10 years, neither one of them is able to conceive. Neither one of them is able to produce a seed that could lead to them continuing their familial line. In this culture, that was about the most important reason to get married was one, to take care of your family, but two, to raise up a son and raise up a family who is able to take care of your crops, who is able to grow, who's able to take care of your land, who is able to continue your family line. And when your family or when your parents get older to take care of them as well. So in these 10 years, there haven't been any children conceived and her sons die. Both of them die before they're able to conceive. And so now what we're left with, we're left with Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth together. And Naomi, in her overwhelming tragedy, finally realizes that she now has to look her shame in the face. She now has to look her fear and her bad decision in the face and say, I can't provide for myself here. There's nothing that I will be able to do here. I have to return home. She says, I know that the Lord would have me. I mean, she doesn't say this, but like essentially she says, I know the Lord would have me return home because I have to be able to survive. And so I'm going to have to look in the face of people who are probably going to look down on me and see me differently because I chose fear over faith 10 years ago. Coming back in her shame to say, you know what? God is asking me to be here. And so this is where I need to be because I need to survive and I need to be a part of where God has me, even if it means I'm going to be looked down upon. But on their way there, she looks at her daughters-in-law and she says, leave me. Don't be with me anymore. There's no reason for you to follow me back because if you do, if you follow me back, then I can assure you nothing good awaits you. They all weep and they plead with her like, no, we're going to stay with you. You need us. You need us for survival. There's no way you're going to be able to make it alone. But Naomi continues to press on and says, there's literally nothing there for you. I have no, you can't just marry some random man in Israel because you're a Moabite. They won't marry you. Also, I'm too old now to find a husband and much too old to find a husband where I can have another son and you can marry my next son so that you can continue the line and continue in this kinship. So don't go with me. Go back home. Go where your family is. Go where you're comfortable. Go where you know that you at least have some sort of hope at having a family and having a life because coming with me will be no life at all. At this, they all weep again. Clearly, there's so much love between these three women that it's just beautiful. But after it, Orpah says, okay. So she gives her love to these two, and she heads out. But Ruth says, no, I'm staying with you. She says, I don't care what you have to say with me. Stop pleading with me. I'm going to stay with you. And that's where we're actually going to pick up and we're actually going to read. It's in Ruth 1. we're going to stop. How incredible is that? How unbelievable is it that Ruth would say in the face of everything that Naomi is telling me, I'm going to stick with you, Naomi. Let's go, let's head back to the pro-con list. I want you, I want us to understand the implications of what she's saying. Because not only is she saying that by sticking with Naomi, that it probably means that she is going on towards loneliness and singleness, and that will be the end of her family line. Not only is she saying that, which is incredibly devastating, especially in this time, but I know that there's some that like in today's culture, especially some people like, yes, queen, you don't need no man, you know, but also take account that she is taking an elderly woman back and her goal and her mission and the only reason she's doing so is so that she can be a caretaker for this elderly woman who's not even her mom, just a mother-in-law that she has grown to love. So the rest of her life is going to be meant for just finding food wherever she's able to scrounge up food for a single woman without any land. But not only that, but she is a Moabite woman who is entering into Israel where she is hated. So she is walking into a place where she knows she is going to receive bitter racism. And it's alluded to multiple times later in Ruth that she is entering into a place that actually could be quite harmful to her, that she could experience, she could be hurt, injured, killed, or raped by any of these people because she is considered nothing as a single Moabite woman, as less than nothing by some of these people. What's waiting for her if she doesn't stay with Naomi? She gets to go back to her family. She gets to go back to her home. She gets to go back with the hope and encouragement that I can probably find another husband, that I can finally start a family even though I wasn't able to before. There is no good, satisfactory reason why she should stay with Naomi except that, one, she was being nice to help Naomi out, but I think that what Ruth realized and what Ruth knew in her heart, the reason why it didn't matter how long the list of cons were for entering and how long the pros of going back to her kingdom were. I think she knew in her heart what Daniel knew and what Daniel, I mean, excuse me, Daniel, what David wrote in Psalms 84.10 when he says, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I think what she realized and what she knew without a shadow of a doubt is that the Lord had her staying with Naomi. And that is the only thing that mattered. When I was trying to decide, honestly, I'm going to be honest with you, I wasn't ever really trying to decide. Every stop that I made, every interaction that I had, every single part of my weekend in Raleigh was the Lord yelling at me, Kyle, this is where I have you. And I don't at all mean to, and please do not hear me at all, likening my experience coming to Raleigh with Ruth's experience of giving up her entire life to be a single caretaking woman who is ending her seed. Because I came here and I was overwhelmingly blessed. And I came here with immense hope at what was to come. She left without any hope except that if I am in the will of God, then I know there is always hope because I know that there is no place better to be than inside the will of God than anywhere else. I know for me, I was incredibly thankful because this would have been a very difficult decision for me had God not been literally screaming in my face, this is where I have you. And I don't mean to say that I haven't experienced drawbacks and sadness at the times that I have to miss holidays or birthdays or weddings or the like because my friends and my family are all in Georgia. There are certainly negatives to being in Raleigh versus having taken that job in Georgia, but I promise you that every day I get to wake up knowing that because I chose, honestly, because the Lord made it literally impossible for me to choose anything else, but I got to be in the will of God and it has been unbelievable the blessings that have come from getting to see what it looks like to be, to just choose the will of God. And the point of this morning isn't to look at each one of you guys and say, hey, time to leave your family, time to leave your homes, time to go to another state and work for another Nate. You know, like the purpose of this is not, it's time to give up everything that you hold dear so that you can follow God or it's time to, you know, give up your job or your career or your friends or whatever. Now, hear me saying, it's not not that. Because if the Lord is working in your life and asking you to do so, then that's a conversation to have. And that is a prayer that needs to be thrown out. But every single day, we are faced with decisions on whether we want to act in faith, whether we want to choose faith in this interaction that we have, in this way that we think about something, with the way that we spend our time, with the things that we value. We are having an interaction in our heads on whether or not we are going to choose faith or we are going to choose ourselves. Fear, worry, comfort, all of those types of things because it's a lot easier to make the decision that seems earthly like a good decision. But this morning, what I'm asking you, well, honestly, what I'm telling you is I I am a hundred percent sure that there is no better place to be than inside of the will of God. In big ways, but in small little decisions. When you're in your small group and it feels like it's uncomfortable for me to be honest and to be open and to be vulnerable with these people that are also my friends and I don't know how they'll react to me, that you choose faith and you say, I know that this is best for me and I know that these people, if they can walk beside me knowing me and my full self, then I promise you I will have a better life and a better faith and I will experience more joy. And so I am going to look that fear of how people will see me in the face and say no, because I'm going to be vulnerable and I'm going to be open in this small group and with these friends. Maybe you have co-workers or you have friends that you know need to hear who God is, but you're afraid of how they'll react to you or you're afraid that they'll look at you different or see you different or honestly, you're afraid of the discomfort of having to figure it out or you're just afraid because it's just scary in general to do something like that. Maybe you have a sin that's eating your lunch or overwhelming you, and you're so afraid to open up about it. You're so afraid to fight it because you're so rested in it that it's become the norm, and it's become your comfort, and it's become your reliance, and you're terrified of getting rid of it, and you're even more terrified of people finding out, but you know that as soon as you're able to open up and able to share this sin with somebody that you can maybe for once and for all kick this sin because you have somebody being accountable to you for it. Maybe you need to change your priorities from the fact that obviously we live in a culture where success and our jobs and the money and all of these things are what we should be pursuing and what we should be valuing. But maybe we decide, you know what? I'm going to value God over all of that. And I'm going to make my decisions that I make for God and for his glory and out of where his will is for my life and not simply what is best for my career and my life personally. I'll give the opposite of the student ones and I'll just talk to the parents now because this is one we talk about in students a lot, but parents. Maybe it means that you need to look culture in the face and say, you know what? I know that all these parents are going to look down on me, but I'm going to value my kids' spiritual life and their spiritual walk and their ability to come to church and to be a part of a church community. I'm going to value that more than I value their education and their athletic career and future. I'm going to value their future as someone who grows spiritually and is spiritually healthy and full that also seeks after being inside of the will of God. There are very easy arguments to fight against all of these. There are probably good spiritual arguments to fight against any of these hard decisions where the Lord is asking you to step out in faith. That's why it's faith. Last week we sang, I'm no longer a slave to fear, but I'm a child of God. And I've thought before, is fear really that big of a thing now versus Bible times? Yes. If you aren't experiencing any fear or any worry when it comes to living out your faith, then my question for you is, is it because your faith is so strong and who God has called you to be, and so at every waking moment, every decision is for him, or are you unwilling to step out in faith enough to where fear isn't even an impact or isn't even a factor? I often realize about myself that it's the latter. I don't lack fear because of my faith. I avoid fear at the expense of not doing anything that requires me stepping out in faith. May we not do that this morning. May we not do that this week. May we not do that in our lives. And may we instead just understand the joy and the goodness of God and allow that to bring about a freedom in our hearts to say yes to God at any and every turn, even if it makes literally no sense to us, even if it makes no sense to anybody else around us. Let's pray. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you for an unbelievably beautiful depiction of faith in the book of Ruth, God. Just in Ruth 1, we got three more chapters. Lord, I know that we're not always asked to give up our entire lives and everything about ourselves to follow you and to say yes to you. But God, what I also know is every single day we are faced with choices of whether we say yes to you and your will, or we say yes to us and ours. God, may we have the freedom and the love and the joy and the goodness that we have experienced from you. May that shape our decisions and boldness to say yes to you every single time. God, we love you so much. Amen.

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be with you in this way. I am excited for the fifth part in our series called Things You Should Know, where we're looking through things in Scripture or that come up in church or in Christendom that we are familiar with, we've heard of before, but maybe we don't know how to explain or maybe it hasn't been discussed or maybe we're just too far down the rabbit hole of faith to raise our hand and ask about these things to get some clarity. And so what we wanted to do, so that you didn't have to ask those embarrassing questions in small groups, is take five weeks here at the beginning of the year and talk through some of these topics that we may have questions about, because we don't really discuss them all the time. This morning, I wanted us to look at grace and mercy. Grace and mercy are two things that we see come up in Scripture a lot. We're going to look at Scripture in a little bit to see how replete it is with references to God's grace and God's mercy. And we sing songs about them. We certainly know about them. We've heard about them. The name of the church is Grace, for crying out loud. But I wonder how many of us would be confident in whatever your working definition of grace is. I wonder how many of us would be confident understanding mercy or explaining it to our kids if they heard those words and said, hey, what does that mean? How many of you would feel comfortable going, I got this, I'm going to knock this out of the park? If I asked those of us listening and watching, hey, could you explain grace and mercy to the church? Could I get you to come in one Sunday morning, I'm just going to bring you up on stage, and you tell the good people of grace what the name of the church really means. Now, I have no doubt in our church, we would do a good job. There would be, I think, a myriad answers across a wide range of definitions using a lot of unnecessary words that would be mostly right. But I think it's worth it as a church to take some time and define these words in a simple way and understand what grace and mercy really are. Because when we understand God's grace and God's mercy towards us, I think that we can't help but want to respond in exuberant praise. I think when we really understand what's going on with grace and mercy, when we really properly understand those two characteristics of God, that it inspires within us a response of gratitude, and that gratitude manifests joy, and it ought to make us want to leap out of our skin and praise our good God. Which is why we've positioned the sermon at the beginning of the service this week, and we're going to transition right into worship as I wrap up the sermon. Because I wanted to give you guys a chance to respond to the reality of God's grace and mercy. So with that in mind, and I would also say, for those of you who are listening to this or me, not on Sunday morning, if you're catching up later in the day, if you're listening on a podcast in the car or on a walk or something like that, as you listen to my voice right now, I would encourage you, plan to listen to some praise and worship music on your own at the end of this sermon. Just go ahead and budget some time in your head to listen to two or three songs or just have it playing in the car and allow yourself to respond to what's shared here this morning. But with that preamble, I wanted to jump right in to defining these words for us so we have a working definition here at Grace. So mercy, the way I understand it, is simply when we do not get what we deserve. Mercy is when we do not get something that we deserve. When our actions or our attitude or our behavior warrants punishment, something punitive, or just some natural consequences, and we don't receive those consequences, we don't receive the punishment that we deserve, when we've earned some trouble and we don't get into that trouble, that's mercy. So mercy is simply when we don't get something that we do deserve. Think of it this way. Pretend you've got a 16-year-old son. He's just got a new car. He's got the keys. And part of the deal with having the freedom to drive is that there's a curfew. And his very first time out, he goes out with his buddies and he breaks a curfew. And he understands that you guys have set up these rules that if you go and you break curfew, when you come back, we're going to take your car keys for a week. That's the deal. All right? So he gets back, he's broken curfew, and what he deserves is for you to take his car keys. And instead you say, you know what? I hope that you remember this. I want to forgive you. I'm not going to hold this against you. Go into bed. I'm not going to take your car keys. Right? That's mercy. He does not get a punishment that he does deserve. He doesn't get the consequences that his behaviors warrant. You just showed your son mercy. That's what that is. So mercy is when we do not get something that we do deserve. Grace, conversely, is when we do get something that we don't deserve. Grace is when we get a special favor or a blessing that we did not earn, that our behavior does not warrant. So we go back to the 16-year-old kid. You've forgiven him and you've sent him to his room, go to bed. I'm not going to take your keys. You can continue to have that freedom. You deserve that punishment, but I'm not going to give it to you. But grace is this. Maybe part of the agreement with your son is if he's going to have the freedom of driving, then he has to be responsible and earn his own gas money, which is a pretty fair driving arrangement across, I think, all families. That's a pretty typical arrangement. You're going to have a car, you've got to pay for your gas money. And because you love him, and because you want him to be blessed, and because it seems like he felt particularly bad about breaking curfew, not only do you send him to bed without taking his keys, but then after he's gone, you take his car and you sneak over to the gas station and you fill that thing all the way up for him. And you leave it there as a surprise the next morning. That's grace. Grace is the full gas tank that he doesn't deserve. He just broke the rules, man. He doesn't deserve that at all. He doesn't deserve any special favors. But because you love him, because you're a good parent, you fill up his gas tank. That's grace, right? And it's important that we understand these concepts because they are all over Scripture. Scripture shows us over and over again that God shows us mercy and that God shows us grace. I went through this week and just kind of looked at some of the passages, and I wanted you to see a few of them. So I'm going to read them kind of machine gun style real quick here. There's going to be three in a row for mercy, and then we're going to talk about these. But just look what Scripture has to say about mercy. I love this one in James. This is just a snippet of the verse, but it's a simple phrase. James writes that mercy triumphs over judgment. And then on in Lamentations, back in the Old Testament, the scriptures say, And then finally, Paul writes in Ephesians, What we see in those verses very clearly is that God's mercy is the forgiveness of our sins. God's mercy to us is forgiving our sins, is not giving us the just punishment that we deserve for our sins. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but when we sin, it is offensive to Creator God. When we sin, we take up arms in a violent insurrection against God's domain in the universe. Last week, we talked about Satan, and we talked about his fundamental sin that is all of our fundamental sins, which is to look at God and to say, you're supposed to be up there. You're supposed to be the authority figure, but I don't want that to be true in my life, so I'm going to be my own authority figure. When we sin, when we choose something that is outside of God's will, what we're saying to God is, I don't accept your authority in my life. You're not the boss of me. I'm the boss of me. You don't make my decisions. I make my decisions. You see, when we sin, it is an active rebellion against the way that God created us. God is the creator. We are the created. I'm firmly convinced, and I've said it before, that that's why Genesis starts the way it does. The very first words in the Bible are, in the beginning, God created. It establishes that relationship, creator, creation. In charge, subservient. And when we sin, we go, I don't like that you're in charge. I want to be in charge. And we rebel against God. And God sent his son in light of that rebellion to make a path back to him so that we could spend eternity with him. And God says, when we sin, listen, you can't spend eternity with me anymore. You can't do it. You're imperfect. You've offended me. You violated the terms of the agreement. I am taking your keys. And then God sends his son to make a way for us to go to heaven anyways, for us to spend eternity with him anyways. And what do we do? We trample on that. We sin again. We demand forgiveness again. And I'm not sure that we stop and realize the miracle of God's mercy, the miracle of his forgiveness. When we do, that phrase in James, mercy triumphs over judgment, becomes really amazing. We deserve judgment. We broke the rules. He should take our keys. But he doesn't because our God chooses mercy and mercy triumphs over judgment. Jesus tells Peter, when Peter says, how many times should you forgive someone when they wrong you? Jesus says, 70 times seven. As many times as they wrong you, show them mercy. It's in his very nature to do this. Even though we are involved in a rebellious insurrection against Creator God, He looks at us in all of our offense. And for many of us, we're not talking about ignorant sin here. We're not talking about this thing that we did and now we realize, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be doing that. Now that I'm acquainted with Scripture, I know better. I'm talking about the willful sin that you and I commit every week, every day. Who am I kidding? That's offensive to Creator God. And yet he shows us mercy because lamentation says his mercies are new every morning. Every day requires more of God's forgiveness. Every day we break curfew and every day he gives us mercy for that. He withholds the punishment from us that we do deserve. He withholds the separation from us that we do deserve, the damnation from us that we do deserve. That's God's mercy. But it gets better because I think God's grace adds another layer on top of that that's even more remarkable. Look at what Scripture says about God's grace, just two verses really quickly. In Ephesians, Paul writes, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. And then on in Romans he writes, and we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So mercy forgives us. God's mercy forgives us, but God's grace restores us. You see? God's mercy says, you're forgiven. I know you messed up. I know you broke curfew. You're forgiven. But then God's grace says, and I've made a way for you to be in my family. He fills up the tank. God's mercy says, I no longer hold your sins against you. God's grace says, because of that, I sent my son to die for you, and now you have a seat at my table etern, Do you understand? God's mercy says we messed up, we've offended Creator God, we've willfully sinned, and we've offended Him, and we deserve punishment, and He says, I'm not going to punish you. And He could stop there. He could say, I'm not going to punish you, I'm not going to punish you this one time for breaking curfew, but don't mess up anymore. And then if we mess up again, then we're done. We're toast. That's it. But in his grace and in his goodness, he doesn't stop at forgiveness. He stops at restoration. Not only are you forgiven, but now here, have a seat at my table. Not only are you forgiven, but now you are an adopted son or daughter of the king. You are an heir to the universal throne. Not only am I not going to hold it against you, not only am I going to clothe you in the righteousness ofal son. For those of you who are not familiar with it, I'm about to give you the quickest, worst rendition of it ever. All right. I've preached about this before. I can do a better job than this, but for the sake of time, we're going to look at some essential details. The parable of the prodigal son goes like this. There's a father who's wealthy and he has two sons. And one of those sons, the younger one, looks at the dad and he says, you know what? I really just want your stuff. I don't want you. Can you just go ahead and give me my inheritance? I'd rather you be dead anyway. Just give me my money so that I can live how I want. And that father, in his goodness, for reasons I don't understand, says, okay, fine, and gives him the money. And the son goes off into the city and he spends it on living in ways that just feed his appetites and his lusts. And he runs out of money. He spends it in totally dishonorable ways. He comes to the end of it. Everybody leaves him. He can't find a job. He ends up eating slop on a pig farm. And one day the Bible says he comes to his senses in this really poignant moment and he decides, I'm going to go back to my dad's house. But he works out this speech in his head where he's going to go back and he's going to say, I'm going to go back and I'm going to tell him, can you just please forgive me and let me be your servant? I don't deserve to be your son anymore. What I've done is too offensive. Will you please just let me be your servant? Because they live better than I do right now. And so he heads home with this speech in mind, which, by the way, it's a pretty fair speech, right? Dude took his dad's money, went off and spent it however he wanted to, wasted it on debaucherous things, and then comes back with his hat in his hand. Yeah, you're darn right he doesn't deserve to be a son anymore. He should live as a servant, at least for a few years, right? But he goes back, and the father sees him from a long way off and runs out to greet him. And the son starts in with his speech, dad, I'm so sorry, I don't deserve, yada, yada, yada. And the dad shuts him up right away, flings his arms around him and hugs him. And in that moment, the son knows that he's forgiven, that his father's not going to hold those things against him. That's mercy. But he doesn't stop there. He takes the ring, the signet of the family, and he puts it on his son's finger. And he takes the robe and he takes the slippers and he puts those on the son. And then he goes and he kills the fattened calf, the really good stuff. And he throws a big, huge party. And he says, my son is back, and he welcomes him right back into the family, which he didn't have to do, and his behavior didn't warrant. It's the perfect picture of the mercy and the grace that God offers us. We're the prodigals. We run away and make willful decisions to offend our God, to throw off his authority in our life and be our own authority. And then at some point or another, we come back, hat in hand, apologetic, I'm so sorry. And he forgives us. But he doesn't just forgive us. He restores us. He doesn't just say, hey, I'm not mad at you. Come here. You would expect that he would say, you're forgiven. Get away from me. I need a minute. That's not what he does. He says, you're forgiven. And then he hugs us. And then he sends his son, his only son, whom he loves, who was perfect, who never offended him, to die for you and for me. He gave us that gift. Do you understand? We don't deserve the grace of Jesus. We don't deserve that. We didn't earn it. Our behavior doesn't warrant it. Nowhere in the scripture is there a contract that says when we break the law and offend Almighty God that he owes us the death of his son? That's not the deal. But he does it anyways. That's grace. And in light of that, the mercy of forgiveness and the grace of restoration, we should want to exuberantly praise our God. But I'm also aware of the fact that many of us, as we listen to this, if you look at the ends of the spectrum of, Nick, you better shut up so I can start praising God right now. I'm about to jump out of my skin. And then, oh, okay, that's cool. I think I understand grace and mercy a little bit better now. A lot of us are closer to this end. A lot of us have responded in our heads and in our hearts to what I just said in that way. Oh, okay, yeah, I get it. I understand that better. That's good. Thank you. And it makes me wonder, me included, why we're on that end of the spectrum. And as I thought about that this week, I could only include that it's probably because we're all entitled brats. We're probably on that end of the spectrum because there's a very good chance that the two to three hundred adults I'm talking to right now are really just entitled brats. Here's what I mean. I just want to give you a picture of my daughter's life. I have a daughter named Lily. She just recently turned five. This is her last six weeks. Before you get offended at me calling you an entitled brat, which I did just do, just hear me out. Lily's last six weeks have been unbelievable. She is, through no fault of her own, incredibly entitled now. I ran this by Jen. She's not happy I'm saying this, but we've accepted that it's true. Here's what's happened with her. In December, we as a family spent basically the month down in Athens, Georgia with Jen's family as her dad transitioned into eternity. And in doing that, with Christmas coming up, there are people here in Raleigh who love us and who love Lily and wanted to make sure that Lily got a gift. So a couple times I would come back to Raleigh to take care of some church stuff, and there would be packages waiting on me at the house. I had, I literally, the first time I came back, this is embarrassing, we had some neighbors collecting our mail for us. I had to get a wheelbarrow and go down to their house and fill it up with all the stuff that was waiting on us. And then they pulled a wagon and we unloaded it at my house. That was Christmas arriving at the Rector's. That's us. And other people had like dropped things off at the door. So now I go home, I'm getting these gifts. I take them back to Lily, who is now opening these gifts like, hey, all these people got you these things. Okay, great, thank you. So she's opening them. We're trying to do the video with excitement. She's trying to fan excitement, but she's four at the time. She's not really good at this yet. She doesn't know that's part of the deal when you get gifts. So she's already getting gifts in early December. I made another trip back. There's more stuff waiting. I bring that back. I go ahead and give that to her because we know that there's Christmas coming. We don't want to mute those things. Then at Jen's house, because of things going on, we did early Christmas with her dad. So all the grandkids go in and she's now opening three or four other gifts from her grandparents. Thank you for these and these and these. Then Christmas Eve, we have real Christmas with Jen's family and she gets more gifts. Then the next day we go to my family's house and she gets more gifts, right, on Christmas. And so now the situation in a state that we don't even live in is at my parents' house, there's a pile of gifts that's too big to carry back to Jen's parents' house. So we just have to leave it there for a second. At Jen's parents' house, she has gifts strewn across three stories of a home, including inside a princess room that her grandfather made for her while he still could that she gets to sleep in, complete with lit teepee, okay? This is her life. There's a mess of toys there. There's some on the main floor. There's a basement that she's adopted as a playroom. And then there's toys in the playroom that my parents have for her. And then she comes back. We don't get back until early January, right? When we get back, there's more gifts waiting on her because people at the church love her and are so good to us. And then her birthday's on January 15th. So on January 15th, prior to that, more gifts are showing up at the house. She's opening them up. She lives in a, in a, like a dang gift parade. It's a totally normal thing for her to come home and open up to like, hey, these two things came for you today. And she just opens it up like they're nothing. Then on her birthday, the neighborhood kids come over and give her stuff she doesn't need in exchange for cake that they don't need. And then the next day we have church drive by where the families come through and they hand her more stuff that she doesn't need. And we wave at them in the freezing cold, and we just have so much junk all over our house. And to this child, it's totally normal. She has no idea that she lives inside of a gift parade. They just show up every day. And what Jen and I have realized is she's entitled. Now, I will say this. She is not a brat. She's not that. That word was for dramatic effect only. She's sweet and kind and loving, but she has no capacity to show the proper gratitude for all the gifts that she's been getting because to her it's a totally normal thing. It's embarrassing to me how much people love us and love her. And I don't know what I'm going to do as a dad. I've literally tried to talk Jen into when somebody gives us a gift, let's put it in a room somewhere. And then as she is good, if she has a good week, then we'll give her one of the gifts from the gift room, right? To try to help her earn it. I don't know exactly how to solve this. I would imagine that we're not on an island with this issue. But the reality of my daughter's life is she's entitled. And she doesn't know it. We're going to try to correct it. But what I understand is that that entitlement blinds her to what generosity really is. That entitlement works to mute her joy because she sees everything through the lens of this is normal. I deserve this. If I ask for a thing, I get the thing. This is how life goes. And she has no reason to believe that that's not how life goes. She's only barely five, and she's loved. See, here's the thing. I think it's great. I'm happy for her. I'm floored by the love that our family experiences. I'm grateful that she gets to live a life like that. But she has no perspective on how grateful she should really be. Because again, her entitlement blinds her to the generosity around her and serves to mute her joy that she should have when she receives a gift. I bring that up because I believe that you and I live in a stinking gift parade and we just don't know it. We live in parades of God's goodness and we don't see it. All of our life, if we grew up in church, as soon as you're involved in church, at some point or another, you're going to hear, you've sinned and you've offended Almighty God. And then as soon as that is said to help us feel better, as a capstone to it, you've sinned and offended Almighty God, but God offers us mercy, so you're good. Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so you're fine. You've sinned, you don't get to spend eternity with heaven, but God offers us mercy and sends his son to die for us, so you're forgiven. So we never have to sit in the reality of what our sin really warrants. We never have to sit under the weight of, I have sinned, I have chosen my authority over God's authority, and that has earned me eternal separation from him. We don't have to sit in that for more than 30 seconds before the pastor comes back and says, but God died for you, so we have mercy. We never stop to think that we don't deserve mercy. We never stop to consider that these gifts don't have to keep showing up at my house. We've never done the math to understand that God doesn't owe you forgiveness. Do you understand? He doesn't owe it to you. He created you. He set you on the planet. He said, these are the rules. This is how you can please me. And we've all at different points in our life said, you know, I'm not really that interested in pleasing you. He doesn't owe us forgiveness for that. We walk around like we're entitled to it. We walk around like we deserve it. We walk around like, listen, the deal should be, God, I'm going to mess up a couple times. If you could let some people kill your son, that seems pretty fair. Grace, we are not owed mercy. That's nowhere in the contract. You say, yeah, but God is love. God forgives. He is love. He does forgive. He's also just. And what we deserve is separation from the God that we've offended. But because mercy triumphs over judgment, and because His mercies are new every morning, he withholds that judgment from us and he offers us forgiveness. He offers us a mercy that we are not owed and that we do not deserve. Yet we are so familiar with it and we sing songs about it so often and we count on it and take it for granted so regularly that sometimes we treat mercy like another doll that someone handed us out the window that, yeah, of course I get this. It's my birthday. This is what we do. And our entitlement blinds us to the grandeur and the majesty of God's mercy. Not to mention the graces that we don't see. Grace is a goodness that we get that we have not earned. Grace is God's favor on our life that doesn't warrant it. We just walked through the really, and we're in the middle of the really difficult season of losing Jen's dad. His name was John. Towards the end of John's life, we found out we were pregnant with a boy that we're going to name John. What grace from God. What grace from God that he says, listen, everybody has to go. As appointed to man wants to die. Everyone's going to have to walk this path. And now it's John's turn to walk this path. But because I love you and because you're good and because you're my child, you're good because I made you good. Here's another John for you to love. That's grace. We don't deserve that. We didn't warrant that. Do you understand that the goodness in your life is grace? It's God's goodness in your life that when you get the new car and you drive it down the road and it smells nice and it looks nice and you're real proud of yourself and it makes us feel like we arrived, that happiness, that moment, that's God's grace. When we sit in our living room and our kids are back from college and we watch our grandkids scurry around or we see their joy and a gift that we were able to buy them, like that's God's grace. When we sit around with our friends and we laugh and we have a good night and we go home and we feel warm, that's God's grace. Your gifts and talents that got you where you are, those are gifts from God that are his grace. His grace is all over our lives. And if we would just stop and look around and acknowledge that we're in a dang gift parade, I think we would be blown away by God's goodness. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses in John, where he simply writes, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, out of the goodness of his heart, we have all received grace upon grace. He just lavishes them upon us because he's a good father and he likes to see you happy. He likes it when you cry tears of joy. He likes the moments that you share with your husband or your wife or your friend or your parents or your kids. He likes those sweet moments. He designs those for you. He doesn't just forgive you. He doesn't just say, hey, I'm not going to hold your sins against you, but he fills up your tank with gas every day over and over from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. He doesn't just forgive you. He sends his son to die for you and he restores you and he welcomes you into his house to sit at his table. And these little snippets of grace are just glimpses into eternity where it's nothing but grace and nothing but goodness and nothing but joy that's waiting for us, that he won for us, that he gifts to us that we didn't earn. And so I just wonder what God's grace and mercy will look like when we no longer see them through the lens of entitlement. I wonder what God's grace and mercy will look like when we no longer see those things through the lens of entitlement. When we can just stop for a second and acknowledge, yeah, I don't deserve mercy. That's not part of the deal. God chooses to show me mercy because he loves me. What will it look like if we take for a second? In a few minutes we're going to sing that song that has the line, I see the evidence of your goodness all around me. What would happen if we would look around at all the goodness in our life that's a gift from God and acknowledge that, man, we live inside of a gift parade. God has given us countless goodness and countless grace. He lavishes it upon us. His mercies are new every morning because we require them every morning. Let's this morning be grateful for God's grace and for God's mercy. Let's see them fresh and new, not through the lens of entitlement that blinds us to the grandeur of his generosity, but through the lens of humility that helps us see his grace and mercy for what they are. And let's be humbly blown away by those things. So sing along as we sing or sit and listen as we sing. But in light of God's grace and mercy, let's praise him together this morning.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson, and I am a partner here at Grace. Typically, when I say good morning, it's supposed to elicit a response, but I don't want to put too much pressure on you. Thank you. Hold on to your hats, because we are going to kick this morning off with a bang. We're going to play one round of Final Jeopardy for all the marbles, okay? And just to refresh, I will give you the answer, and you, our studio audience, is to find the question that best fits that answer. You got it? Okay, here we go. A, sitting at a dead stop on I-95. B, anesthesia-free root canal. C, listening to a celebrity athlete refer to himself exclusively in the third person. D, being waterboarded. E, death by meteor. And F, all of the above. Okay, now your job is to answer in the form of a question. Just shout it out. Someone asked, Nate asked if that was my wife. No, no. She was thinking it, but she's not that type to do that. No, no, that's very kind of you. I wish that you had made it a little less personal, a little less hurtful. What kind of sermon? I'm looking for what kind of sermon? Stewardship sermon, I guess. That's right, a sermon on giving. You know, it's a little sad and depressing for me that you found that so easy to answer. What really stings is that there are some of you out there who answered that question without any sense of irony, without any sense that it was meant to be a joke. I was watching a few of you, and you were actually sitting there trying to answer it seriously. Yeah, I think I'd rather die by a meteor than have to listen to Doug. But okay, well, too bad. I'm here. I'm going to go for it, and you just have to put up with it, okay? But first, let me open us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for all these people. Help me say what it is you want me to say and help it to be profitable for us. And it's your name we pray, amen. Okay, as we are kicking off our capital campaign, Grace is Going Home, I've been asked to speak on biblical stewardship, how we invest our resources, our energy, our passions, our time, and our finances. But what I have to say this morning really doesn't have anything to do with our campaign. It encompasses it. It's included in that. Rather, though, I want to share my understanding of what the Bible teaches about biblical stewardship, about giving, about the importance and practice of it. I also want to push back against some of the ways biblical teaching has been misrepresented and misunderstood. My hope is to adjust the lens through which we see giving in a way that reveals it to be the blessing and the privilege that God intended. Now, I've heard a bunch of stewardship sermons over the years, some better than others, and good or bad, compelling or not, they all kind of typically hit the same notes. You know, one being that, boy, the Bible talks a lot about giving, so it must be really important, and you better pay attention, that God is the owner and source of everything. So why do we even fuss? You know, and why do we even think that it's any of ours in the first place? How we should use our resources for God's glory. How giving expresses our thanks to God and is an outward expression of a confession, really, of the gospel. And how our giving can help people in important ways. And typically, your stewardship sermon ends, sort of seals the deal with an emotional and heart-rending story of how a certain gift made an enormous difference in someone's life. You're not going to hear any of that from me this morning. No bringing you to the emotional brink. No pulling at your heartstrings. No litany of all the great things grace can accomplish helped by your generosity. Another thing you're not going to hear from me is something that every stewardship sermon and stewardship campaign has either said outright or strongly implied, that God and His church need our money. They need our tithes and offerings to carry on their business. Now, I'm exaggerating just a little bit, but it sounded sometimes as if God is up in heaven, fingers crossed, anxiously waiting to see if Debbie and I come through with an appropriate tithe so that the work of the church can move forward. And that's only a part of it. If you're all familiar with the Bible standards for giving, you know that the bar is set pretty high. It is hard to do right. There are a lot of boxes to check. Not only are we supposed to give, but we're supposed to be generous about it. And being generous might not even be good enough because the Bible standard is sacrificial giving. And not only are we asked to give generously, perhaps even sacrificially, but we're supposed to give in a spirit that considers others' needs more important than our own. Not only are we asked to give generously and with the proper care and concern for others, but we're supposed to give freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. Finally, it's not enough to give generously, even sacrificially, thinking only of others, not at all about ourselves, freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. There's one added kicker. We're supposed to do it joyfully. We're supposed to be happy about it. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, how do we do all that? Not surprisingly, my track record is pretty mixed in meeting all those expectations. I'm not at all convinced I'm doing it right, doing it well, or doing it enough, and I know I am not alone in thinking that. If you could see me when I open my checkbook, I'm not sure you would remark to yourself, well, would you look at that? Look how cheerful Doug is. More often, you would see someone who's trying to be a good soldier, who's giving out of his abundance, who's giving out of a sense of need, who's giving out of a sense of obligation, recognizing that the need's here and elsewhere. You know, of course, there have been times when a specific appeal, maybe a church or a cause or perhaps a mission trip, has really gotten a hold of me and touched me, where I became emotionally invested, you know, and I've really got fired up, kind of like a sugar high. But before too long, I always seem to settle back into the less emotional, more mundane and murky exercise of balancing what I need and want with what I think God needs and wants from me. What's the right amount? I don't want to be stingy, but do I really want to go overboard? What's enough? If I give everything away, is that better? Is that inherently more spiritual? How does that square with my responsibility to my family? There's a tension. It's as if I'm in a Turkish bazaar bargaining with God. My goal, more often than not, is to try to arrive at a number that allows me to feel good about myself and sufficiently faithful because I gave God his part without impinging too much on the things that I want, the things I'm used to doing and having, the things others in my life want and expect. Something's lost in this process. That simply can't be what the biblical writers are talking about. For some of us, that sense of obligation leads to a desire to seek God's approval, to do enough to please him, to check that box. For others, it can lead to a pervading sense that giving is a zero-sum game, that when we give, inevitably we forfeit something of equal or greater value. It can also leave open the door for spiritual pride, the thinking that, you know, we're really coming through for the church and for God, that we are one of his 18, you know, a sense of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. Or the pendulum can easily swing in the other direction, where that sense of obligation leads to guilt or a sense that somehow we're disappointing God. For others, we might simply tune it all out and convince ourselves that we're at a stage of life where this really doesn't apply to us. If we have young kids, we're just starting out, my pace sucks at work, blah, blah, blah. We'll worry about that later. So I became increasingly dissatisfied with what I was hearing about giving. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing I had heard had equipped me to give as the Bible wanted me to, generously, joyfully, with a genuinely compassionate heart and caring heart, not out of obligation or compulsion. It's not that all those reasons for giving that I had heard were wrong. They're not. But something was missing, something big and vital to the understanding and practice of biblical giving. And because they didn't tell the whole story, those reasons simply weren't enough for me to experience giving as God intended. So what was missing? It's a $64 question. I'll tell you what was missing. I needed to be more selfish about my giving. That's what was missing. I needed to think about my giving in a much more self-interested light. I needed to understand better what was in it for me. Why? Because giving isn't for God. It's for you and me to benefit and help us. Now, the Bible does talk a ton about the importance of giving. No argument there. An enormous emphasis is placed on giving generosity in Scripture. But all those sermons and stewardship campaigns that I heard had it backwards. Giving's not important to God because he needs it. God wants us to give because we need it, because of the magnificent things the act of giving can do for our stubborn human hearts, how it can shape them, transform them, and move them to a better place. There's no question that our giving can help others, but what's too often missed is how profoundly our giving can help us. The idea that God and his church need our money creates a sense of obligation and duty that misleads and ties us in all kinds of knots. And it does the experience of giving a huge disservice. Now, this may come as a shocker, but God is perfectly capable of doing what he intends to do without your or my help. Scripture's pretty emphatic at that point. Listen to this passage from Psalm 50, written at a time when God's people, the nation of Israel, were seeming to be very faithful and obedient. They were giving lots of tithes and offerings. But they too had it backwards by thinking that their sacrifices and offerings were what were important to God, as if he needed them. This is God talking. I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field are mine. If I was hungry, I would not tell you. I love that. I love that. You know, that seems pretty clear to me clear to me. God values our giving and graciously accepts and uses our gifts, but he does so for us, for our good, for what giving can do to our weak and frail and wandering human hearts. When I said I needed to view my giving more selfishly, when I needed to think about giving in a more selfish light, it's to embrace and lean into this truth that giving can be life-changing for the giver. And the sooner one grasps that truth, the sooner biblical stewardship seems less like an obligation and more like a gift, less like a duty and more like a privilege, less like eating your Brussels sprouts. And I'm referring to Brussels sprouts before you. All the new recipes the last 20 years where they throw in brown sugar. The kind of Brussels sprouts my mom made for us. She boiled them and maybe if she was in a really good charitable mood, she'd sprinkle a little salt, a little pinch of salt. They were horrible. So remember that when you're thinking that. Don't say, oh yeah, I like Brussels sprouts. So it'll be less like eating your Brussels sprouts and a lot more like a cream-filled donut. Not to overstate things, but how we think about giving is a game changer. When one thinks of it primarily as an obligation, the act of giving is robbed of much of its joy and its power to transform our lives. And it's very hard not to think of it as an obligation unless one sees that it is the giver who benefits from giving as much or more than anyone or anything else. Giving is a gift for the giver first and foremost because of its power to move and shape our hearts. My go-to passage in scripture is one many of you are probably familiar with. It's from Matthew chapter 6. I adore this verse. This is Jesus talking. It's one of the most straightforward passages in all of Scripture. And for God's purposes, for what he's trying to accomplish, one of the most useful. Wherever I place my time, my energies, my passions, my affections, my confidence, my joy, my hope, and yes, even my financial resources, that's where you'll find my heart. Now, you might have noticed when I came up here that I brought a rug with me, a very special rug. Way back in the late 1980s, Deb and I finally had a little bit of discretionary income. And I forget how now, but I developed an interest in Oriental rugs. I found them just exquisitely beautiful works of art, each one painstakingly hand-woven over very many months. And, you know, I was enthralled with them, and I went as far as to start buying a few and spending what, for Debbie and I, was a lot of money. Now, you have to bear with me, because I actually have to bend. This is Persian from the holy city of Gom in central Iran. It's woven out of silk with hundreds of knots per square inch. The signature of its master weaver, or Rami, is woven in Farsi here at the top. Needless to say, my rugs immediately became part of my treasure. One way you could tell they were my treasure is that when anyone was coming over to the house, I would scurry and roll it up and put it away for fear that it would be spilled on. Now some might say that defeats the purpose of having a rug if you put it away whenever it might be seen or walked on, but I didn't care. Another way you could tell that these rugs were part of my treasure is that for about, oh, roughly the first thousand times she ever vacuumed them, I couldn't help myself. I felt compelled to gently remind Debbie that she needed to be careful, very careful, and never, I mean never, suck up the fringe for fear that that's not as tightly woven and it unravels and falls apart. I have since stopped that practice, fearing that I might suffer an unusual and tragically fatal accident while sleeping in bed one night. Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things. It's simply to illustrate how easily they capture our affections, how easily they become part of our treasure. Far more than supporting a church or funding a ministry, giving away our resources can be a most powerful antidote for all those things in our lives that compete to be our treasure, a very practical and effective way to help us loosen our grip on our earthly treasure. When we give and invest in the things God cares most about, in things that can have an eternal impact, whether we know it or not, whether we can feel it or not, we are moving our heart's center of gravity. And we are adjusting the lens through which we view our lives, our world, and our futures. Cultivating a perspective that increasingly mirrors God's. God does not need or want our money. What God covets is our hearts. That's what he's fighting for. And the act of giving is one of his most effective tools to align our hearts with his. Now, I might have raised a few eyebrows earlier when I said that in order to experience giving as God intended, joyfully, generously, compassionately, and freely, I needed to understand giving in a much more self-interested light. Surely, someone must have been out there thinking to themselves, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't Christianity all about being completely and utterly unselfish? Never thinking of yourself, but always considering others more important? Yes and no. It's certainly true that we are called to be unselfish in the sense of considering others' well-being before our own. But that's not the same as saying that it's not in our selfish best interest to do that. In Luke 9, Jesus explains it this way. Again, this is Jesus talking. So here's Jesus calling us to serve and to sacrifice and follow his example, but that we do this ultimately to benefit. And it may surprise some, but any notion that self-interest is somehow anti-Christian is not supported in Scripture. How we act in our own self-interest is where we've gone off the rails. That's been the problem since the Garden of Eden, not the self-interest itself. In fact, the Bible consistently encourages us to pursue a life of faith precisely because it's in our best interest to do that. Taking it one step further, placing your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the single most self-interested thing one can ever possibly do. Okay, so what now? What am I suggesting each of us do? First is to simply acknowledge that where we lay up our treasure is where you'll find our hearts. It's as night follows day. It's really pretty straightforward. So if you care at all about the condition of your heart, you can't really avoid some introspection, some question about where you're laying up your treasure. Second, I want to encourage each of us to lean into the transformational power of giving by taking a step or two forward, whatever that step might be for you. Far more than an obligation, the ability to share our resources is an opportunity and a privilege that we should not let go to waste. Few things are as effective in helping us move our treasure to where moth and rust won't destroy. Few things have such potential to align the beat of our heart to the rhythm of God's own. However, please keep in mind that moving our treasure doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. I'm reminded of a time about 20 years ago when I started a Navy SEAL workout plan at home. I get it. Feel free to snicker. I'm not Navy SEAL material. Nevertheless, I kicked off what was supposed to be a 12-week program of two and a half strenuous hours each day, six days a week. Turns out, this is also a shocker, it was too much. It was too soon, and it was way too unpleasant. After six weeks, I had completely given up and was back upstairs in my office eating milk duds all afternoon, doing exactly zero hours of strenuous exercise each day. And that's how these things often work. And moving our treasure is no different. Far better to advance the ball, to take a step or two forward, wherever you are in your journey. Forward progress and movement are the keys. I've been at the stewardship thing a long time, and I've already shared some of my struggles, but my growing appreciation for how giving blesses me has made a difference. In all my years, I don't think I've ever given sacrificially in the sense of really giving up something I really, really wanted and needed. But over the last few weeks, as I've been thinking about my experience with giving, I've come to see that's not exactly how God works. I've always viewed sacrificial giving as coming through what I call the front door perspective, in which a battle of the will takes place right out in the open of my consciousness. A forceful bending of my will, giving up something I really need or want simply out of obedience and faith. I collapse. Exhausted and spent, but faithful and obedient, confident in God's smiling approval. You rock, Doug. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now the key is getting up. I didn't really practice that very good. But I no longer believe that's how giving sacrificially or otherwise actually works. Rather, much more quietly and far less dramatically, God enters through our back door and starts working on us, using our giving to slowly change what we think we need and what we think we want, what's important to us, and a priority. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that the people who actually do give sacrificially don't even necessarily know they're doing it, because at this point, what they view as valuable, what they treasure, has moved and evolved so much. Personally, I have a long way to go, But I can honestly say that over the years, God has used his gift of giving to slowly but surely move my treasure, and thus my heart, to a far better place. The things that I think I need and want have changed, and I've come to view the opportunity afforded by giving as much more of a privilege and much more of a joy than ever before, and I find that enormously encouraging and hopeful. In closing, it's more than okay to think about how giving benefits us. In fact, I think it's critical to understand if we truly seek the life that God has designed for us, life that is truly life. Listen to this lavish promise from 1 Timothy. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. Back in the 1950s, a young missionary traveled deep into the jungle of Ecuador to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to people who hadn't heard it. He and his four colleagues were found murdered along a remote riverbank, murdered by the very tribespeople they had gone to find. A famous saying is attributed to that young missionary, and it's stuck with me over the years, and it really captures what I've tried to share this morning. He had written it in his personal journal six years before he died, and this is what he wrote. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. He this morning. Thank you for your magnificent plan of redemption that graciously includes us. And you do that because in your wisdom, that's how we change. That's how we grow. That's how we prepare for eternity. Thank you for giving, for not only what it does and the witness it provides, but also what it does to our human hearts. And we thank you for loving us, for pursuing us, and for the hope that you give us. And it's your name we pray. Amen.

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