Sermons tagged with Family

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

Thank you. Hear the word of God from the Gospel of Luke. she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Before I just dive into the sermon, I had a couple preliminary thoughts I just wanted to share with you real quick. If you've been a part of Grace for any number of years, you know that we tend to, at the end of the year, give not necessarily more generously, but we tend to give generously at the end of the year. Our year-end giving is usually pretty good. And so one of the things that we've done since I got here is we do a Christmas offering and we say, hey, as end of the year giving comes in this year, we're going to allocate that to these projects and to these ministries and things like that. Well, this year is a little different in that we are pushing to the end of our building campaign that we launched back in, I guess, February of 2020. We had pledged Sunday on March the 1st of 2020. I announced the pledges on March the 8th of 2020, and then the world ended. And that whole time, we've actually been running concurrent to the pandemic. We've been doing a campaign, and you guys have been so faithful, and God has been so good that we are actually in a really good spot. Now, I sent out details about that this week. So if you didn't get an update email from me on the search for the worship pastor and our search for a building and how the campaign is going. If you didn't get that this week, please let me know. All that means is you're not on the list that you need to be on. If you're watching at home or catch this later, fill out a connection card online and let us know. Fill out a connection card here in the service and we'll make sure and get you on the right list so that you can get those updates. So as we look towards the end of the year, basically what we're asking with end of the year giving is this, either designate it for general offering or designate it for the building campaign. If money comes in undesignated, we will by default put that towards the general offering. And then in the new year, depending on what comes in, the missions committee will make decisions about how we want to allocate those to other ministries that we support. Just as a reminder, we give 10% of what we bring in to missions. And this year it's actually been a little bit bigger. This year we've actually given about 12% to ministries going on outside the walls of the church. And that's something that we're really proud of and hold close to our hearts. The other thing I was going to share with you, I have to be careful how I do this, is last week, you know, Kyle preached. Kyle preached so good that about 15 minutes in, at first I was like, dude, this is great. He's crushing it. Good for Kyle. I love this. And then about 15 minutes in, I was like, yo, Kyle, like, chill out, man Like I have to preach next week. I don't have, I don't have that much on Mary right now. So just, let's just take it easy. He did so good. And the whole experience was fantastic. I texted Kirk and Kyle on Saturday and said, hey, you know, I don't have any responsibilities in the service. So I'm actually going to come to the service with my family. I'll get there about 930 9.45. And so last week I had the opportunity to just wake up, help Jen get the kids ready, come to church together, drop our kids off with some folks who really wanted to hug on John and squeeze his big fat baby cheeks. And then Lily went next door with her friends, some folks that care about her. And then I got to talk to my friends and we sat in the back, which I love sitting in the back. I'm jealous of you guys. Yeah, that's it, Scotty. Like, I love sitting back there, and we sang songs. We snuggled up a little bit during the sermon. I sat next to my wife. I was ministered to by the sermon, ministered to by the songs, particularly that last one. And I left here with my heart just full of Jesus. And I thought to myself, that was great. That church is so fun. You guys who just get to show up and don't have to do anything and be ministered to, you don't know how good you got it, man. So just for the record, I'm very envious of you guys. I almost, I considered this week quitting my job just so I could come to church with my family, but I have no marketable skills. So I'm here until the Lord chooses otherwise. Okay. This week, yes, thank you. Thank you, Elaine. For those watching online, there was thunderous applause. This week, we are in part two of our series called Renewed Wonder, where we simply are focusing on looking at Christmas through the eyes of a child. That's why we're doing lighthearted things. That's why we had Christmas Kyle come and do the announcements. But truth be told, we would make Kyle do that no matter how lighthearted the series was. We're decorating cookies after the service. I hope you'll do that. That's for children and adults, too. I'm particularly excited about next week, Christmas Jammy Sunday. Can't wait to see what you show up in. This is going to be very, very fun and very, very festive. Yes, Mike, even you, buddy. This is going to be great. So I'm really looking forward to that as we kind of just look at Christmas through the eyes of a child and just the wonder and the grandeur that comes with Christmas. And so that's what we're doing in the series. And then the sermons, we're looking at the Christmas story through the eyes of different characters within the story. So last week, like I said, Kyle did a great job of looking at Christmas to the eyes of the shepherds. And this week, we want to look at Christmas to the eyes of Mary. What must it have been like for Mary to experience that first Christmas? And what can we learn from her experience? And what about her experience can shape the way that we approach Christmas this year? So as we think about Christmas through the eyes of Mary, it would probably be good to get some context on her, to understand who Mary was and what kind of person that she was. And we really, we don't know a lot. We know that she was from Nazareth. So that makes her pretty simple. Nazareth was a very small town. There's very little archaeological evidence that Nazareth even ever existed. It's just very, very small. It doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just means it's so small that there's not very much there. It's in the north of Israel. It's in the hill country. Like when Jesus is introduced, one time we hear somebody say, can anything good come from Nazareth? It was like the Mississippi of Israel. Just nothing good came from there. So, sorry, that's a Georgia joke. I don't know what the North Carolina, is it West Virginia? Is that who we make fun of in North Carolina? I always make fun of Mississippi. Tennessee, yeah, that's good. We'll go Tennessee. Thank you very much. She was a simple girl from Nazareth. She was probably, culturally, because she was engaged, she was probably 13 to 15 years old. I know that sounds weird for us, but in that culture, typically men had to grow up and establish themselves and have a career and be able to pay a dowry and be able to prove that they could support a wife. So it's reasonable to think that Joseph was probably closer to 30 and that Mary was probably closer to 15 or so, which sounds super weird to us, but then that was how it goes. So she's betrothed to Joseph. To them, engagement was tantamount to marriage. You're essentially married already. You're just waiting for the ceremony, and then you go move in with the groom and his family. So she's getting ready for that. We know that Mary was a young girl of faith. She knew her scriptures. She prayed to God. She clearly listened to the Lord. And that's important because it tells us that when the angel shows up in the passage that Bill read to us and starts to talk about this Messiah figure that's going to come, she knows who that is. She's been told about the Messiah her whole life. Just like we're waiting on the second coming of Christ that we talked about in Revelation for him to come down out of the clouds and rescue us. So she was waiting on the first coming of the Messiah. So when the angel begins to talk about the Messiah, she knows who that is. She was a young girl of faith. And that's important. But she was a simple girl with a simple faith and a very simple life, and I doubt seriously that she had any visions of anything larger than that. And it's to this girl that the angel appears. And I'm going to finish up the passage that Bill began to read because these are the details that he gives Mary about what is you're going to have the Messiah. You're pregnant. God did it. You're all right. And you're going to carry this baby to term and you're going to have the Messiah and he's going to be called Jesus and he's going to be the Lord. He's going to be the most high. He's going to sit on the throne of David. And when we think about Mary and we think about her role in Jesus's life, we only get snippets of her in scripture. And I wonder how in depth we go in our thought process about her, right? Because I always think of her as just, look how lucky she is. Look how fortunate she is. She was favored, we're told. And I saw one author this week as I was kind of reading up on Mary, who just made the point that Mary was favored then so that we could be favored with the son now. And I think that's a pretty great thought. But Mary, God just plucked her out of obscurity and said, yeah, you're the girl. She wasn't expecting it. She wasn't asking for it. At no point do we have any record of Mary praying a prayer and saying, God, you know, I know you're going to bring a Messiah. I don't know how you plan to get him into the world. But if it's through a teenage virgin, I'll sign up for that. So if that's your plan, God, just consider me. She didn't expect that. And I wonder how much we've thought of how much it radically changed her life and the trajectory of her life to be told that she was going to give birth to the Son of God. The angel didn't tell Joseph until after Joseph and Mary had the conversation. So now Mary knows, I've got to have this super tough conversation with my fiance that I'm pregnant and it's not him. And he's got to believe me that it was God. That's a tough conversation. She's got to carry this baby to term. She's got to raise this baby. You ever think when one and a half year old Jesus is sitting at the table in his high chair and he reaches for the butter knife and he's not supposed to touch the butter knife and he's not understanding. No. And Mary wants to slap his hand. She's got to stop and be like, is this okay? Can I hit the Savior? Is that a thing? I don't know what to do. Is that too hard? Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Can you imagine losing your patience with infant baby Jesus, with Messiah Jesus? When my kid won't sleep, I will walk into his room and sometimes the passage does not get put into his mouth as gently as possibly. Sometimes it's possible that I mutter things in the middle of the night and give him unkind instructions. What if you're married? What if that's Jesus and you lose your patience with baby Jesus? Like it's just a totally different way to think about motherhood. How about when they're on a play date and one of the other moms leans over and she's like, I tell you what, you're Jesus. He is just so well behaved. He's like a little angel. And Mary's like, well, actually, he's in charge of the angels. And then all the other moms are like, that Mary, she's got rose-colored glasses on about her kid. She does not see him realistically. She thinks way too highly of him. Joseph disappears from the gospel narrative. Because culturally he was likely older than Mary, and because this is a time in which the life expectancy is not very high, we presume, a lot of scholars presume, that Joseph died. That somewhere in there that Jesus lost his father. So Joseph experienced the loss of his earthly father and then we have James, the half-brother of Jesus, who writes a book in the Bible and gives us evidence that at some point or another, Mary remarried. So Jesus was a stepson. So for the stepchildren in the room, I think that's pretty cool. Jesus knew what a blended family was and felt like. Can you imagine being Mary and trying to be a mother of Jesus and a mother of these other kids and love them equally and fairly and feeling that weight of importance your whole life? Like I think that we think, oh, what a blessing that Mary received to be able to have the son of God. But part of me thinks like, but was it all the time? Because it was, had to be pretty stressful. Had to be pretty difficult at times. And in this way, the one thing that I've been thinking this week, the one phrase that's kind of rung through my mind is, how did Mary experience Christmas was this idea that Jesus happened to Mary. He just happened to her. She wasn't looking for him. She didn't pray for him. She didn't expect it. She didn't know. There wasn't a prophecy that this is how Jesus is going to come. She just, she didn't know. And all of a sudden, this angel shows up and says, you're going to be pregnant. You're going to have Jesus. And it's going to radically change your whole life. And I think of Jesus happening to Mary, like the Kool-Aid man just bursting through the wall, right? Like, I don't know if you're old enough to remember in the 80s and 90s, Kool-Aid had this great ad campaign with the Kool-Aid man, this oversized pitcher filled with red Kool-Aid, and these kids would be sitting around playing a game and one of them would be like, I'm thirsty, and then the Kool-Aid man would just barge through the wall and be like, I got some Kool-Aid. I don't know what he actually said, but that's the implication, is now you will thirst no more. There's a Kool-Aid man here. I think there was a Saturday Night Live sketch about people sitting around being like, I'm thirsty. And the Kool-Aid man like broke through the wall. And there's this big, huge opening that's plenty big enough for the Kool-Aid man, like right next to where he broke through. And the people are like, you could have just, could just use the door, man. Like knock it off with crashing through these walls. But that's how Jesus shows up in Mary's life. Just a Kool-Aid man just crashing through the wall, announcing his presence. I'm here. And listen, it radically changes everything in her life. It radically changes her priorities. It radically changes the purpose. She had plans for her life. Forget them. She had goals for her life. Rethink them, Mary. Those of us who have walked through spiritual deserts, which is everyone who's been a Christian for more than 60 days, Mary couldn't do that. She had to be on her game all the time. She's raising the Savior. There's no wandering around for you. When Jesus showed up, he radically changed her life. He happened to her. And he changed everything. And in the middle of this, in her wrestling with this, we pick the story back up. She's now brought Jesus to term. She's had him in a manger, right? They go to Bethlehem, they go to Jerusalem, they end up in Bethlehem, they have Jesus in a manger which looked, we think of it as a sort of like barn or stable, but it's really probably more like a cave that they were in in the hills of Bethlehem. And when Jesus is born, the angels appear to the shepherds. The shepherds go and they go decide to visit baby Jesus. This is what Kyle preached about last week. And so that's where we pick it up this week when we look at Luke chapter 2, I noticed something that I had never, ever noticed before in the Christmas story. It says the shepherds see the angels, they hear them, they're told that the Messiah has been born. They're like, this is great, let's go meet him. They go to the manger where Mary and Joseph are. And when they get there, they tell everybody what the angel said. And it says, need it explained to them. They're not wondering. And then you got Mary and Joseph. They know. The angels have told them personally. They showed up in their house and said, hey, here's the deal. So those people know, which leads me to the conclusion, and you guys can follow me here or not. This is just me thinking, okay? So you buy it or not. But it leads me to the conclusion that we've got a little bit of a DJ Khaled situation going on here. Now, here's what I mean. I was in Times Square a couple years ago by myself. I dropped Jen off at the hotel, and then I went to Times Square by myself because I love being in Times Square at night. It's one of the most special places on the planet. I think it's so cool. And I'm just taking it all in. And I noticed people start to just kind of flock. There's a ton of people there and people just start to flock to this one street on this one side of Times Square. And they're like three and four people deep. And I'm like, I wonder what's going on over here. So I go over there and I kind of make my way up on a wall and I'm looking down on the road and everybody's looking at this car and waving at this one car. And I asked, there's some random couple next to me. I'm like, what's the deal? What's going on? They go, we don't know. We think that's DJ Khaled. And I'm like, cool. There he is. I saw him. You know, and if you'd have told me 10 minutes ago, hey, just a heads up, buddy. Well, DJ Khaled's about to pass the street right here. You can go get a good seat for it before everybody else knows. I'd have been like, I'm good. I think we'll let somebody else see DJ Khaled. I still don't know what he looks like. He could be here and I wouldn't know it. As a matter of fact, Deej, if you're here, we're always looking for volunteers in the worship team. We're actually hiring, so let's talk, man. I don't know where your life's at. That'd be cool. But the thing that happened was it was just a commotion. There was just a bunch of people. And then there was some people walking this way and then other people started this way. And then it occurred to me, Mary and Joseph are here on holiday. They're here for a census. They're here for Passover. Do you think that they're the only ones that couldn't get a room in the end? You think they showed up so late? The whole country is descending on Jerusalem. You think the whole country got there before Mary and Joseph did? No. There was other people around. There was other people who couldn't stay in Jerusalem and had to stay in Bethlehem. Which, this is beside the point, but Joseph, get it together, man. You got a pregnant wife. You can't make reservations. You know you've got to go. You've known for a year. You've known for 10 years there's a census coming. You can't make a reservation in Jerusalem. The level of not planning from Joseph here baffles me. They're the people who are in group C when you board Southwest. That's Mary and Joseph. It's the only airline I know that before you can get on the plane, you have to line up in order of personal responsibility, right? And then the C's are in the back. But there's a bunch of people around. And there's lights in the sky, And then there's shepherds who just left their flock moving through the city. And it seems to me, all those who gathered, all those who are around, it seems to me that there was a commotion and that they've all moved towards this manger. And they're craning and they're trying to see what's going on. And then the shepherds tell everybody, this is the Messiah the angels just told us. This is what they said. He's going to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And they say that. And the crowds are like, okay. What does that mean? What's that going to look like? And what's cool about that is Mary knew. Mary could have told them. She could have made it so that they didn't have to wonder. And instead, we get this response, which is, I think, my favorite verse in the Christmas story, Luke 2, 19. It says, but Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. That's just a mama's joy right there. That's my baby. And I get to be his mama. And he's the savior. He's the Messiah. He's the one we've all been waiting on. He's the one you grew up longing for. He's the one your soul needs and you don't even know it. And she knew. But for some reason, she didn't tell him. She held that one here. She treasured that in her heart. She said, this moment is between me and you, God. And she pondered, she weighed those things for the rest of her life. And I love that moment. Because in that moment, Mary knows something that nobody else knows. Mary understands something that the rest of the world doesn't understand yet. All those crowds gathered, and what's the with the baby and the shepherds who came over and they were told they don't really fully understand it yet. She's had nine months to ruminate on this. She understands something that the rest of them don't understand. And I'm convinced it's this. Mary knew that Jesus was going to happen to them too. She knew. Just stick around. You'll learn who this is. You'll figure it out. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know how he's going to tell you. But stick around. And Jesus is going to happen to you too. Whether we're paying attention or whether we're not, she knows. All these people wondering, who's this baby? She knows in her head. You'll know. You'll learn. He's going to happen to you just like he happened to me. And here's the part about this that I love. In this moment, in this moment of confidence that Jesus is going to happen to you too, Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. And here's what I mean. She knows that Jesus is going to happen. She knows that this little boy is going to grow up and he's going to become the Messiah and he's going to sit on the throne of David. Does she know how that's going to happen? Not a chance. Does Mary know that this little boy is going to grow up and at 30 he's going to recruit 12 disciples and he's going to give them the keys to the kingdom and that he's going to be crucified on a cross and she's going to watch him die and that in three days he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity and that one day he's going to watch him die. And then in three days, he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity. And that one day he's going to crash down out of the clouds on a white horse and be called faithful and true. And he's going to take us all up to heaven because he came to establish an eternal kingdom and not an earthly kingdom. Does Mary know that? No, no chance. She just knows he's Jesus. And that God sent him and that he's going to take care of things. Does Mary know how Jesus is going to show up in the lives of those gathered around wondering what does all this mean? Does she know how Jesus is going to happen to them? No. Does she know that 33 years later, those same crowds and the children of those crowds might be the same ones gathered around Pilate's governor's mansion when Jesus is about to be crucified, yelling, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ? She doesn't know that. She exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Jesus is going to happen here. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know, but he is. He's going to show up. When? I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, but he's going to happen. And I love that thought so much because if we'll pay attention, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. If you pay attention, Jesus will happen to you too in big and small ways. See, what we know about Mary is that she was faithful. What we know about Mary is that she listened to God. What we know about Mary is that she knew her Scripture. She was listening. And Jesus happened. And so what I know about us and what Mary knew about us is that if we'll listen, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. And I think that's an important delineation in big and small ways. He will happen to us in big ways because when Jesus shows up in our life, make no mistake, he Kool-Aid mans that joker. He shows up and he wrecks shop. He rearranges everything. He totally changes your priorities. He totally changes your heart. You had these goals for your life? No. These are your new goals for your life. You had these plans for yourself? No. I'm going to make these plans for you. You have these priorities? You hold these things precious? Forget them. They're nothing. Hold these things precious. When Jesus explodes into our life, he radically changes our hearts. He radically changes everything. Our lives look completely different once he's bound through the wall. And I think that part of our problem sometimes is that we're the Saturday night live actors going, hey, Jesus, do you think maybe you could just use the door? Do you come in like a, is there like a small Jesus? This one's making a lot of demands, pal. I think that sometimes because we hold on so tightly, we don't let Jesus happen to us the way that he could and the way that he wants to. Mary simply said, when she found out that she was going to have Jesus, she said, I'm your servant. Do whatever you're going to do. And I think some of us, and when I say us, I mean us, tend to think like, Jesus, I'm pretty squared away. But I'd love for you to have some say in these areas. That's not the deal that Jesus makes. He explodes into our life and he radically changes everything. And he doesn't ask us for permission before he does it. And Mary knows that Jesus is going to happen to us. Jesus also happens in small ways. Continually through our life when we need him most. In moments when we desperately need him to happen. I remember being in Honduras years ago. When I was a teacher, I took a class of seniors to Siguarapeque, Honduras. And one of the things that we did there was hand out bags of rice to some of the folks in the village. That's not a critical term. It was literally a village in the hillsides of Saguarapeque. And there was one girl that we took with us named Allison. And Allison was this really sharp, bright girl who I really liked a lot. And she told me one of the nights that we were there that she was really struggling with her faith. I'm just not sure if I believe it. I have so many questions and I kind of don't know what to do. And we talked about it for a little bit and I just let it be. And then the day that we were handing out rice, it's predominantly older and younger women who are in the line for the rice. And we've got like this chain. I'm in the back of a truck and I'm picking up boxes. I'm handing the boxes to somebody and they're picking up bags and they're handing bags and they're handing bags and then they're handing them to the people. And it just so happened that Allison was at the end of the conveyor belt and she was the one actually handing the rice to the women. And I was paying attention to her that day and I saw her face light up in a way that I had never seen before. And I saw the joy of connection that she was having with the women to whom she was handing the rice. And it was this spiritual moment. And so I pulled her aside after dinner that night and I said, hey, listen, I know that you're having questions about your faith, but I watched you come alive when you were helping those women today. I watched a joy in your eyes. And she started to cry. She knew I was right. And I said, I just want you to know that that was Jesus. Scripture tells us that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. And you were serving Jesus today. And he showed up for you. So you might not always have all the answers that you want for your faith, but you can cling to Jesus. And today you found him. And it resonated with her. She's a nurse in Denver, specifically at a hospital in a low-income area so that she can continue to serve the least of these. She's dedicated her life to that service because Jesus showed up for her that day. And this Christmas season, some of you, you need Jesus to show up. You need Jesus to happen to you. Some of us in big ways. Some of us, we need to quit asking Jesus to simply walk to the door we provided and let him come in and wreck shop. Some of us, we need Jesus to happen in small ways. Some of us are like Allison, we're struggling with our faith. We don't know what to do. We don't have all the answers. And if maybe Jesus could just show up here, if Jesus could just happen here, that would be what we needed to see a clear path forward. Others of us, we have things going on in our families. We're facing a difficult Christmas or we're facing a tight Christmas or we're facing a stressful Christmas or it's just a hard season of life and we need Jesus to show up. I can remember a month or two ago, I was in a place where I was just feeling really discouraged. And I prayed one morning. I was like, God, listen, man, if you're handing out, I didn't say listen, man. I don't say that to God. I try not to anyway. Sometimes I do. God, I'm sorry. But God, if you're handing out encouragement, I'll take some. I could use it. I need Jesus to happen here. That was a Sunday morning. I won't go into the details. But for the next three days, encouragement after encouragement after encouragement that I didn't expect. And Jesus happened to me that week. And some of you need Jesus to happen to you too. And whatever situations you're in, and whatever stresses you're carrying and burdens you're bearing, you need Jesus to happen. And so my prayer for you this week, that in this place, in grace, this month, and this season, that Jesus would happen here as we move through Christmas season together. And my prayer for you is that Jesus would happen to you. And for some of you, my prayer is that he would happen in really big, life-changing, earth-shattering, priority-changing ways that you didn't anticipate that scare the heck out of you. But I hope that Jesus shows up big time in your life. And still for others, I'm praying that Jesus will happen to you in that small way that you need him so desperately to happen. But let's make our prayer at Grace this season that Jesus will happen here and Jesus will happen in our lives. Join me in that prayer. Father, you're good to us. Thank you for your son. Thank you for Christmas. Thank you for how it focuses us on you and your goodness and on your son. Jesus, we invite you into this place. We pray that you would happen here. We pray that you would have your way here. Give us the faith and the courage to not stand in your way. Give us the wisdom to know that your ways are better than our ways. Give us the courage to overcome any fear we might have about handing things over to you. But let us, God, pray courageous prayers and invite you into our life in a big way. And Father, for those of us who need Jesus in the little ways, for those of us who are struggling, who are hurting, who are stressed or anxious, God, I pray that Jesus would happen in those spaces too. Even this week, God, even today, would Jesus happen to us. It's in his name we ask these things. Amen.

The Good morning, Grace Raleigh. How are you doing? It's good to see you today. I'm Dale Rector, Nathan's dad, and I am glad to be with you today. Hang in there for a minute. It's going to be a journey. I've got two Bibles. It's a long sermon. So just bear with me. Maybe it'll go quickly if we try. But I want to say something to the Grace Raleigh family first, and that is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not just for moving my son out of my basement four and a half years ago, but for loving him, loving his beautiful wife, Jen, our precious, precious grandchildren, Lily, and now John. And we are so grateful for you. Within the sound of my voice are those of you who will volunteer and step up and will do something to minister to my family and to my kids. And I can't thank you enough. You will do life together. You will laugh together. You'll cry together. You'll tell them the word of God together. You'll grow together. And I couldn't think of a better place for my family than here. So thank you very much, Grace Raleigh. When I was a child, I was given this Bible to me by my grandparents. 1969. I was 11 years old, and they gave me this Bible, and of course, this King James Bible. But Matthew chapter 24 is perhaps the most read portion of this Bible during my young adult life. In Matthew chapter 24, if any of you don't remember or recall, it is the place in which the disciples asked Jesus, what are the signs of the end times? What are those signs? And when is your return? If you pay attention and read Matthew chapter 24 this week, you will see it mirrored and imaged in Revelation chapter 6 next week with Nathan. So pay attention to that. We were crazy about eschatology. What's that? That's the study of the end times. And we dove in and we heard sermon after sermon. In fact, we predicted that Jesus would come back in 1988. There was a book that was written that said 88 reasons why Jesus would come back in 1988. And I'm like, wow, really? It didn't happen. It didn't occur. He still hasn't returned. And it seemed like over the years, the eschatology speeches and the study of Revelation got to be a little quiet and a little silent because most people were wrong. Most people, when they tried to predict something or say what this means, they were wrong. I have another Bible in front of me. This Bible was stolen by, it's not a Gideon Bible. It was stolen by my son four and a half years ago when he came up to here at Grace Raleigh. And four and a half years ago, he took this Bible that I had as a high school student, and I never had a chance to write in it and to say something in it, you know, sappy and meaningful like, you know, the greatest ever, the great Nate, you know. I love you dearly, the best dad you've ever had. Nothing like that at all. I don't have the words. Until I was preparing for this sermon, I thought, I have the perfect words. And to my son Nathan, this is true. That's it. This is the word of God. In Genesis, we see the tree of life. In Revelation, we see the tree of life. In Exodus, we see the ark of the covenant. In Revelation, we see the ark of the covenant. In Joel, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Revelation, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Joel, we see the trumpet sounds, and the day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. In Joel chapter 2 and chapter 3. In Revelation chapter 7, we see the trumpet sound, and the day of the wrath of the Lord and the Lamb comes. In Daniel, we see the exact specific days of the tribulation period. In Revelation, we see the exact same specific days in that book as well. Over and over and over again, if you fall in love with the Old Testament, you'll fall in love with Revelation because it all ties together. It all links together. It's true. It's right. It's God's word. It's what he wants us to have. So I'm grateful for you guys and your study of the word. And I'll be going into Revelation chapter four. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. But basically, you know, when Doug got up a couple weeks ago and he spoke, I thought to myself, Doug, it's really kind of funny and hilarious that you were given one verse. I was given the two easiest chapters in the entire book of Revelation, and you'll see how easy it is in a minute. But chapter 4 is a mirror image of Ezekiel chapter 1. And if you have Ezekiel 1 and you study it later, you'll see this same throne room of God. But John, 90-year-old John, is caught up into heaven. And he's caught up into heaven. And on the Lord's day, he's in the spirit. And whose voice does he hear? Jesus. He says, John, come up here. I have some things I want to show you. I have some things I want you to see. And he shows him where dad sits, where God the Father has a throne. And there's this throne. It's a majestic throne. And on the throne is a brownish image. It's an image of God. It is God. And it looks brown. And it's got an emerald rainbow around its head. Ezekiel says there are fire and metal around his waist. And there's lightnings and thunders that come from the throne of God and go out, and there's a brightness and a brilliance and a wonderment. The throne is set on a firmament of solid water and glass, and it looks still, Still to indicate the comfort and the sovereignty of God. And that's the picture we see of the throne room of God. And around the throne is 24 elders and four cherubims. And we get all enthralled with the brilliance, with the majesty, with the wonder, with the glorious look of the throne of God. And we forget what the point is. What is the point of Revelation chapter 4? It's so simple. It's so easy. Theologians miss it. They like to describe everything that's in here. And I'm going to tell you this, and you're going to go, well, that's not that bright. What's the point of the throne of God? God is on the throne. That's it. God is on the throne. He is on the throne. When Joseph was in prison, captive, God was on the throne. When the children of Israel spent 400 years in captivity, God was on the throne. When the first Passover came and the blood was put on the doorpost of every Jewish family and the death angel passed through and spared those children, God was on the throne. When Moses led the children of Israel out of captivity and 40 days became 40 years, God was on the throne. When Moses was put to the side and went up to the mountain and wasn't allowed to go to the promised land, Joshua went into the promised land with the children of Israel, and God was on the throne. City by city, they took over. Promised to them, to the father Abraham. And the Jews possessed the promised land, they possessed the Canaan land, and God was still on the throne. The period of judges came. We had a few good kings with a bunch of bad kings. We had a dispersion of the nation of Israel. The temple was destroyed. Again, the nation of Israel was taken back to captivity to Babylon this time, and God was still on the throne. They came back to Israel. 400 years of silence. Jesus was born. And Jesus was born of a virgin, came to this planet, and lived in the filth that Satan and we created. And God was still on the throne. The thorns were placed upon his brow. The blood came down. His hands were pierced with the nails. He was hung on the cross, and he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? God was still on the throne. He couldn't look on his son because of our sin, but he was on the throne. Remember that. At that Passover, he was on the throne. Jesus was put into the grave. Three days later, God said, come forth. He came forth. God was still on the throne. 47 days, he appeared to 500 people at one time and then ascended into heaven. And guess what? God was still on the throne. He was still there. Still in control. Still in charge. Now what happens from here? What happens from here? Well, we have 11 of the 12 apostles martyred. John sees 60 years go by. And 60 years go by and he's caught up into heaven on the Lord's day. He thought he died and went to heaven, but he didn't. He was in the spirit. And guess what he saw? Revelation chapter four, God on the throne. Now what's going to happen in Revelation chapter 6 and following is nothing more than a full court press, nothing more than a reclamation process in which God reclaims stolen property. And he comes back and he takes what's rightfully his to redeem the last person who will say yes to Jesus and to say no to Satan and to crush Satan underneath our feet is what Romans says. And guess what? During everything you encounter in the next few weeks with Revelation, as good and as bad as it may seem, God's still on the throne. He is there. He hasn't left. He hasn't abrogated his position. He hasn't vacated it. He's still there. Through your cancer, through your COVID, through your disappointment, through abandonment, through your addictions, through your loss of family, loss of loved ones, to the loss of a young child. Everything that this world can throw at us and this world system can throw at us, God is still on the throne. That's chapter four. Now you say, well, what are the four cherubims? Everyone wants to know about the four cherubims and who are they and where'd they come from? And at this point in the sermon, I would say, who cares, right? Because God's on the throne no matter what. But we've got this curiosity about us. Have we seen the four cherubims before? Yes, we have, Ezekiel 1. The question is not what are the four cherubims, but where is God? You see, when the four cherubims show up, you would expect to see God, because God made these cherubims, angelic beings, if you will, looked like a human, had four sides to their head, the one of a man, the one of an ox, the one of an eagle, the one of a lion, and they looked weird to us, but we've never seen them. And John saw them and described them is exactly how Ezekiel described them in Ezekiel chapter 1. And these are around the throne of God. They move in unison around the throne of God. They're all together, the four cherubims, angelic beings. And I've got this to say about what the faces represent. And most people are guessing. And I'm guessing as well. But the faces represent the very essence of God. You see, we are made in the image of God. When I picture God, I think of a man. The descriptions of God, he has a head and face and hands and so forth. So I think these angelic beings meant to reflect the very essence of God, which is man, which is one of the faces you see. The other faces you see is the very essence of God as creation. And I think he made what he likes. You become that which you worship. And these four creatures, these four cherubims, wherever they go, they're around the throne of God. Can you imagine someone watching you 24-7, 365? I challenge you. Follow Nathan around 24-7. You may all leave the church. I hope you don't. I hope you stay with it. Jen's got a lot of love. We were so grateful for her. But for 24-7, 365, these angelic beings are around the throne of God. And you know what they say? It's recorded in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 8. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. What is holiness? What does that mean? Holiness is the intersection of love and justice. It is the attribute of attributes. It's the attribute that contains all the other attributes. It's where love and justice collide. Everything, God's mercy, God's long-suffering, God's love, God's justice, is all wrapped up in this perfect word called holiness. It means different, different, different. Unique, unique, unique. There's never been anything like God. There'll never be anything like God ever again. He is holy. He is different all unto himself. The perfect amount of love is sprinkled with the perfect amount of justice at the right time, in the proportion in the right way. It is God's way and he is holy. So who am I? Who am I to question the character of God? I think it's funny. Each of us periodically do this little thing, which is wrong, but we do it anyways because we're human. Well, if I were God, I would zap them. Right? I mean, just think of it. When I'm driving down the road in traffic, you know, it's like, okay, here it comes. I believe half the people on the planet would be gone if I was God. Really. My wife knows that's true. You can't, you did what? Come on, man. But we sit there and we judge God through our lenses and through our eyes and from our limited perspective and we say, God, why didn't you exercise justice quicker? Hitler. Six million Jews died. We sit in amazement and say, well, God, if you'd just zapped them a little earlier, we wouldn't have had six million Jews die. And we question God's patience and long-suffering. And then when he does zap somebody, we go, man, that was mean. I can't believe God did that. What's going on here? So, you see, we can't do that. Whenever God acts, God acts in perfectness of love and justice all the time. There's a second group of people around the throne. It was the 24 elders. People have said it represents 12 apostles and 12 representatives from the tribe of Israel. They're wrong. I'm amazed at how wrong theologians can be. And when you study commentaries, be careful. Be careful. The way I study Revelation is in light of what it says in other parts of the Bible. Because some people have a bent on how it should play out. Well, I believe in this, and I believe in that. Well, I believe in the Word of God, and I'm going to let the Word of God just speak to me and say, what does it say to you? It's not Mother Teresa, it's not Billy Graham, it's not the Stanley brothers, you know, it's not Charles Stanley, it's not Andy Stanley, it's not any leaders, it's not any brilliant, it's definitely not me, definitely not my son. We're not one of the 24. What are they? Angelic beings. Well, how do you know that? Job 38, 7, where God is basically, if you will, talking to Job and saying, where were you when I created? You remember that? And Job 38.7 says, when the morning stars were put into place, when the planets were made and the solar systems were made, The sons of God rejoiced. Yes. The angels were there during creation to prove what the Savior did in creation. And these are nothing more than angelic beings that have some authority and some leadership. Why do you say that? Well, I say it because of what is in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11. You created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. That's what they said. They're not puppets. They saw it. They were there. Hebrews 11.3 says, You mean the law of thermodynamics is wrong? In this case, it is. God created something out of nothing. He created that which is seen out of nothing. Well, that just doesn't compute with science. I love the faith of a child. Don't you? I love my grandkids. I mean, you can tell them almost anything and they believe it, right? And some of you think they have been duped in believing that Jesus is real and the Bible is real and they just haven't learned enough yet. When you walk a child through salvation and through that experience in following God, they look at you and they believe it. They trust you and trust you what you're going to say. Then they start trusting the word of God. Then they start trusting the teacher. Then they start trusting the preacher. And it says right in here the word of God that God created. Well, you know what? That's good enough for me. I don't care if it takes you 4.5 billion years to get there. I don't care. God could speak and it could happen. Well, science says this. Who cares? I believe what it says. He made us. He created us. And the reason we don't like to believe in a creation is because we don't want to be subject to God. But the whole thing hinges on his creating us. Because he made us and therefore he owns us and we're subject to him. Now, as an older adult, and this church has a lot my age and older, we kind of return back to that simple faith. That simple time that we had as children. And we sit there and we go, yeah, okay, I get it. Scientists have changed the age of the earth 18 times since I was born. Maybe they just don't know. Maybe they weren't there. And I'm telling you, the reason I believe it is because if I believe God existed in the four walls of my brain and that was it, I'm in big trouble, buddy. I really am. I mean, really, seriously. I get up from my easy chair, I go to the other room, and I wonder why I was there. Right? Hey, honey, would you bring the crackers back? You forgot the crackers again. What about the pudding? Well, I ate the pudding in the kitchen. Did you leave the light on? I don't know. Where's your phone? I don't know. Is it on silent? I don't know. And right now, all of you are thinking, I need to check my phone. You leave the house and you say, did I close the garage? Did I close the garage? You drive back, it's closed. You didn't believe yourself. I mean, this is fun. I mean, this is a blast getting old. And the older I get, the bigger God gets. Nathan, when he was of age to go to college, and we were grateful, my wife and I were both crying. We were crying for different reasons. When he went off to college, he went to Auburn. Not my pick. I picked a Bible college. I said, you should go to Bible college for one year. He didn't necessarily want to be a preacher. And he said, no, I'm going to Auburn. Why? Why do kids do that? Because they know more than you, right? They're smarter than you. They've got this thing figured out. So he went off to Auburn and I said to him, son, I've got one requirement for you and one only. And he says, what's that, dad? This is going to be pretty easy. I said, yeah, it's really easy. When you return from college, I want you to be dumber. And he looks at me, dumber? You want me to be dumber? Yes. He says, why dad? I said, well, right now, you know everything in the world. When you finish your first year, I want you to know a little less and I want you to be dumb again. I checked with him a few weeks ago and I said to him these words, son, the older I get, the bigger God gets. The more miraculous he gets, the more wondrous he gets. And he said, dad, I think the exact same thing. And I'm like, yes, he's dumb again. I like it. John 1 says, That's John 1. The triune God created mankind. We were created in the image of God. And in chapter 5, we see a segue to the right hand of the throne of God, and it is on the right hand of the throne of God you see a scroll. It looked nothing like this. This is the best we could do. And the scroll represented the title deed to planet Earth. And the title deed would be opened one seal at a time. And you had a seal, you opened it, you read it. You had another seal, you opened it, you unscrolled what was written. Had writing on the outside and writing on the inside. The writing on the outside was a person authorized to take the scroll from God the Father, from his right hand. And on the inside was the playbook to the end of the earth, to the reclamation of this planet and us back to our rightful position where he makes all the wrong things right. It's the playbook. It's the rest of the book of Revelation, what was in the Father's right hand. And there was a search in heaven as to the person who was worthy to take the scroll out of the Father's right hand and then loose the seals that were there. And John, 90-year-old John, weeped bitterly. He wept bitterly. Why? It's conjecture on my part, but can you imagine for a 60-year period of time between when Jesus ascended into heaven and when John was called back up into heaven, 60 years had passed. When you became a believer in the New Testament church era, first and second century, it was a death sentence. It was a sentence by which you would die. So John had led and given the gospel out to the ends of the earth and basically had seen his friends die. 11 out of the 12 apostles died and John and John alone only remained. And I can imagine, because I have doubts as an old person, always I have doubts, and I sit there and I go, is this really true? Is this word of God really true? Is this right? And John, I felt like, he thought for a moment, what if Jesus is not coming back to reclaim stolen property? What if this is all in vain? What if those people died in vain? And what I've been saying for 60 years is wrong. What then? What are we going to do? The angel of the Lord said to John, John, there's no crying in heaven. We don't cry up here. Dry it up, buddy. Something like that. And the angel said, behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the root of David. Whoa. Wait a minute. To a Jewish boy. That meant something. That meant something. The lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David. That was the Messiah. That was the Messiah they expected to come the first time. And rescue him for all the pain. And set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah they expected to come the first time and rescue him for all the pain and set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah. This is the one I've been waiting for. This is the guy, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And when John saw between the throne of God and the cherubims that were around the throne, he saw this figure. And it was a figure as a lamb that was slain. Wow. The lamb that was slain. Now wait a minute. Let that sink in a little bit. You mean it's not pretty picture book Jesus with the nice flowing hair, all his hair, with a nice face, a nice body, fit body? You mean it wasn't that Jesus? No. It was a Jesus from 60 years ago he recognized on the cross with the crown of thorns, the nails in his hand. It was a lamb as if it was slain. He had the scars that he got from the crucifixion. And John, I believe his countenance probably changed from tears to gladness, recognizing that the Savior he had followed for 60 years was really true. It was really right. It was the right thing. This was the lamb that was slain because he saw the marks. You see, you can debate the resurrection all you want, but it happened. You can debate creation, but it happened. You can debate how God is going to come back. It's going to happen. Jesus was around with 500 people at one time. There's no scientist on this planet that has the key for that. Nobody has the key for that except God. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope. Let's go watch football. Let's go play. Let's go eat. But we exist because of the resurrection. We are the Easter people. We do celebrate. Every week, the new church celebrated the resurrection of Christ because it was such a miracle. And John, 60 years later, saw that same Jesus in front of him and was just overwhelmed with joy and gladness. That is the resurrected Christ. Now, the disciples, I believe, had their marching order in a couple places in the New Testament. One is found in Matthew chapter 16. There's a location that's in northern Israel called Caesarea Philippi. And at Caesarea Philippi, there was this, what is called the gates of hell. I'm allowed to say that in church because it says it in the Bible, the gates of hell. And what was that place? It was a cave, and me and Nathan were there in 2014. It was a place where people came to worship false, dead gods. It was a place where they came to do unspeakable atrocities, things that were wrong, to try to please these false gods, dead gods. And Jesus had the boys there in such a wicked, vile place with all these gods and the pan-god, and he says to them this something very simple, who do these people say that I am? Who do they say that I am? Well, you're Elijah. You're John the Baptist. You're a righteous dude, right? You're a good person. And then Jesus stopped them and said, no, no, no, no, no. And this is the question of questions that everyone must answer. But whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? And I love Peter. Peter finally got it right with all boldness, with all everything in his gut. And I believe the decibel level got really high. And he said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And what did Jesus say? Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And upon this rock moment came back in every one of the apostles' mind as the ascension of Christ occurred, as they gathered together, as Jesus conquered death, as we see him overcoming death and overcoming all obstacles. They were worried that they would die too, but now they weren't worried. Why? Because Jesus came to life. And when Jesus came to life, they approached Pentecost with a fervor and an intensity that they never had before. And that intensity, I think, they kind of looked like, after the ascension, I think they kind of looked a little like William Wallace. Braveheart. You know the story. Every time I see this, I think of Peter. That's William Wallace. What happened to William Wallace? He died. Hey, you guys don't know what I'm referring to. Google it. In Google, we trust. So just Google it. You'll find out what Braveheart is. He lost his life for the cause. And Peter died, crucified, upside down, dying for the cause. 11 out of the 12 died and were martyred because of what happened. You know what we need today in the church? We need more William Wallaces. We need people that are willing to die for the cause. You know, we just kind of want them to show up to live for the cause, let alone die for it. And why has it become so hard and so different? 2,000 years later, what happened to our intensity? What happened to our focus? I've got a hero of mine. His name is Randy Rye. Randy was a preacher. He left his church because of illness. He was supposed to have died eight times. He's got cancer. He's got organs that shut down. A couple weeks ago, he texted me and said, pray for me. I've got pneumonia. I'm hoping it's not COVID. If he gets COVID, he may die. It may be a death sentence for him. Randy, everywhere, he has no money. He has two nickels to rub together. But he loves the Lord with all intensity. And you know what he does? Everywhere he goes, he says to the doctors, to the nurses, to the patients without hope, he says, I want to tell you about Jesus. And I don't know a better place than in a hospital to tell somebody and get them prepared for eternity. But that guy, he approaches the gates of hell and he says, I'm going to tell this last person about Jesus. In our offices, God is there. Tell people about Jesus. Now, how can we do that today? How can we be the person with intensity today that lives out its Christianity with all fervor? I don't know about you. I haven't checked with this church yet. You're probably not typical of every North American church because Nathan's here. You're probably a little different. But every church I know of has a need for children's ministries. Always. Always a need. Hey man, it's the next generation in there. It's an opportunity to teach and train the next generation. Aaron should have a waiting list of names for people to do childcare. Look, you can hear Nathan on video. We know that. So go sit with the kids. Tell them about Jesus. Well, I don't know what to do. Well, Moses didn't either, but he did it. We need people to step up. What if we had twice as many people step up for children's ministries? What if we had a need come about and twice as much money came in? What about if we had a missions trip and twice as many people signed up for it as could go. What about if we asked for volunteers to serve to love our neighbors and twice as many people showed up? We've lost our intensity. John was the bishop of the church of Ephesus. And at that church, if you read the first two and three chapters of Revelation, you'll find out that the church of Ephesus lost its first love. And John was the bishop there, and he held some responsibility for losing that first love. And they were admonished by God that, hey, you need to get that first love back. Maybe that's what we need to do. I believe when John went back, he was different. And things were different from that point on. Now, if you all would do me a favor and go ahead and stand up, we're going to have the reading of the word of God, and then we're going to transition right into worship at the same time. But John went from Patmos to paradise, from paradise back to Patmos. In one year, he left Patmos and went back to Ephesus. And for five years, he lived. And then five years later, he died. In that five-year period of time, he discipled many young person. Hey, who would like to learn at the feet of John, one of the apostles, particularly after he'd been up to heaven? Well, I would. That would be neat. And so John went back to Ephesus and he discipled a young man, 25 years old, by the name of Polycarp. Polycarp became the bishop at the church of Smyrna. He died a martyr's death in 155 A.D. He had somebody else he trained, Irenaeus, which gave us all the doctrines that we preserve today. The grandchild, if you will, the spiritual grandchild of the apostle Paul. Or, I'm sorry, John. And you see, it pays to disciple one another, to disciple our kids. And I believe John's life ended well with discipling one another. He also had a song. He had a song he learned when he's revelation experience and it's found in verses nine through 13. And it went something like this. And I heard a voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000, and thousands and thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature, every creature, which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and that are in them, I heard saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. This week we remember the dreams God gave Joseph as a teenage boy. The promises that one day his family would bow down to him. Joseph's life has seen remarkable twists and turns since those fateful dreams. But now we will finally watch them come to fruition as the story of Joseph arrives at its hopeful conclusion. Joseph will finally see that he was right to believe being here. Thank you for joining us online, if that's what you're doing. Thank you to Doug Bergeson last week for carrying the torch and doing such a great job on that idea about the land between promise and fulfillment. The only correction I would make if you were here last week is that he said that I assigned him only one verse out of the whole story. That's not true. It was just part of a sentence. It wasn't even a whole sentence in the verse. That's all he got was just that fragment there, but he really did a bang-up job with it. And this week, we pick the story back up. And I've said the whole time that this is a, it's one big, long seven-week sermon. We're driving and have been driving to what we want to talk about next week as we reflect on God's sovereignty in the overarching story of Joseph. So this week, we're going to move through the last part of the narrative together. It's a lot to cover. There's a lot of ground to cover and a lot of story. So this is the least sermon-y sermon of all seven of these sermons, okay? Because we're really just going to spend a lot of time in listening to the story, moving through the story, connecting to the nuances of it. And then we're going to end in a place that left me weeping on a bench outside of Starbucks. I'll explain that to you in a minute. And hopefully it will encourage us to, and then we'll be ready to come next week and reflect on these last six weeks and everything that God did as he wrote the story of Joseph and the profound impact it had on everybody around him. So last week, you'll remember that Joseph was left languishing in prison for two years. He interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker. He told the cupbearer, you're going to be reinstated. He told the baker, you're going to be executed. And those things came true. And he asked the cupbearer to remember him to Pharaoh when he got out of there. And the cupbearer forgot about Joseph. And so he was in prison for two full years after that. And that's what we talked about last week was that two-year wait between promise and fulfillment, which is really a much longer wait between promise and fulfillment. Because when we pick up the story this week, we'll learn that he's 30 years old, which means it's been 13 years since he had those dreams that we talked about in the second week and in the video that we watched just here before the sermon. So we pick the story up in Genesis chapter 41 with Joseph still in prison. The cupbearer is out. He's free. He's forgotten about Joseph. Two years later, Pharaoh starts having some dreams. Pharaoh starts having some dreams and he can't figure out what they mean. He's assembled all the magicians. He's assembled all the philosophers, all the priests of Egypt. He's brought them to the palace. He shared with them his dreams and no one can interpret any of them. And he said, is there anyone who can tell me what this means? He felt that they had profound meaning. And the cup bearer, the light bulb goes off. He's like, oh yeah, I know a guy. I got a guy who can do this. And he tells Pharaoh about the Hebrew in prison who can interpret dreams. And so Pharaoh says, let's go, bring him here. I'm going to do some loose paraphrasing during the storytelling, okay? But it's in the Bible, I promise. Chapters 41 through 45 is what we're going to cover today. He says, well, bring him to me. Let's just, let's try it. Worst case scenario, I'll just throw him back in jail, right? So he brings Joseph to him and Joseph comes up and they shave his head and they get him all ready to be presentable to Pharaoh. And he goes in and Pharaoh addresses him. And he says this to him in Genesis 41. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I've had a dream and there is no one who can, I've been having dreams that no one can interpret. I hear that you can interpret dreams. And Joseph's response to me is pretty remarkable. He says, it's not me. Interpretations belong to God. And this is by no means the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I did not make this point. So this is parenthetical to the sermon. I'm going to step over here. I'm not preaching about the thing I'm preaching about anymore. I'm just making this point and then I'll move back. After years of proficiency, Joseph still doesn't claim interpretation as a skill. After years of being good at this thing, he still doesn't claim it as a skill. And it makes me think to myself, what are the things that I feel like I'm good at or gifted at or gifted to do? And how long have I been doing those things? So long that now I forget that God has gifted me to do some things and it's not my skill that I developed. It's not my thing that I do. If you would believe that I have an ability to communicate, I forget that that ability is not a skill that I have. That's something that God gave me. It is his gift to allow me to communicate, and that gift can be taken away at any time God wishes. It is not my skill. And it makes me wonder about us, after years of proficiency at closing the deal, at charming the right people, at having the right amount of empathy, at having good insight, at being able to give good and wise advice, after years of proficiency at being discerning, at being professionally effective, how many of us have begun to think of those things as our own skills and not gifts from God? I won't belabor it. I just thought it worth pointing out and questioning. So Joseph says, yeah, go ahead. Tell me your dream, and I'll do the best I can to listen to God and to interpret it. So Pharaoh shares his dreams with Joseph. He had two dreams. He says, in this dream, I see seven fat plump cows coming out of the Nile. Now, for those of you who are not Egyptian geography experts, the Nile is the heartbeat of life in Egypt. It's the river around which the whole civilization is built. So he says, I saw seven plump cows come out of the Nile and they began to feed on the grass right there on the banks of the river. But then after that, I saw seven skinny, starving, impoverished cows come out and they ate the fat, healthy cows. And then I woke up. And then I went back to sleep. And when I went back to sleep, there was seven stalks of wheat, big and strong and healthy. And after those came up and came to fruition, there was seven stalks of unhealthy wheat, of dried and shriveled wheat that it says, the Bible says, was blighted by the east wind, which sounds really bad. And those unhealthy stalks of wheat ate the healthy stalks of wheat. And Pharaoh says, what does that mean? And Joseph tells him, he said, here's the deal. Here's what's going to happen. In Egypt, there's going to be seven years of plenty. You're going to see your crops flourish like they never have before, and it's going to be great. But immediately following those seven years of plenty, there's going to be famine. There's going to be famine for seven years. And so you need to get ready for it. And he says, Pharaoh, and I thought this was an incredible detail. He says, the doubling up of the dream, the fact that you had the same dream in two different ways, the doubling up of the dream means that it is fixed by God and it will happen. Now, if you've been paying attention this whole series, where does your mind just go? It should have gone to week two when Joseph had his dreams as a boy, as a 17-year-old kid, when he has one dream that his brothers are going to bow down to him, and then he has another dream with stalks of wheat where his family is going to be bowing down to him. The first one is his brothers with the stalks of wheat. The second one is the sun and the moon and the stars are bowing down to him. So somehow, somehow Joseph, if he says this to Pharaoh because of the doubling up of the dreams, this is a fixed thing that God will bring about. If he says that to Pharaoh 13 years later, you can rest assured that somehow, some way, through 13 years of turmoil, Joseph had clung to the belief that because God gave him those dreams and because they were double dreams, that those were still going to come about. I would have long ago left those be. I would have long ago thought that's not true. That's not going to happen. I would have let go of those things. But I can't help but believe that because Joseph told Pharaoh that the doubling up means that it's fixed by God and it will happen, that Joseph believed the same thing about his dreams. He still clung to that faith and to that hope. I don't know how. And so Pharaoh responds. He believes Joseph. Everyone there is awed by what Joseph says and does. And Pharaoh says, what do we do? And Joseph says, you need to find a guy, man. You need somebody in charge of this. You need a secretary of agriculture. You need someone who watches all the fields and all of the empire, who can be in charge of gathering it. And for the next seven years, you need to store one fifth of the grain that you harvest in this country. And then when we enter the seven years of famine, we'll be able to sell off that grain to the surrounding nations. We'll be able to feed ourselves. We will thrive and we'll get rich while everyone around us suffers. And Pharaoh's like, this is a great plan. Let's do this. So then he talks with his advisors. Who do we think should do this? And he looks at Joseph and he's like, you seem smart. Why don't you do this? And so in an instant, Joseph, once again, goes from being brought low in prison to being brought high. Except this time, he's the second most powerful man in the world. And that's not an exaggeration. Egypt is the most powerful nation in the world. It's the superpower. And Pharaoh says to Joseph, you're in charge. And he looks at all of his other servants and all of his generals. Whatever he says to do, you do it. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get through this. He has the wisdom to lead us through this. And he bestows on Joseph a house and wealth. And he even gives him a daughter that he can get married to. And so Joseph is risen to prominence and he's pulled out of obscurity yet again. And here's God's favor on him and interpreting the dreams. And he's raised to second in command over all of Egypt. And not only that, but he's given the daughter of a priest named Potipharah, which sounds like a girl's name, but it's not. It's a boy's name. So he has a daughter and his daughter marries Joseph. And with the daughter, Joseph has two sons. And the Bible, the narrative pauses to tell us about the two sons and to tell us what Joseph chose to name them. And I think it's significant enough for us to pause and take a look at that too. If you pick up the story in Genesis 41, verse 51, it says, Joseph called the name of the It's pretty profound faith to move through Joseph's story, to finally be blessed with a family and with children that we're sure he always longed for, and to immediately name them Manasseh and Ephraim, which means my hardship is done, and then God has made me fruitful in the land of affliction. He turns and he gives praise to God. Look at the favor that rests on my life. Look at the joy that I get to experience right now. Look at the way that God has worked. And his story comes full circle. And he's the favored son. And then he's the slave. And then he's elevated to Potiphar's house. And then he's falsely accused and thrown in prison. And then he's elevated in prison. And then he's elevated to Potiphar's house and then he's falsely accused and thrown in prison. And then he's forgotten, he's elevated in prison and then he's forgotten about it. And now he's elevated finally into Pharaoh's house, second in command over all of Egypt, second most powerful man on the planet. And he turns and prays to God. And he says, look at how my story has come full circle. And he gives praise to God in what he names his sons as reminders of his journey. And the story could end right here. Joseph exists in prominence. He sees them through the famine. He incurs wealth. He sees them in the years of plenty. He incurs wealth and sees them through the years of famine. And if this story were just about Joseph, this would be a perfectly fine place to end it. His brothers, even by now, figuratively, everyone is bowing down to him. You could even make an argument that those dreams have come true. And this would be a fitting and satisfying end to the story of Joseph. And he and his wife and his sons lived happily ever after as he oversaw Egypt for the rest of his days. But the story's not just about Joseph. And God's plan was never just for Joseph. And so there's more to the story. If you flip the page to the next chapter, chapter 42, the narrative takes you back up to Canaan, where Joseph's family was. His father, Jacob, also called Israel, and his 11 brothers. And Jacob looks at the oldest son, Reuben, and he says, hey, we're hungry. We don't have anything to eat. We're in a famine. I heard Egypt has some grain. Load up the boys, go down there, buy some grain and come back. And so they go down there. They head out, 10 sons of Jacob, but Jacob doesn't allow Benjamin to go. You remember, if you've been following along, that Benjamin is the son of Rachel. Rachel is Jacob's favored wife. This is a good reason why you shouldn't have two wives. Because then one's going to be the favorite. It's going to be a real bummer for everybody. There's some terrible family dynamics going on in Jacob's house. You'll see more in a second. It's remarkable. But Jacob got tricked into marrying Leah, who apparently had weak eyes. And this is bad in the Old Testament. We don't want to marry all you girls wearing glasses. Sorry, you're out of luck. He married Leah, and Leah immediately had many sons for Jacob. But he didn't really love Leah. He loved Rachel. And it took Rachel a long time to get pregnant, which is something that comes up in the Bible over and over again. And then Rachel had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. And Joseph, as far as Jacob knew, was dead. So all he's got left is Benjamin. He's the youngest of the sons as well. So he's got a special place in his father's heart. So he tells Reuben, take your brothers, go down there. You're not taking Benjamin. He's staying with me. And Reuben says, okay, sounds good, pops. And they go down. They go down to Egypt to buy the grain and they get their passport stamped. They receive like the visa for whatever they need to do. They go through all the paperwork and they end up in the office of, wouldn't you know it, Joseph. That's who you have to talk to. And when they came in to where he would receive people, he recognized them immediately, but they didn't recognize him. He looked like Egyptian royalty. He didn't look like a nomad from the hills of Israel. So they didn't recognize him at all. And they say, we're 12 brothers. We're here. We need to get some grain to go back to our dad who's up in Canaan, a little bit north of here. We'd love to buy some off of you if that pleases you, master. And Joseph treats them in a way, and I'll just say this up front. At this point in the story, Joseph starts doing some things to me that just feel like, why did he do that? Like, why did he behave like that? Why did he treat them this way? Even if you understand what he's trying to get at, which is ultimately to see his brother and to see his father, it seems odd that he would choose this course of action. And I did a little bit of research and read about it. Why do people think that Joseph acted in this way? And the bottom line is people have some ideas, but they were flimsy to me. So I'll just say, I don't know why Joseph acts this way, but this is the story, and so this is what we're going to tell. And so Joseph begins to treat his brothers roughly, the Bible says. And he begins to accuse them, you're spies. You're not seven brothers who came down here innocently to buy grain. You're spies, and you came to see the nakedness of the land. You're going to try to attack us. You're going to try to manipulate the situation. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We promise that's not us. That's not what we're doing. We're just, we're 12 humble brothers. We've lost one brother. There's one other brother who our dad loves and he's back home and it's just us 10 dudes. And we're just here to try to get some grain and go back home. We, we, we mean nothing by it. We would not seek to do that to you. And, and Joseph continues to press them. No, you're lying. You're spies. And they go back and forth. And Joseph says, okay, I'll tell you what. We're going to see if you're telling the truth. You're going to go home and you're going to fetch this younger brother that you say you have. And you're going to bring him back to me. And if you can bring him back to me, then I'll trust you and believe you. And we can continue to do business. If you can't bring him back to me and you show up here again, I'm going to kill you because I know that you're spies. And just to make sure that you're going to go get him and come back, one of you is going to stay here as my prisoner until they come back. You're going to leave him as a deposit on the life of your other brother and of yourselves. And so they talk amongst themselves and they decide that Simeon was going to be the one to stay behind. Simeon was clearly the second least favorite brother. That would have been a tough conversation. He's going to stay behind and be thrown in jail. And the rest of the brothers are going to go back and get Benjamin. So that's what they do. Simeon hands himself over and the brothers pack up and they head home. Before they headed home, Joseph went to his steward and he said, take all the money that they paid us for the grain and put it back in their grain satchels. We don't want their money. And the steward says, all right, so he does that. So on the way home, the brothers discover that their money has been returned. They open up the grain to look at it, probably just to stare at it and look at the grain and we did a great job. But then they see the money in there and they're freaked out. Oh no, that guy, that master, they don't know it's Joseph, but Joseph is going to think that we stole this money. We're in a heap of trouble. So then they get all worried and stressed out about that. They eventually get home. Dad says, how's it go? And they told Jacob everything that happened. The guy down there spoke roughly to us. He accused us of being spies. It was really pretty difficult. It was stressful there for some minutes, but he sent us home. Simeon's down there. He's in jail. We got to take Benjamin back to this guy. This guy wants to see Benjamin for some reason to believe us that we're not spies. And then we can get Simeon out of jail and we can come back and we can be one big happy family again. And oh, by the way, for some reason we found the money in our sacks of grain and we don't know what to do about it. We think we might be in trouble when we get back there anyways. And Jacob gets ticked at him. Jacob says, why did you tell that man that you have a brother? What'd you do that for? And they're like, what'd you want from us? How were we supposed to know that he was going to ask us to come back and get our brother? And so they go back and forth about it. They say, dad, let us take Benjamin. We'll go back down. We'll get Simeon. Everything will be straightened out. We'll come back. We'll have the food that we need. It'll be good. And Joseph or Jacob says, no, absolutely not. Can't do it. And Reuben, the, comes up with this idea. He says, listen, I swear on the life of my sons, I will go and I will get Benjamin for you. And if I don't come back with Benjamin, you can kill my two boys, which is one heck of a promise from a dad. And then can you imagine being a grandfather that's like, deal. Yeah, I've always found those two annoying anyway. They're my least favorite grandsons. But even at that, with that kind of guarantee, Jacob says, no, absolutely not. We're not discussing it. And so we turn to chapter 43. In chapter 43, they're hungry again. They're out of grain. And Jacob says, boys, it's time to go back to Egypt and get the grain. And Judah says, I mean, okay, dad, but we got to take Benjamin with us. Nope, can't take Benjamin. They go back and forth about it. Judah swears on his life. Dad, we need this. We've got to go do it. We can't show up without him. We'll bring you back Simeon. And Jacob is angry. And he says, you boys have already cost me the life of my son Joseph. And now I've also lost Simeon. And you want to heap this grief upon me. You're going to lose Benjamin too. And when you do, it's going to kill me. And you're going to have to carry my gray beard down to Sheol, which is what they explained the afterlife to be at that time. But Judah gets him to relent and they take Benjamin and they go back down to Egypt. But before they go, Jacob knew the art of the deal a little bit and he sent them with a bunch of gifts and all the finest things from the land. He sent them with double the money to pay for the first grain and then buy another thing of grain to kind of grease the skids a little bit to keep this guy happy down in Egypt. And so the boys go. They get back to Egypt, and they find Joseph's steward and Joseph says, oh, or the steward says, oh, it's good to have you back. Joseph would actually like to have a meal with you guys. And they're like, oh no, he's gonna kill us. He's bringing us to his house. He's gonna put us to death. He's not gonna believe us. He's gonna take our money and that's the end of us. And they're really nervous and they even told the steward, listen, we hope that he's not mad. We found money in our sacks on the way back. We didn't take it. We don't know how it got there. We've brought double here to pay for the grain that we took the first time. And the steward actually responds to them and says, the Lord your God put that money in those sacks himself. I have received the payment for what you took. You're good. And so maybe they could begin to sense that something was up with us. So the next day they go into Joseph's house. Now they're in his personal chambers, personal house. And they're having a meal with him. And as Joseph goes to prepare for the meal, he looks and he sees his brother Benjamin, but Benjamin still doesn't recognize him. And so Joseph continues to play dumb. And he looks and he says, is that your youngest brother? Have you brought him with you? And they said, yeah, this is our youngest brother Benjamin. And scripture tells us that Joseph was so moved with warmth, it says, that he had to go back to his chambers and weep for a little bit and compose himself before he could come back out. And when all the food was served, everybody received a great portion, but Benjamin got five times the portion of everyone else. And they had this big feast and they were merry. And Joseph began to press on them a little bit. He said, you mentioned a father, an old man back where you're from. Is he still alive? And they said, yes, he's old, but he's alive and he's longing to see his son Benjamin again. So we need to get on the road. And Joseph says, okay, you guys can go ahead. And when they go ahead, he tells the steward, put the money back in their sacks again. And this time I want you to take my silver cup and I want you to put it in the youngest one's bag. I want you to put it in Benjamin's bag. So the steward does as he's asked. The next day, the brothers leave. And after they had been gone for a little while, Joseph again gets his steward and he says, I want you to chase them down. I want you to find that cup and I want you to accuse them of theft and bring them back. I want you to arrest the one who stole it. The steward's like, all right. I wonder how many times the steward had to do things like this for Joseph. Like, was this weird or was this just normal? Anyways, he tracks the brothers down and he comes to the brothers and he says, what have you done? We have given you nothing but good and you repay us with evil. And they're like, what are you talking about? And the steward says, one of you stole something that belongs to Joseph. And they said, go through our bags, arrest whoever did it. And so it was discovered that it was in Benjamin's bag and the brothers are beside themselves. This is the very thing that cannot happen. So the steward arrests Benjamin, brings him back to Joseph's house and the brothers pack up and they go back to Joseph's house because they got to figure this out. And in chapter 44, you see this impassioned plea from Judah who goes to Joseph. And he says, he says, please understand, we didn't do this on purpose. We are simple shepherds and farmers. We are just trying to get this grain back to our family. I know you think we stole this cup. We didn't. And I know that you think it was Benjamin that stole it. He didn't. And please, I'm begging you, if you keep Benjamin here and we have to go home and tell that old man that you asked about that his son Benjamin is in prison and is probably dead. He is going to die on the spot. His life is intertwined with the life of Benjamin. And he is too old and he loves him too much. And his heart cannot bear the news that he would have lost his son because he's already lost his brother. And that broke his father's heart. And he can't take it again. So please, Lord, take me and put me in prison and let Benjamin go home. And it was at this point that Joseph was so moved that he just broke down. And we pick up the story in chapter 45 and I want to read to you what it says because I think it's so powerful. And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please. And they came near. And he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And listen. God sent me here, but sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. We're going to remember those verses next week. He tells his brothers, don't feel bad. Because earlier in the story, when he was first accusing them of being spies, Reuben muttered to his brothers, you guys understand that this is punishment for what we did to our brother Joseph, right? We reap what we sow. Now we're finally getting punished for that terrible thing that we did. And Joseph heard them and he understood them because he didn't need an interpreter. And so here, as they reconcile and he reveals himself to them, he's saying, don't worry, don't carry guilt about that. What you intended for evil, God worked for good. What you thought was gonna be terrible for me, God was working the whole time. You think you sent me to slavery in Egypt? You didn't. That was God pulling the trigger. It's the same realization that Jacob had. It's been God pulling the strings all along. And then the scripture says that they hugged and they kissed each other and they wept. And then they sat and they talked about all the things. I don't know that there's a conversation in all the Bible I would rather get to hear than to sit in that room and listen to Joseph and his brothers catch up and tell all the stories about all the things in Canaan and for them to hear all the things that happened to Joseph over the years. What a sweet, sweet reunion that must have been. And what a picture of the incredible sovereignty of God as he wove those things together to bring that day about. Shortly after this, word gets out to Pharaoh and the palace that those men who keep coming back here for grain, those are actually Joseph's long lost brothers and Pharaoh's overjoyed. And he goes to Joseph and he says, bring your family here. Go get your father, bring the whole clan down here. I'm gonna give you the land of Goshen. It's this really fertile, good, vibrant land. Your family can live there. They can have it. No one's going to mess with them. We'll give them the protection of the sovereign nation of Egypt. Go get your dad. And he gives them wagons and he gives them riches to go back. It's basically, he says, here's a bunch of U-Hauls. Go load up everybody and bring them back here. And so the brothers go, and they're overjoyed. And they get back to Jacob, and they tell him the good news. They say, your son Joseph, he's alive, and he's second in command over all of Egypt. And it says that Jacob was numb, and he couldn't process the news. And so they brought him near and they repeated to him, Joseph is alive and he's waiting for us to come and see him. And it says that Jacob looked out and he saw all the wagons and all the riches and all the gifts, and he believed his son. And he said some incredibly profound words in response to all of this. At the end of his life, after all the striving and all the stress and all the worrying and all the wondering, he looks out to the news that his son is alive and that he will see him again. And he says this, and Israel says in Genesis 45, 28, it is enough. My son Joseph is still alive and I will go see him before I die. And this week, for just a weird set of reasons, I was doing my sermon prep on a bench outside of Starbucks at North Hills, and I read the whole story to get a sense of it. And when I got to this phrase, when I got to Jacob at the end of it, looking out after his whole life of striving, and he could see God's provision, and he understood the story, and he understood the plan, he said, it is enough. And I wept. I put my head in my hands like a crazy person in public and I just cried on the bench. Because it's enough. Because how remarkable is it for Jacob to have gone through everything that he went through? All the ups and all the downs and all the hopes and all the dreams and all the strivings and all the realizations and all the healthy times of faith and all the impoverished times of faith, all the arid times and all of the fruitful times. All of the striving and wondering about his sons and the grief that he had gone through and lamenting the loss of Joseph and probably wishing he'd have done things differently and all the stress about sending Benjamin down and how is my family going to survive in the midst of a famine and all the worries that a man would have carried with him throughout his entire life as he went through all of those griefs and all of those trials and to arrive at the end of it and look at the blessings of God and see how he wrote the story and say, it is enough. And I didn't just weep for Jacob. I wept for us too. Because there's coming a time in all of our lives when we will collectively say, it is enough. It's good. If you're struggling with infertility, there's coming a time when you will say it is enough. We struggle. And I look at John and Lily, and it's enough. If your marriage is going through lean years, and it's a struggle, and it's hard, but you trust God with it, there will be a day where you say, it is enough. All the struggles and all the trials of raising kids and hoping that they turn out right and running the business and working out the things and all the things that stress us and keep us up at night. All the things that keep us worried. All the financial situations and should we move or should we should we do this, or how do we handle this situation, or our kid has crippling anxiety, and we don't know what to do, or I've struggled with depression, and I don't know what to do, all the things that stress us out over all the years, God is in heaven, and he is sovereign, and he loves you, and he has a plan for you, and there will be a day coming in this life or the next where you say, it is enough. And there will be all these little it is enoughs all along the way. Where you look at your situation, you look at your life and you go, this is good. I understand God's plan now. It is enough. But there's one big one coming at the end of time, which is what the whole next series in Revelation is about, where Jesus returns and makes the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, and we say together, collectively, it is enough. And this is so beautiful, because it's the hope that we cling to. It's the one that won't put us to shame. It's the ardent and fervent belief that keeps me clinging to what I do and keeps me believing in church and keeps me believing in faith and keeps me believing in Jesus that one day, even with all the stuff that doesn't make sense, right? Even with all the human suffering, even with early diagnosis that don't make sense to us, even with losses that don't seem fair, even with all the things that we go through that just don't make any sense to us and we can't fathom that God would let that happen. What we'll know is that one day we will be in heaven before God and his throne and we will see Jesus face to face. And on that day, in that place, we will say, it was always enough. And this is enough. That's the promise of faith. That if you believe in Jesus, one day you'll say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is enough. Let's pray. Father, you're enough. You're everything that we need. Father, I know that you have a plan for us. I know that you didn't stop weaving stories together when you wrote Joseph's. You didn't stop making plans for your children when the Bible was finished. But you still do those things today. So Father, I pray that for those who are in a time of plenty, that as good and blessings abound, that they would look around and be grateful at your provision. God, for those who are in lean times, who are in uncertain times, would they cling to the truth that you have a plan and that that plan is enough, that plan is good. God, for those of us walking through hard times, will you just give us the strength to cling to you? To have a faith that surpasses understanding? Will you help us to trust in you, God? It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.