Sermons tagged with Guidance

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

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. Happy New Year, and thank you for choosing to spend your first Sunday of the year in church here at Grace. I'm excited for this year, for all that it holds for our church and all the things that hopefully God has for us this year. I think 2020 is going to be a huge year in the life of Grace. As we launched the year, I wanted to start with a series that would be helpful for everybody. So if you're here this morning, wherever you are on the spiritual spectrum, if you're one who would say, you know what, I'm not even really sure that I'm a believer or that I want to be, but I want to try the church thing. I want to try to understand faith a little bit more. If you're here as a representative of a New Year's resolution to attend more regularly or whatever, or if you're somebody who has really highly prioritized your relationship with God for a long time, my goal for this series is that it would be practically useful for all of us, that you'd be able to take things home every week and really kind of assess, how do I implement these things in my life? I'm hopeful that this can be a very helpful series. That's why it's called I Want a Better Life. I don't think anybody, if we said like, how's your life right now? Is there anything that you want to be better? Very few of us would say like, I'm killing it. I mean, there's nothing else that I could find. Like, Kyle Tolbert's the only person I know who'd be like, nope, totally happy with everything in my life right now. This is fantastic. Kyle's our super energetic student pastor, for those who don't know. So we all want a better life, and so next week, we're going to look at, I want better kids. We're going to look at parenting. Then the week after that, I want a better marriage, which I know that there's only a couple of marriages in here that really want to be better. The rest of you are doing great. For those few, we're going to talk about wanting a better marriage. Then the last Sunday of the month, I'm really excited about, we're going to talk about, I want a better me. Mental health has come to the fore of our culture, and I think as a culture we have an increasing awareness of that. And so I want to take a week and look at mental health and what it means for a believer to be mentally healthy and how the church can accept and embrace and rally around the mental health of us individually and of the people in our lives. So I'm excited for that week. This morning, I wanted to start 2020 by talking about our schedules. So this morning is I want a better schedule. I wanted to talk about our schedules because I feel like as a culture, we are busier now than we've ever been. I feel like there are so many pulls and so many pressures and so many different things and obligations and senses of ought that pull us into things that we just give our days and our mornings and our evenings away to, that as a group of people, as a culture, a society, I think we are very likely busier than ever. I remember when I was a kid, which was in the 80s, which for me feels like a long time ago, I saw somebody tweet the other day, or I guess it was on January 1st, that we are now as far away from 2050 as we are from 1990, which is super depressing. But in the 80s, when I was growing up, man, Sundays, I just saw somebody over there doing the math like, they're very slow. I saw, in the 80s, you didn't schedule anything on Sundays. Sundays was a blackout day. There's no nothing on Sundays because Sundays was church day. I even remember growing up, you didn't have practice on Wednesday night. Nothing was scheduled on Wednesdays. That was a sacred day too. And now, man, like all gloves are off. Everything can be scheduled at any time. And people will obligate you to things so quickly. We took Lily to preschool to start that. And on orientation night, there's a large sign-up sheet that everybody just stares at you as you stare at it. And they're watching you. Where are you going to write your name? Surely you're not going to walk out of here without writing your name on something. And I thought, bad news for you guys. I'm not volunteering for anything. And I didn't. But my wife is sweet. Jen is so nice. So she signs up to be library mom, not knowing that it means like once a week she has to pick up books from the classroom and then take them to the library and then check out all the other books that the preschool now wants, which is funny because the amount of money we give the preschool every month seems like they can afford books, but what do I know? So that's what Jen does like every other day, but she loves it and she's continued to do it, but there are opportunities and things that get our time so frequently. I actually hold, I don't think that there is a busier season of life than that of parents of elementary and middle school kids. From a pastor's perspective, I get to see kind of all seasons of life and which groups of people can engage in which activities in the church. And the hardest ones to grab a hold to are parents who have kids in elementary and middle school. And it's not because they don't care about spiritual things. It's because they legit don't have time for anything. I had some of the moms in the church who have kids in that demographic. I emailed them and I said, hey, can I have your schedules? I just want to get a sense for how busy your lives are. Y'all, it was crazy. It was crazy. As I read through their schedules, literally stem to stern every day. The thing that stuck out to me most was one of the moms who has three kids put, I'm just reading her schedule every week. These are the consistent things every week. And it was all the time. And then she said, there's an asterisk, and the asterisk says, these are the activities that we can predict. There are unpredictable activities such as all these things, right? Swim meets and committee meetings and mom things and dance recitals and all the other stuff that fill up all the time. And she had a note on Friday afternoon. The schedule on Friday afternoon was from four to six o'clock, free time, nothing to do, smiley face emoji. For two hours on a Friday. That's it. That's the free time that the whole family has together. And I thought, my goodness, that's so busy. And some of us can relate to that. So listen, I'm not here this morning to demonize busyness. It's not inherently wrong to be busy. As a matter of fact, in defense of the moms that sent me their schedules, they made each of those decisions as a family. And sometimes you're just in a busy season or a season of hustle, and that's all right. So I don't want to demonize busy, but I do want us at the beginning of this year to think critically about how we assemble our schedules. How is it that we allow things to be put on our schedule? I also want to say up front that in our culture a little bit, we wear our busyness on our sleeve like a badge of honor, like being exhausted is a thing to be respected. That's stupid, right? That's all I have to say about that. That's a dumb thing. We shouldn't be proud of how busy we are. We should accept it if we choose to be busy, but it's not a thing to be admired that someone else is so busy that they can't wake up and look in the mirror and think, I feel rested. That's too busy maybe. But I think a bigger reason why we end up so busy with our time so obligated is that we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's builds a menu. Okay, we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's, the restaurant, builds a menu. Now, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know how much fast food is a part of your world. Fast food is a large part of my world. It always has been. It is near and dear to me. I'm in a weight loss bet with my dad and my sister right now, and so it is not a part of my world, but I think I'm going to lose the weight by about March, which means come April, back to Hardee's, baby. But if fast food is not a part of your world, then you don't know that in the early 2000s, Hardee's, as a restaurant, just completely forgot who they were. They did breakfast. They did biscuits. We know about biscuits. The rise and shine biscuits or whatever they are. Those are delicious. But then they said, let's get into burgers and let's do roast beef sandwiches and let's have curly fries and let's do chicken tenders and let's serve fried chicken. And how about soups? I'm pretty sure at one point there was an experimental deli counter at a Hardee's somewhere. I would have loved to have been in the boardroom just listening to these meetings where some intern says, you know, I think Arby's is making some real hay with that roast beef sandwich and curly fries. We need to get into that market share. And the rest of the really smart executives around the successful restaurant board went, yeah, sounds good. Let's do a roast beef sandwich. Let's figure it out. And they just started adding things to the menu. If you were paying attention, it was just this total hodgepodge. They did everything. I can't imagine what their inventory looked like. And then when that failed, they just went to, let's just do really ridiculous attention-grabbing commercials, and nothing worked. And the thing is with the Hardee's menu is none of the things were bad, right? Roast beef sandwich, that's good, but let's just let Arby's do it. Fried chicken, that's great. Let's leave that to Popeye's. They didn't do that. They just kept adding all the things. Anytime anybody suggested a good thing, boom, got put on the menu. And it led to disorganization, and it's not a very good restaurant. So I think that what we need to do is we need to build our schedules a little bit more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's. We need to build our schedules more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's because I think that we do what Hardee's does sometimes. Somebody suggests something that seems like a good idea, and we're like, yeah, I mean, I guess I should. We go to preschool, and there's a sign-up sheet, and everyone's staring at you, and my sense of awe is going to make me sign up for something. I can't leave here disappointing these strangers that I don't know again. Or we do the same thing with PTA, or it's time to coach ball, or it's time to be on the committee, or Nate called me and asked me to do this thing, and I really don't want to do it, but it's the pastor. I feel like I have to. So we just, when we get good ideas, we put that on the calendar, we figure it out, and we build it like Hardee's builds their menu, and maybe we need to build our schedule more like Chick-fil-A. Now, we know about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A does one thing, chicken. That's it, chicken sandwich. And then they grilled it. And then with an act of Congress, they made it spicy. That's it. That's all they do. And you know that there's been some pretty good ideas in the boardroom at Chick-fil-A over the history of the restaurant. You know people have suggested some really good stuff. Why don't we do rotisserie chicken? No. We do chicken sandwiches. This is all we do. And the other thing I love about Chick-fil-A, if they put something on the menu and it's not working, get it out of here, man. They're ruthless about it. They really streamline what they allow there. They don't have a chicken salad sandwich anymore because they got away from the old one that was mashed down and in the warm bag and was delicious and they tried to go fancy and that didn't sell. And so now they don't have one because if it's not doing what it's supposed to do, get it out of here. They really streamline their menu. And I think that we need to build our schedules like that. So the question becomes, how do we build our schedules like Chick-fil-A builds a menu? How do we streamline it according to what's important to us, so that we don't live our life by default, so that we don't look back on the last year and go, how in the world did I invest my time? How do we do that? Well, I think that there's a biblical principle to help us, and we can find it in Matthew chapter 6. If you have a Bible and you want to turn there, go ahead. The words will be up on the screen in a minute. Matthew chapter 6 is the Sermon on the Mount. It's in the middle of it. It's Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It's Jesus' first recorded public address. I love it so much that we did a whole series on the Sermon on the Mount one time. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is just dispensing wisdom and instruction for life. And in chapter 6, he says this. Verse 19, the words on the screen are going to start in verse 20 don't matter, that are temporary. And the purpose of this morning, don't invest your lives, don't invest your time, don't invest your effort and your energy and your talent and your resources in things that don't matter, but rather treasure up for yourselves, make priorities of the things that will matter for eternity, of the things that will matter after you're gone. Orchestrate your life around those things, treasure those things. And so, to me, the very obvious question in light of, in thinking about our schedules and in light of this passage and this principle is what are my treasures? What are my treasures? And normally when I do a note like this, I say, what are your treasures? It's me talking to you, but I really want you to internalize it this morning and think through what are my treasures? What are the things that are most important to me? What are my biggest priorities? And I was always told growing up, if you want to know what someone treasures, look at their bank account and look at their calendar. Look at how they invest their resources. How do we spend our time and how do we spend our money? And so if we think about time, if I were to go home with you or grab your phone and look through your calendar from 2019, what would your calendar say about what your treasures are? Because you can't fake that, right? We can say, oh, God's most important to me, my family's most important to me, or my friends, or whatever it is, my job's most important to me. We can say whatever we want is most important to us, but all we have to do is look through our appointments and the way that we spent our time, and we'll know what we really value. If we could follow each other around on the weekends, what would we learn about each other that we value? If we could see each other in the evenings during our discretionary time, that one family in the hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, what would we learn about what they value? If we were to look at our schedules and our calendars from 2019, what is it that we treasure? And so what I want us to do this morning is a little bit of homework. In your bulletin there, there's the question, what are my treasures? And there's five blanks, okay? I don't want you to fill those out here. What I'd love to invite you to do is take the bulletin home with you and prayerfully think through, God, what are the things in my life that you want to be most important to me? A better way to ask the question is, God, what are my God-ordained treasures? What would you have be important to me in 2020? How would you have me prioritize my life? I think it's a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of the year to take that home and sit down and prayerfully say, God, what do you want to be important to me? What have you placed on my heart that I need to value? And it's actually a helpful exercise. I did it this week. I just sat down and I thought, if I'm going to ask everybody to do this, I need to do this for myself. I haven't written down my priorities anywhere. I just kind of go. And a lot like Hardee's, my schedule by default just kind of happens. And so if I were to be intentional about building my schedule and listing my priorities, how would I list them? And so I'm going to share them with you this morning, not because they need to be yours and not because you need to copy my list, but just as an exercise of trying to figure out what should be important to us. And then how do we organize our life around those things? So these are my top five priorities in my life as I thought through them this week. You see, the very first thing up there is spiritual health, my relationship with God. The Bible has a lot to say about pursuing God. David writes in Psalms that as the deer pants for the water, so his soul longs after God, that that's how much we should long for God. I almost preached out of a passage where Jesus is interacting with Martha and Mary in Luke, I believe chapter 10. And in that story, Jesus is going to Martha and Mary's house. And Martha is doing what most of us would do and is scrambling around getting everything right, making sure the table's set correctly and that the napkins are folded and that the room that Jesus is never going to go in in a million years is vacuumed and that the curtains are just right. She's doing all the things that you're supposed to do. This is the Messiah, after all, and he's coming to my house. I'd like for it to look nice. And she gets upset because Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary's just sitting there soaking in Jesus's presence. And Martha thinks she's lazy and she gets on to her. Hey, you should help me. And Jesus actually defends Mary and says, Martha, Martha, you are concerned about all of these things, but only one thing matters, and Mary's figured it out. So I believe that if you're a believer, this is the one where I would say you should really write this down too as your top priority. But don't do it unless you mean it. Our spiritual health has got to be our most important thing to us. Because here's what I know about myself. I don't know what you've learned about yourself as you've pursued spiritual health over the years or as you've considered it, but for me, I'm a better everything when I'm walking with the Lord. I am more gracious with my time. I'm more magnanimous with other people. I'm more patient with inconveniences. I'm more considerate of Jen, my wife. I'm more present with Lily, my daughter. I behave better in elder meetings. I'm nicer to the staff and don't want to get out of meetings as quickly. I leave my door open a little bit more often so I can chit-chat, which is not really a thing that Nate loves to do. But when I'm walking with the Lord and he's filling me up, I become a more gracious and more kind version of myself. And I become a better husband and I become a better father and I become a better pastor and I'm walking in a sense of joy and contentment and completeness that I cannot experience away from the Father. So I would be a very strong advocate to putting as your number one priority your spiritual health. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're thinking things through, I would still submit to you that probably the most important thing in your life is being spiritually healthy. I think if you go down that path, it will lead you to serve the same God that I do. But I think for all of us, this is a pretty compelling top spot. Next for me is Jen. It's my wife. In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about marriage, and he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, who gave himself up for her. So if we look at Jesus, his first priority was to God and being obedient to him, and then his next priority was the church. And husbands, that's how we are to love our wives. We're going to talk about this in a couple weeks, so I'm not going to step on that too much. But my Bible tells me that I am to sacrifice my life for my wife. I'm going to lay myself down for her, and I will, listen, I'm up here preaching this to you. She's sitting right there. She knows I don't do this all the time, all right? So let's not act like you should be like me in your marriages. No, we should work on this together, right? No, we don't want any liars up here. We're doing our best. But I know that this is how I should prioritize that. And what does it look like to prioritize these things? If we're to say that spiritual health is my number one priority, then what does it look like as far as building our schedule to do that? Well, first we have to identify the things that make us healthy. I think it's time in God's Word and time in prayer. And so for a lot of us, that might mean adjusting our schedule and going to bed a little earlier so we can get up a little earlier. Cutting out that last episode of whatever it is. Being willing to not see the end of the game, which by the way, go Titans last night. So that we can get up earlier the next day and invest in spiritual health. Maybe it means next week signing up for a small group and prioritizing that in our schedule. Maybe it means not committing to the things that are going to require our time on Sunday morning or some other time where it can be spiritually helpful to us. Maybe it means paring down some of the things in our schedule so that we can have more time for God. And if we think about prioritizing our marriages, I think anybody who's in here who's married, their spouse would be in the top at least three, okay? If that's not it, come see me. But how do we practically schedule for that? I know for us, it's going to mean me being more intentional about finding babysitters and getting out to spend time together. It's intentional about getting home for meals, not stopping by in the middle of the day if it's a full day. We can't just say that these are our priorities. We have to think practically about, okay, if those are my priorities, then how does my schedule mirror that? After Jen is my daughter Lily. I think she has to be after Jen. And if parents, if we're not careful, we'll let the kids sneak up over our spouse, won't we? But I think one of the best things I can possibly do for Lily is to love her mom in such a way that she wants what we have when she grows up. What a thing to say about your parents that they might want that. I think one of the best things for Lily is to grow up in a house where her parents love each other. And listen, we don't have a perfect life or a perfect marriage. I'm just saying that this is what Lily is supposed to see. And it's what I want to give to her. I want to love Lily so well that when guys try to date her, she knows. You're not going to love me anywhere like my dad does. Forget it. I want to love her so well that she doesn't put up with dummies when she's in high school and college. I really do. And I have her listed above the church. And I'm just going to tell you guys this right now because I want her to know as she grows up and we lead this church together that she means more to me than you guys do. I want her to know that. I want her to never think, man, my dad loved those church people, and sometimes it felt like he didn't love me as much. I don't want her to feel that. I don't want her to feel like she's taking a back seat to my job. I do want her to feel like she takes a back seat to my wife because I want her to marry a guy that does that too. And we're going to talk about this next week, but Lily's got to be on there because God's called me to disciple her and to train her in spiritual health as well. After that, for me, are my family and friends. My immediate family and my friends, I lump those together because for me, friendships are super valuable. I believe what Solomon says in Proverbs when he says, the companion of the fools will suffer harm, but the companion of the wise will become wise. I believe in the adage, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future. We believe passionately that you need people in your life who love you and love Jesus and have permission to tell you the truth. And so for me, I prioritize friendships. And I prioritize them sometimes over my job because I believe that we all need safe spaces where we can be completely ourselves and completely vulnerable and still completely loved and accepted. That's a picture of godly biblical love. It keeps us sane. For me personally, I want to be your pastor for 30 years, not three years. And part of that and the help for me is having good friendships both inside and outside of the church that give me life where I can just be myself. So for me, I prioritize those. And then my job. You guys. I put it there because I think the tendency is, for any of us who have careers that we care about, is to allow that to leapfrog everything else in our life. Is to allow that to steal time from other things. And I hear often from people who are retired that one of their biggest regrets is working too much. And I don't want to say that. So on the front end, I try to constantly remind myself because it will eat me up. You guys know how it is with work. There's always more to do. There's always more to think about. There's always something else to be done. There's always the next hill to climb. There's always something urgent. There's always the phone call and always the email and always the thing to respond to. It's not going to go away just because you choose to respond to this one. The next wave is coming. So at one point or another, you have to draw a line and you have to say, these are my God-ordained treasures, and I'm not going to let this one overtake ones that it shouldn't. So we have to measure how highly we prioritize our jobs or whatever else may go there that tends to eat away at your time. So my hope is that you'll go home and you'll say, God, what are my treasures? What are my God-ordained treasures in my life? That you'll physically write them out and then ask this question, what would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? What would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? If I say these are the most important things to me in 2020, then what's it going to take to organize my life around those things? What am I going to have to give up? What am I going to have to reprioritize? Who am I going to have to willingly disappoint and say, I can't do this thing anymore because I'm going to prioritize these things? And if we ask that question, what's it going to look like if we radically reprioritize our life around these God-ordained treasures, I actually have an example of what that could look like. As I was thinking through this this week, there's a family in our church, Wynn and Elisa Dunn, and they've got two kids, one in elementary school, one in middle school. I think the daughter might be in middle school now too. I got to figure that out before they come in the second service and I offend her. But I noticed on their Facebook feed is a lot of pictures like this. I think, Lynn, we have a picture of their family. Yeah, that's them doing something involving harnesses. It seems very fun. They do stuff like this all the time, all the time. They are forever going on little family outings and vacations and retreats. As a matter of fact, listen, I don't check up on you when you don't come on Facebook, but often if I don't see them on Sunday, on Sunday afternoon or Monday, I'll see a picture of their family together somewhere. Family time is big for the Dunns. And so I called Wynn. I said, hey man, this might sound weird, but I'm doing a sermon on this. I kind of explained it to him. And I said, you guys seem to be hanging out as a family all the time. Your kids are in middle school, and they seem to still like you and want to be seen in public with you, which is a big win for Wynn. And so I asked him, like, what's your philosophy around family? Like, what led you to value it this way? And he goes, well, do you know my full story? I said, I guess I don't. And he told me that years ago, he had a really lucrative job. It was a very high-paying job, but it was a high-stress job. And it consumed him. This was in the days of Blackberries, and he was forever on it. It was ever-present. Dinners, weekends, vacations, it was always, when can you do this one more thing? When can you just take this call real quick? Can you just close this out? Can you just put out this fire? It was always a part of him. And he says it was causing a lot of stress in his marriage, particularly as they invited kids into this marriage. And now his wife is home caring for the baby and he's never present. And it was causing tension and it made things difficult. And the kids began to notice how committed he was to his phone and his job too. So much so that he told me that, I think it was about 10 years ago, they went to Busch Gardens as a family. And as he was getting out of the car, he said, you know what I'm going to do? And he took his BlackBerry out and he put it in the car and he shut the doors and he locked it. And he said, when he did that, everybody in his family started crying because we've got our dad. He's going to be present with us today. I'd love to be the ticket taker at Busch Gardens that day. What's the matter with you guys? Like no one made you come. You can go back home. But his family cried because now we get dad. And it didn't take too much longer after that until he looked at his life and he said, man, I'm prioritizing things that I just don't want to prioritize right now. And so he changed careers. He called an audible, left the very high paying job, changed careers and chose a career, chose an industry that would allow him to have more time with his family. Made an intentional choice to radically reprioritize his life around what he believed to be God-ordained treasures. He said that was nine years ago. I said, as you look back on that, do you have any regrets? Or was it just best decision you ever made? And he said, you know, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I think about the money and what would be possible if I had it. But no, there are no regrets. I love my kids. My kids love me. I have a good family, and it's so much more valuable to me than any resources that I could have. And so I'm praying that for some of us, this is just the nudge that you needed because there have been things going on in your life and you're too busy and you're too caught up and you see things slipping away from you that are important to you. And maybe the Holy Spirit's just working in your heart right now to say, hey, why don't you let some things go? Maybe this needs to be the year that you get okay with disappointing people. Where you realize, you know what? If the stranger's disappointed in me for not doing the thing that they want me to do, I'm going to be okay. Maybe we need to step away from things. I'll even say this. I want to be your pastor before I run the business of the church. If you need to step away from church things, sorry Aaron, for your own health, do it. Claim your schedule around your priorities. And in 2020, let's make some changes and reprioritize our lives around these God-ordained treasures so that when we get to the end of this year and look back on our schedule and we look back at how we invested our time, we go, yeah, I invested these things in treasures that matter for eternity so that we had a better year this year than we did last year. So I hope you'll do that. I hope you'll take the list home. I hope you'll pray through your priorities, and I hope that you'll have the courage to reprioritize your schedule around the things that you and God agree are super important to you in 2020. All right, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, I'm going to pray over the year, too, as we kick it off together, and then I'm going to dismiss and we'll go out into the world. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for you, for your presence, for your goodness, for how big and marvelous and miraculous you are, for how much you care about us, for how much you care about how we fill our time. Lord, I pray that we would be courageous in naming our priorities. I pray that we would be courageous in building our schedule around those. God, if we have to say no to some things, then give us the audacity to do that. If we need to say yes to some things, give us the discipline to do that. God, we know that decisions that we make and things that we resolve to do often falter and flutter. God, I pray that you would be with us and give us your strength to see these things through so that our lives might change in profound ways, God, if that's what you would have. Lord, I pray over this year, may all the events of this year conspire to draw every one of us closer to you. Will you overcome doubts? Will you overcome fears? Will you overcome hesitation? Will you overcome hurt? Will you speak to us in the triumphs so that we don't take credit for those? Will you speak to us in the tragedy, God, so that we don't get overly angry at those? Will you please conspire everything in our life to draw us more closely to you so that we might know what it is to walk with you? For many of us, God, make this the year where we finally break the chains of the old habits and walk in new habits. God, please bless this year and bless us as we walk in it. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

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

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. Thanks for being here on this Sunday, the last Sunday in our series called Best Practices. The idea behind this series is that I believe that there are some habits or some practices, some disciplines that we can develop in our life that are really the best disciplines or the best practices that anybody can develop ever. That if we'll develop these, if we will make these a part of our life, they will make us better wives and better mothers, better husbands and better fathers, better children, better employees and employers, better friends and better neighbors. They will make us better people. More importantly than that, if we will instill these disciplines in our life, we will know God better. We will know him more deeply. We will experience the joy and the peace that we believe God offers. So here's what I'm doing as we move through this together. I'm assuming that if you're here in June, that you care at least a little bit about your relationship with God, okay? I don't you know this in church parlance, in the church business, or whatever you want to call it, but summertime is not like high visitor attendance time. Summertime is people who mean it come to church. So if you're here, I'm assuming that you do care to some degree or another about your relationship with God. If you're here because you are checking it out and you're not sure yet and you wouldn't even say yet that I do have a relationship with God, then I hope that this is a way for you to just assess some things and analyze some things and kind of look at and get a peek at Christianity. But as we've been going through the series, we looked at some practices that are really best for us, like reading the Bible on a regular basis. We kind of looked at how to do that and what keeps us from doing that and how we can make that a part of our life. We looked at worship in the second week. Last week, we looked at prayer and this idea of reducing ourselves to the need to pray. Don't wait for life to do that to us, but go ahead and every day admit that there's things that we need God for and spend time in prayer. And in that way, we can move further to being obedient to that command to pray without ceasing, which is a really challenging instruction in Thessalonians. This morning, what I want to do is kind of clean up the series and mention a couple best practices, a couple spiritual disciplines that maybe are a little bit less heralded, a little bit less known, a little bit more forgotten. These all probably deserve their own week, but I'm excited about our next series. I wanted to get to it. This one's a tight four-week series, so we're going to kind of hit three different things this week. So my hope for you is maybe all three of these things are great for you and you can instill all of them. Maybe you're already doing one or two, but I hope that everybody today can take home something that they want to begin to instill in their life or a discipline that they want to renew in their life. So that's my goal for you. So as we look at these three practices that we're going to cover today, one of the less heralded spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines that I wanted to talk about is the practice of giving, the practice of being generous, the practice of giving of our finances. Now, as I say that, if you're thinking along with me, okay, if you're anything like me, then your thought process might go something like this, okay? We're doing a sermon on spiritual disciplines. First thing out of the gate is that I need to give to the church. It's pretty self-serving, dude. Like, you're going to get up there, you're going to tell me these are things God really wants me to do, and then the very first one is, bam, you should give to the church. Okay, listen, I don't blame you for thinking that. I would be thinking that if I were you, but a couple of things to clarify. First of all, when I talk about giving, it's only the second time I've talked about it since I became the pastor here two and a half years ago. But every time I do talk about it, I want to be sure that we cover this thing biblically. And I want to make some points. There's some ways that we talk about giving that just aren't true. The New Testament, which it doesn't mean the Old Testament isn't valuable, but the New Testament is our authority as we look for ways to live our life. The New Testament doesn't tell us to give 10%, and it doesn't tell us that we have to give to the local church. So when I say that we should give, that we should instill the spiritual discipline of giving, I'm not telling you that you should give 10% of your income to grace. That's not what I'm telling you. So in that way, it's not self-serving. What I'm telling you is the New Testament says that we should be a people who are generous, that we should be a people who give. Jesus talks about giving in such a way that he assumes that you will do it when you give. So it's to happen, when you give, give in such a way that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. We see a story about a widow that gave out of her poverty, and Jesus says that's a better, that's a bigger gift, a more meaningful gift than the wealthy person who gives out of their wealth, because her gift required faith, right? We see these instructions about giving, and we know that to give is a good thing. We know that that's something that the Bible talks about. But again, we're to give to God, give to things that are building God's kingdom. So it doesn't necessarily mean the local church. Paul does talk about this idea that if somebody is ministering to you and you're benefiting from that, that we should make it possible for them to continue to do that, that we should support them. But that's as close as we come to me being able to leverage the Bible to say that you have to give your money to grace. So that's really not what I'm talking about. Now, if grace is doing things that you believe in, that you want to support, then support it. Like Mikey, the guy that did the announcements, which is so well, I mean, he knocked those out of the park. When Mikey did those announcements, he told you guys that we were in Mexico right now, that we had two, that we had a team of students down in Mexico and that we're building two homes. I'll just tell you, those homes are $6,000 a piece. The missions committee that we have here, in their generosity, said, we want to go ahead and pay for you guys to build two houses so that two families who live on a dollar a day or less can have a home that they so desperately need just across the border in Mexico. They were able to do that because 10% of everything that's given to Grace goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. So if you've ever given, then you are a part of that. If you'd like to be a part of that moving forward, then you can give and you will be. Or if you'd like to be a part of other things moving forward, give to Addis Jamari, a great ministry going on in Ethiopia where they are cutting off sex trafficking at the front. They're nipping it in the bud before it even starts. They take girls that age out of an orphanage and they put them in a home and they disciple them and they teach them skills because there's a very high likelihood that they would end up in some sort of trafficking industry if they did not. And now they're going to the families that have to put up kids for adoption because they simply can't afford the children that they're having, and they're giving them training and investing money in them so that on the front end, those kids don't even have to go to an orphanage. So be a part of something like that. Be a part of faith ministry where our kids are now building homes for families that desperately need them. The instruction in the New Testament is that we should give and that we should be generous, that we should be conduits of God's generosity. And you may think, how is this a spiritual discipline? I know that that's something that we're supposed to do. I get it that that's instructed in the New Testament, but how are we supposed to do that? Why is that a spiritual discipline? And I would just submit that maybe we don't think about giving as a spiritual discipline because we've heard it taught poorly, or we've thought about it in incorrect ways. I've sat in services and listened to sermons before where people talk about giving as if it's some sort of investment scheme. They'll quote a verse in Micah, and they'll say, if you bring your tithe into the storehouse, then God's going to bless you and fill your barns. And it's almost this idea that if you'll give to the church, God's going to give you even more money. That's dumb. That's not how that works. Charitable giving isn't some sort of divine investment scheme, okay, where God just makes you rich because you give to other people. That's how jerks take advantage of ignorant people. That's how that works. So that's not true. It's not some investment scheme. Will you get blessed when you give? Absolutely. Is it going to be by more money in your account? Probably not. So that's not how that works. The other thing is we get guilted into it, right? God's done so much for you, the least you could do is give a little bit for him. And then it feels like this thing that we have to do out of obligation when really that's not what giving is. The reason I think that giving is a spiritual discipline is because giving builds your faith while we participate in God's goodness. Giving builds our faith while we participate in the goodness of God. I'll tell you why I think this. This was, and I have to preface this story. Jen is against me sharing this story because in this story, we stumbled into some obedience. I feel obligated to remind you that I'm an egotistical jerk and that I don't always do good things. But in this story, I'm going to do something good, okay? But now I feel like everything's balanced and that we're fine. About four years ago, I guess it was, it was December. Lily was due in January. Our only child was due in January. And we had managed to save up some money to have the kid and take the hit of Jen not being in work. Jen worked part-time. I worked at a church. I was a student pastor, a small groups pastor. And believe it or not, I did not make a ton of money. So for us to have money set aside was a big deal. We had about $5,000 set aside. And I'll just be transparent with you. we had not had that much money set aside in our marriage ever. So we were pretty thrilled that we had this amount set aside to be able to have Lillian be responsible for us to miss because she worked part-time as an office manager and she wasn't going to get those hours and we're going to have medical bills and you know how it goes. So we're feeling good about that. Well, then in late November, her car stopped working. So I had it towed to a guy that went to the church, a guy named Kelly McCart. And Kelly was looking at the car. He calls me one day. I was on the golf course. I mean, it's hard. We didn't have any money. By the way, I was golfing during work hours. I was on the golf course. He calls me. I said, hey, dude, how you doing? He says, I'm doing better than you will be. And I went, oh, no. I said, what's up? He goes, it's the engine. I said, ugh. He said, it needs to be replaced. And I'm like, what do I do? Do you think I should do it, or do you think I should just trash it and buy a new car? He goes, I think you should replace it. It's a good car. It's a Toyota 4Runner. I said, all right, how much is it going to cost? He said, $5,000. Son of a gun. So I had to go home, and I think I waited a day or two to tell Jen. You know, like, how's the car? Eh, it's fine. You know, I didn't, I just didn't, she's a very pregnant lady and I didn't want her to have to deal with the stress that I was dealing with. Because it's like, my goodness, how, how are we going to pay our bills in January? Like, how are we even going to make it? I don't want to do the humiliating thing of going to my parents and be like, we're, we're screw ups. Can you please give us money? Like, I didn't want to do that. So I was just really stressed. In the midst of this, it was time to give the Christmas offering at the church that we went to. Jen and I had prayed about it, and we had conferred, and we had each agreed that we, that year, wanted to give $500. But then this thing happened, and now we don't have any money. But it's time for the Christmas offering to happen. And I prayed about it, and I just kind of felt, you know, if I can trust him with $500 when we feel secure about our finances, then I ought to be able to trust him when I don't. And I feel like this is what God has asked us to do. So we said, all right, we'll do it. And we gave the $500. Two days later, friends of ours from the church, our age, not like grandparents or something, peers come up to us, come up to me after a service, and they said, hey, we don't know why, but the Lord just kind of put you on our heart this week. So we just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and they handed me an envelope. I take the envelope home, and inside is a check for $500. Yo. So I kind of start crying a little bit. I show it to Jen. And to me, that was God's way of saying, I'm going to take care of you. I have 1,000 sheep on 1,000 hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I have a thousand sheep on a thousand hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I wish I could chronicle for you the ways that God showed up in January and February so that we didn't have any need. The way that he just took care of all the things that we were concerned about. I think because we were able to stumble into obedience in that situation. But the reason I'm sharing that story is because do you not think that after we decided to give that money and then saw God deliver us in that way, do you not think that built my faith a little bit? Do you not think that helped me trust God even more? And then the cool part is the family that did it, a family called, named the Calders, they had no idea what was going on in our life. And then after they gave it, I shared with them our story. Do you not think that built their faith a little bit? Of them just sitting there going, I feel a prompting that we should try to take care of Jen and Nate. You don't think that built their faith to do that? I think that when we give, we create opportunities for God to show up and show us that he's going to take care of us. When we give, we create opportunities to be on the other end of stories like that, to know that what we gave was used for something far better than whatever we were going to spend it on to begin with. And when we do that, not only does it build our faith, but it allows us to experience the goodness of God as we are conduits of his generosity. That's why I think that giving is a spiritual discipline. Because I think it's something that builds our faith. So if that's not a part of your life, I know, I know that's a tough thing. That's a hard thing. Just practically, it's a hard thing. And there's questions around giving. Do I give 10%? I think that's the tithe. Listen, the New Testament doesn't really tell you a percentage. I think 10% is a good baseline. But I would tell you to just try to get into the habit of regularly giving anything to any ministry that's building God's kingdom. And let God show up. Let that build your faith. Get some experience in participating in the goodness of God in that way. If that's not a part of your life and you want to know God and you want to follow these steps and you want to instill these practices in your life, just find a way that feels right to you. Pray about it. Father, what would you have me do? And give in that way and watch God show up. So that's the first thing that I would encourage you in today is the practice of giving. The second thing is the practice, and you guys are going to be like, what in the world is he talking about? The practice of content consumption. The practice of content consumption. Here's the idea. I'm not going to spend long on this. I don't think I need to make a whole bunch of flowery points around it. I think that you guys can understand this, okay? There's a verse that I love in Philippians. It's one of my favorite verses. It's in chapter 4, Philippians 4, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Now that's a challenging voice. That's a challenging verse. If you think about the things that you allow into your life, the things that you watch, the things that... This steps on my toes, too. The things that you're not even sensitive to on Netflix anymore. Right? The shows that you watch. You're like, but that show has all that stuff in it. Yeah, it doesn't really bother me. Should it? Think about the stuff that you allow into your life. And if it's obedient to this, whatsoever things are just, pure, lovely, commendable, honorable, excellent, there's anything worthy of praise or praiseworthy. Think about these things. How good are we doing at that? And so I just kind of think, if this is something that I want to do, if I want my mind focused on things that are obedient to Philippians 4.8, that are praiseworthy and honorable, and all of those things, that's what I want. How do I do that? How do I organize my life around those things? I think part of it is the content that we consume. And I would ask you, for in your life, besides Sunday morning, besides whatever comes out of my mouth on Sundays, which, that's a low bar, what spiritually nourishing things are you getting in your life? What else is spiritually nourishing you? Outside of random conversations you might have with your friends that you do find encouraging or conversations that you might have with your spouse that you find encouraging, what is in your life that is there to spiritually nourish you, to build you up spiritually? For years and years and years, for centuries, the only option has been to read. And if you're not a reader, if you don't like doing that, which I totally understand, then it's really difficult to consume any spiritual content during the week that's spiritually nourishing in any way, because reading was the option. If you are a reader, I would encourage you, make books that are spiritually encouraging a regular part of your discipline. In my personal quiet time, when I'm really doing it well, when I'm really walking in consistency, I'll read the Bible. I'll let that push me into a time of prayer. And then when I'm done praying, I'll read a spiritually formative book until Lily wakes up. That's kind of how it goes. So if you're a reader, then choose books that nourish you spiritually. But if you're not, I just want to, on a practical level, let you know that there are some really great options out there for you. And I want to talk to you about this idea of harnessing the dead spaces in our schedules because we're all very busy. But there's these things called podcasts that you should really listen to. They're phenomenal. If you don't know what podcasts are, ask someone around you after the service. We will give you a one-day moratorium of not making fun of you or even calling you names for that. Just ask somebody around you, what's a podcast? How do I find them? How do I assess them on my phone. All of you have phones and you can get podcasts on all of them, okay? These podcasts are great because all of the sudden I can listen to sermons from all over the world. I can listen to people have discussions about things that are spiritually formative from all over the world. I can listen to all kinds of people. Do you understand that for centuries and centuries and centuries, the only spiritually building, nourishing thing that people got was whatever their pastor said on Sunday. And that's a bummer. Now you have access to the best pastors in the world who are preaching every week and you can listen to their sermons every week. So I want to encourage you to look for the dead spaces in your schedule. If you have a commute over 10 minutes, use that to listen to something that's spiritually formative. If you go on a walk with your dog, put in some headphones, listen to something that nourishes you spiritually. When you're at the gym, can we just all agree that almost everybody in this room is old enough to no longer need pump-up music? Nothing that you're doing requires you to be pumped up, okay? Nothing. Nobody in this room, I'm looking at you right now, nobody in this room, except for maybe Mikey, is lifting any amount of weight that requires you to be jacked. So just listen to something. Listen to something that's helpful. Listen to something that informs you, that nourishes you, that encourages you, that's spiritually formative. I have a buddy, he goes to the church, I'll tell on him. He's not here this week, and we'll see if he mentions anything to me because he listened to the sermon. But Shane Smith, and he has Smith, he has to drive to Durham every day for work, and he started listening to sermons on his drives. That dude texts me questions a couple times a week. He's asking me stuff. He's wanting to understand Scripture. He's saying, hey, I heard this taught to me. What do you think of this? He is chewing on it. He's considering it. He shows up to my 6 a.m. Bible study. I have watched his life change over the past several months. And one of the biggest things is because he takes time in his day, he looks at that drive not as a burden but as an opportunity to consume some content that's going to nourish him spiritually. And it's changed him and his family. Look for those opportunities in your life and find things that we can listen to. On your bulletin there, I emailed some people in the church who I know listen to podcasts, and I compiled some there for you. So there's recommendations there if you need some. The other thing I would say on this point is there's an app called Audible. And that you can subscribe for like 14 bucks a month and download books. You get one book a month and then they read it to you. You can listen to it. So if you're not a reader, but you're jealous of all the people you know who do read and seem to have things to contribute at parties and at like Bible study and stuff, and you'd like to be one of those people, you can game the system and have somebody else read it to you while you cut the grass. That's really great. So you can subscribe to Audible and you can get these books going in your headphones. So I just want to impress upon you this idea of consuming content that can help you. I think it's a discipline that we should all have and be careful with. The last one I want to talk about today is the practice of fasting. The practice of fasting. Now, fasting's an interesting thing. Fasting shows up in the Bible a lot. And fasting, if you spend any time around church, is something that we've heard of. If you grew up in a Catholic environment or an environment that observed Lent, then you know the idea of fasting for 40 days from certain things. And so we all kind of understand what fasting is. But as I thought about it this week, to put it in front of you, there's a couple things that I thought were interesting. First of all, we can fast for a bunch of different reasons. In 1 Samuel, we see David fast because he's mourning. He's lost his son. He's mourning the loss of his son. And so he fasts and he's brokenhearted before the Lord. We also see David fast in repentance. He's done something that he very much regrets. He made a moral misstep. He sinned before the Lord. And as a form of repentance, he pursues God by fasting. And maybe that's what some of us need to do. Maybe some of us have something in our life that's just eating our lunch that we'd love to not be a part of our life, but it just persists and it just pervades and it's just always there. Have we ever fasted over it and said, God, please take this from me? There's this really interesting passage in the New Testament in Matthew where Jesus says that this type of demon is only cast out through fasting and prayer. Like it somehow intensifies our prayer. We can fast when we're seeking guidance. In Acts chapter 13, it says that the church was getting together, and after a season of prayer and fasting, that they set aside Paul and Barnabas to go on their missionary journeys. We can, when we don't know what to do, when we don't know what's next, we can set aside some time to fast and pursue God in that. But I think maybe the most interesting thing that I saw about fasting is that Jesus just assumes that you do it. See, I think that when we hear fasting, there's a part of us that goes, okay, that's for like, that's for the ninja Christians, right? That's for the Navy SEAL Christians. Like, I'm just regular, just getting by, trying to not do dumb stuff Christian. That's for like super intense, big time Christian. Okay. Do you know in the New Testament, there's no delineation. There's no stages of Christians. You don't get to be like a white belt while that dude's a black belt. You don't get to do that. We're all on the same path moving towards the same goal of walking with God and being disciples of God. And part of that path is this assumption by Jesus that we would fast. Because he tells us in Matthew, he says, when you fast, don't do it like the religious hypocrites do it. Don't walk around with a sunken in face and all sad and be like, what's wrong with you? Be like, I'm fasting because I'm super spiritual. Don't do that. Splash water on your face. Fake it. Try to sneak it by people. Don't let anybody know what you're doing. But the interesting thing to me is this assumption by Jesus that it's a part of your life. And I know that for me, I'm not speaking for you. I'm sure that I'm behind the bell curve on this and you guys are all way ahead of me. But for me, until recent years, that was not a regular part of my life. I still, I fast with the elders from time to time, and I'm still bad at it. Honestly, half the time I fast with the elders, I have to email them the day before and be like, guys, I'm so sorry. I made a lunch appointment tomorrow, and I'm definitely going to eat tacos. So I kind of ruin that for us. It's true. The elders are nodding their heads at me right now, like, yeah, we know. And they're secretly grateful for it, so don't let them talk bad about me after this. They like it when I do that. But it's not really a part of our lives. We don't do it as a regular thing. I bet most of us in here can't remember the last time we did it. But see, Jesus assumes that we fast. And he doesn't assume that it's for, the super intense believers. It's for all of us. And the more I looked into it and thought about what it meant and what it was and why would Jesus assume that we did this, the more apparent it became that it's this picture of something. There's a book by a girl named Margaret Feinberg. I think that's her last name. Is that her last name? Yeah. And it's called Taste and See. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, told me about it, and I started reading it. It's really good. It's gotten me firing on a bunch of different things. I'm really considering doing a whole series on food. I feel like I'm an expert on this. I could bring a lot to the table. See what I did there? Yeah. Okay, I feel like I could do a lot with that, and I want to expound more on this later. But fundamental to this book is this idea that God could have created us any way he wanted to. He could have had us nourish ourselves any way he wanted to. We could have gotten our energy from the sun. We could have worked on photosynthesis like plants. He didn't have to make people who had to eat. He didn't have to make people who had to eat so often, but he did. And it's interesting to think that maybe he did that as a constant daily reminder of our spiritual need for him. As a constant daily reminder that our appetite for food, our body's appetite for food should be the same as our spirit's appetite for God. And in that way, fasting is a physical reminder of a spiritual need. The more I started thinking about this, the more I realized that food is a picture. Every time we sit down at a table and we eat because we need it, that's a physical picture of what our spiritual body needs. And so when we fast, it's an acute reminder of that. It's an intense reminder of that. It forces us to focus on this picture that exists with us every day of our life. And every time we feel the hunger pangs in a fast, that's why some people say, well, you can fast from different things. You can fast from alcohol, or you can fast from social media, or I'm going to put down my phone, or I'm not going to do this, or I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fast from TV. And those are fine. But there's nothing quite like fasting from food. Because it's a physical reminder of a spiritual need. And as we feel those pangs of hunger, gosh, I wish I could eat right now. That's a reminder. This is how your spirit longs for God. I've even gotten to the habit of, on the occasion when I'm actually good at fasting, I'll get a little headachy. And it's really tempting because I still have a lot to do in my day. I'm usually still about to go to an elder meeting. I have other things that I have to accomplish. I'm trying to get a sermon done, whatever it is. And it's tempting to eat something because I've got to stave off this headache because I can't really do my job if I'm not feeling well. So I need to take care of myself. And I'll start to go down that road. But it's a reminder. The way that your body begins to ache because you haven't had food is the way that your spiritual body begins to ache when you're not locked into God. We don't feel it as acutely, and we don't feel it as immediately. And I think that's why God gives us this physical reminder all the time. When we don't eat, we know it. And when food is good, and the meal is good, and we're around other people, and we're around our friends, it's one of the best experiences in life. And I just think it's this one-for-one picture of our need for God. So fasting serves as an acute reminder of our spiritual need. And if nothing else, it brings to the forefront of our mind our spiritual need for God. And so if fasting isn't a regular part of your life, I would encourage you to try it. Try it and let that drive you into prayer. Try it and let that take you into a place where you admit and acknowledge your spiritual need for God. I had a friend who, he's got three boys. This is the worship pastor I used to work with in another church. For all three boys, the week they were born, he fasted for a week and prayed for them. Because those were his boys, and he wants them to grow up to be godly men, and so he pursued the Lord after them. If you've got a big decision coming up and you don't know what to do, have you fasted about it? If there's a sin in your life that's just kicking your tail and you'd love to be done with it, have you fasted about it? If you'd like to get into these spiritual disciplines more but can't seem to find that in yourself, have you fasted about that? I want to encourage you to consider the spiritual discipline of fasting. Now, as we wrap up the series, to me, there's this key question, the answer to which dictates all of our actions after being asked the question. So as we wrap up the series in light of all of these practices, the practice of reading scripture, the practice of worshiping God, the practice of prayer, of giving, of consuming the right content, of fasting, all these different things that we can instill in our life so that we could pursue God better, I think that there is a key question. And when I say key question, what I mean is the answer to this question really determines all of your actions after you answer it. And I get this idea from a book that Jen and I have recently been given. A lot of you know that cancer has become part of our reality and our family in 2019. And so when that became a part of our reality, people started giving us different things and somebody gave us a book. It's called Chris Beats Cancer. And at the beginning of this book, there's a question. And the question is, do you want to live? And it may seem like a simple enough question, but it's really profound in how you answer it. Do you want to live? Because what's about to follow in that book, what he's about to tell you to do, is for most people a radical change in your lifestyle and your diet and your habits. So he sets it up with, do you want to live? The implication is, if the answer is yes, then you'll be willing to do whatever it takes to live. If the answer is no, that's a different conversation. And for those battling that disease, that's a more tricky question than you would think. So I think it's this key question. Do you want to live? If you do, then you will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. And I think that there's a key question for us as we consider our relationship with God, and it's this. Do you want to know God? Do