Sermons tagged with OldTestament

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.

Well, good morning. Happy Easter to you. My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. It's great to see everybody in their bright Easter colors. My wife picked this shirt out for me. She told me that she was going to get the dry cleaning done because there was that pretty Easter colored shirt in the dry cleaning to be done. And I said, oh, which one was that? And she described it by saying, oh, it's the nice one that you got a couple of years ago. It was too big for you then. I think it'll fit you now. And as I buttoned it up this morning, I thought, dang it, if she's not right. So here I am. Listen, this is the 11th part of our series in John. We've been moving through John together. We've been timing it up to arrive at this sermon on this Sunday because this is Easter, man. This is the best day of the year. It really is. This is my favorite day of the year. This is the day where Jesus wins everything for all of eternity. This is the day when the disciples find an empty tomb, and what it means is that Jesus conquered death, and what it means is that we have a way to be reconciled with our Creator God for all of eternity. It is the victory of victories. It is absolutely, as Christians, what we claim, what we stake our hope on, and what we hold fast to no matter what. And Easter celebrates that day. So it is like the Super Bowl of Sundays to be able to preach to you on Easter. This is my third Easter that I've gotten to spend with you at Grace. And back in the fall, I knew that we were going to be going through John in the spring. And so I was reading through John in part in preparation for this series. And I arrived at a story in John chapter 20 about doubting Thomas. Some of you probably know the story. Thomas was a disciple of Jesus who, when he heard that Jesus had resurrected from the dead, he said, I don't really believe that. And then Jesus appears to him and he gives Thomas the proof that he needs to show him that he's actually Jesus and that he's actually risen from the dead. And I thought, man, what a great thing to be able to share on Easter how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts. And so that's what we prepared for, and that's what I prepared for, and that's what I had in mind as we approached Easter, and we mapped out the series, and I knew what all 12 weeks were going to be. And a couple of weeks ago, we made a video, and we showed it in here, and we said, hey, on Easter Sunday, Nate's going to preach about Doubting Thomas and how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts, and it's going to be great, and you should invite people. And that's been the plan. We even, we put it on Facebook and then Steve told me, Steve's our worship pastor, who they did great. Steve told me, hey, we boosted it on Facebook. I don't even know what that is. But I've been boosted on Facebook. I'm kind of a big deal now. I mean, some of you may even be here because we boosted it. And if you did, you're going to be bummed out because I'm not preaching what I told you I was going to preach. Last night at about 10.30, I'm not making this up, I saw a tweet of all things, and I knew that I had to do a different message. My wife is out of town. She's at home with her family, and you'll find out why in a second. And I was going to bed. I grabbed Ruby, Jen's dog that I don't like, and I went to take Ruby outside as just the final hassle of the day to let her go to the bathroom. And while I'm outside, I grab my phone. And my buddy, who I used to work with, a guy named Heath, had tweeted this out. And I saw it in the morning, but I really just kind of passed over it. But for some reason, it was at the top of my Twitter feed, and I saw it. And this is what it says. It says, Holy Saturday, silence, sadness, sorrow. At some point in our lives, we all go through a season of this day. Darkness surrounds us. Nothing is happening. Hope seems lost. Today is the best reminder that the silence of God does not equal the absence of God. Sunday's coming. And as I read that and reflected on what's going on in my own life, I knew that I could not trot out here this morning and preach to you about how Jesus responds to our doubts. Which is a shame because I had a nice alliterated point at the end. It was very pastory. It said, in the face of our doubts, Jesus responds with patience, pursuit, and provision. And I was really happy about that. Isn't that fancy? But I knew as I read that, I can't, on Easter, that because my life feels like a Saturday right now. At Grace, we're real. We're authentic. We're honest. I feel like it's part of our secret sauce. I feel like it's what makes us us. And as a pastor, it's what makes me me, that we tell the truth and we go from our gut. And I felt like to preach what I had planned to preach would be dishonest with you this morning because my life feels a little bit like a Saturday and I need Easter this year. I don't know if you've ever thought about the disciples' perspective on Saturday, but we've been going through Holy Week. And in Holy Week, Jesus on Palm Sunday enters into Jerusalem and sets in motion some mechanisms that are going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. And he knows to his resurrection the following Sunday. And each day during that week over history has been given a name like Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. And Saturday is called Holy Saturday. And I don't know if you've ever thought about Saturday from the perspective of the disciples. But the disciples were men who had walked with Jesus every day. They woke up every morning with him. They listened to him. They followed him. They loved him. They left their jobs for him. They left their lives for him. They put everything on hold for Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus says that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. So they followed Jesus even though they were basically couch surfing for three years because they believed so much in what he was doing. And over the course of those three years, they came to love that man and respect that man and want to mimic and emulate that man. And they had high hopes for that man. And on Friday, it all came crashing down. On Friday, they watched that man put up on the cross and get crucified. And we talked about that last week. They watched their hopes and dreams die on that cross. And I imagine on Friday, though there was sadness, there was also shock, not really knowing what to do, trying to process what had happened. But on Saturday, the disciples are sitting in a room with the door locked because they're fearful of the authorities that they're going to come in and get them and arrest them. And so they're sitting there with the door locked in sorrow and in silence, not knowing what to do. And it feels very much like their God let them down. It feels very much like God is not present. We had hoped in him, we had believed in him, and now he's dead and we don't know what to do. And they look to each other for hope and there was none there. And what the disciples don't know is what we know is that the next day they're going to find an empty tomb and that Sunday is coming. But on Saturday, they didn't know that there was hope for Sunday. On Saturday, it's just death. And on Saturday, death wins. And on Saturday, evil wins and despair wins and sorrow wins on Saturday. Because that's where they are. And that's what they know. And Saturday is sorrowful. It's solemn. And it's silent. And as I thought about that, and thought about how much my life feels like Saturday right now, and thought about how much I need Easter right now, I thought I can in good conscience roll out there and talk about doubts tomorrow morning. My life feels like Saturday right now because three weeks ago, they found a mass on my father-in-law's pancreas. My father-in-law is a man named John. I love John a lot. I have a deep and abiding respect for John. I've said this to some people and I mean it. He has, to me, character that looks more similar to Jesus than anybody I've ever met. There are times in my life when I don't know what to do, and I think, I wonder what John would do. And I try to emulate that. Jen loves her daddy very much. They're very close. Lily calls him Papa. That's what I called my Papa. And so it's been a tough three weeks. Three weeks ago, they found a mass, and then it's just a series of appointments and different things, and you don't get the answers that you want. If you've walked through it before, you know it's painfully slow. And then yesterday, on Saturday, we find out that it's stage three. The Internet doesn't have a lot of good things to say about people with stage three pancreatic cancer. And so it's sad, and it's hard, and we're hopeful. On Monday morning, he meets with one of the best pancreatic surgeons in the world who has devoted his whole life to eradicating cancer from the pancreas. If anybody can help him, it's this guy. And so we hope in that, and we're happy about that. And I was on the phone with his wife, Terry, yesterday, telling her, listen, we don't know anything for sure yet, so we cling to hope. But it's hard. And I'm texting with Jen yesterday because she's down there with her family. How you doing? How's it going? And she just says, it's really hard. My daddy's really hurt. He's not really himself. He doesn't have any energy. And for three weeks, we've been doing a lot of praying, but we don't feel a lot of answers. And so my life feels like a Saturday. God, where are you on this one? He's a good man. It doesn't feel like it's the time. And here's the thing. You have your Saturdays too. You've walked through some Saturdays, haven't you? You've walked through some times in your life that were hard, where it felt dark, where you looked around and you said, where's Jesus here? And you didn't know where the hope was going to come from. You've sat in some Saturdays. Some of you are in them right now. And Saturdays don't all look like loss. I know since I've been here for two years, I've walked with some people. I've watched some people in the church walk through Saturdays. We've walked through the stories of miscarriages together. That's a Saturday. That Saturday's happened in my life before. There are people here who have lost spouses far too soon and walked through that Saturday. One of our very special partners lost his 58-year-old brother a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere. That's a Saturday. Our old pastor lost his son this year. That's a Saturday. Those are Saturdays. And they come in other ways too. I had breakfast with somebody on Monday of this week. And he said, man, my life has just been really hard since about December. I really need to hear from God and I can't. I don't know where he is and I don't know what's going on and I don't know how this is going to get better. It's kind of hard to cling to hope right now. And I wish that I'd had my mind wrapped around this sermon when I met with him because I could have just said, dude, it's Saturday. It's Saturday. And sometimes it's sin that brings it on, right? I was prepared. Sometimes it's not just things that happen around us. Sometimes we bring on our own Saturday, if we're honest. Sometimes our life feels so dark because of the things that we've allowed into it, because of the addictions that we walk with, because of the private shames that we hold close to us, because of the things in our life that are in the dark corners of our life that we don't want to shed light on, that feel like they're owning us and feel like they're eating our lunch. And what we really feel like is we're hopeless in this situation. And I see the freedom that other people walk in, but I don't think I'll ever walk in that. I don't think I'll ever be a whole person. I don't think I'll ever experience the happiness and the freedom that the Bible talks about because I don't believe if you were to ask me, can I overcome this sin, you would say, I don't think so. That's a Saturday. And so last night, at about 1045, I realized, I got to talk about Saturdays, man. Because here's the thing. The disciples had a Saturday too. And they got up on Sunday and they went to the tomb. Actually, it was Mary. And she was expecting to go in and find the corpse and dress the corpse of Jesus with some perfumes and some oil and maybe pray over it. And she found an empty tomb there. Jesus wasn't there. But there was an angel there who looks at her and says one of the greatest lines in the Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen. What are you doing here, Mary? Jesus isn't here. He's alive. And she rushes back and she finds the disciples locked in that room in sorrow and silence. And she tells them and they run to the tomb to see it for themselves. Peter and John run out there. And in John's account, he makes sure to tell you, we started out neck and neck, but I dusted that old man. I beat him to the tomb. I had plenty of time to look around and get my bearings. And when they get there, they find that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has conquered death. And that's Sunday. And they realized for all of eternity, Jesus has taken the sting out of death. Jesus has given us eternal life. Jesus has beaten all the things that would seek to take us down. It's why Paul can write in Corinthians, why he can quote the Old Testament and say, oh death, where is your sting? Where are your shackles? You have no power over us anymore, death, because Jesus rose on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the tomb was empty. Because Jesus overcame it and gave us victory and gave us hope. A hope that we can cling to. A hope that Paul says in Romans 5 will not put us to shame. Jesus won eternal victory on Sunday. And the sadness that was Saturday became the joy of Sunday because Jesus has conquered the grave and conquered hell and conquered sin and death and he's delivered that victory to you for all of eternity. All you have to do is believe that he did it. And then death can't touch us anymore. And then sorrow can't touch us anymore. And I knew that I had to preach about this and I knew that I had to tell you this story and I knew that I had to tell you about Saturday going into Sunday because here's what Sunday means. You understand? Here's what Easter means. Easter reminds us every year that Jesus always comes through. He always comes through. Without Easter, the internet tells me and my family that we have a 12% chance at happiness. Easter says, I've already beaten it. You've got 100% chance of joy. Without Easter, there's no hope. But Easter tells us that Jesus always comes through, that he never fails and that he never lets us down. And here's what I know. Because of Easter, because that tomb was empty, and because Jesus conquered death and delivered eternal life to all of us, including John, here's what I know, that because of Easter, he's going to come through for John too. It may be in the form of giving him some more years. He may get to watch Lily grow up a little bit longer. It may be in the form of taking him to heaven where he will wait, but make no mistake about it, John's going to hold Lily some more. And he's going to hug Terry some more. That's the victory of Easter. That's what today means. And if you're on a Saturday, today is a reminder that Jesus always comes through. Jesus always wins. And even if you can't see how he's going to come through, I will just tell you that he will. Either in this life or the next, he's going to come through. Either now or in eternity, you place your faith in him and he's going to come through. And now I don't have a 12% chance of happiness. I have a 100% chance at joy. And so does Jen, and so does Terry, and so does her sister Lauren. Because 2,000 years ago, Jesus beat cancer. And he beat sadness, and he beat tragedy, and he beat heartache, and he beat your Saturday too. That's what Easter is. Last night, when I decided I was going to be the least prepared pastor on Easter Sunday in America, I made a pot of coffee because I was tired. And I went outside and was just thinking and drinking the coffee. And I looked up and it was cloudy, but on the other side of some clouds I could tell the moon was there. And I knew that on the other side of those clouds was the light of the moon. And I kept my eye on it, and wouldn't you know it, in a couple of minutes the clouds parted, and it was a full moon, and it was bright. And it was like this little reminder from God. It's Saturday now, and it's dark, But that's my sun shining on that moon. And in the morning, it's going to be bright. Because in the morning, it's Easter. In the morning, it's Sunday. And on Sunday, we're reminded that I always win. And it may feel like night in our lives sometimes. We may feel the darkness of Saturday in our lives sometimes. If you do, look to that moon that's reflecting the light that God created and know that whether we know it or not, whether we understand it or not, in a way that we might not be able to predict, that Sunday is coming and the sun will shine again. And 2,000 years ago, Jesus won a victory for us over all the things that would seek to darken our days. And that's what we celebrate on Easter. Pope John Paul said, we do not give way to despair. We are the Easter people. And hallelujah is our song. So no matter how dark it gets, Christians, we sing because we know that Sunday is coming. No matter how silent God seems, Christians, we listen because we know that God will speak. No matter how sad we are on Saturday, Christians, we know that Sunday is coming and Jesus always comes through. And that's why Easter is the greatest day of the year, because it reminds us that Jesus has come through for us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. So I'm gonna pray for you. And my prayer is that you have a good Easter. And my prayer is that if you're in a Saturday, that you will know that because of Easter, you can know that Sunday is coming and Jesus is gonna come through for you too. Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good to us. More than we deserve, more generously than we deserve, you love us in ways that we don't deserve. You are good. We thank you so much for Easter. We thank you for what it means and for what it represents, for the hope that you won when you conquered sin and death, when you came roaring like a lion out of there, giving us hope for all of eternity. Father, I pray that those of us who feel like we are in a Saturday would take solace in Easter, that we would cling to the hope of Sunday, that we would cling to the hope of you. Let us believe, God, that you've won this victory already, that it's yours. Let us celebrate Easter in the hope that it brings well. Let us reflect on you as we do it. Be with those who are sorrowful, God. Let them hold on just a little longer until your light shines. We thank you for Easter. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for being here. This is the seventh part in our series going through the book of John. We're going to continue this series through the week after Easter. So I'm thrilled to see all of you here. Hopefully, as I've been encouraging you every week, you've been reading along with us. I think it's hugely important for you guys to be reading the Gospel of John on your own as you process it and we go through it as a church so that my perspective isn't the only perspective that you're getting on this book. That's why it's such a bummer that I realized yesterday I forgot to update the reading plan and the one that we have out there is not current. So I'm real sorry about that. I had a wedding to do yesterday and then basketball, so I didn't get a chance to do the reading plan. But we'll have that done for you tomorrow. We'll get it out online and we'll have a physical copy for you next week when you get here. If you are following along in the reading plan, just read the next two chapters. We've been going at two chapters a week and you'll be good, okay? But as we've been going through this week, I had a sermon planned out of John 11, looking at the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, John 11, 35. And I had been looking forward to that sermon. But as I got done last week and looked at the chapters that we had to cover this week, there's a portion, there's something happening in John chapter 13 that I just, I didn't feel right about doing a series in John where we don't cover this. There's been a ton that we've skipped over in the book of John. We didn't even stop on the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16. We haven't talked about that, which again is why we should be going through this on our own. But I just didn't feel like it was right to go through a series in John without focusing on what Jesus says in John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's a seat back in front of you. And then later when I read the passage, it will be up on the screen. And I think we have it in your bulletin. There's really no reason, unless you're illiterate, to not read John chapter 13, 34, and 35 with us, okay? So in this verse, Jesus gives a summation of all of his teaching for the disciples. He's left with just the 11 faithful disciples that are with him, and we'll get to this in a minute, but he's giving them a summation of everything that he's ever taught them. And I find summaries like that to be the most helpful teaching or the most helpful advice, right? We know that good advice summarizes all the other advice and makes it a little bit more memorable. I think something that we can all relate to is many of us in this room have had kids. And we know that when you're about to have a kid, this is the time when you are receiving the most unsolicited advice you have ever received in your life. The only other thing I've ever experienced like it was when I was about to become a pastor. I had been named the senior pastor, and so I had kind of a month to get my affairs in order and then get up here and take over, at the time, Grace Community Church. And so everybody was giving me advice on how to be a senior pastor, including my atheistic uncle, who hadn't been in a church in like 35 or 40 years. I'm literally, I'm golfing with the guy. It's the last time I'm going to hang out with Uncle Dick. And he's in the fairway practicing, and then he like steps off the ball and he goes, Nathan, you know, I've been thinking about you becoming a pastor. And I'm like, what in the world is going on here? He goes, I just had something I wanted to tell you. And I'm thinking like, just like everybody else, come on, let's go. You haven't been in church in 40 years. Let's see what you got. It was okay advice, but I just thought it was hilarious that an atheist cared about advising me on being a senior pastor, right? And when you're a parent, you get all this parenting advice. It doesn't matter if they've had kids before. It just matters that they've read a book or seen something on Facebook. They will tell you what they saw. And sometimes this advice is even contradictory in nature, right? You got the camp over here saying you should use cloth diapers. And I'm like, you're crazy. And then you got this camp saying you should use regular disposable diapers. I'm like, these are my people, right? You got the camp that says when you get home, you do not let that child sleep in the bed with you. You put them in their room on night one or they are going to develop dependency issues. And you're like, holy crud, that sounds really hard. And then you have other people that are like, you let that child sleep in your bed until they are eight if they need to. They are your precious angel, you know? And Jen's reading books the whole time. Jen's my wife, not just some lady who reads books for me. So she's reading books the whole time. And she's getting all this advice. And it's contrary. This book says this thing, and this book says this thing. You're like, well, which person knows more about this? Who knows? Can I speak to their adult children to see if this worked out? You just don't know, and you're getting so much all the time. But one guy, this was super helpful, Kyle Hale, the worship pastor at the church that I was at at the time, I was on staff with him. He came up to me one day. He had three boys under five. So he had earned his dad's stripes, right? And he comes up to me and he goes, hey man, listen, a lot of people telling you a lot of stuff. And I'm like, yep, and here comes your thing. And he goes, listen, just for the first three months, just keep the kid healthy and stay sane. Whatever you have to do. Don't worry about what you're going to do to them. You're not going to do any permanent damage. Just keep the child healthy and stay sane. Try not to yell at Jen. That's it. Just do that. And I thought, this is good advice. I can do this. I don't know about all the other stuff. I don't know about the five S's and all the things, but I can do this. I can just try to take care of them, and I can try to not yell at Jen. This is good. This is actually how I still parent. Just make sure she's good and try not to get mad at Jen. That was good advice. It was a summation of all the other advice, right? It was memorable and easy and executable. And this is what Jesus does for the disciples in John chapter 13. Here's what's happening in John 13. I actually, I feel a little bit badly about the way that we've done this series in that we haven't done a lot to follow the chronology of Jesus through his ministry and through his life. We've dropped in on snippets of what he's taught and things that he did, but we haven't done a good job of following the chronology of Jesus. So here's what's happening in John chapter 13. Jesus has moved through his life. About the age of 30, he goes public with his ministry and begins calling disciples to him. And then they do ministry together through Israel. Israel is a relatively small country. It's really a small country by any measure. And so all over Israel, they're doing ministry and they're following Jesus around and he's teaching them how to do what he does. He's preparing them to hand them the keys to the kingdom. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but why didn't Jesus just come to earth, live perfectly, become an adult, and die for our sins? Why did he dabble for three years with this public ministry? Why was it essential for him to do this in order to die on the cross for our sins? And I think the answer is Jesus knew he was going to have to leave behind his kingdom in the form of the church. And he knew he was going to have to entrust that to people. And so he wanted to invest three years of his life into some young men so that he can hand the church off to them as passing them the keys to the kingdom. So I'm convinced that he spent an extra three years here on planet Earth with us for the main purpose of training the disciples to get them to a place where they were ready to take over his kingdom called the church and propel it into the future, which they absolutely did, or you guys wouldn't be sitting here in a different continent 2,000 years later, right? So that's what Jesus is doing with the disciples. So about age 30, he goes public, he calls the disciples to them, he trains them for three years, and then at the age of 33, he's crucified. And that week leading into the crucifixion is called Holy Week. And we're in the period of Lent that's leading up to Holy Week now. So Palm Sunday, which this year we're going to celebrate on April the 14th, is the day that Jesus goes into Jerusalem. It's called the triumphal entry. He enters as a king. But this sets in motion a series of events that by Friday has him crucified. We call that Good Friday. And then Easter is when he resurrects on Sunday. So he is in the middle of Holy Week here. It is the end of his life. He's sitting around one night with the disciples. If you were here the first week, we know, you know, that Jesus has just looked at Judas who had betrayed him and said, the thing that you are about to do, go and do it quickly. So Judas has left. He's at the end of his ministry with the 11 faithful disciples who he will hand the keys to the kingdom to and entrust them with the church. And he looks at them and he says, I have a new commandment for you, which is an interesting thing. Because the Bible says that Jesus had that all authority on heaven and on earth had been given to him. He had come down from heaven as God. He was God in the flesh. He could have added all the rules that he wanted to. He could have been given out commandments left and right. He could have done anything that he wanted. He could have made any rules that he wanted. And he waits three years to do it. And right before, like a couple of days before he's going to go be arrested and die for us, he says, oh, by the way, I have a new commandment for you, in verse 33, he calls them little children. Come to me, little children. Jesus doesn't play the little children card a lot. That's like maximum God card, right? Because they're peers. He's a dude, they're dudes. But in this one, he says, little children, listen to me. So this is like, hey, pay attention. Jesus is playing the God card here. He doesn't do this a lot. What's he about to teach? He says, I have a new commandment for you. So we should be leaning in. This is the one rule that Jesus makes. He could have made any rule his whole life. He's made one, and it's going to be this, and it's going to be a summation of all his teachings. So Christians, church, we should lean into this. If you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you should be very interested in this new commandment that sums up everything that Jesus ever taught and did and said. Non-believers, if you're here and you're considering faith, you should be very interested in this because in this one commandment is the whole of the faith that you are considering. This is a hugely important, crucial passage. And this is what Jesus says to them that night before he prepares to go to heaven. He says this in verse 34. He leans in and he says, little children, disciples, church, for the rest of time, I'm going to give you, I have a new commandment for you. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. This is how the whole world will identify you from this moment on. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. Now, if you've been paying attention in the book of John, you should have some questions. How is this a summation of everything that Jesus teaches, and how is it different than things that he's taught in the past? Because at the beginning of the Gospels, in the beginning of Matthew, and at different places in John, he tells us that we are to, what, love our neighbor as ourselves, right? We know this commandment. This isn't new. This doesn't feel different. We know that we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, it was commonly known then. Then there's a story where Jesus is talking to a lawyer, a young man who's been studying the law, which incidentally is the Bible, and he asked the lawyer, what do you think are the greatest commandments? And the lawyer says, love your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, amen, and love your neighbor as yourself. This was a commonly accepted teaching. So how is this different than this commonly accepted teaching? There's another theme that runs through John of what Jesus teaches. Over and over again, he continues to come back to this idea that it's our job to believe in him. We looked a couple weeks ago when people asked him, what do we do to inherit eternal life? How do we labor for eternity? He says, believe in the one that the Father has sent. When he prays, after he resurrects Lazarus, Lazarus is a friend of his who dies. Jesus shows up at the grave. He brings him back to life, and he prays, and he says, Father, I knew you were going to do this. I did this so that they would believe that I am who I say I am, so that they would believe in the one that you have sent. So over and over, we see this theme in John that Jesus admonishes us to believe in him as the Son of God. And if we see those themes, it's already commonly accepted practice and commonly accepted teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourself, and we know that we should love God as well, and that it's our job to believe in God. How is this a summation of those things that Jesus has taught us? Well, we start when we understand this. When you look at the command to love your neighbor as yourself, do you understand that you are the standard of love in that scenario? That when the admonishment, when the instruction is, love your neighbor like you love yourself. And to love somebody for all intents and purposes is simply to want what's best for them and to act in a way that would bring that about. We love somebody, so we want what's best for them, and we act in a way that would bring that about in their life. That's what we do. And so when we love somebody as we love ourselves, then we are the standard of love in their life. So however we love ourselves is how we ought to love other people. And that's a problem because we are imperfect and we love ourselves imperfectly. There have been seasons of my life where I did not do a good job at loving myself. And if I were to love you like I love myself, then I would probably owe you an apology, right? There are seasons of your life where you love yourself imperfectly. You're not taking care of yourself very well. You're not making the best decisions for yourself. You're not bringing about the best things in your life. And so if you started to love other people like you loved yourself, if we're honest, that's a pretty low bar. When we say that we should love our neighbor as we love ourself, that sets the bar at us. And you'll notice that Jesus says this at the beginning of his ministry, before the disciples have watched him relentlessly love everyone around him. But at the end of his ministry, when they've watched him for three years, graciously and patiently and givingly and sacrificially love everyone around him all the time, Jesus raises the bar on this command. And he says, it's no longer good enough for you to love other people as you love yourself. No, no, you need to love them as I have loved you. You need to go and love other people as you've seen me love them. And when that's the commandment, do you understand that Jesus is now the bar on that love? Before we set the standard, go love others as you love yourself. That's our standard. And he says, no, no, no. I want you to raise it to my standard. Go and love other people as I have loved you. He says this to the disciples who have watched him over the years. Bring sight back to the blind. Make people who can't walk be able to walk again. Love on people who are found in the middle of sin. Restore people who the world would condemn. Argue with the Pharisees. Teach the multitudes. Perform countless miracles. Sit patiently with them. They've watched all of this. And Jesus says, as you have seen me love on you and minister to you, I want you to love one another that way. He sets the bar at himself, not us. But the question then becomes, if I am to love other people as Jesus loved me, how is it that Jesus loves me? And how does that fulfill the instruction that we should believe in Jesus and love God? How can this possibly be a summation of everything that he's taught? And to answer that question, we need to look at the way that Jesus loves. Now, I'm going to give you kind of three categories or ways that Jesus loves us. I would encourage you in your small groups this week as you discuss this, you guys can probably think of more ways or more categories of ways that Jesus loves us. But here are my three this morning. There are three ways, main ways, I think that Jesus loves us. I think Jesus loves us sacrificially, he loves us restoratively, and he loves us recklessly. Sacrificially, restoratively, and recklessly, I think, are ways that Jesus loves us. Sacrificially is obvious, right? If you were to ask anybody, believer, non-believer, anybody who has a cursory knowledge of Scripture at all, how does Jesus love us? One of the answers would be sacrificially. He died for us, so he sacrificed, he gave of himself for us. But it's not just that he died on the cross for us. That's the biggest of sacrifices. But we see him time and again in the gospels give of his time and give of his energy and give of his attention and give of his patience. We see him constantly choosing other people over himself. He even chose homelessness. He has foxes have holds and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He just wandered around loving on other people, not being concerned with himself. So if we're going to love like Jesus, we need to love sacrificially, which means that we need to give of our time and our effort and our energy and our resources in his name and for him. And this happens a lot. We have people over there who are watching kids so that young families can sit in here and go to church in peace. And some of these families just need to sleep right now. I'm not even mad at them for not paying attention because they just need rest because it's hard to be a parent sometimes, right? So we have people who are giving of their time on a Sunday morning and loving on them so that they can be in here. We have people who are teaching the kids in there, loving on them, giving of their time. We have servants all over the church who are loving well through sacrificing. I see that happening a lot in Grace. Once a month, we do this incredible thing when we go to Pender County that was impacted by the floods. And Florence came in, the hurricane came in, there was floods, and we're good, and everything's settled, everybody's got power. Except out there, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of homes that have been impacted by the floods that are unlivable. Insurance can't help them out, and these people have no options. And so Grace actually sends a team of people down once a month to go and help restore these people and restore their lives and fix their homes. And so the men and women who do that on a monthly basis are going and loving sacrificially. They are giving up a Saturday to be down there, which is a big deal, particularly in NCAA tournament time, to give up these Saturdays. Incidentally, the trip this month got canceled and got moved to this upcoming Saturday. So if that's a way you'd like to love sacrificially, you can sign up for that online or indicate it on your communication card, and that's fine. And so there are all these ways to go out and to love others outside of our homes and to kind of step into the lives of others and love sacrificially, show up for the food drive and love the people, the kids who might not be able to eat over spring break. That's good. But to me, the surest test to know if we're really loving others sacrificially is whether or not we're doing that in our home. It's easy to go out in fits and starts and to kind of drop in and make an appearance and love here and then retreat back to those who know us best and be selfish and need our space and our time and our TV and all the stuff, right? That's easy to do. It's easy to step out and love for a couple of hours and then step back into our shell. I learned this lesson when I was in high school. I was 17 or 18 years old and I had just gone off to summer camp, right? A place called Look Up Lodge in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. And it made a huge impact on me. I had grown up in the church, grown up, I think, as a Christian. But this was the time, this was the week where I really, really got it. Something switched for me, and I understood Christianity in a way that I never had. And so I'm on fire for Jesus, right? I'm like the classic mountaintop experience kid coming back from camp. Like I am, I am so fired up. I'm ready to charge hell with a water pistol. And it doesn't have to be one of those pump kinds. It can just be like the single action. Like I'm still in, bring it on Satan. I'm coming for you. Like I am ready. And I'm, my hair is on fire for Jesus Jesus. I come back and I'm telling my parents who raised me in the church and who love God and who love me, are super involved with the church. I'm telling them all the things that I'm going to do. I've made all these commitments. I'm going to do all the things. I'm going to start all the Bible studies. I'm going to lead all the things. I'm going to teach the little kids. You've never seen a Christian like me, Dad. I'm going to change the world. Dad says, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I'm like, man, you really cut the legs out from under a guy. And at the time, I thought he was kind of a jerk for saying that. Maybe he still is. But the point that he made is right. That's great. That's wonderful that you've had this mountaintop experience. That's wonderful that you love Jesus. Be nice to your mom and love your sister. It's easy to run out and fake it and sacrifice for others. It's hardest with the people that we know best. That's why we're meanest to the people that we love the most. That's why we have the shortest fuse with them. That's why we sometimes fail to offer the grace to others, the grace inside our home that we offer outside our home. If we want to love sacrificially, then it looks like, for me, this is something that I struggle with, when I come home sometimes, I know we make jokes about pastors and our job, and it is stressful looking at Facebook and golfing a lot, but there are times when I do come home and I am stressed. I've had a lot of meetings and a lot of things, and we've made decisions, and I've had to work hard, and the last thing in the world I want to do is sit on a chair that is too small for me and make Play-Doh donuts. I don't want to do that. I want to sit on a couch that is too big for me and eat donuts. That's what I want to do. But if I love Lily and I love Jen, then I'll come home and I'll sit down and I'll play. And I'll give Jen the space she needs to do the things she needs to do because she hasn't had that space all day and I'll engage with my daughter. If we love our family, we'll come home and we'll sacrifice for them. If we love the people around us, then we will consider their needs before they have to consider their own. I think sacrificial love shows up first in the people that we know best. Jesus also loves us restoratively. He seeks to restore us. There are so many examples of this. A couple weeks ago, Kyle did a great job preaching about the woman at the well, who at that time had had five husbands and was living with the sixth man who she was not yet married to, which by any account throughout all of history is generally referred to as scandalous, right? And Jesus doesn't bring it up. He just mentioned it as if it's true, but he doesn't seek to condemn her about it. He's far more concerned about restoring her and letting her know about who he is and the promises that he makes and her need for him. In the book of John, there's a story that some versions include where there's a woman who's brought to him in adultery in the city streets. And the Pharisees, the religious leaders say, should we stone her? And he has this impossible question to answer. And he does this thing where he makes everybody, he convinces everybody to go away by riding in the dirt. And once everyone is gone, he looks at the woman and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, and neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. He's not there to condemn her. He's not there to convince her, hey, you know adultery is wrong and you really shouldn't do it. You know that the thing that you were doing was shameful and that I don't like it. And that when you do that, you trample on my love. Like I'm here to die for you because you do stuff like that. Could you maybe knock it off? He doesn't say that. He says, neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. We've extended this series a week so that I can preach to you about the restoration of Peter after he messes up. Peter messes up big time. And Jesus comes to him and he has every right to get onto him and condemn him and he doesn't. He simply restores him. What we see in the ministry of Jesus over and over and over again is that he is far more concerned with restoring you than condemning you. And in the church, when we look at other people, it gets so easy to identify that as sin. Is that person sinning? Is that person doing something that's wrong? Look at what they're doing in their life. Doesn't that count as sin? And Jesus says, yeah, maybe, but how about we love them first? He doesn't let them off the hook. He says, go and sin no more. Go and don't do this thing anymore. But first, he says, neither do I condemn you. He's always, always, always more interested in restoring than condemning, in restoration than condemnation. And if we are going to love other people like Jesus loves us, then when we approach others, we should always be primarily concerned with their restoration to spiritual health, not condemning them and defining what they're doing. We restore people. We do not condemn. That's the Lord's job. And Jesus loves us recklessly. Now, I like this one because we're going to sing a song after the sermon called Reckless Love. I think it's called Reckless Love. I never know song titles. It should be called Reckless Love. And it's about the reckless love of God. And it was a popular song in Christian circles. But we had some debates and some discussions about it as a staff because part of the concern was that it was erroneous to call God's love reckless because reckless kind of infers that there's mistakes made, that it's just like reckless abandon, that there might be some mess up or some error to his love or some misjudgments within his love, but it's good and it's fine and we like God's love and so that's okay. So that maybe it was almost theologically inaccurate. But after we talked about it some more, we decided to go ahead and sing the song. And I'll confess to you that the first time I ever even looked at the lyrics of the song was when we were singing it on Sunday morning because I'm really bad about keeping current with worship songs. We do a playlist on Spotify with the songs that Grace Raleigh does, and that's my worship. That's what I listen to. And if it's not on there, I don't listen to it. So I had not heard this song before. And as we're going through it on Sunday and I'm looking at the lyrics and it talks about how he leaves the 99 and he comes after us and he always chases us and he always pursues us and there's no wall that he won't kick down and there's no mountain that he won't climb to come after us. What I realize about the recklessness of God is that it's talking about this emotional recklessness where he has no regard for how much we hurt him. He is always going to pursue us. That's the recklessness of God. It doesn't matter how many times someone rejects him. It doesn't matter how many times someone makes him a promise and says, God, I'm never going to do the thing again. And then they turn around and they do the thing. It doesn't matter how many times we betray God or we walk away from him or we break his heart or we break his rules or we hurt his spirit, he is always going to forgive us and he is always going to pursue us. It doesn't matter how many times he extends a hand to us and we knock the hand away and we say, I'm not interested. He is still going to extend the hand again. He recklessly pursues us. This is the picture that he lays out in the Old Testament when he has a prophet named Hosea marry a prostitute named Gomer. He says, I want you to go and I want you to take Gomer as your wife. She doesn't deserve you. I want you to go marry her anyway. So Hosea, in obedience, does it, marries her. Inevitably, she cheats on him, goes back to her old life, and God speaks to Hosea again and he says, go back and get her and marry her again, regardless of the toll that it takes on you. That's the reckless love of God. Because there is something very human and very natural to this idea that once our heart has been broken, once someone's turned us down enough times, once someone has disappointed us enough times, once someone has required our forgiveness more than a few times, there's a very natural human thing to do to recoil and to withdraw our love from them and to not pursue them as hard and to not go after them as hard because it's hurt us so many times in the past. And so we recoil out of this sense of self-protection and we build up walls and we don't let other people in because we've been hurt so many times, and we've been damaged so many times that we don't want to experience that again, so we learn to protect ourselves from the possibility of other people hurting us. And God's reckless love says, I don't care how many times you hurt me, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna pursue you. That's the recklessness of God. And if we want to love like Jesus, then we love recklessly. This is how Jesus is able to tell Peter how many times to forgive people, right? Peter goes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, how many times should I forgive someone when they wronged me? When someone wrongs me, when they disappoint me, when they let me down, when they break my heart, when I thought I could count on them and they show me that I can't and it really, really hurts, how many times should I forgive them? Up to seven times seven. As many times as it takes, you forgive them until they do it right. You forgive them as many times as you have to. You recklessly pursue them with your love. That's what it means to love like Jesus loved. We love sacrificially, we love restoratively, and we love recklessly. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about how to love in that way, what becomes very apparent is we are not able to do that. We are not able in and of ourselves to love in those ways, to love perfectly sacrificially, to always empathize and love with restoration in mind. We are not able to love recklessly. We do not possess the ability to do that. And this is how it fulfills Jesus' teaching that we ought also to believe in him. Because what we understand is it is impossible to love others like Jesus loved us without Jesus's possession of and power in our hearts. You see, unless we believe in Jesus and he has taken up residency in our heart and has possession of our heart and his power is working in our hearts to change our ways and our desires to his and our ability to love to His. Unless He's doing that, unless we've loved God enough to believe Him and place our faith in Christ, there is no possible way we can be obedient to the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. So in this, we come full circle in seeing that it is really a summation of everything that Jesus has taught. It raises the bar on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. It fulfills the commandment to love God and fulfills the commandment to believe in the one that he has sent because it's impossible to do it without believing in Jesus. And in that way, it's a summation of everything that Jesus ever taught. Simply go and love. Andy Stanley says it this way. He's a pastor in Atlanta. He says, when you don't know what to say or do, just love others as God through Christ loves you. That's what we do. We love other people sacrificially. We love them restoratively. We love them recklessly. And then Jesus says, this is how the world will know that you are my disciples. This is how I want the world to look at you and know that you belong to me. This is what I want to be your defining and distinguishing characteristic. This should be the way the world identifies you to look at the way you love one another and you love others. That's what I want to define you. And this is something that I think the church gets messed up sometimes. He does not say that the world will know that you are my disciples by what you stand against, by how you define sin, by who you choose to condemn, by what you stand up and rally against in Washington. That's not how we are going to be defined. We're not going to be defined and identified by the world by our good doctrine or dogma or theology. We aren't made known to the world by winning a Bible knowledge trivia contest. We're not made known. The world will not know that we are his disciples by how well we know this book. Now, all of that flows out of our love for him, but it is not our definitive thing. It is not our distinguishing characteristic. Our distinguishing characteristic is who and how well we love. That's what Jesus wants to define us. All the other things are important, but if we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we believe. If we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we're against. If we fail to love others first, then nobody cares how well we serve. We are first to love others sacrificially, distortively, and recklessly. And this is how we will be defined. This is how the world will know that we are his disciples. What would it look like for you to be known in that way? What would it look like for the people around you to say whatever it is they want to say about you, but at the end of the day, that person loves people well? What would it look like to love people so different and in a way that was so other that when people saw you doing it, they were drawn to your God because there must be something else going on here. Nobody could possibly love others that well. Nobody could possibly sacrifice that much. Nobody could possibly mean it. You know how when you meet somebody who's super nice and super gracious and they're very kind to everyone, you think to yourself, they're faking it. You think to yourself, what do they look like when they're down? What if you never were? What if you weren't faking it? Because that love was fueled by Jesus and you loved everybody just as hard as he did. What if this was the distinguishing and defining characteristics of our homes? What if when someone entered into your home and spent some time with you and your family, when they left and they got in the car and whatever else they said about your home, I really like her napkins or those curtains or that's what cozy farmhouse looks like and that's what I want to do. Like whatever else they said about your home, the one thing that they took away was, man, those people love each other well. Man, I felt loved in that house. What if your kids growing up in your house, the one thing they'll say about mom and dad is, listen, they did some crazy stuff and there's some crazy, I got to knock off of me here in adulthood, but man, they love me well. And when I brought friends over, they loved them too. What if that's what was said about your house? That they showed the love of Christ there? What if that's what's said about the church? That when people come to Grace Raleigh, they walk away, and whatever else they experienced here, sermon was okay, music was great, announcements were outstanding. Whatever else they experienced here, they walk away and they go, those people love well. Those people loved me. And I'll brag on you a little bit because I don't think we're too terribly bad at this. Last week we had a guy here, we're getting our website redone. He's our web developer, a guy named Hugh. And Hugh is here. I invited him to just see the church and kind of learn more about us. And so he came in, and he came in after the first service, stayed in the lobby, came to the second service, and then I talked to him afterwards. And I just said, hey, you know, thanks for coming, whatever. And he said, dude, I love this place. I said, really? He says, yeah, these are the friendliest people I've ever met in my life. And he wasn't kidding. He said, they were so nice. He lives on the other side of Cary, like 40 minutes away. He said, if I lived closer, my family would start coming here next week. This place is incredible. So good on you if you were a part of that. I think this is one of the things we do well, but I think we can do it better. What if we were a church where no matter what other people experienced, they walked away and they said, those are some of the friendliest people I've ever met. What if that were everyone's experience? What if when you brought a visitor here, you brought friends or family here, they walked away and they said, that place loves well. It starts in the individual, it goes into the home, and then it comes here. And if we could be a church that loves other people well, that's what we become known for, that's the kind of church I want to be a part of. And you're here, I know, because that's the kind of church you want to be a part of too. But it begins with us. It begins with us pursuing Jesus and asking him and praying, help me to love other people as you have loved me. And what I love about this teaching is Jesus knows he's about to leave the disciples on earth. He's been a physical presence there. He has been the representative of the Godhead there. But he is about to leave and they're going to be the ones who carry the torch. And what better way as the torchbearers of Christ to represent him to the rest of the world than to go and be the embodiment of love to them as Jesus was. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. We love you imperfectly. We love you inconsistently. We love you often half-heartedly. Often, God, we love you forgetfully. God, please continue to work in our hearts to draw us near you that we may love you more. And that out of that love, we might love other people more. Give us the grace and the patience to love sacrificially, God. Give us the sympathy and empathy and insight to love restoratively and give us the strength and the faith to love recklessly. God, may we, may our homes, may this place be known and identified for how well we offer your love to others. It's in your son's name I pray. Amen.

What up? I'm Nate. Thanks for being here. I get to be the pastor here and they let me do the sermons and stuff, so it's good to get to see you if I haven't gotten to meet you already. In case you're wondering, cookout and baggy clothes is the key to this body. So, I mean, you guys can have it too. It's really easy. This is the last part of our series called Lessons from the Gym pursuing and prioritizing our spiritual health. And one of the things that we've been saying is implicit in your attendance in church is that to some degree or another, you care about your spiritual health. Maybe a little bit, we may be dipping our toe in the water. It may be a big, huge deal, a life-changing moment, and you're really taking it seriously. But all of us, to varying degrees, say by being here that we care about our spiritual health. And so we've been walking through that for the month of January. I've been really excited about the series because if I'm honest, I had some trepidation going into it. I wasn't sure if we should do it. For different reasons, I was insecure about it. But you guys have been really nice and kind, and the feedback has been good. And my prayer throughout this has been that we would be, that 2019 would be a year for all of us of marked spiritual growth and maturity, that we would finish the year closer to Jesus than we were when we entered the year. So we've been talking about that pursuit, and I hope that you guys are committed to your spiritual health. I want to talk this morning about a principle in Scripture that I think is one of the most forgotten, underrated, undertaught, undernoticed principles in the Bible and really highlight that today and talk about the ramifications that has for us as we seek to become people who are more spiritually healthy and walking with Jesus. To do that, I want to go back to a place where I was at several years ago at my previous church called Greystone Church outside of Atlanta. I was going to Greystone and they ended up hiring me as the student pastor. And so when I took over, I had a group of small group leaders that worked with the students that were volunteers from the church. One of the guys was a guy named Toby. Toby was a, he was a regular dude, couple kids, job, the whole deal. And Toby's story that he shared with me was he, earlier in his life, I mean, as an adult, but years prior, he was an alcoholic. And that's what he dealt with. That was his cross to bear. And he was very far from Jesus. He never accepted Jesus as his Savior. And then one day, God got a hold of his heart in this incredible way, and he comes to know Jesus as his Savior. He becomes a Christian. He lets God in, and he gives his life over to that. And on the day that he accepted Christ as his Savior, moving forward, he said he has never had another sip of alcohol in his whole life. He goes from walking one way, being an alcoholic, kind of a slave to that, that's a big part of his life, and then the very next day after accepting Christ as his Savior, no more alcohol in his life ever. Now listen, the point of this illustration is not to tell you that alcohol is evil and that you should never have a sip of it. The point of it is, in Toby's life, his conviction was that he shouldn't because it was unwise of him. And God cured him of his alcoholism just like that. And if you guys have been around church for any amount of time, and a lot of you guys are church people, you've seen and heard stories like this, right? Where somebody had an addiction to a substance or some other thing. Somebody was just a big jerk, or they were greedy, or they were selfish, or they were myopic in their thinking, or whatever it was that tended towards unhealth, that was them. And then they got saved. They accepted Jesus as their Savior, and God changed their heart in a 180-degree turn. The very next day, they're totally different people. They were never that person before. We've seen stories like that, or they were never the person that they were before. Again, you guys know this, right? And then we look in Scripture, and we see sometimes indicators that this is kind of the norm. This morning, I want us to look at kind of the life arc of a guy named Paul. Paul was probably the most influential Christian to ever live. He wrote two-thirds in the New Testament. And in the book of Romans, which is the most theologically detailed book in the New Testament, maybe even in the Bible, he's outlining for us what we call the doctrine of salvation, or really why we believe what we believe about how a person gets saved is the word that we use. And when he's outlining that, he gets to the part in Romans 5 and 6 where he starts talking about accepting Jesus and what it means when we become a Christian. And in Romans 6, he says that when you become a Christian, that the old person is gone, the old version of you, the things that you used to do, the things that you used to be interested in, the pursuits that you used to have, that person is dead. He has been put to death with Christ. He or she has been put to death with Christ. And now you walk as this new creation in Jesus. So the version of you that used to be, what Paul says, a slave to sin. You have no choice but to sin. And when we talk about sin, what we understand is a church word that we use a lot of times, but sin simply is living as though God's standards for your life don't matter. That's what sin is. And so when we live a life of sin, we are far from God. We are separated from him. We are a slave to sin. We have no option but to do things that displease Him. And then, the moment we become saved, says Paul, we are a new creature. We can walk in freedom. We're not a slave to that anymore. The problem with stories like Toby's and the ones that you know in your life and passages like that that seem to indicate that this spiritual change and transformation is this instantaneous, momentary thing where we're going one way one minute and then the next minute, because of Jesus, we're walking in the other direction and we're not the same person anymore. The problem with that and hearing stories like that is that they end up, for most of us, being more discouraging than they are encouraging. And they're scourging in the same way that I was discouraged at the gym. I told you that I started taking my physical health seriously. At the end of 2016, I was 204 pounds. I wish I had a picture of Super Chubby Nate. You guys would really love it. But I was 204 pounds, which for me, I graduated college at 155, man, like soaking wet. So I've always been a beanpole. So that was pretty big for me. And I started going, man, like I can't even, like when I just stand still, I have two chins and that's not good. So I got to do something about this. I'm going to have to tuck it. It's just there. So I was like actually taking pictures, like trying to stick my face out, you know, so that way, anyways, it was bad. And I thought, how about instead of taking pictures like a weirdo, you just get healthy. So I started to pursue health. And I would get in the gym and I would work out. I'd really rep it out good, you know, like whatever it was. I felt really tired. I was really sweaty. And I'd get down into the locker room, changing for the shower or whatever it was. And I'm looking in the mirror, you know, there's mirrors all over the place in these stupid locker rooms, and I'm kind of doing like the subtle flex, like, you know, is there anything there? Like give it a little, like squeezing the pecs. Y'all quit looking at me like you never do the subtle flex. You bunch of liars. You all do the subtle flex. So I'm looking at it, trying to figure out, is there anything different about me? And it was depressing because the answer was no. It took a long time. It probably took about three months before I was able to look in the mirror and go, okay, I'm starting to notice some differences. It probably took about five or six months before anybody in my life looked at me and said, you know, you look a little healthier. You look a little skinnier. Are you losing weight? It took a long time to start seeing the after picture that I wanted to see. It probably took about 10 or 11 months for me to get to the place where I said, okay, I think I'm pretty happy with the way I feel and the way that I look. It took a long time. And it was a bummer to realize, getting into the gym, that just because I go to the gym and just because I'm now trying to eat right and I'm watching my calories and I'm watching my sugar and all that other stuff and I'm doing the exercises, just because I'm doing that does not mean that I'm going to get instantly healthy. Just because I have a good week doesn't mean I'm going to see results. And what began to dawn on me is, man, getting healthy takes a long time. And if you think about it, it makes sense, right? You spend your years doing whatever it is you're doing to get to the place of unhealth that drives you to the place to pursue physical health, and you've been eating whatever you want, you've been doing whatever you want, you haven't maintained a discipline of exercise, and it's going to take a long time to shed those years of unhealth, right? And I realize, man, everybody who's walking around who's healthier than me, like they've made a long-term commitment to this. It's not a result of just one good week or one good month, but they are really staying the course to get physically healthy. And what occurred to me is it's the same with our spiritual health. It takes a long time to get spiritually healthy. It's the same deal. If you're walking through life acting as though God's standards for your life don't matter, and so you're walking in unhealth, and you're allowing things to come into your life, whatever it is to come into your life, to come into your head, to come into your heart, to come into your person, and then you just allow those things to sit there and generate within you whatever they generate, and you perpetuate in this unhealth. When you decide to pursue spiritual health, doesn't it make sense that it would take a long time to shed those layers of unhealth? And what we need to realize this morning is it's great to make a decision to commit yourself to spiritual health. It's great to make a decision to follow Jesus. It's great to get on your knees at somewhere in the month of January and say, Jesus, I want you. I want more of you. I want to grow nearer to you this year. It is great to do those things, but it is not one decision or one action or one prayer or one commitment that turns our life 180 degrees and suddenly we begin to walk in health. It takes a long time. That's why I think that this principle in Scripture is so very important and can be so very encouraging for those of us who are longing for spiritual help, but it seems to be taking longer than what we want. I talked to you about Paul. Paul's the most influential Christian to ever live, and Paul has probably the most radical conversion story in the Bible. Somebody who was not a believer and then became a believer. Paul was a guy named Saul who, after the death of Jesus, was actively killing Christians who professed a faith in the guy that had just died and come back to life. He was actively persecuting Christians. And he went to the leaders in Jerusalem and he said, I'd like to go to Damascus. There's been an outcropping of Christianity there. I want to go squelch it. Let me go arrest and kill people. And they said, yeah, go ahead. So he is literally on the road to Damascus, on his way to go kill Christians. And Jesus appears to him. And he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And he gets his attention and he blinds him for three days. And in that moment, God changes Saul's name to Paul and he becomes a believer. And God even goes to another guy named Ananias and he says about Paul, he is my chosen instrument to reach the rest of the world with the good news of me. He is going to build my church in the rest of the world outside of Jerusalem. He's a big deal. And you would expect that a person, the same man who experienced that radical conversion, to go from on his way to killing Christians to now a believer who wrote Romans 6, who explains to us that when we accept Christ, that the old version of us is dead and the new person of us, new version of us now walks in freedom and is no longer a slave to sin. You would expect that that person, if there's ever been 180 degree turn, that it would be him. Except in the book of Galatians, he gives us this little detail about his life that I think is incredibly interesting. He's writing to the church in Galatia and he's kind of giving them his resume. Here's why I can say the things to you that I'm saying. And one of the things he says is this. He says, when I got converted, I went to the Arabian wilderness for three years and isolated myself. You hear me? This guy who was converted radically, who had all the religious training in the world when he was a guy named Saul, who God got a hold of and turned him towards him and said, you're going to be my instrument to reach the rest of the world. Before he went and did any ministry, before he was spiritually healthy, he went and isolated himself in the Arabian desert for three years while God did the work on his heart and on his soul and on his ego and on his mindset and on his values and on his conscience that he needed done before he was healthy enough to go and to minister to others. Do you realize that? It took the most influential Christian who's ever lived three years to go from a place of unhealth to health. And it's not just Paul. We see this in the Old Testament. Moses, a hero of the faith, the founder of the nation of Israel, the author of the first five books of the Bible called the Torah, the guy who carried the Ten Commandments down the mountain and gave them to the people who instituted the law. He grew up in Pharaoh's house, being exposed to training that no other Hebrew had ever been exposed to, being trained to be a leader and learning how to get people to follow him. He got training that nobody ever did because God was preparing him for what he wanted him to do later in life. But before God allowed him to do the thing that he put him on the earth to do, God sent him to Midian to be a shepherd in the desert for 40 years in the wilderness. 40 years in the wilderness. Where God worked on him and worked on his heart and ironed out his arrogance and ironed out his ego and instilled him with the spirit of altruism so that when he began the work, he was ready for it. David, the greatest king Israel has ever seen, the king on whose throne Jesus is going to sit when he returns. As a young boy, maybe 10, maybe 12, maybe 13, was anointed the king of Israel. And Samuel said, you're going to be the next king of Israel. Do you know that between anointment and appointment, there was maybe 15 or 20 years that went by before that was actually fulfilled. And in the meantime, between being anointed king and actually being appointed king to what God wanted him to do, he wandered around the wilderness trying to not get murdered by the other king. Where God worked on his heart and his ego and his humility and his conscience and his values to prepare him for what he needed him to do. This principle of the wilderness runs throughout Scripture, and we often forget about it, or we don't notice it. But I think it's incredibly important to point out, as many of us in the room say, in 2019, I want to prioritize my spiritual health. Because what we need to understand, if we're going to prioritize our spiritual health, is that it's going to take a long time. It's going to take a long time. It's not one decision. It's not one commitment. It's not one prayer. It's a daily decision. It's a daily prayer. It's a daily renewal. And it takes a long time to work out our hearts and get them to a place where God wants them to be so that we can walk in harmony with him. It takes a long time. So those of you who are seeing other people and seeing this instantaneous change and go, why isn't that happening to me? It's not happening to you because that's not natural, and that's not founded. And even Toby would tell you, yeah, sure, it changed my desire for alcohol, but God still had a ton of work to do in my heart. It takes a long time to get to a place of spiritual health. It takes long commitment and daily decisions for weeks and months and years to get to a place where we're healthy. And it takes so very long and is so very arduous because as God is working in us, what we need to realize is he's working in us because we need our consciences repaired, our values reoriented, and our hearts restored. You understand that? It takes so very long to get spiritually healthy because we desperately need our consciences repaired, our values reoriented, and our hearts restored to what they are meant to be. The Bible has a lot to say about this idea of our consciences being seared, is the word that it normally talks about. Being seared so that something that's supposed to make us feel bad when we do it, we do it so often and so regularly that that part of our heart or that part of our conscience is numb and we no longer even acknowledge that anymore. We don't even experience the pains of guilt when we do that thing that we always do anymore because we're so accustomed to doing it. And so God has to peel back layers of scar tissue on our consciences to reorient them and recalibrate them towards him. An easy example of this, I don't mean to be crass, it's just a really easy example. I was in a small group at my old church and I wasn't on staff yet. So people actually told you the truth. Once you become a pastor and you're on staff, nobody tells the truth anymore. It's all like the nice pastor sheen. I would really love to go golfing with someone who would just let some anger go, man. That would be really fun for me. But everybody always acts so nice. And so in this small group where people were actually telling the truth and it was refreshing, we broke up. It was a couples group, and we broke up men and women. And so the dudes were just sitting around talking. And the topic came up of the stuff that you look at, usually on the internet, that you probably shouldn't, well, not probably, that you shouldn't look at, right? And one of the guys said, and he at the time was professing to be a believer. I'm sure he was. I have no idea. He spoke up and he goes, you know, I don't really see a problem with it. And we all kind of go like, that's an interesting take. All right. What's up? And he goes, well, I mean, as long as you're looking and not touching, what's the harm? And listen, I'm not pure as a driven snow by any means, but I kind of thought instantly like, oh my goodness, well, that's not what Jesus says in Matthew. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, if you look at somebody with lust in your heart, then you've committed adultery with that person. So you're not allowed to do that, buddy. But his conscience was so seared from something that seemed so normalized to him that the very act of doing that didn't cause any pangs of guilt in him at all. Now, the rest of his story is he hung around small group long enough. God began to get a hold of him. He actually became a small group leader and then discipled other people and sent them out as small group leaders in the church. So God used him in really cool ways. But one of the things that I'll always remember is when we first decide to move towards spiritual health, there are so many things that we carry a seared conscience towards that God has to open our eyes and begin to peel back the scar tissue of the things that we've been doing in our life for years and years. And it makes me wonder, with this many people in the room, as we decide, hopefully, collectively, to pursue spiritual health, and maybe many of us have been wandering, many of us maybe have been living as though God's standards for our life didn't really matter. Maybe we've been in a spiritual rut and not really taking things very seriously for a while. Wherever we are, I wonder what sort of scar tissue we bring into this room on our consciences right now. I wonder how much work there is to be done in us so that we feel the pangs of guilt for the things that displease God that have just become so normalized to us that we don't even feel them anymore. So God has to do some work in our hearts and in our consciences to repair them. He has to reorient our values. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but we value basically what's around us. And we get our values from the people that we're closest to. And so most of us default to getting our values from the culture and the world that we live in. And our culture tells us things like the kind of car I drive is super important, which I've clearly rejected with my Nissan Leaf. It tells us that the job that we have is really important. It tells us that we should make as much money as the rest. I don't need to make more money than everybody. I just need to make more money than the guys I grew up with or the girls I grew up with. It tells us that our spouses are important for reasons that they're not important, that status is important for reasons that it's not important. It encourages us to go after power or influence with the opposite sex or to chase money or to prioritize all these things that are values imparted on us by the world that we really weren't designed to pursue. And when we decide to pursue spiritual health and we begin to take seriously the teachings of the Bible and we begin to run our life through the grid of what scripture teaches, what we very quickly find is the values of God and his kingdom are very different than the values of the world. And it takes some work to reorient our hearts and our values in line with things that God values. To quit valuing what our job is so much and start valuing the relationships we have there and the opportunity to minister. To quit thinking about how much money we can get for ourselves and how we can be good stewards of the resources that God allows us to have, to use our job and our influence philanthropically, to use our gifts and our abilities to build up God's kingdom and not our own kingdom, to begin to value other people and their friendship and to see them as people who desperately need Jesus as opposed to people who are simply in our way. It takes a long time to recalibrate those values. Years and months of God working on our heart and ironing out the selfishness and ironing out the ego so that we can be the people that he created us to be. And finally, he has to restore our hearts. I don't know if you've thought about this, but your heart was created to beat in harmony with your creator. It was created to exist in peace with the one that created you. And we've said earlier in a service that every lurch at happiness that we've ever had is really our heart trying to find that harmony with the one that created it. But the problem is when we walk through life without caring about the standards that our creator gives us, without much thought towards our spiritual health, and we allow things into our life that don't need to be there, not because they're bad, even though they might be, but more importantly because they're unhealthy for us, it beats up our heart. It damages our heart, and it begins to beat for things that it doesn't need, and it begins, it lurches to find its happiness in things that will never give it happiness, and we walk away with damage, and we walk away with scar tissue on our hearts because we've been trying to fill it and be in harmony with things that it wasn't designed to be in harmony with. Isaiah in the Old Testament describes it like this. Isaiah was a prophet. He wrote the longest book of prophecy in the Old Testament. And he describes the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel was a nation that collectively had been wandering away from God, not pursuing them, living however they wanted to live as though his standards didn't matter. And wander away from him, that that is the condition of our heart when we come back to Jesus. It is wounded from top to bottom. It needs to be bound up. It needs to be healed. God needs to reorient and restore our heart to what he intended it to be so that it beats with him. And that takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't happen because of a prayer. And it doesn't happen because of a spiritual high. It takes a daily, long-term commitment to allowing God to do the work in us that he needs to do to bring us to a place of spiritual health. The good news about this is when we do it for long enough, when we allow God to work in us for long enough, that things and disciplines begin to feel more natural and that the things we want begin to actually change. And we do see our values begin to actually change and our desires begin to actually change. I liken it to the change that happened in me physically when I was trying to eat better, right? And I was actually doing good and avoiding sugars and eating the stuff that I needed to eat. At first, I was bummed out about it, but then I would have like a cheat day, right? Like I've been doing pretty good. It's been 36 hours since I had anything that I wasn't supposed to have. I deserve a little treat, right? So maybe I'd get a sweet tea instead of a water. And I'd drink the sweet tea, and after not having sugar for like a month, it was gross, right? If you've ever experienced this, you take a sip of that sweet tea and go, oh gosh, how did I used to handle this? This is ridiculous. I couldn't handle it. It was too sweet. I had to switch to half and half. Good news, I'm back on full sweet tea, okay? I just want you guys to know that. Yeah, I know. I know. I got my body back in shape. You take it down, buddy. Or I would allow myself a cheat day. I love baked goods, right? So I would be a sucker. Somebody would bring some donuts, a Bible study or something like that and be like, I'm going to have one of those later in private in my shame, but I'm going to have one. And I would start to eat one and it was just too sweet and I couldn't finish it. And my cravings had literally changed. And I used to be like the fast food king. Like I have fast food way more often than I'm willing to admit to you. And so like I loved a big greasy burger and the whole deal. And so maybe I'd have a cheat day. Maybe I would say, okay, that was a good sermon. I'm going to go get myself a nice big cookout, whatever it is. And so I'd go home and I'd eat it, and I would feel gross, like I needed a nap, like it just didn't sit well on me. And my cravings changed, right? And when I started working out, it was hard to get up in the morning. I didn't want to. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to lose that time. Like when I'd get to the gym, I'd kind of look around defeated and be like, I don't want to do any of this crap. But I would make myself do it. But eventually, you do it enough, and your body wants it. And I would go a day or two without working out, and I'd be like, man, I've got to run or something. Like I just need to like sprint around. This is crazy. I need to exercise. Like my body craved it. And so over time, those things change and it becomes more normalized. But here's the thing that I learned. If you add in enough cheat days, if often enough, more regularly than not, you allow yourself that sweet tea again, you know what happens? You get back on the full deal, baby. Eventually, your body goes back to the same place that it was before. If you allow yourself to eat enough burgers when you've been trying to avoid big, greasy foods, eventually your system can handle it again. And you go right back to the place you were before. If you lose your discipline once you're healthy, it doesn't take much to get right back to where you were before. So I'm going to show you something as an example of this, and I'm being vulnerable here, okay? I believe in vulnerability and authenticity. I think it's what makes church so good sometimes. So I'm going to trust you with this. You can make fun of me for this picture today, and then not again, all right? So that's the deal. But I'm going to show you the opposite of a before and after picture. Okay. Or how it's not supposed to look. I'm going to show a picture up here in a second. And the picture on the left is me healthy. And the picture on the right is me like now. Okay. So look, here's what happens when you lose your, when you lose your standard. See me on the left, like that's like November of 2017. That's when I was like at my most healthy. There's some looseness to the t-shirt there, particularly in the gut area. And then to the right there is me like three weeks ago. All right. That's what happens when you fall back into old patterns is you make butter pants Nate there. Okay. Okay. Please take that now. What I've learned is not only does it take a long time to get to a place of health, but if you lose the discipline that got you to that place, you very quickly fall back into who you were. This is the same spiritually. Many of us have spiritually yo-yoed, haven't we? We get to a place of spiritual health. We allow God, we stick to it enough, long enough to allow the Lord to actually get us to a place where we feel like we're walking with him and then something happens in our life. Typically life starts going well and we quit relying on him so much and we just kind of start walking through life. We get back into our ruts. We allow ourselves the cheat days. We don't maintain the vigilance and the discipline over our character and what we allow into our life. And before we know it, we look exactly like we did before we were healthy. This danger and this truth is exactly why I think Paul seems to be so fanatical about perseverance. As we look at the life arc of Paul, we see a man who was converted and who took three years to get spiritually healthy. And then you look at the letters that he writes in the New Testament to all the churches. There's a couple things in there that you pull out that you go, man, these are themes. These are big deals to Paul. And one of them is this idea of perseverance. He is constantly, constantly encouraging everyone around him to persevere in the faith, to hang in there, to maintain the level of discipline, not only that got you to a place of health, but understand that that level of discipline sustains you as you move through life. It prohibits you from yo-yoing spiritually. We've got to hang in there and continue to make faithful decisions. He encourages this corporately and individually. When he writes his letter to the church in Thessalonica, he praises them at the beginning of the letter. He says, I've heard about you and I want to praise you. Why? For your goodness and your faithfulness and your love and your numbers and your growth and your ministry? No. He says, you want to be a good pastor? Here's my advice to you. They're wonderful letters. And throughout these letters, do you know what he encourages Timothy to do over and over again? To endure in the faith, to persevere, to continue to make faithful decisions, to not fall away from the discipline that got him there, to stand strong. And then as Paul finishes the letters to Timothy and nears the end of his life, he shares this incredible verse about perseverance. These two, actually. They're in 2 Timothy 4, verses 6 and 7 thing to be able to say. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. In my Bible, I have a little note next to it. I don't know when I wrote it, but it says, oh, to say this. Would there be a better thing to say at the end of your life than to be able with a clean conscience to say, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I've kept the faith. And so as we consider pursuing spiritual health, hopefully we've been challenged over the series that this is what we want to do. My prayer for you all month, I repeat it every week, has been that you would be closer to Jesus when you finish the year than when you started, that 2019 would be a year of marked spiritual health for you. As we hopefully commit to that in light of this need not only to allow God the time to work in our hearts to reorient them towards him because of that principle of the wilderness and how long it takes to get spiritually healthy. As we allow God that time and we daily choose to commit ourselves to him to get us to a place of spiritual health and then also continue to choose as we commit to that health in an ongoing way, I wanted to finish the series with this simple question or challenge. At the end of 2019, will you be able to say that you finished your race? At the end of this year, if somebody looks at you in the lobby, we come and we have our Christmas Eve services and we blow them out and they're fun and they're really great, and someone looks at you in the lobby, someone who knows you and loves you well and cares about you, and they look you in the eye and they say, did you finish your race this year? You made a commitment in January. You made a commitment to God. You prayed and you committed and you meant it. Did you run your race? What will you be able to say? How do you want to answer that question? To remind you of that commitment, if you've made it, I've put one of these, we've put one of these in each of your seats. It's just a little wristband. It's a cheesy thing, but I think it makes the point. If you're committed to running your race this year, if you're committed to 2019 being a year of marked spiritual health and growth for you, if you're committed to the daily decision and you understand the principle of the wilderness that this is going to take a long time and you're committed to the daily decision of pursuing spiritual health and allowing God to do the work in you to restore your heart and you're committed to maintaining the discipline once you begin to see the results that you're looking for, then I want you to take this home. If you don't want it, you don't need it, it's no big deal, but if you want it, if you're committed to running your race, I want you to take this with you. And I want you to put it somewhere where you'll see it. Maybe not every day, you don't have to prominently display a white wristband, that would be super weird. But put it in the center console of your car. Put it in your catch-all where you drop off your keys when you get to the house. Put it on your nightstand. Put it in a desk drawer that you see at work. Put it next to where you brush your teeth. Wherever you might see it, wherever you might see it frequently enough to remind you so that when you see it, it is a reminder to go, I'm running my race this year. I'm committed this year. I'm making the decisions that I need to make to allow God to work in me this year. I'm going to finish the race. If someone asks me in December if I finished, I'm going to tell them that I did. What could this year be like for you if you committed and you ran? What could this year be like for you? What could God do in your heart and in your life and through you if you would commit to following him this year? What could God do at Grace if we all did this? If at the end of the year we got to be a church where if someone could come ask us, did Grace run their race this year? What if we got to say yes? What amazing things could we see God do here? I can't wait. Because I think there's going to be a lot of y'all running with me. And so I say let's go. And let's be committed to finishing our race this year. Let's pray. Father, we love you so very much. We're so grateful to you for the way that you've loved us, the way that you've looked out for us. God, I pray that you would call on our hearts even now. I pray that those who are far from you, that you would begin to break down those walls and let your goodness like like a fetter, bind their wandering hearts to you as you have with me so many times. I pray that we would be spiritually healthy, that we would allow you the time to do the work in our hearts to orient us towards you, and that when we finish this year, that we would be able to say with a clean conscience, yeah, I ran my race. Show us what happens in a church when a group of people decide to do that, Father. Give us the strength and the courage and the perseverance and the friends and the people that we need in our life to maintain the commitments that we've made this month. It's in your son's name we ask all these things. Amen.

Thank y'all for being here. It's so good to see you. I'm actually the pastor here. They let me do it, which is silly. But my name is Nate, and it's good to see all of you. And again, thanks for being here as we start out January in 2019 together. We have launched the new year with the series Lessons from the Gym. And that started in 2017, that whole year. For whatever reason, I had an uncommon burst of discipline, and I spent more time in the gym that year than I ever had before. And while I was there, just some things occurred to me. I observed some things and learned some things, and I began to see a lot of similarities between going to the gym and trying to get physically healthy and coming to church and trying to get spiritually healthy. And so I just kind of kept track of these things. And as we approached the new year, we knew that some people would be making some resolutions to get physically healthy. I mean, I had my first day back in the gym already this year. It went really well. I was throwing up tons of weight. And then some of us have some resolutions to get spiritually healthy. And we want to meet those and foster those as well. And so as we start the year together, I thought I would share with you some of the things I learned or thought about while I was doing that. Last week, I shared with you my experience in going for the first time and how that could be intimidating when you go to the gym for the first time and you don't know what to do. You feel like kind of an imposter and everyone's kind of looking at you and they're going to figure you out, right? And then it occurred to me that, oh my goodness, this must be what it feels like to go to a church for the first time. It's got to feel uneasy. It's got to be a little bit unnerving, even for those of us with more confidence, which has to be just a little bit intimidating for us to do that. And so I thought, man, what are five things I would love to be able to say to people on their first visit with us at Grace? And what are five things that I want us as a church to be saying to other people through our words and our actions as they come to Grace? And so I would say this, I never do this. I never tell you like, hey, go back and listen to the sermon because that's self-aggrandizing and gross. But for this one, I do think it's important because last week I shared five things that we would love to tell people on their first visit at Grace. And so if you're new to Grace, I would encourage you to go find that online or on the podcast and give it a listen. This week I want to tell you about a meeting that I had with a nutritionist at the gym. As I started to exercise, one of the things I learned is that exercise is good. It makes you healthy. It's very helpful. But if you really want to change the way you look, meaning my goals was for when I sweat, for my sweat to show up on my chest before my belly. That was my only physical fitness goal. But to start changing that, I didn't need to get in the gym. I needed to eat right. And I realized that diet is really more impactful than exercise. So then I started thinking about like, well, how can I diet, right? How can I eat right? Because there's a lot of fad diets out there and they seem unmanageable and unwieldy. And I'm not going to be able to like do those in perpetuity, right? Like I heard somebody say like you have to eat the rainbow every day and that feels like a real hassle. I don't want to do that. I know some people who are on Whole30, which really should be called Whole Hassle. It's so annoying even to be friends with these people when you go out to eat. You may as well just hand a note to the server when you walk in going, I'm really sorry, I'm going to be a hassle for you today. That's not sustainable, right? Because you have to know all these things about food and how to eat. You can do that for 30 days. You can't do that for forever. And so I wanted to learn how to eat right moving forward, something that would be manageable. And so I found a lady who was a nutritionist at the gym and I set an appointment and I went to meet with her. And I was fascinated with what she had to say about nutrition and all the different ways it works and the way that like different bodies respond to different. And I had no idea that it was that detailed. And I quickly became overwhelmed and a little disinterested because I thought, I'm not going to do any of this. So instead, I noticed that her job in trying to help people get physically healthy is a lot like my job in trying to help people get spiritually healthy. And so I began to ask her questions about that. She kept trying to go back to nutrition. I'm like, yeah, that's great. I'll eat some eggs. But let's talk about this, right? And I noticed that she has people come in. She gets to know them, what makes them tick. She comes up with a plan to move them towards health. And then they provide accountability around those people to help them become healthy, and that's really what I do. And from her vantage point, she's seen a lot of people come into the gym wanting to get healthy, and she's seen success stories, and she's seen others that flamed out, and she was telling me the importance of, if you're going to do it, and you're going to do it right, then you really do need a trainer because we hold you accountable. It would be good to have a group of friends or a group of buddies to kind of work out with you or at least see at the gym to hold you accountable there. It would be good if you would do that. Her nutrition and program, she said, was great because you keep a log and she holds you accountable for what you eat and all those kinds of things. And a question occurred to me that I thought had some application at the church. I said, how many people do you see come in? Because when you're at the gym and you're a trainer, January, right, you see us all come in. All the people with our holiday weight on us, like we come in and they see us and they kind of know whether or not we're going to be successful or not. And so I said, how many people do you see come into the gym with the goal of getting physically healthy, but they're doing it alone? They don't have any accountability. They're not hooked up with a trainer. They're not doing the nutrition program. They're just on their own through their own personal discipline. They're just trying to get themselves healthy. How many people do you see successfully do that by themselves? And she very quickly said, less than 5%. Less than 5%. That's nearly impossible. And I thought, oh, how interesting. Because if you think about segments of our culture that are disciplined, people who go to the gym are disciplined, right? And so if you wanted to isolate a segment of our culture that does exhibit discipline that's maybe even above and beyond the mean, you would go to the gym. And what I thought was interesting was even amongst people who are by nature disciplined and have taught themselves self-discipline over the years, less than 5% of them are able to accomplish physical health without other people around them. You cannot get physically healthy alone. And to me, everything in my brain went off as I think about church, because I know that it's entirely true that just like you can't get physically healthy alone, you don't stand a chance of getting spiritually healthy alone. You cannot do that. She said less than 5% of people come in and achieve physical health by themselves. I would say nobody comes into church, regardless of their resolve and their background, void of other people in their life who love them and love Jesus, and moves to a place of long-lasting spiritual health. Nobody does that. You can come to Jesus on your own. You can come to Jesus in the privacy of your own heart, in the privacy of your own home. You can do that on your own. You can get connected with Jesus by yourself. That's absolutely possible. You hear a sermon that compels you. You have a conversation with a friend. You have a big life event. There can be something that just between you and God, you accept Christ and you're connected now to the Father through Jesus. You can do that on your own, but you cannot sustain that growth and flourish in your spiritual health on your own. There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. I have been doing ministry now, vocationally, for nearly 20 years, which is, I feel old. But when I was 19, I went pro, right? They started paying me to be a Christian, which is, that's all ministry is. It's not a big deal. But at 19, I got involved with Young Life, started doing youth ministry, kept doing youth ministry, started doing some other stuff, got involved in a church. I oversaw small groups for a church of nearly 2,000 people and kind of watched the spiritual maturation process within the several hundred folks that were in those and have just been around church world for a long time. And like the trainer at the gym, I've seen a lot of people come in and out of the church. I've seen a lot of people come into the church with gusto. Something's happened in their life. They really want to pursue spiritual health. They want to prioritize their walk with the Lord. They want to prioritize. They want to get some things out of their life that they've been wanting to get rid of for a long time. They want some things in their life that they feel like they've been missing for a long time. I've seen this happen a lot. And sometimes you watch people, it just takes off. Something clicks and they move towards spiritual health and it's a really cool story. And other times you watch them flame out. And maybe that's part of your story. You go back to church with gusto. We've seen this happen. If you've been a church person for any length of time, you've seen other people do this. And maybe we've done it too. We recommit. We make a commitment. I'm going to get spiritually healthy. I'm going to do this. This is going to be important to me. And so we prioritize our walk with the Lord. But then the spiritual things in our life, church, small group, whatever matters most to us, I don't want to set up Sunday morning like it's the number one indicator of spiritual health. It's not. But our commitment to those things tends to fall away, right? At some point or another, it's going to trickle down. No matter how much energy and effort we have and commitment we have going into it, eventually our enthusiasm wanes. And I've seen people come in and they meet with me and they're on fire and they want to get plugged in and they do all the things, but then like attendance and engagement starts to kind of fall off, right? For a couple of months, I don't see them as often. And then after those couple of months, I just don't see them at all. It just falls off. And as I've watched this process over the years, one of the things I've learned is this, that the number one, and I believe this with my whole heart, the number one indicator of your future spiritual health is the community of people that you have in your life. The number one indicator of whether or not you're going to be walking with the Lord in three years and five years and 10 years is who you have in your life right now that is connected to Jesus and connected to you. It's who you have in your life who loves you and who loves Jesus. You show me a person, and not that anybody ever does this, this is a ridiculous hypothetical conversation, but if you showed me a person and you said, this is Kyle, how do you think he's going to be doing spiritually in five years? The very first question I would ask is, who are his friends? Who does he have around him? Who does she have around her that loves her and loves Jesus? To me, that is the number one indicator, more than whether or not we're getting up and reading our Bible and praying, more than what their church attendance is. No, no, no, no. Who do they have in their life that loves them and loves Jesus? It is the number one indicator of future spiritual health. I believe that community is vitally important. And I believe so strongly that you can't be a Lone Ranger Christian that I think it should be prioritized in church above and beyond almost everything else. And this isn't just my idea. This is not something I've learned over observation in ministry. This is a very biblical idea. If you look at Jesus, the Son of God comes down to earth, lives in Nazareth and the area of Galilee and northern Israel for 30 years, and then at the age of 30, he starts his ministry. And if you're a Bible person and you've read the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, they all tell the story of Jesus' life. If you've ever opened those up and you've read them and paid attention to them, when Jesus starts his ministry, when he goes public, what's the very first thing he does? He calls the disciples to himself. Does he go, okay, I'm starting, and then just go out and start preaching and talking to people? No. He goes and he gets community around him. We actually see evidence in Jesus's life that he had some very best friends that lived in a town east of Jerusalem called Bethany. And that those were his people. And that those are who he loves. And when he called the disciples, he didn't just call one or two or three, he called 12. And when you watch Jesus interacting throughout his ministry, he's interacting with groups on a group level. You very rarely see Jesus having a one-on-one conversation with somebody. He's always teaching corporately. He's always keeping people around him. Jesus was one who believed in the power of community. Paul, the most influential Christian to ever live, he wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He was a man, his name was Saul, until God got a hold of him, changed it to Paul, and said he is the chosen instrument to reach the rest of the world. And what he did to reach the rest of the world is he went on three, maybe four, depending on what you think of the last one, missionary journeys where he went around planting churches in cities like Thessalonica and Corinth and Philippi and Ephesus and Galatia and Rome. And then he would write letters back to those churches which have become our New Testament. And when he would go on those missionary journeys, the most influential Christian to ever live, did he go alone because he was so close to God that he didn't need anybody else? No. He had with him what we refer to now as the traveling seminary. Younger men and women that he was training for ministry, that he was pouring into, that he was leaving at certain places. Did you know that there's books in the Bible, 1 and 2 Timothy, that Paul writes to a young pastor because he left Timothy, who was in his traveling seminary, in Ephesus to continue the work there. He discipled him relationally. Even Paul surrounded himself with community. If you read his books, what you'll pay attention to and you'll notice is that friendship mattered a lot to him. The book of Romans, the entire last chapter, Romans 16, is almost entirely greetings and salutations to people who were in Rome to whom he was close. These relationships mattered a lot to Paul. If you look at the book of Acts, where the early church starts, Acts chapter 2, Jesus has lived his life. He's died on the cross. He's come back to life. And then he gave the disciples some instructions. You guys lead the church now. You guys make it go. I'm going to heaven. I'll see you when you get there. And they get together in this upper room and they go, what do we do? And the rest of them go, I don't know, what do we do? And they waited for the Holy Spirit. the Holy Spirit showed up and told them what to do. And so they went out on their balcony and they began to preach to the thousands of people in Jerusalem who were gathered around the disciples to see what do we do next. And when they heard the message of the gospel, when they heard who Jesus was and why he was here, they said, I want in. And the church immediately grew to thousands. Two or three thousand people right there in Jerusalem. That was the birth of the church that we are now a part of today. And in Acts 2, chapter 42 through 47, or chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have the seminal passage on what the early church looked like. Like, if you care about church at all and you want to know, like, are we doing this right? The biggest indicator is to go back to Acts chapter 2 and look at the characteristics of the early church that are listed out in those verses. And we're not going to turn there today because I don't have time to do it, but I'll tell you that the characteristics there are they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to eating meals together in their homes. It says they gathered in their homes daily. It says that they pooled their resources and shared them together and gave them to whoever needed them as those needs came up. And then it says that the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. You know what characterized the early church? Community and connection. It's that important. It's not just important in the New Testament, it's important in the Old Testament. In the days of ancient wisdom, Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, wrote the book of Proverbs. And in Proverbs chapter 10, he says, the companion of the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. My dad used to say, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. It's absolutely true. And then in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes this. I love the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes has the guts to just be dead level honest with you and tell you the truth. The rest of the Bible tells you the truth, but this one just who love you and love Jesus and are helping foster that commitment. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon says, the more the merrier. The more people you have around you in your life who love you and love Jesus, the better chance you have of maintaining and growing and flourishing in a spiritual health. I believe that this is so important, this concept of connection and community, that if you were to ask me what the most important part of my job is, that's what I would say. Which is interesting because when I took this job, that's not what I thought it was. If someone were to come to you and ask you, hey, who's your pastor? You would say, well, it's a guy named Nate. We're kind of going through a rough patch right now. But then if they were to ask you, what is his job? You would probably say, well, he preaches. We prop him up there on Sunday morning, and he runs his mouth, and then we go home, and that's how it goes. His job is to preach. And when I took the job, I felt like my job was to preach. But the more I've thought about it, I've realized that's not the biggest thing that I do. The biggest thing I do is to create systems and processes that funnel you into connection that matters. The biggest thing I do is get fanatical about connecting you with people once you come here. The biggest thing I can do is activate those of you who are grace people, who are grace partners, to use and leverage your community and your connections to graft others into the family of God so that they have the community that you have and are plugged in in such a way that we propel them towards spiritual health. The most important thing I do is to help us be fanatical about getting other people connected to people who love Jesus and who love them. It is the difference maker in future spiritual health, and it is vitally, vitally important. It's a huge deal. And if you hear that and you think, gosh, man, I hear you. We do have to get people connected, but you should preach, man. We got to learn the Bible. There's other things that are super important. I agree with you. Because of that, I want to ask you to do a little exercise with me, okay? I'm being serious now. You can get a pen. You can get your bulletin. You write this thing down. Or if you're like me and you're going to ignore my instructions anyway, just think about it for a second. Here's what I'd like you to do. If you've spent any time in church, if you're not a church person, this is your first time in church, this is going to be a hard exercise for you. You just chill out for just a second. But if you're a church person, I want you to do this for me. I want you to take 30 seconds and write down the five most influential sermons you've ever heard in your life. The five sermons that you've heard in your life that have impacted you in such a way that's moved you to a place of spiritual sustained health. The ones that you look back on and you go, that one was good. That one really changed me and impacted me. Five most influential sermons in Go. Y'all can't even remember two of mine. All right. Time out on that. If you're really doing it, you can continue it later. It is an interesting exercise. Now I want you to do this. Same piece of paper, same thought process. Make a list in 30 seconds of the five most influential people in your life who have impacted you spiritually and pushed you more towards Jesus. That's an easier list, isn't it? It's a much easier list. And when the pastor asks you to write down influential sermons, you think, oh, shoot, I've got to come up with something here. No, you don't. Here's what I know. Can I just tell you this? Can I just be honest with you? You guys don't remember what I say. I know that. You guys don't remember my sermons. Maybe. I've been here almost two years. Maybe one, maybe two. You don't remember my sermons. And that's okay. You're not supposed to. I've worked the hardest I can to give you something on Sunday morning that's worth showing up to. I don't expect you to remember it on Wednesday. I just hope that there's something over the course of time that we learn about Scripture, that we learn about our God, that we learn about our Savior, that moves us closer to Him, that they can impact us for that day, for that week, but we just push the needle every week. We just push the flywheel every week. There's not one single sermon that moves us in that direction, but do you know what impacts us? People. Over the course of my ministry here, if God blesses me with decades here, you know what will be most impactful to you is the times that I am able to show up at the hospital, the times that we're able to sit around a table together, the times that we served on committees together, the times that we were in small group together. You know what's going to impact you at grace more than my sermons is the friends that you have here that push you towards Jesus. That when you begin to fall away a little bit, they reach out and they grab you and they go, hey, why don't you come back? That when your marriage starts to struggle a little bit, they put their arm around you and they go, hey, is everything okay? That's going to impact you. The people in your life are going to impact you so much more than what happens here on Sunday mornings. And I understand that. Which is why I believe that the most important thing I can do for you is to connect you in community. The other reason I believe this, if we're just being honest, thinking about church moving into the 2020s, which is super close now, which is nuts. And I know you guys probably haven't thought about this. I think a lot more about church than most folks. Do you realize that the only part left of church that you can't download is friends? You ever thought about that? The only part left of church that you can't download is your friends. Listen, I work hard on these sermons. You guys say, most weeks I work hard on them. Sometimes I wing it. You guys say nice things about the sermons. But this is not false humility here. There are world-class speakers and preachers who their sermons are uploaded every week. You can listen to me on Sunday and go listen to six better ones every day of the week. There's better sermons and better preachers out there. That doesn't hurt my feelings. It's just true. And if you're coming to church for the sermons, you can download those. If you're coming to the church for the music, which by the way, time out, wasn't that freaking great this morning? Gosh, that was so good. I'm so proud of the way, the job that Steve has done and the way that they sounded. And it's just, I really like that. And I love singing Reckless Love. But you can get in your car and sing it with the person who wrote it, who got paid to record it, who is really good. You can download worship songs. You've got Spotify. You can dial up anyone you want. You can have a big, long worship session in your car or in your office or in your kitchen, wherever you want it. You can download that. You know what you can't download? Your buddies. People who love you and love Jesus. And so I believe that the churches who emphasize community most are the ones that are going to be healthiest and best as we move into the future. The ones who emphasize community and connection are the ones that are going to actually be healthy because we're paying attention to what matters in the lives of others. And so my goal for you is that you come in here and you get connected with other people. That's what I think about. And can I tell you that that's the reason I chose Grace? That's the reason I came to Grace was because of the tremendous sense of community that we have here. In December of 2016, I had an interview set up with the search team from Grace. It was a Skype interview. It was going to be two hours. And so I woke up that day, I think it was December the 8th, and I began to do research about the church because when they asked me, why is it that you want to work here? I'm not going to go, I don't know, what's on your website? Like I was going to have a good answer for them, right? Which by the way, if you're interviewing for jobs, like you should do that, like research for the company. They appreciate that. So I was just learning because I didn't want to look dumb. And can I just be honest with you? Some of you guys know this story. Others of you don't. So I'm sorry about this. The more I learned about grace in December of 2016, the less I wanted to be here. Because that church at that time was not going well. It was kind of leaking like a sieve. And I thought, I don't think that this is, I got a job I like, comfortable in, I have a family. I'm not moving six hours for that. So I actually opened up my computer to write the email to cancel the interview. But then I thought, time out, big time. You're not so important that you should cancel interviews. Just take it and practice. You need it. So I took the interview. And they asked me all the questions and whatever it was. And then at the end, they said, well, do you have any questions for us? And I thought, yeah, I mean, I don't really care. I said, let's just let it fly. I was interested in this. And I said, you guys, you guys have not been doing well. You've been shrinking for several years. And that church has been through a lot of strife. What are you still doing there? And they said, we're here because we love each other. We're here for the community. We're here because our kids grew up here and this place matters to us. And we're here because of our connection with others. And when they said that, I thought, that's where I want to be. That's what I want to be a part of. A church that values community like that. Because I so strongly believe in it. And as I've come here, I've seen that that is what's most important to Grace. I've watched you guys as we've come and we've grown over the last 18 months. As people come in who maybe haven't been in a while, there hasn't been even a hint of, oh, you're back now. It has only been open-armed welcomes. It has only been warm receptions. And I hope that as you've come back to Grace that you've experienced that same warmth as well. If you haven't, I'm sorry that we have failed you, but I think that's what characterizes Grace. I think it's what we do, and it's what we do best. Which is why, as I came here, and I thought about what are we going to look like in the future? What's going to characterize us? Because we're in Raleigh. There's hundreds if not thousands of churches. All of you guys, this place could fold. All of you guys could be in another church next week, okay? And I know that. So it's important to me to figure out what makes us us. What makes us Grace Raleigh? God has different churches that he's positioning throughout the city to build his kingdom here. What's our niche? What do we need to lean into so that we most wisely invest our resources and our time? And I'm convinced it's community. It's our ability to graft other people in and get them connected. Because of that, in the fall of last year, I began to look at our mission statement. And our mission statement was a good one. Loving Jesus, loving our neighbor, and living faithfully. We said it here every Sunday. It's a good mission statement. And for those of you who are unindoctrinated, the mission statement of a church isn't a huge deal, except that it really serves as kind of the marching orders for a church. The mission statement, what you say it is, has two purposes. It's descriptive to outsiders. As they look at the church from the outside in, what does that church do there? It's descriptive to them. It's prescriptive to insiders. It prescribes for us what we need to do. Our mission is to love Jesus and to love our neighbor and to live faithfully. That's what we're going to do. That's what's going to be expected of me if I go there. And that's a good mission. But this thing I had in the back of my head was the idea that that's a good mission, but that's not graces. That's not personalized to grace. That doesn't make grace unique. That doesn't capture who we are and what we most deeply care about. And to me, the belief in community and commitment to one another, connecting with one another as we connect to Jesus, is what's most important to us. It's what is vitally important to us. It's the reason I came here is because I felt like we were on the same page with that. And so at the beginning of the year, I proposed a new mission statement to the elders, and we had a really great, I would call it a healthy give and take discussion about it. And it was a worthwhile investment of time because by the end of it, we were all on the same page and of one accord. And we came up with a mission statement that I don't believe at all changes the direction of grace. I think it captures what we already do and makes our future more clear. So now, beginning in 2019, the mission statement at Grace Raleigh is connecting people to Jesus, connecting people to people. That's what we do. It's who we are. This doesn't change our direction. It just makes it more clear because we're already passionate about doing this. Because I think you know without ever saying it or thinking through it that the best indicator towards someone's spiritual health is whether or not they're connected to other people who love Jesus and love them. And so when someone walks through the doors at Grace Raleigh, our very first goal for them is that they would get connected to Jesus. But what we understand about the power of community and the difficulty of life is that no one grows closer to him by themselves. And so the very next thing that we have to get, we've got to be fanatical about is getting them connected with community. The shorthand of this is connecting people. Grace Raleigh, connecting people. That's what we do. Who do we connect them to? Well, first we connect them to Jesus and then we deepen that relationship by connecting them to other people who love Jesus and who love them. I hope that fires you up. I hope that you like that. I am excited about that. I've had people ask me a lot over the past several months, what do you think is the future of the church? How big do you think we're going to be? How big would you like to see us become? Where do you think we're going to go from now? What are we going to look like in five years? And to all those questions, I always go, I don't know. That's a lot of pressure, man. I just have to preach. I don't know. And to be honest with you, I don't really care. I don't really care how big we get. That's not really important to me. What's important to me is how healthy we are. What's important to me is how good of a job we do at what I believe church exists for. And the entire time I've been here, whenever anybody would ask and they say, what's your goal for the church? My goal is that on Sunday morning, when somebody walks through those doors, we acknowledge that God has entrusted us with that soul and we are a good steward of that soul. Whether it's for the first time or the thousandth, we need to be good stewards of the souls that God entrusts to us when they walk through those doors. And I believe that the best way to do that is to teach the Bible, connect them to Jesus, and to get them as quickly as we can connected with other people who love them and love Jesus so that we can sustain this desire for spiritual health in their life. We have to do it. I don't want to see people coming in here and fading away. That breaks my heart. So we have to fight for these connections. And the challenge at Grace is to take a sense of community that for years has protected us and sustained us and been inwardly focused by necessity and now begin to turn that out and graft other people into the family that God is growing here. That's what we need to do. Because of all of this, we have small groups. Small groups are the best way to get connected with people at Grace. If you are thinking right now, man, I don't know if I'm connected, I really need to be, then this is the next step for you. I would encourage you to do an inventory and think about your friends. Who are the top five people I talk to most often? Do they love you and love Jesus? Because if they love you, that's great, but if they don't love Jesus, that doesn't do you much good. If they love Jesus and not you, that's not very helpful either. We need both those things. Do you have that? Some of us need to lean into that more. Some of us need to rekindle some old friendships and say, hey, I really need you in my life a little bit more. Don't say it like that. Think of a cooler way to say it, but that's what you need to do. Some of us, you're coming in from other circles of life, and your circles of friends, they might not go to church right now, and that's great. I'm not telling you at all to disconnect from those friends, but what I am telling you is you need some connections in church. You need some connections of people who love you and love Jesus. And so I would encourage you, if you're not a part of a small group, to fill out that piece of paper that's in the seat that you're sitting in. That's an easy informational thing. You just write your name, write the way that you want me to get in touch with you, and then you put when you're available and what you think you might be looking for, and I'll give you a call or shoot you an email. We don't do sign up for a small group anymore like you pick from a catalog. I like to play matchmaker, and as long as I can, I'm going to do that every semester and just spend the time with the individuals and figure out what's going on in your life, what are your needs, what's the general sense I get from you, and how can I best place you in a group of people who are like you, where you're going to feel comfortable and get connected. So my encouragement to you is, if you're not connected, fill that out. And when we're done, in a minute we're going to take communion, then we're going to sing a song, and we're going to be dismissed. And as we're dismissed, at the end of the aisles, the doors, is either going to be an usher or a little table with a basket in it. Just put that sheet in the basket. Those are going to be put on my desk this afternoon, and I'll follow up with you this week and try to get you connected. As an aside, if you're here and you're in your 20s, there's a lot of you here. So many that I'm taking a break from my young family small group, my wife and I are, and we're going to help give some energy to the 20-something small group this semester. So if you're in your 20s and you'd like to get connected here, please indicate that on that white piece of paper and I'll be in touch with you this week. I'm particularly excited about that this semester. But whoever you are, whatever your walk of life is, we have a way to get you connected here and I hope that you will be. And I'm so excited as we move forward that this mission statement is going to characterize us. Because being committed to that, I think and I hope that we're going to to come to a place where we have to choose between do we grow more or do we try to stay smaller because if we grow too big, we can't do this. I wanna make that choice and I wanna choose health. I don't care what we look like. I hope that I get to be here for decades and I don't care what we look like at the end of that but I do, as far as size, but I do hope that we're healthy. That would be success. And I think by staying committed to this, we have a really good shot at that. And I'm going to pray, and then we get to partake in communion. Father, we love you. We're so grateful for you. We're so grateful for the way that you reach into our lives, that you love us recklessly with no regard for yourself, how you pursue us. Lord, we are so grateful for the connections in our life that move us closer to you. We are grateful for the friendships that have sustained us in this place. I pray that you would use those friendships in amazing ways moving forward. God, as people come to grace, may this be a place where they get connected quickly, where they experience community and your love quickly. And may that community serve to move us closer to you. If there's anyone here who's experiencing any trepidation about just taking that first step towards connection, I pray that you would give them the courage to do at least that today. We thank you for who you are and all the ways you love us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.