Sermons tagged with Transformation

All right, well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Now's not a good time. I'm busy. Happy Mother's Day for those to whom it applies. As we were singing that last song, I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. I think that's an excellent song for Mother's Day. I think about my wife, who's an incredible mother. I think about the mom that I got to grow up with. I think about the kids that we have and share together and see God's evidence, the evidence of God's goodness all over my life. And hopefully for Mother's Day, that's something that you get to reminisce and think about too. Hopefully you have a great mom. Hopefully you've gotten to experience being a mom if that's something that you want to experience. But I also know that for others, Mother's Day is hard. We had a lot of hard Mother's Days when we wanted the gift of children and we didn't have it yet. And so I always like to just acknowledge that and pray in gratitude for good moms, for good memories, for the blessing of motherhood, but also pray for strengthening for those for whom Mother's Day is difficult for myriad reasons. So if you'll join me in prayer, I'll pray, and then we'll dive into the sermon. Father, we're grateful for good moms, moms that love us,oms that love us enough to get on to us, to keep after us, to not give in. Moms who wake up in the night with us. Moms who are always there, who leave notes in our lunches and who pray with us every morning. We thank you for moms that we've seen read your word and seek you diligently. We thank you for moms who raised us to help see you. And God, we thank you for the gift of motherhood and parenthood. And those of us who have children, God, are so grateful that you've given us that gift. And so we pray that we would be the mom and the dad to them that we need to be. God, also lift up those for whom holidays like this are difficult. Maybe it's difficult because their mom's not here anymore, and that's hard. Maybe it's difficult because they want to be a mom and they're not. And that's hard. Maybe it's difficult, God, because we thought we were going to be a mom and then we weren't. So, Lord, I pray just for special strength, protection, grace, and peace onto those folks. And that, God, those of us who feel blessed by today would see you as the author of that blessing. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is part five of our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at different stories and instances in the Bible where we see these emotional flare-ups, these blow-ups and these blow-outs, and kind of just ask, what can we learn from that? Because this blowing up is a very part, it's a part of the human existence. It's something that we all experience. And so earlier in the series, we talked about, I talked about Peter cutting off the ear of one of the soldiers in the garden, and I kind of compared that to when we lash out at people. We just get angry, and we lash out, we're cutting off ears, and we should try to cut off less ears. And we talked about what can we do when we feel like lashing out. And so I thought it would be good to look at the other end of that and say, what do we do when we're the one whose ear just got cut off? What do we do when someone lashes out at us? So the question for today is, what should you do when someone blows up on you? When you are on the receiving end of unwarranted anger, of unjust frustration, of unfair lashing out, what should you do when someone blows up on you? And I thought that this would be appropriate for Mother's Day because what is being a mom if not getting blown up at eight times a day because you had the audacity to suggest that now might be a good time to brush your hair or not wear Crocs with a church dress or not get out of bed at 630 to make Mother's Day breakfast. Not that any of those things happen in our home, but with your children who are less good than ours, I'm sure that they blow up at you. And I can only imagine, you know, right now we've got a seven-year-old daughter. John is two. He doesn't really know how to blow up at anybody. He just clenches his fist really tight and you can just hear, he screams and you can just see this visceral anger coming from him, which is great. And, but Lily knows how to blow up. She's seven, but they're seven-year-old blowups, you know, like they're not, they don't really sting a little. I bet the 17-year-old blowups are rough. I bet those, I'm not looking forward to those. And then something tells me that the older your children get, the worse those instances become. And I also know that on the other end of the spectrum, I've talked with enough people, with aging parents, that sometimes as parents get older and older, their filter is just used up. It's just used up. They don't have a new one. There's no replacement. You can't get one from Amazon. It's just gunked up and they've tossed it aside. And they can say things that aren't so nice sometimes. And that's tough. It's tough when someone blows up on you. It's tough to be on the receiving end of unfair anger. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was going to pick up my dad at the airport. And I was at the airport and just kind of started to, I was near the terminal, so the traffic kind of starts to funnel in and slow down and whatever. And this cab, like a literal taxi cab, I don't even know, like, what are you guys even doing anymore? Like, who's using cabs? And not, why does it even exist in Raleigh? I don't understand this. It's like, it's like, it's like seeing the yellow pages on your front door or something. Like, didn't we, didn't we cover this? Anyways, cab comes blowing past me, swerves into my lane, like, and, and, and like slams on his brakes. Like he's mad at me. And I'm like, what in the world's going on with this guy? I have no idea. I did not see him anywhere in my rear view. I was not aware. I didn't even think that I had changed lanes recently. He just decided he was mad at me. He gets in front of me and I'm like, whatever. So I, I actually, I didn't even need to be in that lane and he was now going slow to mess with me. So I, I I just went around him like I got to go to the second terminal, buddy. And I look over, and he is aggressively hanging the bird at me. And I don't know how you do that non-aggressively, but this was aggressive. Shaking his fist, yelling things. I literally, like honestly, I'm on the stage, okay? I'm preaching to people. So before God, I have no clue, no clue what I did that upset this guy. And so I just kind of looked at him and went, and kept driving. I don't know. I wasn't mad, but he was really mad at me. So what do we do when someone gets really angry with us and we don't deserve it? We didn't do anything. We don't know what to do. How do we act in those moments? How does God want us to act? And what's really cool is not even how does God want us to act just so that we behave well, but how can we act in those moments that will actually draw people, the people who are angry and the people who can see that anger, that will actually draw them closer to our Father. What can we do in those situations when someone blows up on us? When I was thinking about that, there's one story that comes to mind in the Bible. To me, it's the best blow-up story in the whole Bible. It's one of the biggest ones. I can't think of many others that are like it, if any at all. But it's in 1 Samuel. We see the first part of it in chapter 18, and then I'm going to point us to chapter 19. So Saul is the king of Israel. He's the first king of Israel, but there's this kid named David who's been anointed as the next king of Israel. Normally, Saul's son Jonathan would take the throne from him, but God has used the prophet Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel. And then after getting anointed, David does this really annoying thing where he goes down in the valley and he kills a giant that everybody else in the whole country was afraid of, including Saul, and he does it without Saul's armor. And so Saul's a little ticked at him. And then he puts David in his army, and there's this song. This is the English translation of the song. Maybe it sounds better in the original Hebrew. I don't know. It's a pretty dumb song, if you ask me. But it was, Saul has killed his thousands, but David has slayed his tens of thousands. I don't know what the melody is on that. Maybe I should get Roburg to help me out. That seemed to work for you. But I don't, that was the song, right? So there's some jealousy there between Saul and David. And so Saul was a man that was given to what we would probably identify as anxiety or depression, bouts of despair and anger. And one of the only things that could calm him was David coming to the palace and playing the harp for Saul. That would calm him down. And so David's doing that one day, and Saul is just seized with anger and throws his spear at David to try to kill him two times. David dodges both of them and then gets out of there. Then after that, Jonathan, who was David's closest friend in the world, goes to Saul, his dad, and he's like, dude, this is a paraphrase. He says, dude, what are you doing? What's the problem here, man? This guy, he loves you. He serves you. He's a good servant. He's faithful. He's a good leader of men on the battlefield. He's there to play the harp when you need him to. I'm not mad at him. I'm happy that he's going to be my king. You don't need to be mad at him for me. Just like knock it off with David, with hating David. Can you do that for me? And Saul says, yes, I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Which just as an aside, if you ever in your life have to promise to stop trying to kill someone, you just need to take a look in the mirror. That's all. I'm not going to make a bunch of points about that, but that's a sentence that no one should say. I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Then we pick up the story in 1 Samuel 19. Turns out Saul's a liar. He just really liked trying to kill David. So here we go. Then a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, and he sat in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the lyre. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul so that he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, If you do not escape with spear two times, leaves, gets invited back to the palace, goes back to the palace. He's playing the lyre again to try to soothe Saul. And Saul, for a third time, throws a spear at David. David eludes it and gets out of there. Which, as an aside, I'd just like to point out, this is one of the fundamental differences between David and I. I have a one-spear-throw policy. If you throw your spear at me one time in anyone's house, I'm leaving that house, and I'm not going to trust you around spears again. David has a three-spear policy, much more gracious than I am. So he eludes it for the third time. He leaves. McCall is actually Saul's daughter that was given to David in marriage, and she helps him escape. Later on, we see this poignant scene where David and Jonathan meet in a field, and Jonathan tells David, you're going to have to go until my dad dies. He's never going to stop wanting to kill you, so you got to go. So David, for I think about this 20 year period goes and he just lives in the wilderness with a band of some of his soldiers. And they just elude Saul at various times. Saul chases David through the wilderness, trying to capture him and kill him. And there's actually two really poignant scenes in the wilderness where David has a chance to kill Saul and he doesn't. There's one where they're in the En Gedi, the caves on the edge of the En Gedi plain, which is in the southern part of Israel, close to the Dead Sea. And Saul's army must have been close because David and his men were hiding in a cave. And Saul, now at my house, when someone says they have to go to the bathroom, we say, do you have to go to the bathroom or the bathroom bathroom? Saul had to go to the bathroom bathroom. So he goes into a cave to take care of business. While he's in there, just so happens, that's where David and his guys are. And David's guys are giving David the eyes like, dude, you could totally kill him right now. And David realizes this. But he says, shame on me if I harm the head of the Lord's anointed. So he takes his knife and he cuts off an edge of the robe and Saul leaves. And once he's a little ways off, within shouting distance at least, David feels terrible that he even did what he did. And he goes out and he gets Saul attention, and he shows him the robe. And Saul feels so bad about the grace and forgiveness that David shows him that he decides, I think I'm going to be done killing David for a while. And he goes back to the palace. It wasn't long before he started hunting for David again. This time, David and a guy named Abishai snuck into the tent at night, and Saul's laying on the ground asleep with all of his men around him asleep as well. And Abishai looks at David, and he says, let me strike him with the spear. It will only take once. It will not take twice, which is a really, like, it's one of the cool lines. Like, I only need to do it once, man. I won't need two on this one. I'll get him. And David says, no, shame on me if I touch the Lord's anointed. And then in a battle between some of David's forces and some of Saul's forces, Saul ends up being killed. And the person who takes Saul's life, David actually takes their life for being willing to do that to the Lord's anointed. So what we see from David is that although Saul blew up on him, had completely unjust, unfair, unwarranted anger at David, David always, his whole life took the high road. His whole life honored Saul. Never once did he raise to meet Saul where he was. And so if we're going to ask, what should we do when someone blows up on us, when we are the object of unwarranted anger and frustration, I think we can look to this example of the life of David and see what he did, and we can mimic those things in our own life. And what's really helpful about this is I think that there are three really important New Testament passages, verses or passages, because some of them are two verses. I think there are three really important New Testament passages that honestly, every Christian, if you're here and you call yourself a believer, you should have these memorized. You should be able to say these off the top of your head. These should be things that show up in your life that you think of often enough so regularly that you can quote them. You might not know where they're from. You might not know how to find them. You might have to type them into Google to figure out the reference like I did this week, but you should know them. You should know what to type into Google. And so I want to look at three verses that display three behaviors that David displayed in this story about his interaction with Saul. So let's look at three things that were true of David and try to make those true of us. The first thing we see in this story is that David was slow to anger. He was slow to anger. And I know he was slow to anger because David could have, by all accounts, by all accounts, he was a better warrior than Saul. By every measure, he was superior to Saul. When Saul is in his house and potentially drunk and throwing spears at him, David could have very easily taken that spear out of the wall and gotten his vengeance on Saul right there. Now, you might say, well, he couldn't do that. There's guards. He could have been killed. Yeah, maybe, but what we know is that he didn't raise up in red-hot anger and do what some of us would do if somebody tried to hurt us. He kept his cool. He was slow to anger, which is really not the typical response in the human experience, right? That's why James writes this verse to remind us to do it. In James 1, 19 and 20, he says, does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. This is one that we should know. This is one that we should have memorized. This is one that we should remind ourselves of, particularly when someone is blowing up at us. Because human nature is not to stay calm and stay down here. Human nature is to rise and meet the anger with anger, isn't it? You guys who are married know this. You know this. You've had those fights, those days, where you look at each other and you're just mad at each other. You're just mad. And finally, one of you goes, what are you mad about? What are you even upset for? And the other one says, I don't know. You're mad at me, and I don't know why you're mad, so I'm mad at you. Well, I don't know why you're mad. So I'm mad at you. And then you kind of go back and forth. You're like, what was the first thing that made us mad? And nobody knows. And like, can we just agree to just kind of set the arms down and slowly back away from this one? Are we done here? We're like, yeah, we're done here. But that's typical in human interaction to meet anger with anger. I remember years ago, very early on in our marriage, Jen and I were at each other's throats about something. I don't remember what. But as we were talking about it, she gets really upset. She storms up the stairs, slams our bedroom door. Now, what did I do? Did I, because of my maturity and wisdom, think to myself, she's probably overreacting, but I'm going to let her stay up there and simmer because we don't want to say words in anger. And, you know, I'm sure that she'll kind of calm down. She'll realize maybe that was a little bit too much, and she'll come and apologize and tell me I'm right. That's probably what I need to do. No, I did not do that. I did not do that. Instead, I thought, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to tell her that she does not need to be slamming doors in our house. So I go upstairs, and I open that door, and I start getting on to her for the way that she's expressing her anger. And she, again, I don't want to talk to you right now, and leaves the room and goes into the guest room and slams that door. Now listen. Here's what I know. I don't know what we were fighting about. But if I make that sweet woman act like that, it's my fault. I was wrong. I don't know what we were fighting about. I know I was wrong. That's what I know. Now when she went into the second room and shut that door, did I leave her be? No. Because I wanted to poke it. So I walk up to the guest bedroom and I open that door. And I said, you know, I can open this door too. I can open all the doors. I don't know what happened after that. Things just kind of went red, I guess. It was just a blur. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's mad at us. Oh, I'm going to get mad at you. Some cab driver hangs you the bird, you're like, hey man, forget you. You know, like whatever. Your kid snaps at you, you've had a stressful day, you meet them there and you snap at them. Your spouse, your co-worker, your parent. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's angry with us, we raise to meet that anger. Well, James tells us, don't do that. Don't do that. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's important to be quick to listen and slow to speak too, because in those moments when we're frustrated, we have things that we want to say. But if we'll calm down and listen, we'll probably learn new information that may change what we want to say, that may help us be slower to anger. So when someone's angry with us, wisdom says, I'm going to be quiet, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to listen, and I will not meet anger with anger. This is what David does. The second thing that David does is David was quick to forgive. He was slow to listen and quick to forgive. He moves to forgiveness very, very quickly. We see no evidence whatsoever in any of the texts that David was ever angry with Saul or that David could not forgive Saul ever through the rest of his life. We see David offer Saul quick forgiveness, which is right in line with what Jesus teaches Peter in Matthew chapter 18. When it says that Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me that should I forgive him? As many as seven times? And Jesus says to as many times as you need to. Forgive again, forgive again, forgive again, forgive again. And it feels pretty generous for Peter to ask that. How many times, when my brother commits the same offense against me, how many times should I forgive him? Up to seven, which makes sense. Your friend comes over to your house, he gets too rowdy, he breaks your new TV. You forgive him that one time. How many more times should I forgive him? Seven? That's a lot of breaking TVs. And Jesus says, no, as many times as you need to forgive them, forgive them. The way that I think about it is, as many times as we hope God forgives us, forgive other people that many times. When someone offends us, when someone lashes out at us, when we are the object of someone's unfair anger and unfair frustration, we should as quickly as we can move to forgive that person. Because holding that grudge is only going to hurt us. It's not going to hurt them. Now, I will also say this. Last year at Lent, during the Lent season, I did a sermon on forgiveness. And I basically just preached to you from the perspective of my good friend, whose husband was having an affair on her, and she had to really learn what forgiveness looked like because they had five kids, and that was really, really tough. And one of the things that she said that was super helpful, if you're a person who's struggling with forgiveness or wants a more robust explanation of forgiveness and what it looks like, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to that sermon. But one of the things she said that I found very helpful and others have commented to me too that was very helpful is forgiving someone does not mean that you have to trust them again. And so I would say this to you. If the person who is blowing up at you is making a habit of that, if they do it regularly, if it's not just a one-off that you can ascribe to a set of circumstances that are no longer true, but you have someone in your life who's blowing up at you again and again and again, you should be slow to anger in those situations, and you should be quick to find a path to forgiveness in those situations. But let me tell you what David did not do. He did not go back into Saul's palace again. He did not make himself vulnerable to a spear the fourth time. He did not trust Saul again. Did he forgive him? Yes. Did he honor him? Yes. Did he give him grace? Absolutely. But did he put himself back in that home? No. No. If you have someone in your life who is habitually blowing up at you, it is perfectly good and wise to remove yourself from that situation until something changes and you feel like you can trust that that's not going to keep happening. As we talk about what do we do when someone blows up on us, it's... I'm mostly talking about people who aren't our spouses. If it's our spouse and they do it all the time, if it's our brother or sister or friend or mom or dad and they do it all the time, that's a separate sermon. But what I would say to that separate sermon is, it's okay to not put yourself back in a situation where someone's going to blow up at you all the time, where you feel like you're just around a ticking time bomb. We should seek to forgive, but we don't have to trust and keep putting ourself in a place where that is going to happen over and over and over again until we believe that something is going to be different. The last thing David does is David was a conduit of grace. He was a conduit of grace. He was connected to God's grace. He was pouring grace out onto others. Back in the fall, I did a series called The Five Traits of Grace, the five characteristics that make us who we are, The five things that we want every partner to exhibit. And one of those things is to be a conduit of grace. To be attached to the grace of God so that the grace that we receive flows out onto others. This is the verse that I think of when I think of this. This is probably, if you're going to memorize any verse at all, if you don't know any of these, start with this one. Start with this verse. Put it on your mirror where you get dressed. Put it on your dashboard if you get angry in the car. Put it next to where your emails are if those things make you angry. Whatever sets you off, whatever stokes your fire, just put this verse so that you can see it. And it's super easy to memorize and it's super impactful. For from his fullness, John says, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God's grace that pours out on us, we have all received grace upon grace. When we think about a couple of weeks ago on Palm Sunday, I did a sermon about the earned wrath of God on us for placing his son on the cross and that Jesus on the cross exhausts the wrath of God for his children. When we think of the wrath that we don't have to experience because God poured it out on Jesus instead of us, that's grace. And God knew, as I said, God knew that we were going to cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. He knew that we were going to do that. He knew what you were going to do after you prayed the prayer and after you accepted Jesus as your Savior. He knew that you were going to move through that awful season of your life that you'd like to forget. He knew that and he forgave that. He knows what lies ahead and he's forgiven that. When we think about the grace that we feel every week when we come to church and we sit here and we sing the songs and we have this voice in our head that reminds us of who we are and what we've done and where we've been and that if the people here knew what I was capable of, if the people here knew what I know, then I would have to find a different church to go to. And yet God chooses me and God loves me and God blesses me and he's given me grace upon grace. When we realize that, that that God is so good to us, that that God is so patient with us, that that God will watch us go through years where we don't have quiet times, where we're not praying to him, where we're not seeking him, where everything about our Christian life is compulsory and cursory. He will watch that zombie walk through life and still try to breathe spiritual life into us at all times, calling us back to him. He is excited every time we come home. He is excited every time we utter the words, dear God, and we begin to pray. He is thrilled in his heart every time he hears your voice praise your creator. When we receive from his fullness that much grace, it is very easy to pour grace out onto others. And this is what David did. He had grace for Saul. I think he understood Saul's plight. I think he had patience for him and his depressions and his moods, even in understanding his desire for his own son to be on the throne. And one of the best pictures of grace we see, maybe in the Bible, but definitely in the life of David, is once Saul has passed away, David has ascended to the throne. Anybody who's watched the History Channel or read any books about old kings and kingdoms knows that once a king takes over, one of the first acts of orders of business is to kill everyone associated with the bloodline that preceded him so that there's no threats to his throne. And there was no one left that they knew of, but then one day somebody found a relative of Saul's. It was a nephew or a cousin or something, I can't remember which. Named Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, it says, had a disability. And that's important because that made it more difficult for Mephibosheth to earn money and provide for himself. So he was a person who needed help. And they brought him to David, expecting David to kill him, to put him to death, to be done with the line of Saul and move on. Instead, David, learning who he was, had mercy and grace on him, made a seat at his table for him, and invited Mephibosheth to live in the palace and dine with him and be with him and considered him a family member for the rest of his life. That was how David showed grace and honor to Saul. That's the kind of grace that we're to show to others. The grace that says, I'm not saying I did this in the moment, I'm not trying to give myself credit, but the grace that says, you know what? It would be super stressful to be a cab driver. I don't know how they do it. I went to Chick-fil-A and Home Depot the other day. I was about to lose my mind, and that's like five minutes away. I don't know how they do it to be a cab driver. And you know what? I bet I did something inconsiderate that I wasn't even thinking of. So I'm going to give them them that. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. They're probably in a hurry. They probably need to get where they're going. Or, if this helps, life would be really hard to be that dumb. So I'm glad that God didn't make me that dumb. Whatever you need. We offer others grace. And I'll tell you who's the world's best at offering other people grace. It's Jen, my wife. She will do this all the time. We will be in traffic. Someone will cut me off, cause me to have to slam on the brakes. Our children are crying. We're terrified. And I'll say, my gosh, can you believe that person? And she'll say, now, Nady, because she calls me Nady. If you want to call me Nady, too, you can. It'd just be weird. She says, now, Nady, you don't know. His wife could be in the passenger seat in labor right now. And we just need, tell me I'm lying. And we just, we don't know what's going on in their life. I could be walking down the road, I promise you. I could be walking down the road and some guy could just come up to me and dog cuss me in front of my family. And then I could get out of the situation and walk down there and be like, can you believe that guy? What a jerk. And she'd be like, now, lady, you don't know what's going on in his life. His wife may have just left him and his parents may have just passed away. You don't know. That kind of grace. And when we remind ourselves of God's goodness and grace to us every day, it is easy to pour that out onto others. And I say start with that one, memorize that one, because if we're full of grace and we're offering other people grace, can't we be more quick to forgive when they mess up? Can't we remember that hurt people hurt people and just assume that they're hurting and maybe actually help them get to the bottom of their hurt rather than piling on and making them feel shame for blowing up in a way that they regret? If we're full of grace, won't we be slow to be angry? Won't we stay here longer? Because we're trying to see the best in them and we're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in the situation. I think if we just abound in grace that it takes care of the rest. And then the amazing thing that happens when we do this, when someone blows up at us unfairly or unjustly, if we do what this says, when someone blows up on you, be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abound in grace. When we do that, what are the people around you going to notice? What are your children going to pick up on? It's the easiest thing in the world to match anger for anger. It's the easiest thing in the world to lash back out. It's the easiest thing in the world to let someone say something nasty to you, say something mean to you, to have a server who's curt with you, one of those servers who acts like they don't even want to be there that day. It's perfectly human to let them walk away and then you venture frustration to the people around you. But what if you meet them with grace? What if you're slow to anger when other people would meet? What if you're quick to forgive when other people would hold on? What if you're abounding in grace when other people would abound in suspicion and doubt? Then not only have you brought that person who blew up at you a little bit closer to Jesus, not only do you bring yourself closer to Jesus, but you bring the people around you who see that and who marvel at that closer to Jesus too. Simply by being someone who, like David, is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and always abounding in grace. Let's pray. Father, would we in this way be more like David? And so be men and women after your own heart. God, when we are the subject of unfair anger, unfair frustration, when people treat us in ways that we don't deserve to be treated, would you help us to be slow to anger? Would you help us to stop and to listen? Not meet frustration with frustration? Would you help us to be quick to forgive where we can, to give us an earnest desire to find a path to that forgiveness? And God, more than those things, would you help us be people who abound in grace, who walk in this acute awareness of the grace and the love and the mercy that we have from you. Let us be people who walk in an acute awareness that from your fullness we have received grace upon grace, and let us freely and excitedly and happily give that grace to those around us, even when those around us treat us unfairly. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody, Alan, welcome back to the service. It's good to see you all. Did you shout getting some coffee? That was a great timing. That was the time. That was the spot. It's better than leaving right now. Yeah, you did great. No, you did great. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that so that in future services, I can make fun of you when you do stuff. And that will be great. This is the second part of our series called The Table. And we're focusing on Jesus's ministry and Luke around the table and how he uses meals purposefully and strategically in his life. And if you've spent time around me, if you've been here for any length of time, you know that one of the things I like to remind people of is the fact that I believe that God speaks to us in stereo. If we hear something from one isolated friend, they say one thing. If a sermon pricks our heart in a certain way, that's great to hear that one thing and try to respond to it correctly. But if we hear it from another friend and then from mom or dad or a husband or wife, and then we hear it from a sermon and then we hear it in a song and then just something, we're scrolling and we see it again, then I would argue that God is trying to get your attention and tell you something very specific. Because again, I believe he speaks in stereo, which is why I thought it was so interesting that I went to a pastor's conference this week in Orlando. And there's like 6,000 other pastors there. Some of the best communicators in the Christian world are there just kind of telling you their ideas and experiences. And it was a real refreshing time. I'll tell you more about that a little bit later in the sermon, but I thought it was really, really interesting that here I am, we're in the middle of this series called The Table. That wasn't my idea, it was Carly's idea, and then I get into it, and it's really, really great stuff. And then I go down to this conference, and what do all the speakers say? The speakers say the future of the Christian church in America is around the table. The future of evangelism in the United States is around the table. The future of discipleship, Christian maturity in our country is around the table. And we believe God is doing something and he is moving and he's moving around our tables. And so I'm sitting in the conference going, okay, I'm in. Like what you got? God, I'm listening. So for me, I do believe that God is speaking through this idea of the table. I shared with you a couple weeks ago, I do think God is doing something here. I do think he's moving here. Look how many of you showed up today. You're better Christians than the people who are cozy and warm watching online. I'm sorry, you know it. If you're home, like, you know that that's true. Thank you for coming here this morning. You really meant it. You really wanted some Jesus today, so we're going to try to take you right to him. But I believe that God is moving, and I believe that God is speaking. And if he's speaking to you about the sacred times around our tables and how we can use those and employ those and use those to push us and others closer to Jesus, then I would encourage you to lean in and listen today as well. This morning is called The Table for Relationship. We're looking at how Jesus uses the table for different purposes throughout his life. And this story we take from Luke chapter 7. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Luke chapter 7. If you didn't bring one with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Luke chapter 7 has this great interchange between Jesus and a Pharisee named Simon. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. They were the lawyers and the senators and the pastors all rolled into one. And Jesus gets invited over to Simon's house, and he has this great discourse. And I'll get into it, and I'll read it. And when I read this passage, it's the second part that we're not going to cover today that always, to me, jumps out as the most resounding portion of this passage. But I'm actually saving that portion of the passage for our Good Friday service. So again, that Friday before Easter, we'll be here. I don't know the time yet, probably seven o'clock, but don't quote me on that. Just don't make other plans that night. Come to our Good Friday service, and we're going to cover the rest of this story there in a different way. But I want to focus on the front half of this story that we find in Luke chapter 7, verses 36 through 39. If you have a Bible, read along with me. If you don't, it should be on the screen. One of the Pharisees asked him, Jesus, to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. Okay, we'll leave the story there. It goes on, and Simon accuses Jesus of this. Why are you interacting with this woman? Jesus tells a little parable about a debtor being forgiven his debt, two debtors being forgiven their debt, and the larger debtor is the one that is more grateful. And Jesus says this great line, yes, he who is forgiven little loves little, but he who is forgiven much loves much. And it's this great instruction about how grateful we are for Jesus and who he is operates in direct correlation to the weight of our sin that we feel. And if we don't feel a great affection towards Jesus, then it's very likely that we walk around thinking we're a lot better off than we actually are, thinking we're somebody when we ain't. But again, we're going to focus on that with Good Friday service. For this, I think it's helpful and interesting to focus on something else in this story. And before I tell that, just so I know that we're all on the same page, I told you what a Pharisee was. Pharisee was the religious leader, senator, lawyers, all wrapped up into one of the day. They were the religious elite. This woman is from the city, and she is a sinner. So that should tell you what she did and what her profession was. It was the oldest profession in the world. If you still don't know what this woman did for a living, ask someone next to you and, you know, make fun of them if they ask you, and then tell them, okay? But that's who she she was and that's what she did. Women didn't have a lot of options back then. And so she comes in and she anoints his feet and she wipes away, she dumps alabaster ointment on his feet, perfume, and then she cries on his feet, she kisses them, and then she washes his feet with her hair. And I'm not going to get into it. Culturally, this was an okay thing. This was understood. Everybody kind of knew what she was doing. It wasn't nearly as weird and awkward as it would be now. If I come to your house and some lady just wanders in and just starts crying on my feet and dumping perfume on them and kissing them, I'm never coming to your house again, okay? That's super weird. I'm not just going to sit there and be like, well, this is biblical. I'm going to, I'm going to leave. And I'm going to swear to Jen, I do not know that lady. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. But in this context, it's fine. So what's interesting to me about this dinner invitation is why Jesus accepted it. Why did Jesus go? We see him, and we'll look at this next week when we look at the table for celebration. When he asked Levi, the tax collector, who later becomes Matthew and writes the gospel of Matthew, he asked him to be one of his disciples. And Levi says, come to my house, I'm going to throw a feast. And he throws a feast with all of his sinning tax collector friends who don't know Jesus. And then Jesus is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard for going to that party and for going to other parties like that. And Jesus' response is, a physician does not come for the well, but for the sick. I came to seek and save the lost. And so we see in Jesus this very high degree of interest in hanging out with people and being around people who we good church people would not typically associate with because they're gross and we're better than them, right? Spoiler alert, we're not, okay? You suck and they do too, and that's why we all need Jesus. So we know that Jesus accepts those dinner invitations, but this one's interesting to me because it's not from a sinner, quote unquote. It's not from the outcast of society. It's from the religious elite. It's from the people that seem to not need Jesus, who he doesn't seem too interested in carousing with, except he gets an invitation from Simon and Jesus accepts it. Now, why does he accept this invitation? Now, this is a guess for me, okay? I don't have a verse to hang on this. This is my guess based on what I know of Jesus and what I know of Scripture, this is my best guess. You guys know Jesus. You know Scripture as well. You're welcome to your best guess, and you're welcome to disagree with this. But it is a guess. Why did Jesus accept this invitation? Was it to be polite? Maybe. Was it just a commonly accepted practice? It could be. But I think that Jesus was also concerned about Simon's soul. I think that Jesus also wanted him to see the light. We see throughout the New Testament and the Gospels that Jesus is pretty hard on the Pharisees. He calls them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. He's pretty pointed with them. If he's going to be harsh with anybody, it's going to be the Pharisees and then a couple times the disciples. But in this scene, Jesus is actually amicable to them. He wants to go spend time with them because I believe that Jesus cares about the souls of the Pharisees as well. Not only because he says he cares about everybody, he says he loves everybody, but we see him go into Simon's house. We see him in John chapter 3 have a private, subtle, under-the-radar discussion so he doesn't get in trouble with Nicodemus, another Pharisee. We see Jesus in quiet moments act favorably towards them. Why? Because he cares about their souls too, and he wants them to know the truth. So I believe that Jesus took this dinner invitation, at least in part, to begin working towards the conversion of Simon, to evangelize him. And he knew that Simon's friends would be there, and he'd have an opportunity to begin to work towards their conversion as well. And I believe that Jesus in his wisdom knew that this woman was going to be there as well, and that would give him an opportunity to include her, to rope her in, to say in front of the religious elite, I love her too. She's all right with me too. And you should accept her at your table as well and quit separating things out and quit thinking that you're better than because you're not. Everyone's equal in the kingdom of God. I believe that he wanted to slowly chip away at their thought processes and chip away at her thought process and invite them in. So I believe that Jesus uses this meal for conversion and inclusion, understanding that both require relationships. I believe that Jesus was using this meal to begin to work towards the conversion of Simon and his friends and the inclusion of this woman and people like her into one table, realizing that both of those goals require relationships, require friendships. Jesus understands that for a man like Simon, entrenched in his ideology, since birth he has been poured into by other probably well-meaning rabbis and spiritual leaders who have simply misled him because they were misled. And it's really scary to think how generational teaching can lead to people reinforcing bad ideas on down the road until you as parents are teaching things to your kids because they were spouted to you by some ignorant Sunday school teacher when you were a little kid and you've never reconsidered them in your whole life. You see how this happens? And so this is what was happening with the Pharisees. It's not that they didn't love Jesus or it's not that they didn't like God and want to be in right standing with Him. It's that they were blind. They had been misled. And you don't break someone like Simon free from his ideology with one exchange in the town square, with one pithy remark or parable or saying. You break someone free like Simon from their ideology with conversations over time. You gradually open their eyes. If there's someone in your life who you love who does not know Jesus, we can take a page out of Jesus' playbook and engage in relationship with them and realize it's going to happen over time and over conversation and over consistency and over watching someone love them like they actually love them and love Jesus too. It takes relationship to see people come to faith. And Jesus also uses relationship for the inclusion of this woman. She is a woman one would assume. Maybe she didn't, but I don't think it's a bad guess to assume that she lived with a degree of shame. Maybe she didn't feel it all the time. Maybe when she was around other people who did what she did and other people who hired the kind of people that she was, maybe she didn't feel shame around them, but in general society, anytime she entered into a house like this, I bet she felt shame. I bet she felt unwanted and unwarranted. I bet she felt rightly excluded from genteel society. And what Jesus is doing here is going, no, no, no, no, she's good with me too. She's okay too. She's included here. When we first wrote this out, I was going to say the table for adoption or the table for inclusion and how we can use our table and we can use our friend groups to invite people into the space and say, they're good with me, they should be good with you too. And that's what Jesus was doing. He was providing her a cover for that relationship and for these people saying, we're all equal and we're all even. The challenge for this with her is that when you live your life in shame, it takes hearing that you're loved and accepted more than once for you to actually believe it, doesn't it? You know this is true in your life. Most of you in this room, if not all of you, have heard plenty of times God loves you, he forgives you, he desires you. We sang earlier, he runs after you. There's no mountain he won't climb up, shadow he won't light up coming after you. You know that intellectually to be true. You may even know that if you're a believer, you're an adopted son or daughter of the king, and he loves you as much as he can ever love you, no matter what you've done, no matter what you're going to do, he is passionately in love with you. And you may know that he approves of you and that he accepts you just the way that you are. But isn't the Christian life a slow, painful acceptance of that? Don't we have a tendency to say other people are loved and accepted, but God does not feel that way about me because I know better? Don't we heap shame and guilt on ourself and assume that we're unacceptable to God and others because of what we've done and assign His acceptance and His love to other people? Isn't it one thing to know intellectually that you're loved and forgiven and another thing to know in your heart and soul and actually live like you are? Doesn't that inclusion by Jesus take a long time for us to learn? So Jesus knows, if I want to convert Simon and his friends, and if I want this woman to know that she's truly included and loved, it's going to take time. It's going to take relationship. And Jesus sets a model of relationships in his life. I don't know if we think of it in those terms or if you've considered that before. But at these meals, we see him building relationship. When Zacchaeus is in the tree and Jesus walks by him, he says, hey, I'm coming to your house for lunch. Like, let's hang, man. Let's go. He develops relationships with his disciples. He develops relationships with the people around him. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were some of his best friends, and he went and retreated there. Those were his people. That's where he was safe and trusted, and they were safe and trusted as well. Relationships are important to Jesus, and I believe he lived a life modeling the importance of these relationships. And I believe that one of the reasons he did it is because Christianity requires relationships. Biblical Christianity requires of us biblical friendships and biblical relationships. The whole Bible is written not to individuals, but to communities, groups of people. Even the books of the Bible that are originally addressed to individuals, Philemon, Titus, Timothy, Acts, and Luke, which are addressed to blessed Theophilus, were intended to be shared as groups, in groups. Were intended for people to consume together. It's this unique perspective of Western philosophy and Christianity that has reduced Christianity and faith to our own personal salvation project, where the most important thing in faith is whether or not we're saved. And Jesus offers us so much bigger, robust gospel and love than whether or not we're going to heaven one day. He offers us a relationship with our creator God now that we can share with others on this outpost of eternity. Christianity was never, ever intended to be lived alone. As a matter of fact, if you've spent any time at Grace, hopefully you've heard me say there is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. I would argue with you it is absolutely impossible to grow as close to Jesus as you can without other people in your life walking with you. That's why when we had a discussion as elders years ago around our current mission statement, connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people, there was some pushback. Some of the folks in the circle at the time felt like it should just be connecting people to Jesus. We should not elevate connecting people to people on that level. It's connecting people to Jesus. And it was kind of tough for them to get over connecting people to people. Like, that feels too simple. That feels too easy. And so we agreed that we would put it second. So there's a clear priority there, which who cares? But I was a real stickler about connecting people to people, and some of the other people in the circle were a stickler about that because I would contend that you cannot grow as close to Jesus as you possibly can without other people in your life who also love you and love Jesus. And so we are committed to connecting people to people to help you in that walk. And if you think that, if you have any hesitation about that being true, about closeness with God being possible without, all I need is my Bible and prayer and God and I'm good. Okay, well Adam had that. The first book of the Bible, second, third chapter, he had that. In chapter two, we see him. He has the perfect relationship with God, the exact relationship with God that God created us for, the exact relationship with God that we will finally one day experience in heaven. Adam walked that. He had that. He walked with God in the cool of the evening. They talked every day. Adam was the perfect man. He was intellectually superior. He was emotionally intelligent. He was utterly fulfilled. And he had a perfect relationship with the perfect God. And he lived on a perfect earth with no pain and no death and no struggling. And he didn't work. It's like living in a country club with just amazing fruit everywhere and pretty much walking through life like me, if you think about like the perfect man. And even in that perfection, he looked around after a period of time and he went to God and what did he say? I'm lonely. I'm lonely. I need, I need a companion. You cannot live out this life on your own. You cannot live the Christian life without relationships. To further that point and to show us how essential they are, I actually want to share with you something I heard this week. I've heard this before from this same guy, and I heard it again, and it was such a good reminder, and I feel bad for not having shared this with you before. But the Bible is full of one another's, isn't it? If you read it, we should be kind one to another, we should pray for one another, we should hold one another accountable. We should confront sin in one another. We should love one another. We should outdo one another in humility. We should bear one another's burdens. We should celebrate with one another. We should mourn and grieve with one another. There's a lot of one another commands in the Bible. And one another's are impossible outside of genuine, honest friendships. All those commands are impossible to obey outside of genuine and honest friendships. Now, there's some that are easier. Be kind one to another. We don't have to know people very well to be kind to them. We can be kind to people. But the better you know somebody, the more kind you can be. If I think about Cindy, our wonderful and lovely sound technician today, and I want to be kind to her. It's her birthday or something. Jen and I can buy her flowers. Buy her flowers and have a flower sent to her house, and oh, that's a nice gesture, whatever. But I know that Cindy loves the Duke Blue Devils. And if you don't, pipe down, nobody cares, okay? She loves them. And so if I made the flowers blue and white and sent them to her, that'd be a little bit extra kind, wouldn't it? Or you know what? I might find out that Cindy doesn't even like flowers. So knock it off with that stuff and send her donuts. I don't know. The better you know somebody, the kinder you can be. But there's some of these that really, unless you know somebody, unless you're friends with them, you can't obey these commands. Pray for one another, which seems simple enough, but you guys have been in a small group and you've been in those circles. Hey, does anybody have any prayer requests? Yeah, could you, my cousin's friend has a girlfriend who's, she might have COVID. Oh gosh, is she okay? I mean, it's just a head cold right now. She's probably okay, but let's pray for her. I'm like, I'm not, nope, I'm not gonna do that. And also, just so you know, sometimes Christians, you don't have to pray for everything. Somebody can tell you something and you can be like, okay, you don't have to like, I'm gonna ardently seek the Lord's throne over this. You can just let that one be. Or it's, you know, it's surfacy stuff. My wife is sick. My kids had a little bit of a cold. I got a trip coming up. Pray for traveling mercies. Sure. But when you're in a small group for a long time and trust begins to develop, the prayer requests get different, don't they? Pray for us. Our kids are struggling in school. They might have to repeat kindergarten. We just want wisdom there. We don't know the right thing to do. We just want to do the best thing for them. You start to get really real prayer requests. Hey, man, can you just pray for my marriage? We're not doing great. It's been a rough couple, two, three years. And I really don't know how this is going to go. Will you just pray for me that I can be a good husband? Sure. Hey, I lost my dad last year, and it has really done a number on my faith, and I don't really even know what I believe, and I'm having a hard time trusting God. And I don't even know if your prayer is going to work, but would you pray it anyways? When you're friends, you start to get real prayer requests. And you can really actually pray for each other in meaningful ways. And if you're close enough with them, when they tell you to pray for their cousin's friend who might have COVID, you can tell them to shove it and pray themselves. We can't start obeying these one another's until we're actually friends. If we're supposed to confront each other with sin, let me just tell you, for me personally, you do life how you want to do life. For me, if you want to sit me down and say, hey, Nate, I've noticed this destructive pattern in your life and I really don't think it's good for you, we better be friends or I'm out. I might sit there politely and say thank you. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to leave that conversation and I'm going to call a friend. I'm going to say, listen to what this person said. Is this true? But I'm not going to hear it from you if you're not my friend. We don't have a track record of going through life together. And listen, confronting sin and other people, the only way it can be done is with the foundation of relationship. When the Bible tells us to mourn with one another, to grieve with one another, to celebrate with one another, those are things that require a deep bedrock friendship and relationship there to be able to do that. We cannot be obedient to instructions about biblical Christianity without the power of relationships and friendships in our life. And I would even say this, just to push it a little bit further. When I hear about folks who are going through a rough patch, marriage is really, really hard. They've developed an addiction of some sort and they're fighting it. Their personal life is falling apart. Their professional life is falling apart. Whatever it is, when I hear about people whose lives are beginning to spin a little bit out of control, can I just tell you what I often find and what they often share with me? They say things like, you know, I really don't feel like I have many friends. I'm not sure if I have any friends at all. Let me tell you something. As your pastor, and if you're sitting in this room today, I'm your pastor at least for today. As your pastor, if you are doing life without friends, you're in trouble. If you are doing life without friends who share your values, if your closest friend is your spouse and you don't have any true friends outside of that, you're in trouble. And if your closest friend is your spouse and you don't have any true friends outside of that, you're in trouble. And if your closest friend is your spouse, and you don't have, I'm not saying your closest friend shouldn't be your spouse, I'm just saying you should have really good friendships outside of your marriage. If you don't, you're putting too much pressure on them, and they're putting too much pressure on you, and you're going to let each other down, and things aren't going to go good. Jesus designed us to walk in friendships. If you don't have them, the biggest encouragement I could give you is to pursue them. When I counsel with young couples doing premarital counseling, very often I'll do the marriage of people who don't live close to us. They don't live in Raleigh. They live in Fuquay or they live in Greensboro or they live wherever they live. But centrally, their family's around here. So they're choosing a venue in Raleigh. So they want a pastor that's local and close to the venues. They find me online and I agree to do their wedding. And when I talk to these people, I ask them, what's your plan for finding a church? And very often they'll say, you know, we don't have a church. We're looking for a church. What would you recommend? How can we find a good church? And I always tell them the same thing. Listen, find a church. And I mean this, you're gonna laugh, but I really do mean it. And I think this is actually what most of you have done. Find a church that has a tolerable pastor. They don't have to be great, okay? The sermons don't have to blow your doors off every week. You can download really good sermons every week. Find a pastor that doesn't drive you nuts and sit under that teaching. Find worship that's good. Here we have great worship and we're lucky. But find it that's good. But you know what you really need? Find a church where you can make friends. Find a church where you can make friends. And then everything else kind of fades away. You can go to the church with the best preaching and the best worship and the best programs. But if you don't have friends, you're never going to connect in the way that you need to. And that church isn't going to serve you how it should serve you. So when you choose a church, choose a church to build friendships, to do life together. With all of that being said, I want to bring us back to the power of the table and ask, what would happen if we viewed our meals as Jesus did? What would happen if those opportunities around the table, and I don't want to be unrealistic, not every day, not every meal, not every time we sit with somebody who's going to have a sacred element to it, but man, it happens far more often than we think it does. What would happen if we would understand that relationships and friendships are absolutely essential to my faith, and they're essential to the faith of others, and they're essential if I see someone I want to convert, if I see someone I want to move closer to Jesus, if I see someone I want to influence, then relationship is essential within that influence. What if we accepted that and began to use the meals in our life to further those things, to pursue those things? What would happen if when we had the opportunity to go out to eat after church with our friends, we had one or two intentional questions? We don't make the whole lunch and impromptu Bible study, but what if we had one or two intentional questions? What's God been teaching you for the last six months? Anything at all? What'd you get from Nate's sermon? What'd you think of that? That was terrible. Did you agree it was terrible? Yes, I agree it was terrible. And then have a great conversation. Did you love it when he made fun of Alan at the beginning? Yes, I loved that. Whatever it was. Point of fact, I told you I went to conference this week, and the idea for that, it came to me last fall, and I texted an old buddy of mine. We were on staff together at the church I worked at previously. He left and started his own church. He's been a senior pastor for, I think, about eight or nine years now. I'm in my seventh year of being a senior pastor, and so we talk multiple times over the course of the year, how are things going, and I was telling somebody before the service that when you're a senior pastor and you have the opportunity to talk with another senior pastor, the conversation's just different, right? Because we're smarter and more spiritual than all of you. So it's just, no, it's because we have the same job. Like if you're the national sales director of whatever, and you talk to another national sales director of whatever, and there's a lot of similarities there, then you're going to be able to just talk about things that other people don't understand and can't talk about. So the ability to relate is very, very high. And so I wanted to go and have some extended time to spend with another senior pastor and just talk about what it's like to do life in the way that we've chosen to do it. And what his church is almost the exact same size as our church. And so it's good one-to-one comparisons about how you're handling different things. And I wanted to go to this conference, but I was determined to use the conversations that we had with a purpose. And some of you may have seen that I put on social media, we went to, we were going to go golf, and I said, I'd rather go see the Star Wars section because I've never seen it. Nobody in my family cares about it. And so we went to see the Star Wars section, which was great. I don't know if it was $165 great. I was there for like 90 minutes, and I was like, cool, I'm going to go to the hotel. But it was really fun. I got us matching t-shirts because of course, you know. And we had a great time. But at the breakfast, when we wrapped up, we had gone to conference for two days. We went to Disney and had that experience and shared meals together and all this stuff. At breakfast on the last day on Friday morning, I asked him, what are your takeaways? And one of the things that we agreed upon, he said, this was not a frivolous trip. This was an absolutely spiritually encouraging trip. And I made the comment, I would argue that the most important things on this trip happened in line and at meals, not at the conference, not with what we learned. And he said, a thousand percent. And it was because at the beginning of the trip, we shared, we want this to be purposeful. We want to have important conversations. We want to talk about important things. So we talked about silly stuff, our mutual affection for Caitlin Collins on CNN. I mean, we both think that she does a great job as a news anchor. But then we also talked about family. And do you think your mom and your dad and your sister are part of your ministry? What are your responsibilities for them? What do you do with hosting? How do you plan series? How do you keep your spiritual life vibrant when church feels like it's dragging you down? We had good, meaningful conversations that helped both of us. So what would happen if we all did that? And the meals that we had around our table, we began to use intentionally. And we came in with one or two intentional questions just to check on the people that we were having meals with or just to help us become better friends with them. But what if we didn't see our time around the table? And I don't mean just meals. It can be any setting where we have an opportunity to talk with people and we don't have anywhere to go and nothing to do or be? In those settings, how can we use those more purposefully to build friendships, to build the relationships that are essential to biblical living? And then I would ask you, what relationships do we need to pursue so others might begin to pursue Jesus? Who do you have in your life that you can leverage your table to push towards Jesus, to convert or include? Who do you have in your life that you can encourage spiritually? And shame on me for not including this one, but what relationships do you have in your life that you can pursue to begin to push you towards Jesus? Who seems to have things figured out maybe a little bit better than you right now that you can invite around your table and just ask them questions. There's so much benefit from doing that. I issued last week the Dinner Table Challenge for the series and said between now and Easter, we're encouraging everyone here to have someone around your table from grace who's never been around your table before. And we're encouraging everyone to have someone around your table who's not from grace, who's never been around your table before. Point of clarity, someone asked me last week, is that the same meal or is it two separate meals? It's two separate meals. For me, I'm not really down with mixing universes. I don't like it when someone invites me over to their house and they've also invited over other people who I don't know. And I'm like, well, I've been ambushed. What is this? I just want to go back home. This is completely, I was not prepared for this. But listen, if you're down with that, if that's your deal, you like mixing universes and making people uncomfortable, sure, invite them both over and let's just see what happens. But I would encourage you, don't just invite the easy ones over. Be strategic. Who can you invite over and hopefully encourage them towards Christ? Who can you invite over and maybe learn from them? And when God places you in opportunities, in small groups and in meals and around tables and in friend groups, and as you have new acquaintances that you're allowed and enabled to pursue, how can we use those to push them and ourselves closer to Jesus? But what I want us to take away from today, if nothing else, is the Christian life is impossible to live without friendships. It's impossible to live without relationships. If you don't have them or you need stronger ones, the best place to begin to do that is around the table. So let's use those strategically as we move throughout the rest of our weeks leading up to Easter and prepare our hearts for celebrating Easter when it comes. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we thank you for the example that was set for us by your son. How he modeled for us sitting around tables with people and having conversations that needed to be had. Loving on people in surprising ways, encouraging people towards conversion in gentle ways. Father, I pray for people here who feel like right now in their life they're a little bit lonely and they're a little bit alone and they're not sure if they have the friendships that they need and that they want, would you bring them people in their life that they can pursue, that will pursue them, who love them and who love you? Would you build friendships in their life? Father, would you give us the courage to pursue those, to extend the invite, to make the offer, to reach out and bridge the gaps. And God, around those tables, would you bless the conversation? Would you build friendships that last for decades? Ones that encourage us towards you? And God, in these relationships, would we find more of you there? In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, Aaron, and the band. Thank you very much. It was good stuff this morning. This is the second part of our series called Powerful Prayers. I think I called it Great Prayers last week. I don't really know what we named the series. I just tell them what I'm going to preach about, and then they make a graphic. So that's how that goes. But this one's called Powerful Prayers, and I am excited to share with you this morning what I believe is probably the most powerful prayer of repentance in the Bible. There's a couple different instances where we see some people in profound repentance and restoration situations, but this is probably the greatest one and the most famous one. This is David's prayer of repentance after his sin with Bathsheba. And I'm not sure what the worst thing is that you've ever done, and I don't want to know what that is. I'm very grateful that we don't have a Catholic model of pastorhood here at this church, and you have to confess things to me. I don't want to know those things. Those are your business. Those are not my business. You and God, you take care of that. I don't need to know. I don't know what the worst thing is you've ever done, but I'm willing to bet it's not as bad as what David did, and I'm willing to bet, unless it is just mind-blowing in its evil and efficacy, that they're not going to write about it so that every generation, henceforth for,000 years learns of it, okay, when they come of age. So this is a pretty unique sin and a pretty profound response to it. And so I think that there is a lot to learn from David's prayer of repentance. And that's kind of what we're doing in this series, is we're just looking at great prayers in the Bible, powerful prayers prayed by saintly people, and we're asking what can we learn from these prayers. So we're not talking about how can I get a better prayer life. We're talking about when I pray, what can I learn from these prayers? And even on this topic of repentance, we're going to be talking about repentance this morning. I preached on repentance in the spring in our Lent series. I'm sure you guys all remember, I mean, almost all of it. It was really good. But I preached on it in the spring, on what it was and on how we do it and on the symbolism of it. And when we walk away from a sin, we walk towards Jesus. And so if this raises some questions for you and you feel like it might be a little incomplete, I want to repent, I don't know how to repent, or I'm not really sure I understand what it is, then I would tell you to go back and listen to that one in the spring, because that's when I kind of talked about the details of repentance. But this week, I want to ask, what can we learn from David's repentance? And if that's what we're asking, then we need to know what he did. Now, a lot of you know what he did. You know this story. You know how David became a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. Some of us don't know it at all, and some of us know bits and pieces. So just to make sure we're on the same page and that we understand what we're reading when we look at his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, which is where we're going to be, by the way. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. I wanted to let you know what he did. We find this story in 2 Samuel 11, so you can go there and you can fact check me to make sure I'm not making this stuff up. But it says in the springtime when the kings were off to war, David was in his palace. And there's a lot of insights that we can make into this story, but I don't want to belabor the story this morning. I just want us to understand what's happened. So David's army is off to war, being generaled by Joab, who shows up in this story. And David decides one day that he's going to go out onto his roof. And while he's on his roof, he looks across the way, I would presume, and he sees a woman named Bathsheba bathing. Because in that culture, you bathed on the roof, out of sight from everyone else, but unless you're the king and you have a palace that's higher than everyone else's building, now you can see what you want to see. And so let's be clear about this. David did not go up onto the roof to have a cup of coffee, fire up a cigar, and just take in the sunset, okay? That's not what he was doing. David knew what he was doing. David went up there to see what he could see, and he saw what he wanted to see. Bathsheba was bathing on the roof, and so he tells his guys, whoever his guys are, however the attendants to kings work, he says, I'd like you to bring her to me. So they go get Bathsheba. They bring Bathsheba to his chambers. And he did with her what kings do with pretty girls that they bring to their chambers. And what's interesting, I don't know if it's interesting, but what's important to understand in this moment is that consent was not a thing. I can't say with certainty that what happened between David and Bathsheba was against her consent, but what I can say is that it wouldn't have mattered at all. David was the one making this choice. Bathsheba had no choice. I'm 100% certain she felt powerless in that situation, which only compounds the sin and the predatory nature of what David is doing. And if you're going to tell me that this is the first time David's done this roof bathing, bring her to my chambers trick, I'm going to tell you, you have not watched enough Netflix because that's not how things go. I would be willing to bet this wasn't the first time David had a woman that he found attractive brought to his palace so that he could do with that woman what he wanted to do with that woman. It's not the first time he turned a human into a commodity. So he does what kings do in that situation, and word gets back to him. I don't know. I guess it had to be a couple of weeks later. Bathsheba sent word to David that she was pregnant. And David's like, this is a problem because she's married to a guy named Uriah, the Hittite. Uriah is one of David's mighty men. That's the special forces of the ancient Hebrew army. This is the delta force that's tasked with protecting the king and then also being the forefront, being the tip of the spear in the battles. These were some bad dudes. I think it might be 2 Samuel 17 where the deeds of the mighty men are chronicled, and it's really cool. It's like, I mean, for guys it is. Girls are like, yeah, who cares? But for dudes, it's great. So go read 2 Samuel 17, and it chronicles what the mighty men did, and Uriah is one of those guys. So not only is Bathsheba married, but she's married to a man who lives to serve David, who is one of his best soldiers. And when he finds out she's pregnant, David says, okay, I got to cover this up. So he sends word to Joab on the front lines. He says, send me Uriah back. I need to talk to him. So he sends Uriah back and David says, hey, just wanted to check in with you, see how the war was going. How are you guys doing out there? How's Joab? How's everything going? And he gives him an update and David says, you know what? You're such a great guy, Uriah. You know what I want? Go see your wife. Go see Bathsheba. She's a looker. Just go see her. Spend a night there at your house and then I'll send you back to battle tomorrow. And Uriah refuses. He says, my Lord Joab is sleeping in the field, as are all the men that I fight with. How could I possibly come home and enjoy the warmth of the bed and my wife and be an honorable man? I cannot do it. And so he sleeps on the front step of his house so that all the city knows Uriah didn't go in there that night. So David's little cover-up ain't going to work. I reread the story just to make sure I wasn't misleading you. And something that I hadn't noticed before is when Uriah doesn't do what David needs him to do so that he can cover up his sin, he throws a party the next night. He says, Uriah, stay another day. And then he plies Uriah with wine. And the Bible says clearly gets him drunk and then sends him home to his wife. Maybe this time it'll work. He refuses. He sleeps outside. So the next morning, Uriah wakes up. David hands him a letter. He says, I want you to hand these instructions to Joab the general. They're sealed, so Uriah doesn't look at them. He carries them to Joab, and they're instructions for Joab to put Uriah in the battle where the fighting is the most fierce, and when it gets really intense, have everybody else back away from him so that Uriah is killed. Make sure Uriah dies in battle, is the order. So he does. Joab withdraws the troops. Uriah is killed. Bathsheba is grieving. David, the ever gracious and loving king, brokenhearted for the plight of the widow in his kingdom, does the magnanimous thing and takes her in as his bride and restores her to a proper life. What a good thing for David to do. He is a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer, and he's gotten away with it. Not only has he gotten away with it, but he got away with it, and he found a way to make himself look a little bit better at the end. The very next chapter, 2 Samuel, there's a guy named Nathan, the prophet. And he goes to David, and without belaboring the story, he says, hey, I know what you did. God told me. You need to make this right. And David is brokenhearted. He's crestfallen. Next chapter over, he's on suicide watch. He's brokenhearted at what he did. And what I love about Psalms is Psalms, David didn't write all the Psalms, but he wrote most of them. And it serves us as kind of this private prayer journal of this great king, of this great man, where he writes all the defeats and all the victories and all the laments and all the celebrations and all the times when he's brought low and all the times when he celebrates. And so this moment in his life isn't excluded from his diary. And so we get a peek into his feelings after he's been confronted by Nathan about his sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah the Hittite. And so this is the prayer of repentance that David prays in his worst moment. When his absolute worst moment is brought to life, when his most evil is brought to life, when David has to be confronted with the fact that I didn't even know I could be who I am right now. I didn't know I was capable of this kind of sin, but it just kind of builds and builds and builds until I don't identify myself anymore. And then he's confronted with it. And in that confrontation, he sits down and he prays, and then he writes out his prayer. And I think it's helpful for us to look Against you and you only have I sinned. On one hand, that's not true at all. You sinned against Bathsheba horribly. You sinned horribly against Uriah. You sinned against all the attendants and all the people that you wrapped into your little scheme. You sinned against Joab, who you turned into a murderer on your behalf. You sinned against a lot of people. But at the end of the day, what David is realizing here in this prayer is that, yes, I've sinned against a lot of people, but I have offended no one and sinned against no one more egregiously than I've sinned against God himself, because all of this goes back to him and all of this grieves his heart. So he says, against you and you only have know what hyssop is, it purges. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. I love that part of the prayer. Create in me a right heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. David's acknowledging this is broken. My heart is broken. My heart is sinful. I don't know how I became capable of what I did. Create in me a right spirit because mine is wrong. He's falling on his face before God. He's rendering his heart. And it's easy, I think, to jump into the story at this point and say, yeah, yeah, of course he's praying this. He got caught. I don't see him praying this before Nathan went to talk to him. He was perfectly fine living with Bathsheba, letting her be pregnant, planning on raising this son with his multiple other wives and multiple other sons. David's just sorry because he got caught. And we've seen this. We see this in our children. We've done this ourselves. We're not really sorry for the thing that we did. We're sorry that we got caught doing the thing that we did. And then we do all the things we're supposed to do. And it would be very easy to apply that sensibility to David. But what we see in the repentance of David is this sincere brokenness at who he is and what he's done. And we see it, like I alluded to, in the chapters that follow the story in 2 Samuel. He spends the next week on suicide watch. He's literally laying on the ground. He won't go to bed. He will not eat. He will not drink. His friends and his servants are very concerned for him. They try to get him up. They try to get him to stop crying. They try to get him to eat something. They try to get him to lay down on a bed and not the floor. And he refuses. He is broken. He is broken at the reality of his sin and who he is in light of his sin and how he's hurt the heart of his God because of his sin. And in that brokenness, he writes this prayer, and we see the contrition in verses 16 and 17. These are such important verses for understanding the heart of repentance and what God wants from us. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. Listen, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. See, in the Jewish faith that David was a part of, when you sinned, there were sacrifices that were measured out according to the sin. There was a prescription for what you needed to do. You've sinned this badly, it requires this kind of sacrifice. This was a really bad sense. This is going to be like multiple bulls cut in half, burned, probably some doves, throw in a lamb for good measure. It's like if you grew up Catholic, it's like you got to do this many Hail Marys and Our Fathers and whatever else you're supposed to do as penance for your sin. This is what he's supposed to do. There's a prescription here. And David says, I'm not going to offer you sacrifices. I'm not gonna offer you the Hail Marys. I'm not gonna go through the motions. God, I know that you don't want sacrifices. You know that I'll go kill every bull that I've ever owned. I'll do it right now. But that's not what you want. You don't want me to go through the motions. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. What God is looking for in our repentance is a heart that is broken over what we've done and who we've become. It's interesting to me, and the older I get, and the more perceptive I get of the man that David was, the more the juxtaposition of the two startles me. David's also called a man after God's own heart, by God himself. And it's not for the avoidance of sin. He's a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. I promise you this is not the first time he's done that. And he was a lifelong adulterer because he had multiple wives for his whole life. And if you read the Bible and be like, how come that was okay back then? It wasn't. David either didn't know or didn't care or some combination of the two. He was a terrible father. Every bit of evidence we have is that he was an absentee father. And yet, God says he's a man after God's own heart, which I can only find encouraging because it tells me I've got a shot. David was a mess. You are a mess. I'm a mess. And yet, David was called a man after God's own heart. How? I think it's because of his repentance, because of his response when he's confronted with his sin, because of how earnestly he returns to the Father and offers him his broken heart. So if we look at this powerful prayer and we ask what we can learn from it about our own repentance, I think the first thing I would point out to you is if we haven't wept over our sin, I'm not sure our hearts are ready to repent. If we haven't been moved to tears, if we haven't been brokenhearted, if our sin and the reality of what we've done and who we've become and who that's turned us into, if that doesn't weight us down so much that we fall on our knees before the Father and beg for his forgiveness, then I'm not sure we're actually ready to repent. Because again, and I said this back in the spring, confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yeah, this thing is wrong. Repentance is to move the opposite direction from your sin. It's to have been moving in this direction towards sin, stop, leave it, and move back towards Jesus. Repentance is moving away from sin and towards the Savior. That's what repentance is. And if we're going to truly repent, our hearts have got to be broken about our sin. I'm not sure what sins that we carry in here this morning. I'm sure I could guess a few. And by guessing a few, I just mean list mine, and then you probably will check some of those boxes too. But I think sometimes we think about repentance as in the big moments, right? Repenting of committing adultery and impregnating a married woman, and then killing her husband to cover it up, and then embroiling everyone else in scandal. I think we think of repentance there, but what about repentance of attitudes that we've carried for years that we've never dealt with? What about repentance of the way we talk to our spouse and how they don't deserve that? What about repentance of these small racist attitudes we carry around and don't address? What about repentance of God needing to teach us the same lesson over and over again? What about selfishness or things in our life that look like greed or materialism? What about that list of things that we've known for a long time we need to stop doing and we're not? Or those lists of things that we've known for a long time we need to start doing and we're not? Repentance isn't just for what we would call big sins. It's probably more helpful for all the little ones that we just carry with us, where good becomes the enemy of great. And what I'm telling you this morning is, I don't think that we can properly repent until we've been actually broken by that sin and who it makes us. And I know that some of you aren't criers, and so the idea of breaking down crying in front of, before the Father at what we've done is probably not realistic. So whatever broken down looks like to you, that's where we need to be if we're going to properly repent. And so it would make sense this morning to invite you into a place of repentance, But what I also know is that some of you are simply not ready for that. Some of us have sins. We know exactly what we are. We know what we're doing. We know who we are. And we know that we're going to go from this place and we're going to do them. And if we're just honest before the Father, what we would say is, I know I don't need to, but I'm going to. I like it in my life. And so that's just how it's gonna be for a little bit. About those things and about everything in between, I think a helpful prayer to move us towards repentance would be, Father, help me to see my sin as you do and so break my heart as yours is broken. I think I would encourage you to pray this prayer. If you know that there is sin in your life, but you've never been broken over it, you feel a little bit bad, maybe that habit doesn't need to be there, but I haven't fallen to my knees over it. I'm not brokenhearted over it. Then I think a very fair and wise prayer is to say, God, I know that this is in my life. Will you break my heart over it? Will you help me see it as you see it so that I hate it like you hate it? Will you help me see how it's hurting me and my family like you see how it's hurting me and my family? So that I would be brought to a place where I'm ready to actually repent? If you're not even ready to pray that, pray this. God, I know there's things in my life that don't need to be there. And you and I both know I'm not getting rid of them anytime soon. Will you please move the needle for me? Will you just move me to a place where I no longer want these things in my life? Will you help me to progressively hate them? Let's just invite God to move us closer to repentance this morning if our hearts aren't moved to be ready for it. But for our hearts to be broken as God's heart is broken, we have to understand, I think, what God sees when we sin. I read somewhere that God's primary emotion towards us when we sin is not anger, it's pity. He hates that we have to do it. It's like a parent watching a child make decisions that are hurting them, and you just have to sit back and watch, and it breaks your heart. And I think what breaks the heart of God when we sin is knowing who you could be and who he created you to be, and knowing that you're allowing that sin to prohibit you from being exactly who God created you to be. Do you understand that when you carry around sin in your life chronically, that you've never even met yourself? Do you understand that? That when God formed you in the womb, he knew exactly who he wanted you to be, and he knew exactly the good work that you were created to walk in. And when you sin, you prohibit yourself from walking in that good work. You prohibit yourself from growing into the person that he created you to be, and so you've never even met yourself. Your spouse is married to some truncated, soul-sick version of you. Your kids are growing up in the home of a half-person who carries around sin. Sin is like a cancer that eats us silently from the inside out and destroys our souls. So when we carry around unrepentant sin, we are a person and a version of ourself that isn't who God created us to be, that isn't who God intended us to be, and no one that we're around gets to experience the fullness of who God is in us because we're soul sick. We're truncated versions of ourselves carrying around sin who have never been able to love our children as God intended us to love them and show them his grace because of our own mess. We're soul sick people who have never been able to love our husband and our wife and give them the spouse that they deserve and let them see God's love through us because we have cancer in our life that we are not addressing. And so it is right and good to learn to hate our sin. I saw this week, someone wrote, we've heard it said that you should love the sinner and hate the sin. He said, I tell you, love everyone and hate your own sin. I think that's a good place to start. So let's ask that God would bring us to that place. And as I dug into this prayer this week to share it with you and the heart of it, I noticed something else come out of David's prayer that I hadn't seen before. I think that when we think of repentance, we think of it exclusively as this thing that brings us low, this thing that humbles us, this thing that brings us to our knees before the Father. Repentance is a low point, and then God builds us up. It's a humbling, and that's it. But we're wrong when we think of it that way, because true repentance doesn't leave us brokenhearted. It restores us to joy. True repentance doesn't leave us brokenhearted. It doesn't leave us down here. It doesn't leave us scraping on the ground. It restores us to joy. It builds us back up. It restores us to our former life. Two times David prays this in a prayer of repentance. He includes this request twice, and I think it's amazing. In verse 8 and verse 12, he says in verse 8, let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. And then verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold with me a willing spirit. In the midst of being brought low, you know what David asked for? Restore me to my former joy. Heal the bones that you've broken, God. And I was sitting chewing on that idea. How does repentance restore us to joy? And I felt like I was gaining on it, but I wasn't quite sure. I felt like I had my head around it, but I wasn't quite sure how to explain it to a room full of people to make it come alive for us. And I was just sitting in my office staring out the window for an hour thinking about this. You would have thought I was a crazy person if you walked by just this blank stare looking out the window. But after thinking through it for a while, I think the best way I can explain it is that the joy of repentance is the all clear after the cancer operation. The joy of repentance is the all clear after the cancer operation. You know, my family has been touched by cancer multiple times in multiple ways. And we all hate that C word. We all hate it. And it's touched all of us. It's scared all of us. It's cost all of us. And if you've been through the journey, you know how scary and uncertain it is. There are three families in the church who recently got that news. Hey, we found a mass. And that begins three weeks of praying and of testing and waiting for doctors to call back and uncertainty and trying to have a strong face, trying to put on a brave face, trying not to think about it every moment of every day, trying to get good sleep while you wait for this news. And sometimes you get the news, and it's like, it's benign, it's nothing, you're good. Oh, great. And then sometimes it's not that good news. And then sometimes we have to go through the whole cancer journey, and there's treatments, and there's chemo, and there's sickness, and there's a whole path that you have to go down. And sometimes, if you're fortunate, if they caught it early, if you got the cancer in the good spot where they can go get it and not the bad spot where they can't, sometimes they'll send you to surgery. And they'll go to that surgery, and they're hoping that they found it all. They know right where it is. They can get it, and they can sew you up, and you have a new lease on life. They're hoping they don't get in there and find more. And so if you're really lucky, after going through years of the cancer journey, the surgeon goes in there. He or she gets it all. And then they tell you afterwards, after you come back from the anesthesia, you're good. We got it. You're cancer free. Have you ever heard those sweet words about someone you love? That's the joy of repentance. You're cancer free, new lease on life.. That thing that was inside of you that was eating you from the inside out, that was destroying your body and destroying your health, that's not a part of your life anymore. Walk fresh, walk new, walk into a newness of life. There's going to be some recovery time. Don't like sprint, but you're good. Go. Experience joy. That's what repentance is. Repentance is handing Jesus the scalpel and saying, here, operate on me. I don't want this in my life anymore. I'm tired of this. I don't need it. Please, would you get rid of it and bring me closer to you? That's what true repentance is. And so the joy of true repentance is finding out that this cancer that we had in our soul that was making us soul sick, that was making us offer a truncated version of ourself to ourselves and those around us, what we find out is that's done, that's gone. You don't have to live with that anymore. Now walk in a newness of life that Jesus bought for you. That's repentance. David got that. That's how he was a man after God's own heart. And that's what I want for you this morning too. Those of you who carried sin in here, which is all of us, I want us to repent. I want us to hand the scalpel over to Jesus and say, would you please just come get it? I want you to be restored to joy of walking in freedom, of knowing there's nothing to hide, there's nothing to be ashamed of. I can skip, like Micah says, like a calf loosed from his stall, because we're free to love. That's what I want for you. And that's what repentance is. So in a second, I'm going to pray. And as I'm praying, Aaron's going to start to just play softly behind me. And when I'm done praying, I'll say amen. The lights will be down. And we're just going to be quiet for a minute. At least a full minute. And that's going to be your opportunity to respond to this. To what true repentance is. If your heart is ready to repent, repent. If it's not, ask God in the most honest prayer you can muster to move the needle. Take me to a place where I see my sin like you do. But I didn't want to talk about something like this without giving you the opportunity to respond to it in the moment. So not in the car, not later on, not tomorrow morning, right now, after I pray, you're going to have a silent minute or two to just bow your head and close your eyes and talk to the Father about whatever you need to talk to Him about. Let's pray. Father, You're good to us. Thank you for, through the cross, making repentance possible. Thank you for who you are and what you've done. Thank you for insisting on recording David's worst moment so that we could see what might be his best moment in Psalm 51 and his repentance. I'm reminded, Father, of the invitation to lay our burdens down at your feet, and so I pray that we would do that today. It's my earnest prayer that some of us would walk out this door this morning feeling a restoration of joy that we haven't felt in years. And God, it's my sincere prayer that if it doesn't happen this morning, that it will happen soon so that everyone who is in this room will get to experience the joy of walking with you and the people who are in the lives around the people in this room will get to meet them as you created them to be, maybe for the first time ever. But God, would you move in our hearts that we would see our sin as you see it and so be moved closer to a sincere repentance. Give us the faith and the courage to hand you the scalpel and to surrender to you removing things from our life. In Jesus' name, amen.