Sermons tagged with Father

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I'd love to do that after the service. Or you could just come to Discover Grace right after the service. We've got food for you and we've got space, so hang out with us there. Just for a little bit of clarity, Mikey, I don't know where you're sitting, but I lied to you in front of the whole church. This is not great. This is fine, I would call it. This is what I'm about to tell you is average. This is an average sermon for me. So let's adjust expectations to whatever you think my average is. If you think my average is good, then I got good news for you. You're going to like it. If you think it's not so good, then, you know, good luck in finding another church. And I mean it. I hope they serve you better than I can. This morning we are in the letters of John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. We've been moving through the books of the New Testament. This summer and next summer we're doing a series called 27 where we go through the 27 books of the New Testament. But sometimes we are grouping them together because the letters of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John really all three have the same message. And 2nd John and 3rd John are one chapter. So it'd be tough to give you an overview of that one chapter. It's better to just group them together because the message that they preach, the message that they proclaim, is very similar all the way throughout. Now, John, the disciple, wrote these letters. He wrote them probably towards the end of his ministry. It's the same John that wrote the Gospel of John, in which he describes himself the disciple whom Jesus loved We've talked many times about John's unique relationship with Jesus. They were uniquely close They sat next to each other at dinner. Jesus told John some things that he didn't share with the other disciples There was a relational closeness there that I'm not sure Jesus or John experienced anywhere else in their life. And then John also wrote the book of Revelation that we're going to get to next summer. And then towards the end of his ministry, he wrote these three letters. And John is also super significant in church history because we believe that he probably kind of replaced Peter as the leader of the church after Peter passed away. Then John was a leader of the church. And then he discipled some guys named Ignatius and Polycarp, and they like took the church after John did. So he's kind of the link between the last of the biblical figures to lead the church. And then guys that we learn about in history books, not in the Bible. So these are significant letters that they fall at the end of his ministry and reveal to us what he thinks is most important to share with the people. And unlike some of the letters like Thessalonians that's written specifically to the church in Thessalonica, these letters are written to all the churches, to take one, to read it to the congregation, and then to get it to the next church down the road so they can read it there the next week. So these are just general advice, advisory letters to the church. And in 1, 2, and 3 John, we see this theme, this instruction, this singular idea come up multiple times. When we decided to do this series going through the books of the New Testament, I knew when we planned the series what I was going to preach when we got to the epistles of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. Because they proclaim one loud message the whole time. I knew what I was going to be preaching. To me, now maybe somebody else has preached an overview on these three, and they pulled a different theme out, and I don't want to be critical of that, but as I read it, when I look at these letters, there's one theme to talk about that if we don't talk about that, we're doing a disservice to these letters from John. And I went through, and I read the theme. I know what it is. And so I read the letters in preparation for the sermon. And I counted 12 times in seven chapters that John says basically the exact same thing. It's the most reiterative book in the Bible that I know of, besides maybe Proverbs. Just the same idea over and over and over again. He keeps bringing your attention back to this one singular principle. And it's captured in a lot of passages, but I'm going to look at 1 John 2, verses 3 through 6. It's kind of the seminal passage that captures this idea that shows up 11 and the other 11 ones that I counted off for myself is simply this idea. If you love God, your actions will prove it. If you love God, your life will bear that out. So clearly, I'm talking to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a a Christian then you get to kind of watch from the outside and see what you might want to get yourself into or what you might be considering but this isn't for you this is for the believers in the room and if you're a believer you've said at some point that you love God and what John says is that's great if that's true then your actions will bear it out we will it. And what's great is all of these letters, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, are like a commentary or a blow-up of this teaching that Jesus offers to the disciples that's only recorded in the Gospel of John. In John chapter 15, when Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. He says, to abide in me, you keep my commandments, and my commandments are that you would love. So then at the end of his life, John is reflecting back onto that singular teaching of Jesus. If you abide in me, you'll bear much fruit. How do you abide in me? You obey me. What does it mean to obey me? You obey my commandments. What's my commandment? That you would love one another. So then 12 different times in his swan songs to the church, he reiterates this idea. If you love me, if you love God, your actions will bear that out. And when you think about that, it makes a lot of sense because that's true of every relationship, right? Like I have a wife named Jen. She's wonderful. And if I told her every morning when we woke up, sweetheart, I love you so much. You're the best. Text her in the middle of the day, just thinking about you. I love you. Before we go to bed at night, hey, you're the best. I love you. That's great. But if my actions don't bear that out during the day, if I'm an unholy, impatient jerk to her, if I'm a terrible father to her children, if I give her crud about the house being dirty when I get home, when she's had a way more hectic day than I have, if I refuse to be helpful around the house, if I nitpick her and just make these little demands, if I just take the service that she offers the family for granted and I never express how much I appreciate it, if I don't cut the grass, if I'm lazy around the house, if I just don't do any of the stuff that a halfway decent husband is supposed to do, eventually she's going to stop believing it when I tell her that I love her, isn't she? If Aaron Winston, our wonderful children's pastor, says she loves the kids and she loves their families, but she doesn't bother to learn their names when they show up, eventually y'all are going to stop believing her when she says that she loves them. It's one thing to say it, but John says, put your money where your mouth is. If you say that you love God, then act like it. Then do the things that communicate love to him. If I want Jen to know that I love her, then I need to learn her and do the things that I know communicate love for her. I need to show up randomly in the middle of the day with a Chick-fil-A Coke because she didn't sleep well last night. When I do that, she knows that I love her. Jen needs to laugh at my jokes. That's all I need from her. That's all I require. Touch me sometimes. Just give me a pat on the back. You're great. And then when I make a joke like laugh and I know as long as she laughs at my joke the world is right everything's okay that's all we need but we learn to love in the language that people receive love and God says you know what I want you to do you know the important thing if you say that you love me you know how you show me you obey me you submit to submit to me. You trust me. You keep my commandments. So really the question becomes, why is obedience the thing that God asks of us to prove our love to him? And it's not that we have to prove our love to him, but why is that the proof of our love to him? I think it's for this reason. Obedience admits that God is the expert and we trust that expertise. Obedience admits that God is the expert on life, on humanity, on love, on the human condition, on the universe, and that we trust in that expertise. I'll tell you what got me thinking about that in this way. Sometime last year, some of the kind folks in the church started gently encouraging me that, hey, you know, it'd be great if we could have a cross somewhere on the stage. And so I thought through it, and I thought maybe there's a chance we can inlay one in this center panel. And we've got a lot of talented woodworkers at the church, and none of them were available. But Greg Taylor has tools. So I called Greg, and I asked if he would be interested in this. Some of y'all are picking up on that. I asked if he could help with this. And he said, yeah. He got excited about it, and we started kind of talking about what we could possibly do. He kind of sketched some stuff out and told me what he was thinking. And as he was telling me what he was thinking, I honestly thought, like, I don't think it's going to look good. I don't think, I don't, I don't think that's the way that we should go. It's not really, I don't see it like you see it. So that doesn't sound like a good idea to me. But I also know this, that knowing just a little bit more than most folks about the Bible does not make me a good interior designer. So you know what I did? I shut up. And I was like, all right, Master Woodworker, I don't see your plan. But you do, and you seem excited about it, so go ahead. And then he did that. And I came in here and I saw it. And I thought, I sure am glad I shut up, because that looks phenomenal. looks phenomenal thank you Greg the whole church got better because of that often in my role I have to trust the advice of others who have an expertise that I don't last summer when we were going through the purchase of the land we own four acres off of Litchford Road we'll find out more about what's gonna go there on the 10th of December, two weeks from today. Oh, December, I said? We're going to delay it even more. It's going to be so fun. It's going to keep you guys waiting. Yeah, thanks. Two weeks from now, September the 10th. I'm so focused on that sermon that what I want to say in that sermon kept me up all night last night. I couldn't go to sleep because I was thinking about that. And then I woke up and I was like, I kind of came to this morning. I was like, that's not even what I'm preaching this morning. I have to focus on this. I'm thinking about that a lot. But as we were going to buy the land last year, there was a team of people that were kind of informing us, informing the elders, informing me on the decisions that we should make. And they were spearheaded by one of the great partners of our church, a guy named Scott Hurst. Scott Hurst is a lifelong corporate real estate guy. And so he would call me and he would say, hey, what do you think we should do about this? Do you think we should make this kind of offer? Do you think we should do this or that or whatever? And I would always tell him, Scott, I don't know. Your vote is my vote. Whatever you think we should do is what I think we should do. I have no right to usurp your expertise and insert myself and think I know what to do as we evaluate whether or not to purchase land. I'm just trusting in your wisdom. In the same way, we had a group of people that we put together from the finance committee, from the elders, and one of the bankers that we have at the church. And we put together, I don't know if they're the finest financial minds in the church, but they were the most available at this time. So we put them in a room and we said, how much do we need to raise so that when we build the building, we're borrowing a responsible amount? And they gave me an amount. And as soon as they gave me the amount, I said, that sounds great. That's fine. Zero pushback. No questions. Let's go. Because I trust in the expertise of those people. So I'm happy to submit to what they think. Now, how ridiculously absurd would it be of me to hear the advice of those people and slough it off? To hear Greg say, hey, this is what I think we should do with the cross. And for me to be like, listen, Greg, I know you spent a lifetime in your basement, in your shop, working on projects. And I couldn't do what you've done in a whole lifetime. But I was a trim carpenter for six months when I was 25 years old. And I know a thing or two. And I'm just going to tell you, I don't like your vision, man. You need to rethink that. What if I looked at Scott Hurst when he gave me some advice on something? And I said, you know what? I didn't take a course on corporate real estate and sales deals when I was in seminary, but that was in the class right next door. And I picked up on some stuff. And I think I know a little bit better. What if I push back on the team of people that we asked to advise us on how much we need to raise? What if I push back and I said, that's not, that's a bad idea. That's not doable. I would be dumb. I'm not saying that I'm not. I'm just saying that would be proof. That'd be what you would need. I would be incredibly prideful and incredibly obstinate and incredibly short-sighted and incredibly myopic if I just threw off the advice of the experts in my life and just chose my own way. I was like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to do this. Because I know how to read the Bible and run my mouth for 30 minutes, I'm the smartest and we're going to do what I say. No, it's dumb. It's silly. It's short-sighted and prideful to throw off that sort of wisdom. And yet, you guys see where I'm going with this? God is the author of the universe. Jesus is the founder and perfecter of your faith. God knew your very soul before he knit you in your mother's womb. He knows the hairs on your head. He knows the number. He knew the good work that he created you to walk in before he ever created you. To say that God knows you better than you know yourself is a vast understatement. He doesn't just know you. He knows the depth of you and all the possibilities of you and all the inclinations of you and all the future pathways of you. He knows all the things that bring you joy. He knows all the things that fill you up. Not only you, but everyone around you. For all of history, he designed all of this. He is the author of life. He is omniscient, meaning he is all-knowing. He is omnipresent, meaning he is everywhere. He can see every possible outcome of every possible scenario, and he can play that out better than any computer we could ever touch. He has all the algorithms. He can figure it out. We can't see past this minute, and he can see every outcome for all eternity, and he's told us some things about how we should live our lives, things that we should do and things that we shouldn't do, things that we should pursue and things that we should cut off, things that are good for us and things that will damage our soul. The author of the universe who sees into the infinite has told you those things and yet we choose to trust in our own wisdom and not his. In different ways and in different seasons and at different times. We throw off the wisdom of the infinite for the blindness of the broken. We have access. Through his word. Through his presence. Through his spirit. Through prayer. Through others. Who call Jesus their savior. We have access to him. To the divine. To the infinitely wise. And he makes it very clear what he wants us to do with our lives. He makes it very clear how we are supposed to love and how we are supposed to serve, how we are supposed to outdo one another with humility. How we are supposed to avoid certain things and embrace certain things. And in the face of that infinite wisdom that only wants what's best for us, we continue to choose the blindness of the broken. The pleasures of today sacrificing the joy of tomorrow. And I don't know where you are in your obedience to God. When I say things like, you know, there's ways in which we're all being disobedient, I don't know what comes to your mind. For some of us, we flash right away. We know the areas where we're allowing sin and the things that so easily entangle to prohibit us from running our race. When I say, what's an area of your life where you're just not being fully obedient to God, you know right away. And that's good. Others of us, because we've been at this a while, have probably settled into this place where we've begun to settle for good enough, where we worked really hard, we've done pretty well, things in life are going pretty good, we've got our spiritual disciplines, we've got our regimens, and we don't do them all the time, but we do them most of the time. And when I compare myself to the other people around me, I seem to be doing pretty well. And I know that there's more work that I could do, but it's hard. So I'm going to stop. And we settle into this kind of middle-of-the-road faith where we're just comfortable. And God, through his word and through his prayer and through worship, beckons us to more. He calls us into deeper obedience. He calls us to walk with him in stride. He calls us to abide in him. He offers this much more full life that's waiting for us on the other side of obedience, and yet we just choose to throw off the wisdom of the infinite that God knows what's best for us in favor of the blindness of the broken. No, I know what's best for myself. Do you understand that when we sin, that's what we do? We throw off God's wisdom and we choose our own wisdom? No, no, no, I know that you are the author of the universe. I know that you kind of wrote this thing and you know all the things there are to know, but for this one, I'm right. Listen, if you think I'm dumb, if I were to ignore the advice of Scott and corporate real estate, what does that make us all when we ignore God's expertise in our own life and we choose our own? It seems really silly to be disobedient when we put it that way, doesn't it? What must it feel like to God when we regularly and habitually refuse His expertise and choose our own? Is there anything, is there anything in life more infuriating than when you're talking with someone and you know you're right about a thing and they will not give it to you? They insist that you are wrong and that they are right and you don't know what universe they're from because you're right and you know you're right. And if you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This happened sometime last year and I don't remember the particular word. But Lily, my daughter, she was six at the time. And I think I've shared a little bit of this before. And again, I'm making up this conversation. I remember the gist of it, but I don't remember the word and the actual things that were said. But this is pretty much how the conversation went. She pointed to a word. It was mañana, the Spanish word for tomorrow. I think that's right, right? That means tomorrow. Yeah? You're Spanish adjacent. You should know. His wife speaks Spanish. And I said, she pointed to the word. She said, how do you say this, Daddy? And I said, you say that mañana. And she goes, I don't think that's right. And I'm like, based on what? Based on what expertise do you think I'm wrong? Like, I'm open. Maybe you know something I don't. And she goes, well, that's not, that's not how my, how my teacher at school says to say it. She's taking Spanish at school. She says, that's not how the Spanish teacher says to say it. And I said, how'd the Spanish teacher say that you should say it? And she says, banana. And I'm like, excuse me, banana? That's what you're going to enter the chat with? And I just kind of look at her. I said, I said, baby, that's not right. And she goes, yes, it is, dad. That's what my Spanish teacher said. I said, I do not believe that that's what your Spanish teacher taught you. Because if it is, there's going to be a really strongly worded email. Not that I'm passionate about Spanish education, but that's ridiculous. I'm going to write an email about that. And we're going back and forth. And I'm literally like, I'm even pulling out reason like, Lily, you have taken two months of Spanish. You're largely illiterate in English at this point in your life. I promise you, I know that it's mañana. Do you see that? That's an ñ. That means ñ, mañana. That's what that means. That's why it's there. And it didn't matter to her. Like, Lily, I took Spanish three times in high school. I only made it through. I took Spanish two twice. But I did take it three times, technically. I've been to Spanish-speaking countries. I've been exposed to that. If you drop me in the middle of Costa Rica, I could get home. There would be hand motions and things, but I could get back. Like, I know that's manana. And it was so infuriating because it didn't matter what I said. She was right, and I was wrong, and I literally had to finish the discussion about manana manana with agree to disagree. We have two different opinions about this. I was so mad. How infuriating is it? When you know the right thing to do, you know the right answer. And the person you're talking to is like, man, that's not right. And yet, as I was talking to our student pastor, Kyle, about this this week, he pointed it out and I thought it was a great point. Our God experiences so very little of that frustration. In those moments, when we're obstinate and we are insisting to him that it's pronounced manana, I do not believe that our God experiences frustration like we experience frustration. I do not believe he is angered by that like we are angered by that. In those moments of our profound obstinance, I believe that God is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I believe he is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I think of it like this. Some of you have walked this path. My children are not old enough to have walked this path, but I've watched other people walk it. And you know the pain of being a parent with adult children and watching those children choose a path that leads to pain. You've watched those children make choices and you can see the end of that road. You know how that's going to end. You know their life is going to be shattered because of it. You know their heart is going to break because of it. You know that they are going to shipwreck themselves with the choices they are making and you are impotent to stop them. And all you can do is sit back and hope that the crash isn't so bad. And hope that when they're ready to pick up the pieces, they ask you to help. Some of my older parents in the room know the pain of watching an adult child collide towards catastrophe knowing there is nothing that you can do. And I think that this is what our Father in Heaven experiences every day. Watching us just careen out of control, spiraling towards a collision or a blow-up or a shipwreck, knowing that what's there is going to end and hurt for us, hoping that when we get there, we allow him to help us pick up the pieces. I do not think our God experiences anger and frustration with us when we're disobedient the way that we understand those emotions. I think he experiences hurt because he knows he has something better for us. Do you ever think about why God asks us to do things? He tells us, he makes it very clear in scripture that we're not to lust, that we're to avoid sexual immorality. Are we to do that just because God wants us to live puritanical lives that aren't as exciting and interesting as those who don't put themselves under the standards of the Bible? Is that what God wants is just his children to be more puritanical and less indulgent than other people, and so let's just keep a lid on that. No. God knows that if you are married, that every time you look at someone who's not your spouse and you desire them in a way that you don't desire your spouse, that you cheapen your spouse and you make the relationship worse. Every time you look at someone outside your marriage and you compare them to who you are married to and you want things that they seem to have that your spouse doesn't seem to have, then you cheapen your spouse and you weaken your marriage. Every time. And God knows this. So he doesn't tell us not to lust because he wants us to be Puritans. That's a happy accident of avoiding lust. But the point is, it's only when we never do that, it only deepens our devotion to our spouse. It only deepens our attraction to our spouse. It only heightens our desire for them. And then in living within this happy, fulfilling marriage where you two are mutually desired, guess what you experience? Maximum happiness and joy in a happy marriage, which is what we all want. God says, he tells us in Psalms, David writes this. In his presence there is fullness of joy, his right hand is our pleasures forevermore. It's the idea that if we pursue him, if we obey him, then the best things are waiting for us there. Why does he tell you not to be greedy? Because he doesn't want you to have nice things? Because he wants you to live the life of a pauper? No, because he knows that if you're greedy, that those things that you want are going to own you. That you're going to live a life serving stuff and image. And it'll throw off your priorities and you won't be the spouse that you're supposed to be and you won't be the parent that you're supposed to be and you won't be the member of God's church and kingdom that you're supposed to be. Because you spend your life pursuing and hanging on to stuff. And there's no joy to be found there. If you think about anything in the Bible that God tells you to do, anything in the Bible that requires your obedience, and you ask yourself, and listen, I'll give you a hint. I always preach this. Whenever there is an instruction from God in the Bible, and I have to present it to you, hey, guys, we need to not be prideful. Hey, guys, we need to not lust. Hey, the Bible tells us that we need to pursue humility. Like, whatever it is, I'm always thinking in the back of my head, why? Why is it important for God that we would do those things? Why would he instruct his children in those things? And the conclusion, it looks a lot of different ways and a lot of different sermons, but this is the basic formula. He tells us to do something, A, because when we do it, we love other people and him better. Bottom line. When we don't lust, we're loving God and others better. When we're not prideful, we love God and others better. When we're not greedy, we love God and others better. When we show humility, we love God and others better. When we offer hospitality, we love God and others better. That's always the first answer. And then ancillary to that, the benefit of that, that should push our selfish souls directly to it, is that also it's what's best for us. Also, there is the greatest joy found in obedience. There is the greatest joy in the fullest life found in following the good shepherd. God asks us to be obedient. He puts things in front of us, not for his weird pleasure, not because he wants us to feel bad, not to browbeat us and make us puritanical, but because by walking in obedience to God, we love him and others better, and we find the greatest joy possible. So he urges his children to obey him. That's why I love this verse in John 10.10. It hangs over my desk. I think in this verse is the fundamental question for all of Christendom. Jesus in John 10 is referring to himself as the good shepherd, and he says he lays at the gate of the pen to protect us, and then he says this, the thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. Other translations say, have it to the full. And I love that verse. I love that thought, that point. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. And so it's no mistake. It's no exaggeration to say that Jesus wants the best life possible for you. That's not health and wealth, praying that. I'm not telling you if you follow him, you're going to be rich and no one in your family is ever going to get sick. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is in Jesus the promise is, if you follow your good shepherd and go where he leads you, and don't wander into your own fields trying to find your own sustenance, but if you trust him and you follow him and his wisdom, he will lead you to the best pastures, and in those pastures, you will find fullness of life, life to the full, life abundant. Meaning, there is no greater life waiting for you outside of God's commands. Which brings us to the fundamental question of Christianity. Jesus says, he's the good shepherd. Do you believe him? Jesus says, he will take you to the best pastures. Do you believe him? Jesus says, if you just put your head down and follow him, if you just abide in him, that you will find a fullness of joy there that you can find nowhere else. Do you believe him? He beckons with that teaching the simple question, hey, hey, hey, do you trust me? Do you trust me? Do you trust Jesus? And John, at the end of his life, as he distills all the teaching of a lifetime to this singular point, hey, do you trust Jesus? Do you say that you love him? Do you say that you know him? Well then, obey him, because obedience proves trust. I don't know what areas of your life you would look at and say that they're out of sync with God. I don't know where you would find your disobedience. But whenever there's an area of our life that's not submitted to God and his wisdom, what we are saying with our actions is, I'm the expert here. I don't need you. I do not trust you to be the good shepherd. I will be my own shepherd and I will find my own pastures. Thanks very much. So that's the question that I would leave you with. When Jesus says that he's the good shepherd, when God says that he cares for us, when we're told that he's going to lead us into green pastures, when we're told that in his presence there is fullness of joy, in his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Do you believe that? If you do, then obey him. And if you need to pray while I'm praying, if you need to pray while we're singing, and offer some areas of your life over to God where you've been walking in disobedience, declare that now before you walk out those doors that you will offer those over to him and you will walk in obedience and trust him to be the good shepherd. Prove to God with your obedience to his commands that you love him and you trust him. And what you'll find there is the best life possible. Let's pray. Father, I always say that we love you. And we do. I know that we do. And God, we believe. But sometimes we need you to help our unbelief. God, I know that this room is full of people who love you, who want to love you more, who want to know you better. But we have so many things clinging on to our souls, entangling us, keeping us from running our races. So we simply pray this morning, God, that you would help us see them. What are the things holding us back? What are the pockets of disobedience that we've clung to and allowed and fostered and nurtured over the years that we need to expose and let go? God, if there are things pressing on our hearts and our souls right now, would you not let us leave this place until we agree to submit those things to you? To walk in obedience in those areas once and for all. Lord, we love you. We pray that our actions this week would bear that out. That we would love you and others well. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this incredibly gross, hot Sunday. I heard somebody say it's like walking around in warm soup outside. I think that's pretty appropriate. I think we're going to take out the lounge areas next week and make more space for y'all. So we're getting the message. You're coming back to church, so this is great. These lounge areas are penalties for not coming in the summertime, so now we'll get back to normal. We've been moving through a series called 27 that we're going to do this summer and next summer where we're doing an overview of the 27 books in the New Testament to kind of give you an idea of where we're going for the rest of this summer and where we're going to pick up next summer. For the rest of the summer, I'm just going to go through the general epistles, the general letters that are largely in the back half or entirely in the back half of the New Testament. We're going to do Hebrews this morning. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, did a phenomenal job covering James for us in July. So if you want to catch that one, you can go back and take a look at it. And then we're going to do 1 and 2 Peter together, 1, 2, 3 John together. Because I don't want to do three sermons out of 1, 2, 3 John that all say like, hey, if you love God, obey him. That's the message of 1, 2, 3 John. And then we're going to do Jude Labor Day Sunday. We decided that we would save the most overlooked book of the Bible for the most overlooked Sunday of the calendar. So that's going to be very appropriate when we do Jude and you guys watch online while Aaron and I work. But this morning we're going to focus on Hebrews. And deciding how to approach Hebrews and how to give you guys an overview of Hebrews was a little tricky because Hebrews is such an incredible book with so many good things and so many good themes. The overriding theme of Hebrews is to exalt Christ. The overriding point of Hebrews is to hold Christ up as superior to everything, the only thing worthy of our devotion and our affection, the only thing worthy of our lives. That's what the book of Hebrews does, and it focuses us on Christ, which is appropriate because we preached Acts last week. Well, I preached. You guys listened and did a great job at listening. I preached Acts last week, and we talked about how it's the Holy Spirit's job to focus us on Jesus, past, present, and future. And so once again, we're just going to enter into this theme in the text where the whole goal of it is to focus us on Christ. And so my prayer for us is that that's what this will do for us this morning. In an effort to exalt Christ, the author of Hebrews, who we're not sure who it is, the author of Hebrews starts out his book this way. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he had spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right some of the most sweeping prose about our Savior that we'll find in the Bible. The only other place that compares is probably found in Colossians, which Aaron covered. Aaron, our worship pastor, covered last month as well. So from the very beginning, he exalts Jesus. He is the image of God. He is the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe with his majesty, the sweeping picture of Christ. And then the author goes on to kind of build this case for the superiority of Christ. And the book is called Hebrews because it's written to the Jewish diaspora all throughout Asia Minor. As here, I know that you have a Jewish background. Let me help you understand your new faith by helping you understand your new savior. And he goes to great lengths to explain to them why Jesus is superior. And he does this through four major comparisons. He compares Jesus to Moses. He compares Jesus to the angels. He says Jesus is superior to the high priests. And he says that Jesus is a superior sacrifice. And he goes through and he tells them why Jesus is superior to those things. Now, to the Jewish mind in the first century A.D., all of those comparisons would carry a great deal of heft. They would matter. The Jewish mind would immediately know what that meant, would immediately be taken aback by the boldness of the author of Hebrews, and feel the weight of the comparison that they were being asked to make. But for us in the 21st century in America, those things don't resonate with us like they did with the first century Hebrew mind. We know, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in two decades, you probably already know that we're of the opinion that Jesus is a bigger deal than Moses. Like, we got that one down. You know that already. You know that we think that Jesus is superior to angels. No one's getting confused and worshiping angels. Aaron's never gotten a request for a praise song for angels. Like, we've never gotten a Gabriel praise song request. So we know that. Nobody has any misgivings about me being superior to Jesus. We know Jesus is the superior priest. We know he's the superior priest to everyone that's ever lived. And that's a really hard concept for us to hold on to, I think, when we see it in Hebrews that he's the great high priest. That's a difficult one for us because most of us in this room have never really even had a priest. Most of us in this room have had pastors. And pastors are different than priests, take on a different role than priests, have historically been viewed differently than priests. So that's a tough one for us. And then the sacrifice, none of us in this room have ever performed a sacrifice. If you have, I'd love to talk with you about what led you to do that in your life. I'd like to hear that story. I don't know if I want to commit to a full lunch because you're crazy, but maybe just out there, you just tell me about that time with the goat, okay? But these things are difficult for us to relate to. They don't hit us the same way. So a lot of my thoughts and energy this week went into helping us understand why these are such weighty comparisons, why they are so persuasive, and most importantly, why they're still important to us today in 21st century America so that the book and the message of Hebrews can be just as impactful for us as it was for first century Jews. So I think, as we think about the overview of Hebrews, the most interesting question is, why did those comparisons matter to me today? Why are they important to me today? So we're going to look at them and we're going to ask, why does it matter that Jesus is superior to these things? So the first one that we see, I'm doing kind of a combo platter and you'll see why, but Jesus is superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message is greater than theirs. In your notes, I can't remember if I put it there or not, but there should, it'd be helpful to write above these three points and be bracketed by the text. Jesus is superior because, superior to blank because. So that's, that's the question that we're answering. He's superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message are greater than theirs. Okay. Here's why I kind of combined those two. We probably all know, the Jewish mind certainly knew, that God's law came from Moses. God brought the law down off of Mount Sinai and presented it to the people. Now we often think that just the Ten Commandments were written on those tablets, but those tablets were covered front and back. So we don't know what all was on there, but most certainly more laws. And if you read through the books of Moses, the first five in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll get somewhere around 620 some odd laws depending on which rabbi or scholar you're talking to. And so those were the laws of Moses. And those were the laws around which their religion was framed. Those are the laws around which their culture was built, around which their entire life was formed by following those laws well. And Hebrews is earth shattering to them because it says, hey, Jesus's law is superior to Moses's law. You can cast Moses's law aside. It doesn't mean there's not some good ideas in there. The one about like not committing adultery, we should probably carry that principle forward. But those laws are done. It's now Jesus's new law that he gives us in John. Jesus tells us that in these two things are summed up all of the law and the prophets. Everything that Moses or the prophets ever wrote or writings that's ascribed to them can be summed up in loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that early in his ministry. But then at the end of his ministry, he's sitting around with the disciples and he says, this new command I give you, there's this new thing I want you to do. I'm going to add to the, I'm going to sweep away those commands. I'm going to give you this new command. Follow this. I want you to love your neighbor. I want you to love others as I have loved you. It's this new command that Jesus gives. And so that command is superior to all of the commands that came from Moses in the Old Testament. It's also superior to all the commands that come after that. His message is superior. This is what it means with the angels really quickly. According to Jewish tradition, it was the angels that took the tablets from God and delivered them to Moses as God's holy and anointed messengers. So what we're seeing in these two comparisons is Jesus' message is greater than any message that's come before or will come since, and his law is the greatest law, superior to all other laws, and it's the only one worth following. This is incredibly important for us because we live in a culture and we are people who are incredibly vulnerable to the insidious slide towards legalism. We are incredibly vulnerable to reducing our faith to a list of do's and don'ts. Okay, I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself. Like, I get that. But is it a sin if I do blank? I hate that question. Is it a sin if I do this? Is it a sin if I watch this? Is it a sin if I go there? Is it a sin if I have this? That's an immature question. It's almost irrelevant. Is it a sin? And we even do it in the early stages of our faith. Am I in or am I out? When I die, am I going to burn forever or dance in the streets? Which one is it? I just want to make sure I'm praying the right prayer so I don't burn forever. That seems like a bummer. So I'm going to believe in this. Am I in or am I out? Is there an unforgivable sin? Is there something that if I do it, I'm going to lose my salvation and then I'm out? And we try to make it about the rules. We enter into Christianity kind of asking the leader, like whoever's in charge here, can I just have my personnel handbook? I just need to know when my vacation days are. I need to know how many Sundays I can miss in a year and still be like, good. You know? I don't want to have to feel that out. We want our policy handbook. And when we make that our faith, we pervert it and distort it into things that it ought not be and was never intended to be. When we try to make the Bible basic instructions before leaving earth, have you heard that? If you haven't heard it, sorry, because it's stupid. And I just told you it, now you know. We try to make it God's handbook for life. There's a rule for everything, we just got to find it. And when you do that, the people who know the rules the best and appear to follow them the best are the spiritually mature ones. Meanwhile, the people over there who don't follow what we think are the rules super well are actually getting busy loving other people as Christ loved them. But we don't value them because we value the rules. So it's important to let Hebrews remind us that Jesus' law is superior to the laws that we add to his law. Because we love to say yes and. We love to turn Christianity into an improv class. Yes, that's true, and this. Yes, to be a believer, what does God ask of you? That you would love other people as Jesus loved you. Yes. And also you shouldn't watch shows that are rated MA on Netflix. You should not do that. Yes. And you should love other people as Jesus loved you. And you shouldn't say cuss words. Because we got together in a room at some point, and we decided that these words that are spelled this way are bad. And you can't say them. And they're very offensive. And they offend the very heart of God. Jesus didn't make that law. We do yes and, and we start to build other rules that are requisite for our faith. And at the end of that is legalism. And some of y'all grew up in legalism. I know my parents grew up in legalism. My mom went to a church outside of Atlanta where you couldn't, if you're a girl, you were not allowed to wear skirts above the knees. They all had to be to the knees or below. And if they weren't, you're a sinner. You couldn't go, you weren't even allowed to go to the movie theater. If you're going to see a Disney movie, you cannot, you cannot go to the theater. You were not, your family was not allowed to own a deck of cards because with those cards, you might gamble and offend the sensibilities of God. And what happens when we do that is people like my mom who grow up in that, when they grew up in that, in their adolescence, they're riddled with all this guilt of things that they're supposed to do and shame for not being able to do them. And that shame isn't coming from Jesus because you've offended his law. That shame is coming from rickety old deacons because you offended their sensibilities. And it's not right. We should always choose love over law because that's what Jesus asked us to do. And here's what can happen when we do that. At the last church I worked at, there was a policy, and some of you are familiar with policies like these. They're particularly prominent in the South. There was a policy that you could not consume alcohol in public. You had to privately foster your own alcoholism. You couldn't consume it in public. You can have it in your house. You can have it with trusted friends. But you can't consume it in public and you can't be seen purchasing it by someone from the church. It's absurd policy. Be all in or all out. Just say don't drink it. That's way less hypocritical than drive to DeKalb County to get it and then drive back. So one day, I'm cutting my grass. I'm relatively new to the neighborhood. And when I finish up, my neighbor, Luis, comes out. He says, hey man, hot day. I said, yeah, it's hot. He goes, you want to have a beer with me? Now that's against the rules. I'm not allowed to have a beer with Luis because I don't want to, I'm not going to get into it. According to the rules, this is bad. But he's my neighbor and we know what do you want to have a beer with me means. He's showing me hospitality. He wants to talk to me. He wants to get to know me and I need to love him. And it's not very loving of me to be like, I'll be right back. I'm going to go get my water. That's just not what you do. So I said, sure. I had a beer, an illicit, an illicit beer. God, I'm still sorry. And we talked and we became buddies. And Luis had a stepson and two sons that lived with him as well, him and his wife as well. Gabriel, Yoel, and Yariel. And over the course of the next six years, I got to be their pastor. And I got to baptize all four of those guys in the church. Now, if I had said no that day, could that still have happened? Sure. But, I chose love over law, and God used it. We should be people who choose love over law, understanding that Jesus' law is the superior law. And just in case you think I'm letting people off the hook to do whatever you want under Jesus' law, as long as you're loving others, it is absolutely impossible to love others as Jesus loved us without being fueled and imbued by the love of the Holy Spirit. We cannot love others as Jesus loved us if we do not know Jesus and love him well. That the two things that sum up the law and the prophets, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen, love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as Jesus did if you do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. It takes care of everything. And suddenly there's times when you shouldn't watch that, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't have that, or you shouldn't shouldn't go there or you should do this or you should do that, but not because it offends some law or sensibility that we've added to over the years, but because to do that or to not do that is the most loving action to take. That's why it's important for us to still acknowledge that Jesus's law is the superior law and that Jesus is a superior messenger and the angels. Now your notes are out of order. The next one we're going to do is priest and then sacrifice. So I'm sorry about that. But it's important to us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priests because Nate is broken. It's important for us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priest because I am broken. When we were running through the slides before the service started, we got to this one, and the band and the tech team laughed at me. They're like, Nate, you think we don't know that? We haven't pieced that one together. And I said, well, my mom's coming. So this one's for her. Sorry, mom, this is news to you. I know that you don't need me to tell you that I'm broken and that I'm a human. And that I'm going to teach you the wrong stuff sometimes. The way I think about faith and the Bible and God and Scripture and all the things evolves. It changes. There's things I taught when I was 30 that I'm so embarrassed about now. And there's things I'm saying to you right now that when I'm 52, I'm going to be like, oh, what a moron. I just know that's true. I'm broken. And even though you guys know that, and you guys know not to put pastors on pedestals, and you would probably all say that you have a pretty healthy idea about that, and I consider it part of my personal ministry to you to act in such a way where it's very easy for you to not put me on a pedestal. That's my ministerial gift to you guys. You would probably all say that you know better than that. But we still get the jokes. Those still happen. I had a friend, a good buddy, still a friend of mine named Heath Hollinsworth. Heath had three brothers. He still has three brothers. Jim was the oldest and Jim was an associate pastor at the church that Heath and I both worked at. So we all worked together. And then Ryan and Hunter worked construction. So they're a little bit less important in the kingdom of God than me and Heath and Jim. Which is the, that's the point I'm making. And whenever they would be around their dad for a meal and it came time to pray for the meal, Heath was in charge of the service. He was program director. It was a big church. So he had positions like program director. Here, Aaron does that. But whenever it came time to pray for a meal, their dad really didn't like praying in public, so he would always get one of the boys to do it, and he'd kind of look them over, and he'd be like, Jim, why don't you lead us today? You're the closest to the Lord. You have the most direct line. And Heath would be like, I work at a church too, and I'm sure it flew all over Ryan and Hunter. But he would joke about it. It didn't really make him mad. He just thought it was the stupidest thing because Jim was ordained and Heath wasn't. His dad thought he had a more direct line to the Lord. And as stupid as that sounds, you guys say that to me. I know we don't really believe it, but we keep saying it. When I golf with y'all and I hit one in the woods, which is rare, but when I hit one in the woods and it comes bouncing out just miraculously, just a squirrel throws it and it just lands in the middle of the fairway, somebody is going to say, got that pastor bounce, somebody's going to say it. We make the jokes and we think the things, and I can tell you from personal experience, we exonerate pastors too much. We honor pastors too much. We think too much of them. We have too great an expectation for them. I am not to be exonerated. My job in God's kingdom is not more important than your job. My gifting is not more valuable than your gifting. And listen, your character is not less important than my character. A lot of us have more expectations for me and what my character should be than for ourselves. And that makes no sense because you're a royal priesthood too. If it's okay for you and not okay for me, then you either need to raise your standards for yourself or lower them for me. Probably raise. And I don't mean to hit that too hard, but the church has a long history of making the people who stand here way more important than they actually are. And we've got to knock that off. While I'm here, and just kind of kicking you guys in the gut, let me kick you in the teeth. The other thing I was thinking about with priests and why this is important is the historic role of the priest. Do you realize that for a vast majority of Christian history, from the first century A.D. to now, for the vast majority of that, Christendom did exist under a priesthood. And that those priests were the sole arbiters of the truth of God in the lives of their people. Do you understand that? The people, for much of history, were largely illiterate. The vast majority of people were illiterate for much of church history. And before the printing press, a Bible was so expensive that it took the whole town to raise money to get one, and then they'd put it up on the lectern in the church or in the pulpit, and they would literally chain it so that nobody could steal the Bible because it was that valuable, and it's the only one that existed in the town, and because everyone's largely illiterate, the only person who can read it is the pastor. Do you understand how easy it is to manipulate when that is true? Do you understand how vulnerable that populace was to the malice that might be in their pastor? Do you understand how limiting it is for your faith if there's only one person who can explain to you who's reading scripture on your behalf and then telling you what it says and then telling you what you should do about that? That's how we got indulgences and we paid for St. Peter's Basilica because they manipulated the masses in that way. Because I'm the only one in the room who can read this and I get to tell you what it means. That's incredibly harmful. And now, we live in a time when Bibles are ubiquitous everywhere. You all probably have multiple Bibles in your home. You probably have more Bibles than you do people. If you'd like to add to your collection, take one of ours. You can download it on your phone. You can look it up on the World Wide Web. You have universal access to the scriptures of God. And yet, I see so many of you, so many Christians, walking through life, functioning as scriptural illiterates, trusting your pastor to spoon feed you truth twice a month for 30 minutes. And that's all you know of this. People have fought and people have died and people have lived to make this available to you. And yet as Christians, many of us live our lives as functional illiterates who still rely on our pastor or spiritual leader to spoon feed us the truth twice a month? How can we be Christians and be so disinterested in what God tells us? How can we call ourselves passionate followers of Christ and yet not read about him? How can we have access to this special revelation of God and the inspired and authoritative words within it that tell us not basic instructions for life but about our wild and wonderful and mysterious father? They tell us all about that and we have access to it all the time. We can read it whenever we want. We can do all the research we want. We can even, you can download professors walking you through this as you explore it on your own. And yet we function as illiterates still acting like the only source of truth is our pastor for whatever sermon they want to give that day. Jesus is your pastor. He's your source of truth. And he made sure that this got left for you so that you could learn about him. I'm here to augment the work that you're doing. I can't do the work for your whole life. Neither can your small group leader. It's important to know that Jesus is our high priest because we have the freedom to go to him and to pray to him whenever we want. We don't need a go-between. We don't need someone else to spoon-feed us truth. He makes it available to us here. Now, let's end on a higher note than that. It's important for us to know that Jesus was the superior sacrifice because he was enough. It's important for us to know that Jesus was a superior sacrifice because he was. This is important to mention. Because the old sacrificial system, you had to perform a sacrifice, and then you were good until you messed up again, and then you had to go back and you had to sacrifice. Like I wonder about the people who like went to the temple for a certain festival and they performed all their sacrifices and they're good. They're good before God. If they die, they're fine. And then they like take a wrong turn or there's traffic getting out of Jerusalem and they say things they shouldn't say. Like, I guess we got to go back to the temple and do this again. But Jesus is a superior sacrifice because we need one for all time. That's it. We're done. We don't have to go back and keep making sacrifices. And yet, we do the yes and thing again where we go, yeah, Jesus died for me and he made me right before God, but now that I'm a Christian, I keep messing up, so I need to do more and I need to better, and I need to perform my own personal sacrifices to get myself back in good graces with God. And we make Jesus' sacrifice not enough. Yeah, that was good then, but I know better now, and I need to keep working harder and keep being hard on myself and keep making my own sacrifices to then get back into the good graces of God so that he will love me more and approve of me more. And we live our lives, I do this too, as if Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough. And now God in his goodness and glory and perfection requires me, Nate, to make greater sacrifices to supplement the insufficient sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I think that we would do well to wake up every morning and remind ourselves, even if we have to say it out loud, what Jesus has done for me is enough. God loves me as much as he possibly can and ever will. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me less. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me more. And there's nothing I can do today to make myself more right before God. Jesus was enough. He did that for me. And then walk in the goodness and freedom of God. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Walk in that fullness. Walk in that grace. Walk in that gratitude by allowing the sacrifice of Jesus to be enough. That's why Hebrews can still, that's how Hebrews can still resonate with us today. By acknowledging that Jesus is superior to the law and the message of old, that he's the superior priest that gives us unfettered access to him, and we ought to passionately pursue that, and that he is the greatest sacrifice because he's enough for us once and for all. We don't have to keep supplementing that with our insufficiency. And to do all of this, as we're reminded of all of this, and we start with the sweeping prose about Christ, and then we see the comparisons, he starts to close his book by drawing this conclusion, and I think it's a great place for us to stop and put our focus on today as we prepare our hearts for communion after the sermon. But he starts to summarize his book and to wrap up by telling us to do this. I preach about this lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, my Bible says, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In light of all that we learned, in light of who Jesus is, the image of God, the very imprint of His nature, and in light of the ways that Jesus is superior and serves us and sacrifices for us and is our high priest, in light of the law that is to love Jesus with all our heart, in light of the law that is to love other people as Jesus loved us and then so in turn love Christ and be fueled by that love, in light of all these things, what are we to do? What are the rules that we're supposed to follow? How are we supposed to live this Christian life? Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Run your race. Go out there and run hard. Pursue Jesus with everything you've got. Go love other people with your whole heart. And to do it well, you've got to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we don't do that by white-knuckling it. We don't do that by trying to be our own sacrifice. We don't do that by supplementing the work of Christ in our life. No, we do it by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If we'll do that, we will follow God's laws. We will pursue Jesus hard. We will love others well, and we will have run a good race. That's the point of Hebrews. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are, for how you've loved us. Thank you for your son. Father, I pray that it would be critically important to us to acknowledge the superiority of Christ. That it would be critically important to us to pursue Him, to love Him, to know Him. Father, if we are not in Your Word, if we're not pursuing You on our own, would you light a fire in us to do that? If we've spent too many years not knowing your Bible well, would you let this be the year that fixes it? If we've spent too many years adding to your law, would this be the year that we let that go? If we've spent too many years supplementing your sacrifice, would this be the year that we finally accept yours? And God, as we go from here, would you help us run our race? It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been coming in July and never before that, and I'm new to you, they gave me the month off, and they were very, very kind to do that. So again, as I iterated in the Grace Vine this week, thank you so much for being the kind of church that allows me to take a month off and be with my family and be present with my kids. When I came back to work this week and I said bye to the kids, my daughter Lily was actually disappointed, which I feel is probably a good thing. I guess that means the month went well. It would probably be bad news if she was like, praise the Lord, he's leaving again. That may be how Jen felt, but Lily was sad. And just to set the expectations for this morning, I heard comments and things as I was wrapping up the month of June to take sabbatical and then some stuff during the month and even some stuff this morning about like, oh man, this is going to be a good sermon. You had six weeks to get this one ready. Like you used to come back and light our faces on fire. No, no. I didn't think about this sermon for one single second in the month of July. Not a single one. I didn't even know that I was preaching. This is the book of Acts this morning. I didn't even know I was preaching on the book of Acts until Tuesday when I decided that it would be the book of Acts. And then some stuff happened in my week. I ended up having to go back out of town. I wrote this sermon on my parents' dinner table at 10 o'clock on Thursday night. I'm essentially winging this, and I'm rusty. So let's just tamp down expectations of good and hope for brief, and then later I'll be good. If you really want to hear the sermon that I've been thinking about all month, then you should come on September the 10th. On September the 10th, we're going to roll out the plans that we have for the church. We're almost done. We're ready to show you. We're very excited. We're going to launch the campaign in earnest. It's going to be an update, and I've been really thinking a lot about what I want to share with you guys that Sunday morning about the future of grace and what we hope for. So that's the one that I hope is really good. This is going to be fine. With that being said, you can open your Bibles not to the book of Acts, but to John chapter 16. We will get there in a second. As I think about the book of Acts and what I want you to do with Acts, so we're going to be focused on just kind of an overview of Acts. What is it? How do we use it? Why is it there? What can it teach us? One of the things to know contextually about Acts is that it's essentially the second half of the book of Luke. Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and then he wrote the Acts of the Spirit or the Acts of the Apostles, depending on which strand of the church you come from. But they're both written to a guy named Theophilus. So they're basically part one and part two of the accounts of Christ and then the accounts of the Spirit. And when I think of the book of Acts, I think of it this way as it fits into the New Testament. From a narrative perspective, the book of Acts is an atlas. I think we have that in your notes. Yes, in a narrative sense, Acts serves as an atlas. Now, here's what I mean. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, to know what this is. I see you don't know. You know lots of it. You have no clue. You never touched this in your life. Then here's what you don't know. If you're too young to know what this is, I have been entrusted with a church, the leadership of a church, with children, young lives to mold, a marriage, various stations of responsibility throughout my life. I have never felt a deeper sense of responsibility than when I was in the back seat of our 1985 Maxima with automatic seat belts and my dad would tell me to open up the Atlas and tell me where I need to turn next. That is fully locked in. I've never felt a greater sense of responsibility because you can't just let any of the kids do that. You let my sister do it, we're going to be in Kansas. It's going to be a disaster. I have to do it. And the family is relying on me. So atlases hold a great place in my heart. And when you look at an atlas, when I open this to North Carolina, the way that an atlas works, I know you guys can't see it, but you can see enough for this to work. When you look at North Carolina, it's just the whole state, right? It's an overview of the whole state. And then what you get is you get these little windows where different cities are blown up. So like Charlotte is there. Charlotte's there. But then this is Charlotte for when you get in the city, you need more detail. And then Raleigh gets its own on the next page there. This is back before 540. I was actually looking at it this morning. Yeah, this is 1995. I had to email some people who are not in the millennial demographic to get my hands on one of these. But that's how atlases work, right? There's an overview of the whole state, and then where more detail is required, there's these little windows, these little blow-ups that accompany it to give you more detail for certain parts of the map. And that's how I think about the book of Acts and how it interacts with the New Testament. When you think about the story, the narrative arc of the New Testament, from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel telling the story of Christ, to the end of the book, Revelation, and you think about chronologically, how does that flow? Acts is, from a narrative perspective, the atlas. It gives the overview. It's the state overview of the New Testament. And then the letters that we see subsequent to Acts, the Pauline epistles, Paul's letters, Romans and Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians, and all down through Philemon, those serve to me as windows into the goings on in the book of Acts. When you read through Acts, you'll see Paul go to Philippi and Thessalonica and Corinth and all the places. And then you can turn to those letters and you can get a greater detail about what's going on in those churches. And the same with the general epistles. They're kind of tucked into the narrative story of Acts. So as we approach the Bible and we think about the New Testament, the composition of it, the book of Acts serves as kind of the atlas of the roadmap that gives you the narrative arc from the Gospels to Revelation. And that's helpful for me as I think about the structure of my Bible. But far more importantly than what Acts does for the Bible in a narrative sense is what the book of Acts does in an ecclesiastical sense, in a sense that pertains to the church and to the theology of the church. So in an ecclesiastical sense, Acts serves as a telling of the great work of the Holy Spirit that links the two great works of Jesus. So an ecclesiastical church, as it pertains to the church, as it pertains to church life, as it pertains to theology and how we understand God moving and acting and working in his church, the book of Acts serves to tell the story of the great work of the Spirit, of the age of the Spirit, as that work links the two great works of Christ. Now, admittedly, theologically, for those of you who think about these things, I struggled with that sentence because Christ, according to John 1, was involved in creation. That's a great work. Christ is still at work right now as our high priest interceding on our behalf. Christ will rule forever. So I don't mean to reduce the life of Christ and the works of Christ to the death and resurrection and then his return. Those are just what I'm calling the two great works of Christ. And so in the church age that we are in, in the age of the spirit in which we find ourselves, we constantly look back to Christ on the cross, that great work, and we anticipate the next great work, the return of Christ. And the book of Acts serves as a descriptor of the age of the Holy Spirit, whose work links the two great works of Christ as the Spirit grows the church. So that's how we think about the book of Acts, and that's what it sets out to describe for us, is the work of the Spirit, the age of the Spirit and of the church, the thing that Jesus came to build. So if we want to know, okay, it's the age of the Spirit. Acts details the acts of the Spirit in this church age. Then what is the Holy Spirit supposed to do? What is its job? What can we expect of it? What are we looking for as we look at the works of the Spirit? The best answer to this question actually comes in John chapter 16. I know it might feel weird that the highlighted verse on a sermon on the book of Acts is from the Gospel of John, but I think after we read it together, it will make more sense to you. This verse, this passage, is Jesus talking. John 15, 16, and 17 is this long discourse from Jesus just to the disciples. It's some good, intimate, revelatory teaching. It's capped off at the end of it by the high priestly prayer when Jesus, it's the longest recorded prayer of Christ where he prays for them and the church to come. And he prays for you and for me if we have placed our faith in Jesus. And in the midst of that discourse, Jesus tells them, I know you're sad that I'm leaving, but it's actually better that I am. And here's what he says in John chapter 16, verses 6 through 11. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. It's a threefold purpose. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So Jesus outlines to his disciples and to us this threefold purpose of the Holy Spirit. And what I want you to see this morning is what that means. What does it mean to convict the world of sin, to convict the world of righteousness, to convict the world of judgment? And then how does that show up in the book of Acts? And then not only in the book of Acts, but in our lives as well. So if we look at the first one, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. And then he gives detail of this down in verse 8. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Verse 9, concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. This is the apex sin, to not believe in Christ. It's the one that can't be fixed. It's the thing that we have to do. And so when we ask what it means for the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, I think it means this. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin by helping people believe in Jesus. And I know I already taught you ecclesiastical. Now I'm throwing in salvific. That just means something that has the power to save. And so this repentance of who Jesus is, repenting of who you thought he was and accepting who he says he is, is the fundamental repentance to enter Christendom. It is the foundational repentance for anyone who would seek to become a Christian. It's why I articulate as often as I can that to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus was who he says he was, he did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. The fundamental repentance to become a Christian is to repent of who you thought Jesus was and accept who he says he is. And I believe this to be true because of how the Holy Spirit works in the book of Acts to bring this repentance about in the crowds of the people of Jerusalem. If you look in your Bible in Acts chapter 2, what you'll see is that Jesus has died, he's resurrected, he's milled about for 40 days interacting with people and freaking people out, and then he ascends into heaven. And when he ascends into heaven, he tells the disciples to wait until the appointed time and they'll know what to do. So the disciples are assembled in this upper room and they don't know what to do. They're just looking at each other going, what do we do now? I don't know. He just said, wait. Wait on what? I don't know. We'll know when it happens. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is abuzz. They're trying to figure out what's going on with this guy and what these guys are doing in this upper room. So they're all milling around outside, thousands of people just waiting to see what the disciples are going to do. And one day at Pentecost, the flaming tongues descend down from heaven and light on the disciples and they are given the gift of tongues and they go out onto the balcony, onto the portico, and they preach to the crowds that are gathered there. Peter preaches in his own language and each person hears it in their language. That's the gift of tongues that we see in Acts. And they're all convicted and they all want to be saved. Peter goes out and he preaches the gospel. He tells them who Jesus is. And their response is, we believe, what do we do? And Peter's response, my Bible scholars already know, repent and be baptized. And this is something that I've chewed on for years. But repent of what? We're tempted to say, we often say, repent of your sins. Sure. All of them? Perfectly? This is the line of delineation for salvation? I should repent of everything I've ever done and am doing and I should repent perfectly and if I can't do that then I cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? Certainly perfect repentance of all the things isn't the line because there would be no one saved but Christ. Because of that I am convinced more and more that what Peter is telling them to do is repent of who you thought he was before you killed him and when you killed him. This crowd is the same crowd that was surrounding the courts of Pilate when Pilate was going, we don't need to kill this guy. He hasn't done anything. Why don't you just let me release him and kill Barabbas? And the crowd said, no, give us Barabbas and kill Jesus. And Pilate says, well, this isn't on me. And the crowd says, well, his blood is on our hands and on the hands of our children. It's that same crowd. I don't know if it's one for one, but a majority of them are in the same place. It's that same ethic, that same group of people. And so Peter is telling them, repent of who you thought Jesus was, that guy that you killed, and confess that he is the Lord, that he is who he says he is, and then be baptized. It is salvific repentance. It is foundational repentance for all people for all time. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of the sin of not seeing Jesus and accepting him for who he says he is. And he is still doing this work today. If you have a friend that you are trying to love towards the kingdom of heaven and share the gospel with, it is we work, we say words, we pray, we do. It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict and to open up eyes to see Jesus for who he says he is. And often, in our culture, in this day and age, in a nation that is very close to post-Christian, where everyone has heard the name of Jesus, and if they're not following Jesus, they probably have a reason, and here's the thing, it's probably a good one. In our culture now, the Holy Spirit has to do a lot of the same work that he had to do back in the church age, back in the age of Christ. What did he have to do to help them see that Jesus was who he says he was? He had to knock off the scales of religiosity and tradition and poor teaching and well-meaning teachers who were slightly askew and led them to an expectation of Christ that he never set for himself. And so the Holy Spirit is doing that same work today in our hearts and in our lives. I read a stat this week that over the last 20 years or 25 years, over 40 million Americans have stopped going to church. Why is that the case? Why are we living in this deconstructed culture? Well, part of it is on them. Part of it is they had great pastors and great teachers and great people in their life, and they just weren't listening. And that's part of the deal. But a larger part is because we've done church really badly, because we've depicted Jesus as who he isn't, because we put expectations on him that he didn't ask for. And so people are growing up in the church blind to who Jesus really is because the teaching in the church has been so bad. And the Holy Spirit has to convict us in our adulthood and help us knock the scales off of the Jesus that we were taught and help us see the Jesus that presents himself in scripture and in the hearts of people who love us well. So the Holy Spirit is still doing that work. And I'm not so ignorant as to believe that he's not doing that work for some of us in here today who have our doubts. I would just posit to you that maybe your doubts about who Jesus is aren't because of who he said he was, but because of what someone else told you that he was. And maybe the Holy Spirit can help open your eyes to see past those things. Then Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness. What does it mean to convict of righteousness? I think of it like this. Jesus says that he convicts of righteousness because he is going to be with the Father, and that's a little bit mysterious. And so for this one, I did, I did my research, which I know, I know it's a surprise for everyone, but I did my research and I think it's easiest to understand it like this. The Holy Spirit convicts those who believe to grow in Christ likeness. So once, once he's convicted you to believe and you see Jesus for who he is, then he convicts you to grow in Christ-likeness, to grow in your own righteousness. This is the process that the Bible and theologians call sanctification. The sanctification process is to become more like Christ in character. I grew up thinking of salvation as this moment, as this point of inflection in time where you were saved or you were not, and that is still partially true. But now as an adult, I think of salvation as a process from the moment God opens our eyes in faith to the moment he claims us in eternity and secures us in his kingdom forever. That is a process as we live the rest of our lives as Christians. And in that process, in our time of living, God sanctifies us. He convicts us of places where we're not righteous, where we're not Christ-like. And he shows us where we need to be more righteous and more like Christ. The Holy Spirit convicts. Now that we have opened our eyes and we believe in him, then the Holy Spirit says, good, that's step one. Now step two, I'm going to convict you of where you're not righteous so that you can become more righteous and more like Christ in character. We see him doing this to Peter in the book of Acts. We see the Holy Spirit acting this way in Acts. In Acts chapter 10, there's a conversation between Peter and Cornelius, and Peter receives a vision. Peter was a good Jew. He was a Jew's Jew. And in this time, there was several dietary restrictions that had religious connotations to the Jew. There was things he could and could not eat and people he could and could not eat with. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in a dream, gives him a vision, and basically says, hey, you can leave those rules behind. Knock it off with that. Eat with Cornelius. And Paul has to end up getting on to him. You eat with Gentiles when no one else is around, but when Jews are around, you won't do it because you're a hypocrite and you're scared of other people and you need to knock it off and quit being a sissy. It's this moment of conviction for Peter. And what I love about that moment of conviction, and it's so important for us in our moments of conviction, I think conviction can sometimes have a negative or judgmental connotation. That we feel that when we're convicted of a sin, that that's somehow God telling us, hey, you're not pleasing me right now. That's the spirit in your ear saying, you should stop that behavior because it's not pleasing to the Lord. It displeases God for you to do that. Over sabbatical, I got the fresh conviction of get off your phone and engage with your children, right? Well, the conviction doesn't come from the spirit because me being on my phone and reading the New York Times or my Kindle app or whatever it is, is sinful. And God wants me to stop doing that because it displeases him. And the holy watchdog is disappointed in me. He's convicted me of that because he's saying, hey, by doing that, you're not loving your kids as well as you could be. So love your kids. And this all makes sense when you consider the new commandment that Christ gave us. Christ left the disciples with one commandment. Go and love others as I have loved you. That's the new commandment I give to you. That's the commandment for all Christians and all of Christendom. Go love others as Christ has loved us. And so the conviction of the Holy Spirit towards Christ's likeness and righteousness isn't a conviction of displeasure before God. It's a conviction of, hey, when you do that, you're not loving other people well. When you engage in that behavior, you're not obeying the command to love others as I have loved you. Look at Peter. He says, stop, knock it off with the dietary restrictions. Why? Because those restrictions are prohibiting you from loving Cornelius in a way that he needs to be loved. He thinks he's unacceptable to God because you won't eat with him. So stop it, man. You can't love Cornelius well. This is what convicts me. This is an unconvincing statement. I know. I need to be healthier. I have young kids. I'm old. I did the math the other day. I'm 42. When my grandma was 42, I was two. I was John's age. My son, that's nuts. I'm going to be 70 when he has a career and meets someone. I would like to meet his kids. So I got to knock it off with the red meat. I got to knock it off with filet of fish, which is going to be a tough battle. Those are good. That's the Holy Spirit's conviction. Not because those things are displeasing before the Lord, but because if I want to love my children and the next generation well and be present for them in old age, then I need to do what I need to do now to be ready for that. Now, I don't know what the Lord's timing is, and I don't know what's going to happen between now and then, but I am convicted that I need to do my part to be healthy for my family, and I think that's a good conviction for us to have. Not because what we consume is displeasing before the Lord, but because what we consume doesn't enable us to love the people in our lives the way he's asked us to do that. So when we're convicted to righteousness, what we are convicted towards is Christ's likeness and loving people better. All sin that you have in your life, all unholiness that you have in your life. It's so abhorrent to God because it does displease him, because it does disqualify us, but more than that, it disables you from doing what he's asked you to do, which is to love other people well. So when he convicts towards righteousness, he's convicting us towards love. But the other important part of this is coming to grips with the abhorrence of our sin. And not just the abhorrence of it, but the weight of it, the volume of it. It's right and good for the Holy Spirit to hold up a mirror before us and for us to be crushed underneath the weight of our sin because of the place it brings us to. I came across this as I was doing a little bit of research this week. This is from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was the pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle in London in the late 1800s. He's called by many the prince of preachers. He may have been the greatest preacher that ever lived. He comes to remind them not only of God's loveliness, but of their own unloveliness, of their own enmity and hatred to this God of love, and consequently of their terrible sin and thus ill-using one so infinitely kind. Listen, the Holy Ghost does he want to convict us towards greater love for one another, he does want us to feel the weight of our sin and our utter inability to fight the battle against it alone. When the Holy Spirit has done his job and we have invited him into our hearts to do his work, he will so overwhelm us with the weight of our iniquity that we will cry out to the Father, I am helpless. It will be the cry of Paul in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? If you are here and you think you can just leave this room determined to be more righteous, then you will not be more righteous. And if by some miracle you succeed in breaking the chains of one sin in your life, you will usher in the new chain of pride at having done it on your own. Congratulations. The Holy Spirit pushes us towards love of others and helps us feel the weight of our sins that we might be reliant on him and his work rather than ourselves. That's how he convicts of righteousness. Now, how does he convict of judgment? What does it mean to convict us of judgment? Because the time of the evil one is coming. Let's sum it up like this. The Holy Spirit convicts concerning judgment by reminding us that good will triumph over evil. When Paul, we see this in Acts, when Paul goes to the Greek Areopagus, Mars Hill, he interacts with the philosophers there who like to talk about ideas. And a lot of you guys know the story. They say you have monuments to all the gods. I see here you have a monument to an unknown God. I know who that God is. That's actually Jesus. And he goes on to share the gospel with them. And then the end of that passage in Acts chapter 10, it says that they were convicted by the Spirit about who Jesus was and an assurance of the judgment to come. An assurance of where they would go when they died. We see the Holy Spirit doing that work in Acts. And the Holy Spirit does that work now. When we say that his job is to convict us of judgment, it means his job is to remind us that there is a time coming when that judgment will happen. And if you are not a believer, that judgment is terrifying and wrathful and awful, and you ought to be terrified of it. But when you are a Christian, we can look forward to that judgment with hopeful anticipation. That moment that I preach about often when Jesus comes crashing down out of the clouds in Revelation 19 and on his leg is righteous and true and he comes back to restore creation and to redeem us and to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. As Christians we cling to the hope of that moment. It's what gets us through death. It's what gets us through trials. It's what gets us through hard times is the belief in the arctic hope and the assurance that one day Jesus will do what he says he's going to do as the Holy Spirit seeks to link the great works of Christ, not just from his death and resurrection, but links the church age to the return of Christ when it's all said and done to tell us die for, when he comes back to get us. So the Holy Spirit is constantly, constantly, constantly pointing you to Christ. In sin, he points us to who Christ is to believe in him. In righteousness, he points us to the character of Christ to become more like him. And in judgment, he points us to the future of Christ in hope that we might cling to these things in life. That's the role of the Holy Spirit, to point you to Jesus, past, present, and future. To assure you, while you watch someone you know fade away, that you will see them again in glory and they will not look like this. To assure you, when you watch your children struggling through something you can't fix, that there's more to the story than this, it ends better. To assure you that the people you know that have been degenerated by illness or mental issues or whatever, that one day you will get to meet a healthy, loving version of them. The Holy Spirit points us back to the victory on the cross, to the victory of Easter, where all the crud that you deal with was broken and defeated. If only we can place our faith there. So that's the role of the book of Acts. That's the role of the Spirit in the book of Acts and now. And what's wonderful about Acts is it's the only book in the Bible that ends with an ellipsis. Acts isn't finished, and neither is the Spirit. The book of Acts isn't done being written. We're still in the book of Acts. Now, I'm not getting crazy. I'm not saying we're adding stuff to the Bible. All right, relax. But we're still into the church age that was ushered in at the ascension of Christ that awaits the return of Christ. We are still writing the story of the church and the Holy Spirit is still moving in the writing of that story. And he's still moving in you to convict you of your belief in Christ, of your Christ-like character and of your hope in what he will do one day. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the church and the gift that it is to us. Thank you for all the expressions of the church happening all over our community and all over the world today. God, I pray that each person in this service and the service next door and the service across the country and across the globe, that each person is somehow convicted by your spirit today, is somehow warmed by the hope of your spirit, by the promises of your spirit, is somehow moved closer to love through the spirit opening their eyes. God, I pray that the people who sit in the services today who don't yet believe you because they don't see you for who you are would have their eyes opened even just a little bit more today. We thank you for the church and what it is. We thank you for the church age. We thank you for your spirit, for your helper, who points us constantly to your son. And it's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and this morning I am so excited to have the opportunity to preach to you guys out of the book of 2 Thessalonians. Now, I don't know who in here has recently read through 2 Thessalonians, or even if you ever have, but it's a pretty interesting book, and if I'm being completely honest, as I read through it a couple times, I read through it and kind of just shook my head. I was like, I don't really know what I'm going to preach out of this. I don't really know what of this is applicable for like a Sunday morning at Grace in 2023, but I guess here we go. No, but it's an interesting book because of the reason why it was written. To give a little background, those of you who, those of you might have been here for a couple of our other Sunday mornings where we have gone through some of Paul's writings. First and second Thessalonians are two letters that were written and attributed to Paul and Paul's ministry written to the church in Thessalonica, written to the city, these people who he had gone and spent some time with, and after spending time with them, had written them two separate letters. Now, the more interesting part is why and the occasion for why he's actually writing the second letter. He's got a great reason to write the first letter. I actually got to preach on 1 Thessalonians a few weeks ago, and it's a beautiful letter, and it just so well just describes exactly what Paul is trying to do and say, and you read it, and you're like, this is awesome. And then 2 Thessalonians is written basically for the opportunity for him to kind of address and to correct a misunderstanding that some of the people in Thessalonica had around the first letter. So basically the reason why he's writing it is to say, hey, look, you misinterpreted what I said here, and it's actively messing you guys up, and you're kind of not only believing the wrong things, but now you're doing the wrong things, so this needs to be addressed. And so, because of that, what that means is, before we're fully and adequately able to dive into 2 Thessalonians, we have to give a bit of a background, a bit of review over 1 Thessalonians. And now, look, I looking around and I see, everyone, I see on your faces, you're like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We have been listening nonstop to your sermon from July 4th weekend ever since you preached it. I can see it. You're all like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We've listened to that sermon like five times. It was just so meaningful and so beautifully written and especially spoken. No, but in case any of you might maybe aren't there, maybe you missed that Sunday, you missed that sermon, or just in case it's helpful to have a reminder and to have a bit of a review, let's jump into it. So the first part of the review I want to get to is not about necessarily 1 Thessalonians or even 2 Thessalonians, but more of a general, here's who Paul is. Paul, once he became a Christian, he devoted his entire life to ministry. Paul's goal, his ultimate point of his life was this. He wanted to share the gospel with all people, and he wanted to call them to repent and to live lives that were reflective of that gospel. For him, to live meant to teach people who Jesus was. And one of the reasons why I love 1 Thessalonians is because when he writes that, and as we previously discussed, as he writes this letter to the Thessalonians, we get a pretty distinctly clear picture at what Paul thinks is the best strategy in being able to do it. What Paul believes is the best way that us as believers are able to share Christ with the people that are around us. And so that's what he does. He writes it. He says, this is what I did. This is what I want you to do. And basically it was this. Paul believed the best way to minister and to share the gospel was through building relationships, through genuine relational love, and without any expectation of reciprocity. When he went into Thessalonica, he didn't go in and stay kind of on the outskirts of town. And then when he woke up, he would go to the center of town, find a stage, and just preach in front of these people who he didn't really know. But hey, I've got the good news of the gospel, and so you need to listen to me. He didn't do that. He went and fully immersed himself into the community, fully immersed himself into the culture, getting to know these people, spending time with these people, eating meals with these people, and building these loving and lasting relationships with these people, because in his view and in his mind, the best way to adequately and rightfully share the love of Christ and to share the gospel of Christ was through building those relationships. He even got a job while he was there. Not only was he just actively meeting people and building community, he actually literally was serving in the community. He was working amongst the people and building relationships with the people he was working with, the people that he was working for, and ultimately, one, to just have one more immersion into the culture, but two, so that it didn't feel like, so that these people didn't feel like he was using them for reciprocity, so that these people didn't feel like he had any other motive for why he was preaching. He didn't want them to be like, man, that guy comes in here, he's preaching us the good news, and that's just because he wants the good money and the good food that we'll give him for bringing up this great news. No. Paul wanted to get a job. He wanted them to know, hey, I'm earning my living. I'm earning my living amongst you and around all of you. I want you to see that because I want you to see that the only reason I'm bringing you the gospel, the only reason I want to get to know you better is so that I can share the love of Christ with you and no other reason than that. And so, unfortunately, he has to leave abruptly. His life's in danger because some people were upset about his teachings. He has to leave abruptly. And he finds out through the grapevine later on that man, his teaching, that his work in Thessalonica had not gone in vain. That the gospel had taken root and was expanding like wildfire. That all of these things that he had done for these people, all of the ways that he had taught and encouraged them on how to live, how to live a life for Christ, of how to live this kind of lifestyle evangelism where, hey, your life should be centered around the gospel so that you're bringing the gospel to anyone that you come in contact with. They were doing that. And so people are being more deeply rooted in Christ. The people in Thessalonica, they're adding to the numbers daily of the people who are giving their hearts and giving their lives over to the gospel, over to God and over to Christ. Not only that, but I found, we talked about this when I preached, I found out that one of the biggest attributions to Christianity becoming a world religion was the fact that it spread out so widely from Thessalonica. So many people in other cultures, in other cities, and even in other nations would come to Thessalonica for the sake of trade. They were there all the time. And because the gospel had such an impact and had such a deep-rooted movement going on in Thessalonica, it was encouraging and impacting all of the people who were coming in, and those people were going out into their places that they live, and they were spreading the gospel there. Incredible stuff. It was awesome. And so Paul finds out about this. And so out of the joy and excitement to hear such things, he writes his first letter, 1 Thessalonians. And in the letter, he writes about how much he misses them. Like we already established, he built and established some deep-rooted relationships and loving relationships. So, I miss you guys so much. I can't wait to see you soon. And he reminisces a bit on his time there, on his time where he spent time getting to know them and sharing the gospel with them and all of those things, and then just talks about how excited and how proud he is of them, that they have followed in his footsteps and they are now living out the gospel the way that he had called them to do. And then finally, he takes the rest of the book, mostly, to encourage them to continue to do the same. To encourage them to continue to do good, to continue to live their lives for Christ, and to continue to make Christ known in everything that they do. And it's a beautiful book. It's awesome. But there was one problem with that letter. And the problem in that letter is that there's one specific thing that Paul wrote about that he meant to use as encouragement, but ended up kind of being used as something a little bit different. In the end of chapter four, the beginning of chapter five of 1 Thessalonians, Paul takes some time to talk about the second coming, to talk about what he refers to it as the day of the Lord. When Christ comes back, when the Lord comes to bring all of the believers up into eternity with him, to spend eternity in perfection in heaven in his presence. He talks about it for a couple reasons. There were some worries and some fears amongst the people that needed to be addressed, and so Paul uses that to address that. But one of the main reasons that he does that is he wants, he's kind of like, hey, this will, it'll come like a thief in the night. We don't really know exactly when it comes, when God, when God will come back, when Christ will come back and bring all of us up. And when he does so, he kind of is saying that basically to say, hey, look, Paul wanted the Thessalonians to understand that their time on this earth was short, so they needed to make every second count. Time is short. We don't know the day or the hour when Jesus is coming back, but it could be soon. And if it's soon, be ready, be excited, and live your life in a way that is significant. It's basically saying, hey, spend the time you have left on earth pursuing and making Christ known in your lives and worlds the ways that I've taught you. All the ways that you've been doing already. You're living out these lives that I've taught you and that I've shown you and I'm so encouraged to hear that. Continue to do that. Continue in the reminder that, hey, we don't know how much time we have left on this earth, but as long as you're here, live it out for Christ. Well, it's not exactly how they read it. There was a group and a portion of the Thessalonians that when they read that, they didn't recognize that, hey, the point of what he's doing and that the point of what he's saying is that you should pursue Christ and know Christ and make Christ known even more because we don't know what's going to happen next. They actually kind of mistook it as the opposite. And their misunderstanding was such that they thought he was being literal with, hey, the Lord could come at any point. The Lord could come at any time to saying, hey, the Lord's getting ready to come. So get ready. And upon hearing that, some people decided, okay, well, I don't really, that my life on earth is really that worth it now because we're just going to wait for God to come. And so what happened was instead of these people being encouraged to continue to live out their lives for Christ, they kind of were discouraged to live out their lives. Basically, the Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words, well, yeah, go ahead and throw it up there. The Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words caused a group of them to quit their jobs and deem their earthly lives as seemingly unimportant. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the kid who wakes up and knows that they've got friends coming in from out of town who are driving in, don't know when they're going to get here, don't really have any conceptual concept of time, so it doesn't even matter if their mom tells them when they're going to get here. They just know they're coming. At some point, they're going to drive into that driveway, and I've got to be ready. And so to prepare for them to get there, the mom is like, hey, buddy, you got some chores. We have things that need to be done. You've got work that needs to be done before these people get here to prepare for them to be here. But the kid is just so excited. He's just so excited that these people are coming, that he is completely uninterested in doing the work that his mom's asked him to do. Chores, schmores in his eyes, you know what I'm saying? And instead, he just is like, you know what, I've got to stay right here because the window's right here. If I don't have, like, if I don't check every 30 seconds to, like, to see if they're here yet, then they might just not appear, you know? And so they spend the whole day, instead of working and doing what their mom asked them to do, they spend the whole day, instead of just kind of wasting away, not doing any of the things they've been asked to do because they're just way too excited about these people coming. Y'all probably know a little, I'm sure some of us have kind of been there before. A lot of you are parents. I'm sure your kids have done that before, but that's kind of how they behave. That's kind of how they reacted. Hey, if Jesus is coming back, if he's coming back at any point, then what's the point in me living my life now? Sure, I've got this earthly life, but I'm about to have an eternal life any hour at this point because Paul just told me so. So what's the point in going back to work? Why do I have to do all these responsibilities? I've already done my part. I've checked off my boxes. I've already given my heart to Christ. So what's the point of me having to do any of this now? They just were like, hey, I'll just sit back and I'll wait to go to heaven because it's going to happen at any point in any moment. And as you can imagine, in the same way that the mom was probably pretty unhappy with her son, who didn't do anything she'd asked him to do, Paul, when he finds out that this had been the reaction of some of the Thessalonians, was not super excited about it. So he writes 2 Thessalonians. He writes 2 Thessalonians, and predominantly, to be able to correct not only this incorrect view and this incorrect theological belief, but this incorrect behavior that he was not super thrilled about. And so he takes time to kind of outline, hey, there's a couple things that need to happen before the second coming of Christ. It is not immediately imminent to the point that like, hey, you could wake up that like at some point you might just not wake up tonight because Christ has come and brought you back home. There's things that have to happen. I'm not going to get into those. You can read some of those. It's great. It's helpful. It's useful to know and understand. But all that to say, Paul writes about those because he wants them to kind of like chill out, like, hey, whoa, buddy, Jesus is not coming back in one hour, so let's chill out there, and let's not teach other people that that's what's happening. But then he takes time to address what he calls people who were kind of falling into idleness, leaving their jobs, leaving their secular human lives, and just sitting back and waiting for Jesus to come. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3. But the first people he addressed are actually not the people who had fallen into becoming idle. The first people he actually addresses are the people who had not fallen for that. The people who had read his message and whether or not they understood it, they were like, hey, Paul had given us a mission. Paul says we need to be at work. We need to be working. We need to be living our lives. We need to be getting to know people and living amongst people. We need to be doing what God has called us to do. And so Paul addresses them first and is a little bit harsh. Basically, ultimately saying, hey, look, here's the deal. I know some of you are probably kind of helping and aiding some of these people who have left their jobs and don't have money to buy food and all that stuff. They're not your problem. You don't really need to be helping them out. They're people who have decided, hey, I know I can work, but I'm just not interested. They're going to help me out. He even says in verse 10, he's very specific when he says, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Then he takes a little bit of time to allow them to recall his time there. One thing that Paul does in his writings, he wants to make sure that it doesn't come off that he's holding people to a different standard than the standard that he is holding himself. And so he recalls his time there. Hey, don't you guys remember that when I was there, that my whole mission and my whole goal and all of my ministry was set and based around the job that I was doing and the life that I was living? Did you see me just like wasting away over to the side because like, hey, God's got me, so whatever. No, I was there. I worked a job. I brought money in because I didn't want people to feel like I was using them for their money. I wanted them to know that I just wanted them to know and love Christ. And then, finally, he addresses the people who had fallen into their idleness. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3.12, which is not on the screen, so I'm just going to read it. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Hey, this isn't encouragement, but it's also a commandment. If you left your job, and if you are shirking your life's responsibilities, if you've decided that your human life is just kind of done at this point because you're waiting for Jesus to come back, it's time to stop. I'm not just encouraging it, I'm commanding it. It's time to stop, go back to work, do your work. And so, and, so I read that, and we talk about that, and I think everyone in the room is like, yeah, cool, man. That makes sense. You shouldn't do that. But like I kind of opened with, I really struggled as I read that to go, okay, so what's the value for the people at Grace? I mean, I guess I could stand up and just say, hey, look, Grace, here's the deal. If any of you guys have been doing some extra research on the second coming recently, and if in your research you've decided that Jesus could come back at any moment or any day, and so you've decided that because of that, you're going to leave, you're going to just leave your human responsibilities behind, you're going to leave your job and not worry about providing for yourself or anybody you need to provide. If you're doing that, I would encourage you and command you that instead you should not do that. Go back to work. Go back to your responsibilities. Go back to your family. They miss you. No. It's not a super effective tool to communicate to all of you guys. But after reading it a few times, I realized that this section where he addresses the idleness, he doesn't stop at just addressing the people who had fallen into their idleness separately from the people who had not fallen into idleness. He goes one verse more. He goes one verse longer, and I think that what this next verse does is to help us understand why maybe the sin that they had fallen into and fallen under is maybe a little bit similar to something that we fall under and fall into sometimes. So the next verse actually is on the screen, and this is to address all of the believers in Thessalonica. The ones who had fallen into idleness and the ones who are still doing exactly what Paul had called them to do and what the Lord calls them to do. And this verse says, and it's verse 13, as for you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing good. After the command, hey, don't help out people who don't need your help and are just trying to get it. After the command to, hey, go back to work and start doing your job and get back to your lives that you were already living. He says, and all of you, every one of you, do not grow weary in doing good. And what this verse did, finally, after reading it countless times, what it finally did is it reminded me of 1 Thessalonians. And it reminded me of why Paul wrote about the second coming in the first place. It reminded me of why, of why it's important that Paul finds everyday life and work so important in the first place. Because that, our lives, the lives that they lived and the lives that we live, because that is where the Lord has placed them and that is where the Lord has called them to live for him. Paul's point in talking about idleness, Paul's point in telling people to go back to work isn't just for the simplicity of, hey, go back to work, you goofballs. His point is don't neglect the human secular life that God has uniquely given you and called you to. Instead, use that life to do good, serve and love the people you're around, and continue to build relationships that share Christ's love and point people toward Christ. What the Thessalonians who fell into idleness had done is they had forgotten that until Christ had actually come down to get them, that the Lord was not done with them yet. Hey, if you're still on earth, even if it's for one more day or one more hour, if you're still on earth, that means Christ still has you on earth on purpose. Their lives on earth had been created for them by God to do exactly the work in him that only they could do. They'd forgotten that Paul's teaching that all of life is meant to be lived out for Christ and that there should be no distinction between different parts of life. Sunday morning is not more spiritual or more holy than Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday night small group does not become more spiritual or more holy than being in the office on Friday morning. There should be no distinction. Doesn't that remind us of what Paul already taught us of how to spread the gospel? He didn't say, hey, everyone leave your jobs so you can become preachers. He said, hey, guess what, everyone? The Lord puts you in your jobs for a reason. He's trying to use you in those jobs. And ultimately, I think the big tragedy that Paul is trying to address is this, that their misunderstanding had removed them from their quote-unquote secular lives, and Lord had given them lives where daily they interact with people who need the love of Christ. And because they had decided they were done with all those earthly responsibilities, they had effectively walked away from all of the people who needed Christ's love the most. And Paul couldn't stand it. And so Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. And doesn't that sound more like something that we maybe need to hear and be reminded of? Isn't that a truth that maybe makes a little bit more sense on our end? Don't we sometimes, even though maybe we're not leaving our jobs, maybe we leave God at the footsteps of our jobs, forgetting or not being willing to acknowledge the fact that the Lord maybe has us there for a reason that's his and not just for the sake of you doing a job to get money. I think what the connection of 1 and 2 Thessalonians does such a beautiful job is to remind us that our time on this earth is short. And so we should live it meaningfully, reflecting the Father who not only created us, and not only saved us through the death and resurrection of Christ, but the Father who is with us every second of every day. Father who's guiding our steps and working to use us for his glory and his plan. The Father who decides to allow, to allow us in our short and ordinary lives to make an eternal and an extraordinary impact on the people that are around us. So then I turn it around and I ask a couple questions. How often, Grace, do we miss or how often do we overlook the Lord's presence and the Lord's guidance in our day-to-day lives? How often do we miss that the Lord is trying to work inside of our lives every single day? Or, how often do we find ourselves so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we are unaware or unwilling to see why the Lord might have us in those places and why the Lord might have us around those people in the first place? I think what Paul wants us to realize is this, that as a Christian, every moment is holy because we carry the presence of God into every single moment that we walk into. And maybe more directly, every time we separate our secular lives from our spiritual lives, we are missing the opportunity to expand God's kingdom and extend the heart of Christ. God is with us every moment of every single day. He's with us so we get to experience a relationship and a knowledge of him. But he's with us because he is trying to guide us into every moment of our day so that we can turn that and extend the heart of Christ to the people that are around us. And so I want to close with a quote. It's a quote that has been meaningful to me in years past as I ponder, hey, what does it look like to make my everyday life more centered around God, more centered around Christ? What does that look like? What does that mean? It's a quote from John Ortberg. And I'm going to read it. And it's a little different than some of our other blanks. And I'll tell you why. So, and it's actually, you can read it up here or it's on your sheets. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to scripture or blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. I'm going to read that one more time. This time I'm going to read it as a blank. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. So the quote, that blank is meant to be scripture, but I removed it because I want us to be thoughtful about what else could maybe go in that blank. Certainly one of the best ways to be able to experience and to know God better and to know what God's plan for us is on a day-to-day basis, one of the best ways to do it is through scripture. And when we meet with God and we dive into scripture, we don't just do so willy-nilly. We do so knowing, hey, we're about to meet with God. And so we come in with an attitude of expectancy. But what if we changed it up? What if we said, if I come to work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. If I come home from work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. When I hit the golf course on a Saturday morning with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. Fill in the blank. If I enter into blank, whatever that blank is, at each part of the day, with expectancy. Expecting the Lord to move. Expecting the Lord to already be there. Expecting the Lord to guide my path as I take each and every step. How would our lives look different? How would each phase of our lives look different? Not just when we walk into church and we get to celebrate the Lord, but when we walk out of church into lunch. Grace, I believe that if we walked each step of our lives with the attitude of expectancy that God is going to move, then that could really change things. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that we never grow tired and we never grow weary of doing good. Lord, as you have called us in everything that we do to do good for you, to live out a life that is reflective of you in the gospel and to make most of you in every step that we take. Through relationships, through building relationships, through sharing your gospel through whatever it looks like. God, I just pray that we stay and remain mindful that you're always with us, not just in small groups, not just on Sunday mornings, but every step of the day. And Lord, may we not ever try to separate our life from your life because you never do that. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

All right, I see no one paid extra for the splash zone this morning, but I feel like I should like just stand down here and preach, but no, it's good morning. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. As most of you probably know by now, the month of July, our head pastor, Nate, is actually taking a sabbatical. It's something that was afforded to him as he has spent diligent, full-time service to this church, ministering to all of us so lovingly and so well for seven years. And so he is taking some time during the month of July to refresh and recharge spiritually in all other ways, spending time relaxing with family, on vacation, all of those things. And so I'm super happy for them. I'm super excited that he's getting the opportunity to do that. And honestly, I'm really excited for us and what that means for Grace, because you know he's gonna come out of that time ready to run in August, ready to run alongside of us in August as he comes back spiritually, recharged, and re-energized. But that also means is I get to preach this morning, which is really cool. Yeah, like cool. All right. I wasn't fishing, but I am thankful for it. I will say, like, I am mostly very excited about it. We're in our series 27, and in 27, we are going through a different book of the New Testament each week. Now, the reason why I'm mostly excited is because I think that there's a small part of me that thinks that Nate might have set me up for failure for this. Because as we talked about this series, we knew that he was going to be on sabbatical. And so there were a lot of voices, a lot of people talking, discussing, hey, what should this series look like? How should we do this series? All this stuff. And one of the main things that Nate made very clear is, hey, don't worry about us going in order. We're not going to go in order all the way through the New Testament. Just choose books that you're going to love and that stand out to you in your preparation. Awesome. Thanks so much. Man, Nate's the best. He doesn't want to be holding us to a certain book. He wants us to pick the book. And then Nate decides for the first four weeks, he's going to do the first four books in order of the New Testament. So while we know in his office that he has decided we don't have to go in order, now you guys are coming ready for an Acts sermon, and I'm hitting you with 1 Thessalonians. And not only did he set me up for failure, but he also knew if there's rioting in the building because I go out of the order you guys are ready for, he's gone. He's on sabbatical. He doesn't have to worry about it. So if you will, please bear with me, and please put down your, you know, whatever pickaxes that you're going to come to me because I'm breaking out of order because I am this morning going to peel off the Band-Aid and we are going to jump into the book of 1 Thessalonians. Now, one of the distinct things about the New Testament, as a lot of you guys know, 13 of the books are attributed to Paul and to Paul's ministry, the Apostle Paul. He wrote these letters to these different churches in these different areas, and they were all named after the areas in the people that he's writing to. And those are, and they're all written by Paul. And so for a lot of this series, we're going to be bringing up this guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul. Now, the thing about Paul, he was not a big fan of Christians. He persecuted them. He wanted to kill them. He thought like, hey, like get rid of this ideology of Christianity that you think exists because this is not, this is not it. You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I'm not having it. Until God kind of hit him literally in just this, he blinded him. I don't know what else to say. I don't really know what word I was searching for, but he blinded him and sent a Christian to go spend some time with Paul, teach Paul the truth, and then literally God opened Paul's eyes, both literally and figuratively, to the gospel that, hey, Paul, you're right that I am God, but you're wrong about who Christ is. This Jesus who came and lived, came and lived because I sent him as my son from heaven to earth to live a perfect life and to die a death signifying the death of all sins of the people who believe him. And he was resurrected from the dead, just as you've heard people tell. And that resurrection signifies that all those people who would believe in him and believe in Jesus as king and trust him as their Lord and Savior, that they are raised to life as well. That when God looks at them, they don't see the imperfections of their lives and of their walks in their life, but they see the perfection of Christ and the holiness of Christ because they have entrusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And once the Lord told Paul that, Paul's life was then about one thing and one thing only, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul did, when you read about his ministry and acts, when you read about his ministry and read his writings to each of these different churches as we're gonna go through, he has one goal and one goal only, and that Paul's ultimate goal was to share the gospel to all people and call them to repent and live a life reflective of that gospel. It's the only thing that he cared about. I want to make sure everyone I come in contact with knows who Jesus is, and I want to make sure everyone that I encounter not only knows who he is, but will give their hearts to that Christ and give their lives to the ministry of that Jesus, just as I have. And that's a lot of what 1 Thessalonians is. That's the goal of 1 Thessalonians is Paul writing to the people in the church of Thessalonica, some as reminding himself and just reminiscing on his time there, some to say, hey, like I'm so excited that this is taken, and some to say, hey, continue and press on. That is the goal of this. But as I was going through each one of his letters, as I was going through each book in the New Testament, man, what really jumped out to me about 1 Thessalonians is outside of clearly this being the goal, as it so often is in Paul's writing, I think that he just gives a really, really excellent description of exactly what that looks like. I think that's super valuable, because I don't, if you're like me, there's times where I hear sermons, or there's times where I'm reading through Scripture, and it is abundantly clear what Scripture would have me do. It's abundantly clear, okay, yes, I do love God. Yes, I know that I should go and tell more people about Jesus. Yes, I know I should minister to these people. I know I should make disciples. I should do all of those things. But sometimes I feel like it's a lot harder through Scripture to find, okay, so what exactly does that look like? And I think we find a pretty excellent description of what it looks like when we read the book of 1 Thessalonians. And so before we jump in, I want to give you a little background, a little history. So Paul and one of his ministry partners named Silas, you can find in the book of Acts, Acts 17, where they spent some time in Thessalonica. They go and join their community and start preaching the gospel, telling people who Jesus is, telling people, hey, this Jesus who came and walked on earth died for you so that you could have eternal life, so that you could have this eternal relationship with God the Father, all this stuff. And boy, was it effective. I mean, as they were preaching the gospel, the Lord was just taking hold of the hearts of the people in Thessalonica. And man, I mean, there was, it was like wildfire the gospel was spreading in the area. And it's incredible to read about. It's incredible to see. I mean, literally, it's like, it's like, you know, one of those church revivals where you see the Lord clearly moving. But in this case, it wasn't necessarily a revival because these people are coming alive for the first time. This entire city is hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. And so it would be more of just a vival, I guess. They're becoming alive for the first time. I don't know. I don't know words like that, but that seems right. But it's incredible to read about how the Lord was moving, but then that brought some consequences as well because there were still Jewish people in the area who, like Paul was prior, was not happy about Jesus taking over, wasn't happy to hear that there were these two guys that were spreading these claims that they felt to be inaccurate, and so they started persecuting the people and kind of looked like seeking out Paul and Silas to the point that the Christians felt, the Christians and Paul and Silas all felt so distinctly worried that they ended up smuggling them out of the city at night one night because they were like, hey, if they find you, I think they might kill you. And so it is best for you and it's best for everybody if you can go ahead and leave, if we can get you out. And so they got out, they got out safely, and they got out knowing, hey, we know that a lot of people love Christ and give themselves to Christ, but man, Paul is really pretty downtrodden about the fact that he had to leave. As you read in 1 Thessalonians, there's a bit, especially on the early part of 1 Thessalonians, where he's really upset. It kind of takes on this flavor of, some of you guys probably know this, when you were a kid and your parents let you know that one of them got a new job in a new town or a new city and you were going to have to move, which meant, hey, all of these relationships that you've built, all of these friends that you have that you dearly love, you're not going to be able to see them much anymore, and you don't really have much say in that matter. You're just not going to get the amount of time that you hope to get with these people that you love. And that's kind of how Paul starts off this writing, just kind of really sad and really upset about the fact that he was having to be pulled out of this place with these people who he had really grown to love and adore. Not only that, but he got to see the way that Christ had begun moving in that place, and that excited him, but he just, he almost felt like he was leaving them when they needed him most to really learn, and to really learn from him and imitate him what ministering to other people looked like, and establishing roots where they had built a foundation of Christ. And so he just kind of felt like he got the short end of the stick on that and was really upset. So what he did is he sent another ministry partner named Timothy to go check in on him. Timothy, go spend some time with these people. First and foremost, let them know that I am praying for them every day. I pray that the Lord is continuing to move in their hearts, move in their lives, move in their city. But man, I also just pray that soon enough I get to come and see them again, to see my friends, the people that I love so much, once more. Let them know that, please, and spend some time with them. See how they're doing. See how the church is doing. See if the gospel is continuing to move, and report back to me. And so he does. He goes, he finds out, and he comes back. And the response is really positive. It's really good and exciting news that while obviously there's still issues going on in Thessalonica, but the gospel has just absolutely taken off. Where a foundation was set and where Paul had ministered to these people and showed them Christ, they were building upon that foundation and continuing daily to bring more and more people into the faith under Christ. And not only that, but it was moving outside of the city walls as well. I learned actually in researching that Thessalonica, how it is set up, it's actually kind of a, it's a trade town. So a lot of people in the rest of Macedonia and all over those nations, and also in the Roman Empire, all congregate to Thessalonica to do trading. And so while there is this there's this vival happening amongst the Thessalonians, as the gospel is traveling and hitting and encouraging so many people in this city, it is also moving outside of those city walls because as people are coming in for trade consistently, those people that are there are spreading the gospel to them as well. I actually read in a William Barclay commentary. This is really cool and really interesting. He basically said that you cannot understate, you cannot downplay how important the Christianity expanding outside of Thessalonica was for Christianity becoming a world religion. That's how important Christ taking over the hearts of the people in Thessalonica was. One of the main reasons why Christianity spread worldwide. And so you can imagine how Paul wrote to these people in response to this. First Thessalonians is in response to Timothy coming and telling him this unbelievable news. And as you can imagine, he writes just completely joyful and absolutely elated, which we've been there too, right? You've got, I mean, a lot of you guys are parents. You've raised kids that are still alive, which is like unbelievable to me, but good job for y'all. But you have kids and you have people in your life that you love and that you invest so much time and energy in. And so when you see them do well, when you see them do the thing that you helped them be able to do, get to that next step, get to that next point in life, when you see them come to know Jesus Christ for the first time, there's nothing better, right? There's nothing better, one, because somebody that you love is doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well, people getting to know Christ, Christ being shed and spread, Christ being spread through the nation and into other nations. And so that's how he writes. He reminisces on his time there spent with these people, building relationships, growing to love them, being a part of the culture, being a part of the community, and sharing the gospel through them, saying, hey, like, I'm so happy that I was able to minister to you in this way, and I'm even happier that the Lord is moving now, and that you guys are imitating the way that I ministered to you guys, and now you're ministering to other people in the same way, and it's effective, and I am so happy to hear it, and I think what that does is it opens up the door to asking a question. The question is, how did Paul minister to the people in Thessalonica? Okay, this is awesome. Paul ministered to these people. So many of them started giving their hearts and giving their lives to Jesus, and now they're doing the same thing that he did, and it's continuing to work incredibly well. And I think that 1 Thessalonians does an excellent job of telling us exactly what. And so as you go through, I think the whole book does a good job of sharing that, of sharing that directive, of giving, of saying, hey, this is exactly how it was done. I think in particular, chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, does a really excellent job as to making something that seems a little bit inaccessible very accessible, not only for the people in Thessalonica, but I think for the people in this room. It's a very doable strategy of ministering to people that we can emulate. And so we're actually going to start, we're going to start in verse 7, and then we're going to go backwards, because as we've established, I'm not going in order. So if you will, please just read with me verses 7 and 8. Let me read that one more time. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. We came and we brought you the gospel, but we brought you so much more than that. We brought you our whole selves. We gave you ourselves. I think it's a pretty excellent summation to say that Paul ministered gently and sacrificially through genuine relational love. He didn't share the gospel from a distance. It's not some guy who rolls up into this community during the day, sets up a pulpit, and preaches throughout the day, sharing the gospel, and then goes back to his place away from everybody afterwards. He immersed himself into this community. He built relationships with these people. He chose to serve them and love them well and intently. He goes after them, becomes a part of them, and builds through relational love these relationships and these friendships with these people so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that this person cares about me, that I am loved by this person. What's he doing? He's showing the love of Christ to these people so that he can share with them the gospel of who Jesus is, and they're going to be willing to hear it. I think what he realized is that we should strive to present the truth of Christ through imitating the love of Christ. We hear a lot about what it looks like to share the gospel, and I get a ton of questions about how am I supposed to do that. Like, I don't really think I'm meant to be Paul and go with a couple guys to different nations and different cities and preach to them until I'm thrown in prison and then write letters to them. But clearly what Paul is saying here, because Paul echoes a lot in his time and in his writing, I am ministering to you in this way and I am calling you to imitate and minister to other people in this way. How am I calling you to share the gospel? The same way that I'm sharing the gospel with you. I'm coming, and I'm going to be a part of your lives. I'm going to build friendships, and I'm going to love you well. I'm going to love you out of the love of Christ that I have received from Christ, and through that, through me loving you like Christ, I am going to share the truth of Christ with you in a way that is impactful, in a way that is meaningful, and in a way that you are going to be willing to hear from me because you know that I only genuinely care about you. He actually goes a little bit deeper in verses five and six. And so, hey, like, we're disciples of God. We could have come in and told you, hey, these are the things that you need to know. These are the things that you need to do. These are the things that you need to figure out so that you can be saved. But instead, he said, hey, that's not, that wasn't our goal. Our goal wasn't to share the gospel in this impersonal, in this formal, impersonal way. It was to share the gospel as personally as possible. Now, the wording of the greed part, I want to go dive into that a little bit, because as I kind of told you, he's a little bit repetitive with the things that he says throughout, and I think that is probably because they're important. Paul thought it was very, very meaningful and a very useful tool of ministry to, when he went into Thessalonica, not to establish a church and be the head of that church, not to be a guy who, what he did is, hey, I'm bringing you the gospel. I'm kind of going to be the minister here, and so please pay me, bring me food, give me shelter, so that I can bring this good news to you. Instead, Paul talks pretty distinctly about that he got a job in Thessalonica as soon as he got there, because he wanted to work amongst the people. He wanted the people in Thessalonica to know, hey, I care only's awesome that you're doing ministry and that that's your full-time job, but he's kind of saying all of you guys, y'all are doing it the way that he would do it. Y'all are doing it the way that he's calling here. That's how, I think that's ultimately maybe the thing that stuck out most to me in this is this is a message for the people of the church that aren't working in the church. I have to work hard to make sure I don't do that. I have to go out of my way to make sure that my students know that, hey, I'm going to minister to you and I'm going to love you while you're in this building, but I'm also going to go outside of these walls to make sure I'm a part of your lives, ministering to you, getting to know you so that you know without a shadow of a doubt that, yes, sure, this is Kyle's job to do this, but the only reason he's actually doing it is because he loves me, and he wants me to know the gospel. But you guys aren't beholden to those things, and I think that what Paul is saying is, y'all are doing it right. That's the way that he would call us to minister. And what I think he realized is that there is a purity of intention when you have nothing to gain from the people you are specifically loving and pouring into. How pure is your motivation when as you're building relationships and as you're building upon foundations of relationships, when you're loving people well, going out of your way to serve people, that you're asking of nothing in return, to where they know that you're only doing that because you care about them, just in the same way that you know that the only reason you're doing that is because, hey, the Lord loves this person, and so do I, regardless of who they are. And I think what I love about this is that this is a message that I, like, this is something that I see people in this church do really well. I think this is certainly something to be like, yes, I need to do this, whatever, but like, I see this all over, all over the place in this church. I got a buddy, Preston, that comes to the church that he's maybe one of the best possible, like, friend makers that I've ever met. Like, when I watch him in conversation, I'm just like, gosh, man, like, that dude genuinely cares about everything that everyone says to him. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if he's just trying to be like Jesus or whatever, or if he's just, well, you know, like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just so taken aback at how good he is at making people know, hey, you are my friend and I care about you. And recently we had a conversation. He said there was a guy in his office who obviously was his friend because he's been around Preston and that's what Preston does. He makes friends. And he was like, hey man, like, I just seem to notice you really care about people a lot. And you honestly seem to be a lot more content than I am with life. You don't seem to get quite as upset about stuff. You love people well. And I just kind of want to know what's your secret. I want to be more like that. I want to understand how to do that better. That opened up the door for Preston to be able to tell him about Jesus. That door doesn't get opened if Preston is just trying to give him the gospel but not give him any part of himself. But Preston gave of himself, built this relational foundation that that guy wanted to ask Preston that question. I think about my buddy Logan, another guy who comes to the church. He, two of his best friends are two people he served in the Navy with. Neither one are believers, actually. But Logan has loved them well and has built that friendship to a point that he's able to share the gospel with them, and they're not going to be turned off. They're willing to listen. Not only that, but they love him so much that they want to support him in whatever the way they can. So he's actually, he hosts every other Monday night, he hosts this film watching group where the point of it is to watch this film and then talk about how it relates to the gospel. And guess who's on Zoom every single week from all over the nation? Those two guys. They want to be a part. They want to talk about film, and they listen. They get to hear about the gospel every other week on Monday night where outside of that, they don't hear it at all because they have a friend that they love and want to support a cool thing that he's doing. They hear the gospel because Logan has loved them and has loved them well and has built that relationship to that point. My wife, Ashlyn, she rules. I don't know if I've seen more tears than watching her go from two offices, one in Garner and one in Cary, to just being in Cary. The people in that Garner office, there were just so many tears because Ashlyn is the friend on staff, on staff with those people who's going to always consistently love them well and encourage them, point them back to Jesus and be a light in their life. You don't know how effective you are at that until you leave and you find out that the response is everyone being so upset. She had a mom say, hey, I know we live in Garner, but we're going to be there in Cary. I can't stop crying. My daughter genuinely says that Miss Ashlyn is her best friend. We're going to stick with you. That happens because Ashlyn loves very well. She's got a person in the office who just, in the carry office, who just experienced a tragedy and reached out to everybody, said, hey, this happened. Please don't ask me about it. I'm not ready to talk. A week later, guess who's, guess who walked in, whose door she walked in because she wanted to talk? Ashlyn. Because Ashlyn, she knows that Ashlyn loves her well and is going to point her to Jesus and point her towards the light. And finally, I look at, I look at Karen and Chris. I know Chris isn't used to being praised on a Sunday morning, but since Nate's gone, we're just gonna, we're gonna break all the, we're gonna break all the molds here. But I mean, their, their youngest daughter is my age, graduated in 2011, and they right now have decided, you know what, we're tired of having all this stuff, we want to have somebody come and live with us. They have somebody from, a soccer player from South Africa currently living with them, a college student, which like, I don't know, can't be like insanely fun, and't be insanely easy. I mean like super nice dude, but like, you know, they've been living with a lot of freedom for a long time by themselves. And so they're just hosting kids over at their house all the time, college students, just college dudes, just rolling up, soccer players, probably acting a fool. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Definitely not acting a fool. I know you're not, bro. But I mean, how easy is it? How easy would it have been for Karen and Chris to love them well by supplying them with Chick-fil-A coupons so they feel like they have some other food? To bring them some candy, bring them some extra clothes, whatever, and just check in on them every once in a while. But what they recognize and what they realize, in the same way that Paul knew was incredibly important, is if I want to truly impact the people that are around me, then I need to truly be a part of their lives. I need to truly build relationships with these people built on a foundation of the love of Christ, loving them well, encouraging them well, and that is a true and ultimate way to make a gospel impact. And that is where then the door is open to truly not only share the love of Christ through your actions, but share the truth of Christ in your words, and to truly share the gospel to the people around you. And in Paul's writing, Paul kind of says the same thing. He's like, guys, I want to encourage you in this, but you're doing it really well. Actually, I want to read it because I think it's beautiful, and I think that the simple way that I want to encourage you, Grace, who does this so well, is the same way that Paul encourages the people of Thessalonica. So if you will, please, let's read verses, or 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, be able to show and share the gospel to so many other people. So my simple question for you that I want to close on is this. Who and where can you do this more and more and continue to do it more and more? So I want to close this morning in a prayer, but I want to, it's kind of a specific prayer. Ashlyn, my wife, she wants to be as helpful as possible in my sermons, and sometimes she feels like, I gotta like, you know, she feels like she's unhelpful. I'm like, Ashlyn, you're great. Just you loving me is very helpful. But she knew kind of what I was talking about this morning, and she was reminded of a song, it's actually by Casting Crowns, throwback, called The Bridge. And this song, I think, just does an absolutely beautiful job of just giving the same encouragement and the same prayer that we pray as we try to share the love of Christ so that we can share the truth of Christ. So if you will, we're just going to pray, and I'm going to pray over us these lyrics from this song. Bow with me. With love, we earn the right to speak your truth. It's not just what we say, it's what we do. I want to be a bridge, God, that leads to you. So reach through me and let them see, Lord, let them see. Lord, let us love like this. Let us share the gospel like this. Not formal, not impersonal, but as personal and as loving as we possibly can. We love you so much. Amen.