Sermons tagged with Culture

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for joining us in that way. We are beginning our new series, or we're continuing in our new series, called You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is to take the wisdom of Proverbs, proverbial wisdom, written by King Solomon, who the Bible claims is the wisest man who ever lived, and to look at some of his wisdom and say here at the top of the year, if we confront ourselves with it, if we listen to it, I bet, I bet that by the end of the year, you'll finish 2026 being glad that you listened to the wisdom of Solomon here at the top of the year. You guys will have to forgive me. We've got a small contingent of Bills fans in the church, and they're all sitting in the front row with, I even forget the name of those pants, but there's a particular, what's the name of those kinds of pants, do you know? Zubas, yes, that look like zebra stripes, and then Susie's got on the best fan shoes I've ever seen in my life, so I just need to say that out loud before I can continue as if there's nothing happening right in front of me. But we're looking at this proverbial wisdom, and one of the reasons I wanted to do it, and one of the reasons I wanted to spend a month looking at the wisdom of Proverbs is because one of the best things I've ever done is to take very seriously reading the book of Proverbs. You've heard me say, hopefully multiple times, that the greatest habit anyone in their life can develop is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. And I still believe that to be true. And there was a season where for three years, every day, I read a Proverb dated as just read a chapter. It's a great place to start. And if you want to read your Bible and you don't know where to start, you don't know how, that's where I would encourage you to begin. If you are someone who reads your Bible, I will tell you that most days for three years, I read whatever proverb was commensurate with that date, that day, and then read whatever else from the Bible I wanted to read that day. And those were some of the richest three years of my life. I immensely enjoyed it and never got tired of reading those Proverbs. So that's a good place to start. And if you hear nothing else from me today of any value, but you leave here and you go read Proverbs every day for the next year, I promise you, you'll be glad you did. This morning, we're going to look, did you like that, Tom? This morning, we're going to look at a proverb about generosity. And I said this in the Gracevine this week. I send it out. And if you're here and you don't get the Gracevine, you don't know what that is, and you would like to receive it, just please fill out a connection card or email me, and we'll get you on that distribution list. But I said in the Grace Find this week that we were going to be talking about a proverb on generosity. And those of you who are my church friends and church people, you know that generosity is pastor code for give us some money. Generosity is code for I'm going to preach a sermon compelling you to give to the church because we need to get some stuff done. And I want to ally that fear this week. Maybe that's why it seems a little bit more thin this week than last week is because I sent that email out. Those of you who have been here for a long time can attest to this. I've never preached a sermon trying to get you to give to grace, nor do I think that the New Testament teaches that you need to give 10% to your local church. I don't even think the New Testament teaches you need to give 10%. I think it just is a good marker based on something that happened in Genesis with Melchizedek and Abraham that we'll talk about later. But I don't even think the New Testament teaches you that. So you'll never hear me preach a sermon trying to compel you to give to grace. So that's not what we're doing this morning. But what you will hear me do, hopefully, repeatedly, is preach sermons on generosity. And the sermon on generosity would make particular sense this morning as it relates to the strategies and desires of grace, because you guys are well aware, we just had a big push towards this building campaign, and we're're hitting go and we're going to try to be in there by the end of next year. So that's particularly relevant to our church. But that's not what I'm preaching about this morning. I can tell you that next week one of our elders, David McWilliams, who's faithfully operating the camera back there, is going to give us an update. We had end of the year giving. We have some very good, exciting news to share. He's going to give us an update. We just want another week to get all of our numbers together so that what we present to you will be the most accurate thing possible. We don't want to talk in what ifs and hypotheticals. We want to talk in precision. So David's going to do that next week. By the way, David has been serving with Jim Adams for a year now as elders, and we still have yet to bring them up here and pray over them because I'm not good at planning things like that. Also, just while we're here, Wes and Doug served for six years, and I was supposed to bring them up here and pray for them too. I've not done that yet either. So Wes, David, Doug, Jim, sorry. But as we think about generosity this morning, I think this proverb allows us to frame it up in a very robust, encompassing way so we can think about the idea of generosity from a more holistic view. So let's look at Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, which simply says this, a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. I don't think that we think about generosity the way that Solomon frames it up here. First of all, he says, a generous person prospers. And we should be careful there because we're tempted to kind of fall into a health and wealth gospel that says, the more that I give, the more that will be given back to me monetarily. The more money I give away, the more God will bless my bank account. And that's really terrible teaching, and it ends up making poor people poorer. So that's not what we want to do. So we have to understand what prosper is. And we have to open ourselves up to maybe it means more than just prospering financially. And one of the ways that we prosper is what follows. He who refreshes people will be refreshed. The people who refresh others will be refreshed themselves. I think that opens us up to what prosperity there actually is. But I like this verse because it doesn't tell us how to be generous. It just tells us to be generous. And that the more you give to other people, the more you refresh others, the more you restore the souls of others, the more you look out for others, the more you care for others, the more your soul will be refreshed. And I think that's a really helpful and valuable way to think about generosity. And the truth of it is, God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. All the way back at the beginning of the Bible, beginning in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where the laws are meted out for the ancient Israelites, for the ancient Hebrew people. God is very diligent and fastidious about making sure that his children are generous people. He says, care for the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners, which means care for those who can't care for themselves. Care for the widows because they have no way to make money and no one's paying for them. They need your help. Care for the orphans because they have no way to take care of themselves. Take care of them. Take care of the sojourners, the aliens, the people who are foreign, who are coming to your country from other places. We should always have a heart for them and their plight. So take care of them. And God gets so specific as to give this law in multiple places in the books of Moses. When you harvest your fields, leave the corners there, healthy, ready to be picked. For who? For the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners. Leave that there so that they can wean from your crop. That ethic, that ethos is there from God at the very beginning of the Bible. And then we see again, Abraham meets the king of Salem, a mysterious figure, the most fascinating figure in the Bible to me, Melchizedek. And he, upon meeting him, gives Melchizedek 10% of everything that he has. And this 10% law becomes called the tithe, and it gets written into Jewish law, Hebrew law, which we inherit in the New Testament. And it was so extensive that they gave, those who were being as righteous as possible, would give 10% of everything that they owned. They would literally empty the pantry and give 10% of the cream of mushroom soup can that they had and give 10% of the spices. They would give 10% of everything. That's how important it was to God to write it into law to do in that way that his people would be generous. Then we get into the New Testament and we see Jesus teach generosity over and over and over again. And listen, almost every time it's taught, it's taught to be generous in order to care for the have-nots. It's almost always taught as don't tithe to be obedient, don't tithe to be blessed, but give what you have to give to take care of the people who don't have something to give. This is the story of the widow's mite, where the rich man gives a bunch and the widow gives all she has, and it's two pennies. And Jesus says she just gave more than he did to the kingdom of God. We cannot argue with the idea that our God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. With that in mind, I would like for us to consider how we can be generous. We're going to swallow the frog and do the obvious one first. We can be generous with our finances. We can be generous with our finances. This is the obvious one, and this is where our brain goes when we think about generosity. And so I'd like to talk about this, but then spend the rest of our time on other ways to be generous. But I was listening to a book recently, and some of you guys like to judge people for listening and not reading, because you're stuck up. And it was by an author named Scott Galloway, who is, it's difficult to define what he does. He sits on boards, he runs companies, he's a professor of economics at NYU, and he's someone that I find interesting and thoughtful. And he wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man, and that's something I've thought about a lot is I've got a son named John who's four and a half. And I don't know why the half matters. He's four. I'm a grown up. And then I have a daughter named Lily who's going to turn 10 here in a week. And I think a lot about what is it that I want to teach to John that I don't want to teach to Lily? What is it that Jen, my wife, should teach to Lily that she doesn't teach to John? And I don't have a good answer for that. And I would invite this, if any of you have answers for that, I want that discourse. Particularly if you're a little bit longer in the tooth than me. Then I really want to hear that. If you're shorter in the tooth, maybe just relax. But he wrote a book, Thoughts on Being a Man, and I would, the only criticism I have, I'm not recommending it to you. There's cuss words, so as a pastor, I cannot recommend it. But the only critique I have is I really think it would better be titled Thoughts on Being a Human. Because the things that he was espousing in there didn't feel to me like things that only men should think about. I think women should think about these things too. And Scott is a devout atheist. He has respect for people of faith, but he's not a person of faith himself, and he's open about that. But in his book, and he's become, by any stretch of the world's measure, very successful, all right? He's in his mid-50s, really successful dude, flying on private jets when he goes places, that kind of thing, all right? But here's what he said, and this is what I thought was interesting that I wanted to share with you. He said when he started his career, it was all about accruing for himself. It was all about what he wanted to get. It was all about getting rich and getting more for himself and just build, build, build, build, build. But that one day, once he felt like he had enough, there was this seismic shift in his mindset. And he became a lot more interested in being a generous person than being an accumulator. He realized it made him feel good. This is wild. It made him feel good to buy dinner. In his words, it made him feel like more of a man. In my words, I would say it made you feel like more of a grown-up. But the way that he phrased it was, it made me feel like more of a man to buy dinner for my friends, to take my friends on trips that I could afford and let them come. It made me feel like more of a man to give things away. And again, I'm not trying to be over-masculine here. I think it really makes us feel like more of a responsible human. But he said that there was this shift, and after that shift that he made this decision, that he made it his goal to give away more money every year than he spent. Not more money than he made, but give away more money than he spent on himself. And he said, in doing this, it makes me feel better about myself and about who I am. Makes me feel like a better human. This, to me, and if Scott were here, he might push back on this, but this, to me, is an atheist nodding towards the way his creator inclined him to be. What he was saying in his book was, when I refresh others, I am refreshed. And I realized it made me feel better to give away my resources than it did to accrue them for myself and my own selfish ends. And my challenge or my thought to the church this morning, because this is a room of largely church people, is if an atheist can stumble upon the simple joy of generosity and find in his own experience that he is refreshed by refreshing others, then can't we as Christians learn from that lesson and be people who seek to be generous? I told you the story a few weeks ago of the former student that I have, a kid named Alex. He's not a kid anymore. He's in his 30s. He graduated in 2010, and he and I haven't had a ton of contact since then, but I've always thought very highly of him and been glad that he's been in my life and that I had the opportunity to be in his. And he had a tough story and ended up not going to college. He had to watch his brothers when he was 19 years old. But he found a way and he became a general contractor. And some of you know the story, but just by way of refreshing, he reached out to me a month or two ago, and he just said, hey, I'm making good money now. That's not what he said, but that's pretty much what he said. I'm making good money now. I want to be generous. I want to give. I want to honor God the way that he's blessed me. I want to bless others. What can I do? And he, to answer that question, drove. He had a job in Charlotte. He lives in Atlanta. So he drove the day before the extra two and a half, three hours from Charlotte to Raleigh, met me, took me to Sullivan's where I got a bone-in filet, which is really great. And then we met in my office and I said, hey man, here's six nonprofits that I know of whose founders I know very well, who I trust and love. Let me just tell you what they do and you tell me where, and then you just do whatever you want. I don't need to know, but then you can kind of figure out where your heart's led, which ones of these capture you, yeah? And that conversation led to him having breakfast the next day with the founder of one of the non-profits and then giving that founder the largest single donation they've had in the history of that non-profit. That's cool, isn't it? Now listen, Alex also told me in that conversation, in our discourse about wanting to be generous, that out of this desire to simply be generous, he had a job in downtown Atlanta. They were building a building or they were refurbishing one or whatever. There was a job with a fence and the things and all the stuff. And he would go there every day. And he said on his way there, he would go to the ATM and get out cash. And keep it in his truck. Because there was homeless people surrounding this job site. And he would make sure to go around and give money to every homeless person that was there. Because he felt like he had the opportunity to do that and he wanted to do it. Now here's where our brain goes. Okay? And here's where mine went. Dude, that's not wise. There's a better way. I love your heart. There's a better way to give money than to do that. And that's why he and I were having the conversation. Let's think about a wise way to do it so we can make sure that that money's going to God's kingdom. We can make sure that's an effective expenditure. But here's why I tell you this story this morning. It's to say that what I truly believe, and this is just my opinion, you may disagree. What I truly believe is the spirit of generosity that led him to give in both situations, whether it's a large donation to a responsible nonprofit or smaller multiple donations that we really don't have any control over, in God's eyes are the same. Because it's not about what we give. And I don't even think, and I'm careful when I say this, because I do think we need to give to God's kingdom. But it's not about what we give, and I'm not always convinced it's about where we give. It's about the fact that we just give. So we should be generous financially, whatever that looks like for us. We should also, I believe, be generous with our time. This is not a way we think about generosity, but it is a way we think about our days. And the story that I will share about being generous with our time is actually critical of me, which is what I would prefer. I'd much prefer a story where I look bad than to tell you a story where I'm the hero. So I'll tell you a story where I look bad. In November, we went home for Thanksgiving, and I needed to preach that upcoming Sunday. My dad is a CPA. He has his own firm, and he was going into the office on Tuesday morning, and I said, hey, dad, can I come into the office with you? Excuse me. I said, can I come into the office with you on Tuesday? I need to write a sermon. I've got a couple things to do, and I'd like to get that done and be done with it so I can just focus on family this week. He said, sure. So we rode to the office together. And on the way to the office, I'm thinking about, and I think some of us can relate, I've got a lot of work to do. I have a very important task to write a sermon for 145 people to listen to. This is the most important thing happening in the whole world. Thank you for the laughter over there. That was what was intended. But that's where my head's at. I have to get this done. I have to do this. And there was some other things I needed to do. So I was really focused and I was in what we call in my family task mode. Like I'm not interacting, engaging. I'm just trying to get stuff done. And so we get to the office and we're walking in and dad stops. There's a car pulling in and he stops and he says, oh, that's so-and-so. And he kind of steps back. Like he's going to wait on so-and-so to get out of her car and come see us. And this is where, if you'd like to be disappointed in me as your pastor, this is a great place to start. I looked at dad and I said, what difference does it make? And he went, okay. And we went inside. Because my thought was, dad, this is just practical brain, okay, I'm sorry. Practical brain. I'm never going to talk to this lady again in my life. I don't know who she is. She only knows who I am because I'm your son. I don't want to talk to her. I have a job to do. I need to get done quick because my wife has the kids with her mother-in-law out on the town. And she'd really like me there as a buffer, frankly. She'd like me to be there. I need to go. So I need to get this done as soon as I can. I need to get in the car. I need to drive to Monroe and go to some stupid store I don't care about so that I can hang out with my family. That's what I need to do. That's the pressure that I feel. So when dad says that so-and-so, I think, who cares? What's it matter? And so he's like, okay. So we go inside. My sister works for dad and she had brought us Chick-fil-A biscuits that morning, which are the worst of all the biscuits. And they really are. They're the worst. And she has the Chick-fil-A biscuits, but I am grateful it's free biscuit, fine. And I said, Dad, where can I work? What conference room or cubicle are you going to tuck me into? And he says, well, you know, you can, one of those down there. He goes, but don't you want to eat first? And I said, again, practical brain. No, Dad, I'm visiting you for three days, all right? I don't need to have breakfast right now. I'm going to go eat the biscuit while I write the sermon and get my important work done. And so I said, no, Dad, I'd really just like to get to work. He's like, okay. So I go get to work, and I write the sermon. I text Jen. I'm done. Where are you guys at? I go to the thing, and we do the things. And then, this is why I'm telling you the story, that evening, Dad snaps at me about something that was pretty innocuous. And those of you who, I have a good relationship with my parents, but Dad and I can get on each other's nerves. And those of you, Kristen's nodding her head as she sits next to her dad. All right, perfect. Let's just unpack this right now, Sartoriuses. If you have grown kids, you know you can get on their nerves. If you still are fortunate enough to have your parents, they know how to get on your nerves, you know how to get on them. We got on each other's nerves. And I thought it was silly. And I finally, I didn't snap, but I just kind of said, I don't know what you want me to do. You know, we were talking about whatever. And I just, like, I needed to go. So I stepped away. And I came back after a calming down period of 72 hours. And it was like 15 minutes later, I said, hey, Dad, I'm sorry. That's not how I want to handle that, but here's what's upsetting me. And he said, I understand. And we started talking. And here's what I learned, and this is why I'm sharing this story. He said, son, essentially, you matter a lot to me. I talk to you a lot. I talk about you a lot to my employees. And it would have meant a lot to me for you to have taken the time to have met them and to be gracious with them. But you were too self-important and you couldn't. And that's why I'm upset. And I went. What a lesson. What a lesson. I don't like saying this, particularly on a permanent record. But he was right, and I was wrong. I was so focused on my tasks and what I needed to get done that I couldn't see the value in investing my time in people. And so I missed a chance. How much better would my afternoon have gone if I would have simply been generous with my time and honored my dad? How much more refreshed could I have been by taking the time to meet the different people that he wanted me to meet. How arrogant of me to think that I have nothing to benefit from small talking and exchanging pleasantries and shaking hands and learning names. What, honestly, what a jerk. And so it was a lesson. Be generous with your time. How many of us have opportunities throughout the week when someone imposes on our time and we have a task or we have a thing that we want to do, but this coworker has texted us, this coworker has popped in, this person has emailed us, this person has called us, this friend needs us. It might be dinner time, but they don't normally call at this time, so what are they calling about? How often do we have opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss for whatever reason? Maybe your reason isn't task-oriented self-importance like me, but maybe it's something else, but how often do we have the opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss because we don't think of those times as opportunities for generosity. We just think about them as impositions on our schedule and on our tasks. I'm reminded as I think of this, every time I read through the Gospels, I am amazed at Jesus' generosity with His time. Those of you who have read through the Gospels, can you recall the amounts of times that Jesus finishes an arduous day or week of ministry? Does the Sermon on the Mount, heals people, speaks to people, casts out demons, teaches, combats with the rabbis, and then once that's done, it says Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray. He went off to be by himself and to rest and recruit. And here's what stuns me is how many times in the gospels it says after finishing a day like that or an event like that, Jesus goes off to pray by himself and on his way to do that, someone says, Rabbi, can I talk to you? Will you talk to my mom? Will you come meet my son? They need you. And Jesus always, sure, what do you need? Yes, I would love to. Yes, let me talk to you. Yes, let me pray to you. Jesus is the greatest example of someone who is generous with his time. And I think, I suspect, that we can probably all be more generous with ours. The last idea about generosity I want us to consider is that we can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our disposition towards others, with our assessment towards them, with the benefit of the doubt we are willing to give them. I had a friend in college named Paul Honeycutt. Paul Honeycutt and I, we played on the soccer team together and we did the landscape crew together. We were in charge of keeping the grounds of Toccoa Falls College pristine and we did great. It was a fun job. I got to do the zero turn mowers and the weed eaters every day and I loved it. And Honeycutt was this really interesting guy because Honeycutt was cool. Everybody liked Honeycutt. Everybody did. He had all the friends in the world. And at this stage in life, try to remember, you know, I've been in high school and now college and cool people are cool. Cool people, they make friends easily. They make friends well. And they tend to be a little bit exclusionary in the way they move through the world. If you're not as cool as them, they're not going to give you their time. They're not going to be as nice to you. It can get to be exclusive, right? And so that was my experience of cool people. And Paul was cool. Everybody liked Paul. But Paul was unique in that he was kind to everyone. We ran in the same circle, and I watched some people try to get into the circle, and other guys in the circle would kind of hold them in arm's length. I don't know if you're going to cut the mustard. I don't know if I like the cut of your jib. What a great phrase that is. But I don't know. So they kind of hold them away. But Paul was always the first person to welcome them in and to make them feel like a part of things and to be a good host and to be a generous person with his spirit. And I remember asking him one time, this is now 25 years ago, I think, and I still remember the conversation. I asked him something to the effect of, Paul, you're so nice to everybody all the time. How are you this nice to everyone? And Paul said this simple phrase to me, and I'll never forget it. He said, Nate, if they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. Isn't that great? If they're cool to Jesus, thanks Jeff. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. If Jesus likes them, I do too. And here's the problem for us Christians. Jesus likes everybody. How inconvenient is that? I don't know. I've thought about this over the years and I'm not going to make any declarative or definitive statements this morning. I really don't know how much space there is for us to choose to not like somebody. I don't know how much space there is for that. I don't know how much space there is for us to just hold a grudge against somebody. I don't know how much space there is to think the worst of somebody and write them off. Now listen, I want to be very careful. I'm not asking us to trust everyone and to make ourselves vulnerable to everyone and to return to painful relationships when they've burned us in the past and it's hurt so much. I'm not asking you to be unwise. Scripture says that we should be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as vipers, and I think that that absolutely applies. But what I am saying is, I'm not sure how much space we have to just choose to not like someone and write them off. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. And unfortunately, Jesus likes everybody. So I think maybe you don't have something to learn from my buddy Honeycutt, but I still do. And here's where I would say this too, and I say this carefully. Our country is very divided right now. We know that. By simply saying that statement, everybody in this room just tensed up about 25%. Here's my estimation of part of that division. Is that we are not generous in spirit towards the people who don't vote like us. And what I've noticed is our tendency is to think and assume the worst of them. But what if we would be more generous in spirit and assume the best of them? Not just politically. People who think differently than us. People who don't share the values that we do. People who don't root for the bills. What if we started to view generosity as being a way to assume the best of others, to believe the best of others, and to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever we could? Let me tell you what would happen. Not just on a church level, but on a personal level. It is refreshing to refresh others. This series is called You'll Be Glad You Did. If you will listen to the wisdom that Solomon wrote down, you'll be glad you did. This week, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of people we are in regards to generosity. And my main point is, how refreshing would it be to spend this year being more generous with your resources, with your time, with your spirit, with your demeanor towards other people. And here's what I would challenge you with. If you think about these things, and there's other ways to be generous as well, but if you'll just think about these things. How can I this year be generous with my finances? How can I this year be generous with my time? How can I this year be generous with my spirit towards others? I highly doubt you'll finish the year and think, I wish I'd have kept more of it for myself. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this church body, for this family. Thank you for the love that we share and the community that we have. God, all of us in this room have been given resources. From your fullness, we have received grace upon grace in different ways. And I pray, God, that you would increase our heart and increase our desire to be people who are characterized by generosity. May we be people who are happy to give, who are happy to refresh others, and in so doing find that you refresh us as we do. Give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear opportunities for generosity. And give us the willingness to step into those. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and I'm very excited for the series. I hope that you guys had a good Thanksgiving. For the Rectors, it's a whirlwind. It's six and a half hours to Atlanta on Monday, five hours to Dothan on Wednesday, six hours to Greenville on Friday, and four and a half hours to Raleigh on Saturday, which is 22 hours of travel. So if you see my children and they look a little bit addled, that's why. But they did great and we had a great time and we saw family and I hope that you did too. But now that we're past that, we have arrived at my favorite time of year at Grace. I love this time of year at grace i i love uh getting to celebrate next week uh as mikey said is uh christmas sweater sunday so i hope you'll bring out your best um i've seen some of yours before and i know they're pretty good so maybe you've upgraded but i hope that we'll all have a good sweater to wear for next week my favorite sunday of the year is fami jammy sunday We'll be like them. Which is more pointedly Amo La Civita every year. I'm looking at you, pal. Let's put something on this year, buddy. But I love this season. I love the Christmas series. I love how fun it is. And for me, obviously, we're celebrating Christmas. We're celebrating what that is. We're celebrating the arrival of Christ. But I also, in my head, as I kind of celebrate the end of the year, I celebrate what God has done at Grace. I celebrate who you are and who we are and God's presence here. I celebrate the people who are committed to this place and who love it so much, and all that God has done. So I think it's a perfect time of year to kind of not only celebrate Christmas and what that means and the arrival of Christ, but to also reflect on what God has done in our church and in our church family and look forward to what He's going to do in the future. To that end, we've got a meeting on December the 14th, immediately following the service to update everybody on the building, where we're at, and exactly what it's going to take to get us where we believe we need to go. And I think we're a lot closer than people suspect. So I'm optimistic for that meeting and I'm hopeful that you'll make it a priority to be there. I also know that that's on the same Sunday that we're doing the kids caroling. So there's going to be grandparents and stuff like that here. So to the young families, I would encourage you maybe bring two cars that day and one party can stay behind and attend the meeting and then the rest can go out to eat with grandma and grandpa and then you can can catch up later, because let's be honest, that lunch is overrated, and you probably just want to be here. Anyways. This series, here we go, is it, was, Wassailing, here we go, Wassailing. As Aaron mentioned, it was either Aaron or Mikey, I don't pay much attention. A few years ago, either last fall or fall before last, we did a series called The Songs We Sing. And we looked at the songs that we sing as a church, some of the hymns and praise choruses that we do, and we found them in the Bible. And we said, let's kind of imbue them with more meaning by looking at these songs. And it's a Christmas series that I've always wanted to do. And so this year we're going to do that. We're going to look at a Christmas carol each week and look at how it's imbued with meaning through scripture. We're going to climax this on Christmas Eve, looking at the greatest song that's ever been written, in my opinion, Oh Holy Night. And so I'm very excited to do that, but we've got some good songs along the way. And we have a song that we're focused on this morning that if you were paying attention to the video, you already know what it is. Or if you've looked through the notes to try to see what the fill in the blanks are, you already know what it is. But I'm not going to tell you yet if you haven't done either of those things. The first thing I'm going to do is make the opening point. This is the least expected opening point that I'm going to put on the screen in the history of Grace Raleigh, okay? A few weeks ago, I had a point that said something like, faith is like a Brazilian steakhouse. And Carly, who I send the notes to, who puts them on the bulletin, emailed me back and she said, I can't wait to see what this is about. And then I sent her this week's notes and she said, I never thought you would top Brazilian steakhouse, but I'm about to. Here's the first point of the sermon. Be like Keith Cathcart. Yeah. Where's Keith? Hey, buddy. Don't let him go, Keck. Be like Keith Cathcart. Here's my second point. Sort of. Okay. Now that we're clear. Now listen, before I just dump on him for the rest of the sermon, let's be clear. Keith is a really good friend of mine. I love Keith. I have a policy in my house. I do not pay money to a handyman of any kind until I've gotten permission from Keith. When there is something wrong in my house, I call him and I say, I think I need to call somebody to come fix this. And he will often say to me, if you call somebody to fix that, I will not be your friend anymore. I cannot respect you as a man. Keith has stood on the safe confines of my deck while I was up on my roof with FaceTiming him, showing him some flashing underneath some shingles and he helped me repair it. And we did, we fixed the leak. Did we not? Yeah, we did. So he's a good buddy. He's also the greatest evangelist I've ever met in my life. And this is true. Keith evangelizes like no one I've ever met. He espouses his beliefs more zealously and more effectively than any Christian I've ever known. The problem is he's an evangelist for the Steelers, not Jesus. Although I'm sure he does evangelize for Jesus from time to time. He's an incredibly effective evangelist for the Steelers. As a matter of fact, to prove it to you, I texted him earlier in the week. And I said, hey, I'm not going to tell you why. I just need you to text me pictures of people you've converted to Steelers fans. I just need three or four pictures. Dude sent me 20. 20 pictures. And he said, this is just the beginning. He got so excited about it. He's going down to Mexico to celebrate Christmas, to do a Christmas celebration with our ministry partners there. And he printed up terrible towels that say Feliz Navidad. And he's going to hand them out to 200 children and get them to wave them at once. And he told me it's going to be the greatest moment of my life. Just so you don't think I'm making this up, I wanted to share with you some of the people that Keith has evangelized for the Steelers. So let's take a look, Lynn. This is a young man at our church. He did not grow up in Pittsburgh. He does not care about the Steelers, but now he does. His mom made the mistake of going to Mexico with Keith and the rest of the team. They didn't just go to Mexico together, let's be clear. Sorry, Miel. There was like a whole group of people. They all went together. That's funny. He converted him. This is Patrick. Patrick did not, he's wearing, I don't know, Patrick, are you in the service this morning? Yeah, there he is. He's wearing that jersey. I didn't even tell him to. He didn't even know that this was happening. He's caught the virus, okay? Keith gave him that jersey. He's so proud of himself. Look at that dumb grin on Keith's face. Look at him. He's evangelizing for the Steelers. What's the next one? Is this Chucky? Oh, no. This is a guy. This is a random dude from Home Depot. That's who that is. That is Casey. Casey. Thank you, Keck. Keck is also in Steelers gear. Did you purchase that gear, Keck? Or did Keith? He puts on his hat. Yes, that's a random guy from Home Depot that is now a Steelers fan because of Keith. Who's the next one? Chucky. Chucky is the foreman in Mexico. Now this, I'll give Keith some credit as much as it pains me. Keith has been going to Mexico for darn near 20 years. And he met Chucky when Chucky was in seventh grade and was a volunteer working to get a home for his family. And he has gone through the years and he is now the foreman of the work crews for Faith Ministry, the ministry with which we partner. Every year, Keith goes down and he spends time with Chucky. And every year, he gives Chucky more Steelers crap. He has gotten birth announcements, wedding announcements, engagement announcements. That is like a surrogate son to Keith, and that's a very special person to us here at Grace. So I don't want to make light of it, but also, look at that. He's got all kinds of Steeler stuff. Can I tell you this? He even got me. Here I am. I went, too. I figured if I was gonna be in Pittsburgh, I needed to look the part, so I shaved down to a mustache, which I would say looks awesome. And here's the worst part. Do we have it, Aaron? He got my children. He got them too. But do you know what I did with those towels? Last time we had the hootenanny and we had the grill, the Blackstone needs a towel to clean up the grease I use those just so we know all right that's enough of that Keith is the most effective evangelist I've ever met in my life he loves the Steelers he wants everyone else to love the Steelers and he and it's a point of pride and joy when other people love his team too. And it's harmless and it's fun. But he, as I was thinking about the song this morning, he embodies this song better than anyone I've ever met, which is this, Go Tell It on the Mountain. We know this Christmas carol. Go tell it on the mountain. Go proclaim it. Here's the chorus of the carol. Let's look at it together. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. I love this carol. I thought it was the right place to begin the series. I don't know how you guys do it in your house, but at our house, after Halloween, the first weekend after Halloween, we decorate for Christmas. I know that's crazy. I know. But here's what Jen and I say. There's nothing wrong with a little extra Christmas in the house. We love our living room with lights and a tree and the ambiance. And during the year, we got our TV up on the mantle, you know, like you're supposed to do in 2025. And then bracketing the TV, we have these potted plants that are fake that have like different like plumes coming out of them like you're supposed to. But at Christmas, they're reindeers, and it's cooler. And then instead of just this naked mantle, there's garland with lights on it. And so it's just festive. And then we turn on the gas fire that emits zero heat whatsoever. And it's more cozy in there. So in our house, we decorate for Christmas the first weekend after Halloween and the first school day after Halloween we get in the car and Lily will say, Daddy, can we listen to Christmas carols now? And we do. On the way to school we listen to Christmas carols. We've got a playlist. We've added to it over the years. She has her favorites. I have mine. If you haven't listened to Barbara Streisand's version of Jingle Bells, it's the best in the whole wide world and I love it. I highly recommend. But one of my favorite songs that we listen to in the car together is Go Tell It on the Mountain. It's fun. It's festive. It's energetic. And it really gets across the point of the season. This idea of go be an evangelist. Here's what Keith does for the Steelers. As he goes and he tells it on the mountain. Over the hills and everywhere. Everywhere he goes, he's going to tell you about the Steelers. He's going to give you a terrible towel. He's going to give you a jersey that you don't want, that your children are going to wear, and now your host. But he's going to go and he's going to tell. And that's what this song is about. Go tell it on the mountain. Go tell people about Jesus. And this is a fundamental part of our faith that we don't talk about often enough. I'll be the first person to admit that I'm bad at evangelism. I don't do it as often as I should. And before I get into the sermon too far, making a crude analogy that's clumsy, it's far easier to evangelize for your team than it is to evangelize for your Savior. Because there's not a bunch of social emotional baggage wrapped up in your team. Keith doesn't go tell people that they should root for the Steelers and then get the response, I've tried to root for the Steelers before, but the fans of the Steelers are hypocrites and they hurt me. I've tried to root for the Steelers before, but I have existential reasons to believe that the Steelers don't exist. I've tried to root for the Steelers before, but I have this and this and this reason why I just can't do that anymore. You tell someone to root for the Steelers, and they're like, no, I like the Falcons, and you're like, I'm so sorry for you and your life, but I understand. But you tell someone to convert to your Savior, and it becomes a lot more complicated and a lot more deep. And so it's a clumsy comparison. And the point of the story isn't to guilt Keith into sharing Jesus with the same zeal that he shares the Steelers. Although, Keith, maybe. But it's a clumsy comparison if you want to make it one-to-one. Nevertheless, evangelism and going and telling it on the mountain is a fundamental part of what it is to be a Christian. And here's how I know that this is true. I don't know if you've ever thought about the disciples in this way, but I have a cousin. I was just with him over his cousin-in-law, actually. He's an OBGYN, and he had to go through a ton of school to get to practice as a doctor. And the last part of school that you do when you're pursuing the medical field is residency. You go and you follow actual doctors who are licensed. And you that's what the disciples were doing. The disciples were in residency with Jesus. They were being trained by him. They were being prepared for ministry. And this is not the point of the sermon, but just by way of thought exercise, I doubt that you've ever considered, why didn't Jesus, if what Jesus came to do is come and live a perfect life and die a perfect death, why didn't he die on the cross when he was 21? Why didn't he die when he was 18? Why didn't he die when he was 30? Why didn't he just come down here, live a sinless life, die a perfect death, and be our perfect sacrifice, which is what we believe that he was and is? I'll tell you why. Because he wanted to spend the last years of his life training young men in residency to take over the church. To do what he did. And so that's what the disciples were doing. They were in residency learning how to lead what would be known as the church. Because the church didn't exist as an idea before Jesus implanted it into the minds and the practices of the disciples. And when he left, he said, now go and spread the good news to the corners of the earth, to all the nations. Go to the ends of the earth and tell them who I am, baptizing people in my name. Go make disciples in Jerusalem and Judea and all of the ends of the earth. The reason that Jesus didn't just live and die was to train the disciples. You understand? And fundamental to that training was evangelism. It was so fundamental that 30 years after the death of Christ, when Mark and Luke, and Mark wrote the gospel on behalf of Peter, and Luke wrote the gospel to, oh, blessed Theophilus, to explain to this man named Theophilus what was going on, and then to explain to humans for the rest of time what was going on. It was so important to them that they included this story in Mark chapter 6 and in Luke chapter 9. Two of the disciples thought that this part of their training was so important that it needed to be recounted. In Mark chapter 6 and Luke chapter 9, you can look it up if you want to. I'm not going to read the verses. Jesus sent out the disciples two by two. He said, go in pairs, go into the surrounding towns, cast out demons and heal, and tell them the good news of the gospel. Tell them who I am. Tell them what I've done. Tell them what I'm going to do. And we often, those of us who know our Bible, associate that with the end of the story, which is if they don't receive you, shake the dust of that town off of your sandals as you go, which is to say, like, I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore and go. And we like that because that way, if evangelism doesn't work, we don't have to feel bad and whatever. But the point of that story, the point of that recounting, the reason that it's included in the gospels, the reason that Peter and Mark and Luke felt compelled to include that in their narrative and in their recounting of their experience with the Messiah is to say the point is we were told to go and tell other people about Jesus. We were told to go and evangelize. And so it is unavoidable that part of our Christian experience is to tell people about the Jesus that we love. Now listen, I want to be really clear here. If you're new to the faith, if you're questioning the faith, if you're here kicking the tires to see if faith is for you, I'm not preaching to you this morning. This is not for you. I don't want you to feel an ounce of responsibility for the things that I'm about to say. I just would invite you to soak it in and know that this is what we're about. But if you're a Christian, if you're not kicking the tires, if God is your Father and Jesus is your Savior, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and is going to do what he says he's going to do, then this is for you. And this should compel us. A fundamental part of your life, of your faith, is evangelism. Is to tell people about your Jesus. And I know that this makes us deeply uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. It's an uncomfortable conversation. But that does not negate the fact that it is a biblical imperative, that it was a course requirement for the residency of the disciples, and it is an expectation that Jesus himself places on you to go tell it on the mountain, to go tell it everywhere, to go tell people about the Jesus that you love. And in our culture and in our context, go tell people why you still love him. Go tell people why you stayed in church and they left. Go tell people why you've come back to church after wandering for a while. Go tell people what Jesus has done for you. Go tell people about the sense of peace that he's given you. Christians, go tell people about the sense of worth that he's given your soul. Christians, go tell people about the purpose that he's given you in the waning years of your life. I know many of us are at the point of our life where we're thinking, we're not thinking about a cruel, we're thinking about legacy. What do we leave behind? Go tell people what you want to leave behind and why. Go tell people what you want to build in your building years and why. If you're young, go tell people what you want to do with your life. And why? Go tell people how you want to raise your kids and what you want them to do. And why? Go tell people about your Jesus and why you're sticking with it and why you're still doing it and why you still have faith and why you still bother to get up on a Sunday morning and to do your makeup and to do your hair and to tuck in your shirt and to blouse your sweatshirt, which is something I just learned this morning. Go tell people why you bother to do that instead of sleep in. And don't just keep it to yourself as this personal private thing that's my business and not their business and I don't want to offend anyone. No. Go tell it. Go tell people what Jesus has done for you. If you serve in the community, tell people why you do. If you're kind to someone at the office that other people are not kind to, tell people why you're kind to them. If you pray for your grandchildren, tell people what you hope for your grandchildren and what you pray for them. I think in 2025, this idea of evangelism, it used to be when I was growing up in the 80s, evangelism was like, go tell people the good news. Go tell people about this Jesus. They may have never heard of him before. He forgives their sins. And he omits their shame. He erases it. And he's conquered sin and death so that we don't have to be afraid of him. So that we don't have to be afraid of it. Go tell them the good news. Go tell them that Jesus exists. And it was this idea that you could sit down with a person and be like, let me tell you about the person in this Bible that the whole Bible is about. It's about Jesus. Let me tell you about him and how he erases all of your guilt and shame for all of your life and accepts you for who you are and makes a passage into heaven for you for eternity. And then the idea was that they would hear that and be like, my gosh, I've never heard that before. That's incredible news. I'd like to be a Christian. Is that true now? The people in your life that you know who either don't believe in Jesus or are not actively engaged in faith, they have a reason. They have a reason. And it's a good one. I don't know what it is, but it's a good reason. The people that you know in your life who are atheists, when I was coming up, do you know what I was taught? Atheists are dumb. And if you'll just do a couple easy arguments with them, you'll win, and they'll convert immediately. Have you guys found that to be true? The atheists in your life probably, some of them are dumb, just like some of you are dumb. But most of them are pretty smart. And some of you are pretty smart. Begrudgingly. Evangelism is different in 2025. But I think an interesting way to engage the conversation is to say, here's why I'm still doing what I'm doing. Here's why I'm still here. Serving my God, praising my Jesus, worshiping my Lord. And I think that's an interesting place to start the conversation. But the larger point is, we can't get around the fact that evangelism is an essential part of Christian life. And I bring that up because Christmas is the perfect time to go tell it. Christmas is the perfect time to go tell it. Our whole world rallies around this holiday, right? Our whole world commercializes this holiday. This is when all the holiday stuff starts. This is when they start telling you to buy presents. This is when Lexus every year comes out with the most ridiculous ad campaign I've ever seen with a red bow on a $75,000 SUV as a Christmas present. Listen, I've often said I don't believe in reincarnation, but if it's true, I want to come back as a member of a family that gives away Lexuses at Christmas. And if any of you are giving Lexuses as Christmas gifts, consider the building campaign. It could help. Our whole culture rallies around this holiday. We commercialize it and we make it about gifts and all the things and family and decorations and lights and we celebrate. But Christians, we hold the truth of it. I am not going to say that Jesus is the reason for this season. I will not preach that. Although he is. We hold the truth of what this season is about. It's about Jesus. It's about his arrival. When I preach on Christmas Eve, it's going to be the phrase, long lay the world in sin and error pining until he appeared and the soul felt its worth. Oh, that's the most compelling line ever written. That's what Christmas is about. It gives us a sense of worth and purpose and hope and joy. And we know that better than anyone around us who doesn't love Jesus and who isn't spiritually engaged. So Christmas is the easiest and best time of year to go tell it. And let me tell you an easy way, the easiest possible way to go tell it and to evangelize your friends. This is going to sound self-serving, but I'm going to explain it. The easiest, I can't think of an easier invite than a Christmas Eve service. Can you? How easy is it? I've got some friends. I'm not setting myself up as moral exemplar. I'm a terrible evangelist. But one thing I have done in my life is Lily was a part of a soccer team for years. My daughter Lily, she's nine. She'll be 10 in January, which is nuts. And I coach. I have a soccer background and I coach. And I got to be friends with the coach and her husband, Heidi and Trey, and their daughters, Josie and Hannah. And Lily decided to quit. And I was like, I like this community. I'm going to keep coaching. And I'm also convicted that I asked you guys to volunteer. This is an organization that runs on volunteers. And so you guys give up an extra day to volunteer here. And I get paid to be here. And I don't volunteer anywhere else. So I thought maybe I should practice what I preach and volunteer somewhere. So I coach. So I kept going. And people are like, you're just a creepy guy coaching nine-year-old girls, and your daughter's not on the team. I'm like, yeah, it's cool. Don't worry about it. But I volunteered, and I enjoy that relationship with them. And there's another coach on the team, a guy named Vishal, who's from Pakistan. And I enjoy him too. And I've developed a relationship with him such that I told him when I get back from Thanksgiving, he actually said, let's get drinks or let's get wings or something like that. And so I'm going to go out and spend some time with what we call Coach V. And I was actually in the lead up to this, I realized I need to invite Heidi and Trey to the Christmas Eve service. And here's why this is such an easy invite. They're people of faith, but they don't go to a church. It's marginal for them. But they probably want to celebrate Christmas Eve somewhere with their family. There's a chance they want to go to church somewhere. So why not just invite them to Grace? And it's actually funny, we've joked about them coming to Grace and they said, we kind of like you being our friend and not our pastor. And I'm like, I kind of like you being my friend and not someone who comes to my church. It's nice. But I bet you have people in your life where it would be a really easy invite to just say, hey, I don't know if you're going to celebrate Christmas Eve anywhere. I don't know if you're part of a church right now, but you can come to my church. And at that service, can we show them that we take our Jesus very seriously and we don't take ourselves very seriously at all? Can we model for them what church can be? Can we show them who our Jesus is? Can we use that service to go and tell it? And now here, this is very important to me. I'm not preaching this sermon to get you to invite people to Christmas Eve, okay? I don't care, and I don't think you understand how true this is. I don't care how many people come to the Christmas Eve service. I'm gonna have a good Christmas with my family either way. I'm not trying to get butts in seats I never have. I've never, ever, and some of you know you've been here for all eight years, stood up here and tried to compel you to invite people to grace for the sake of grace. I've never done that. And I never will. But it does occur to me, invite them to Summit's Christmas Eve service if you think I'm full of it. I don't care. Go to a Christmas Eve service with your neighbors. That's not the point here. I'm not trying to fill up our services. But what I am presenting to you is the easiest of opportunities. Is it easier to invite your neighbor, your coworker, a family on your kid's ball team, an associate, whatever? Is it easier to go, hey, I don't know if you wanted to celebrate Christmas Eve in a church but if you do come to mine it's gonna be pretty okay and here's how I know it's gonna be pretty okay the sermons like 12 minutes that day and then it's all songs all right so we know we're in good hands Aaron's got it is it easier to invite them to that or in March? Hey, do you want to come to church with me on Sunday? Yikes. That's a tougher one. I hope you will. I'm just saying, I'm just acknowledging what we all know. So it's never been easier to go tell it than it is this Christmas season. So I hope that you'll consider that as a way to kind of open the door to conversation with some people that you care about. And I hope that maybe you'll leave her thinking about who can I invite to the Christmas Eve service. And again, if you think this is remotely self-serving, take them to Summit. I couldn't care less. I would, I would, listen, I would rather you invite people to Summit's Christmas Eve service and go with them and let them experience church there than I would you come by yourself having never invited anyone. Okay? But if you want to bring them here and let us show them what it's like to worship Jesus together and celebrate who he is, what a wonderful introduction into church. There's never been an easier time or season to go tell it. Now, I don't just want us to go tell it this season. I want us to continue to do it. So three very quick ways because I just realized it's 1056 and I'm going to move very quickly through these. Three very easy ways to be an evangelist. Okay? First, this sounds cheesy but it's true. Wear it. Wear it. Keith, did you wear a hat this morning? Yeah. What is it? Nah. Keck, you, listen, you don't have to spend more than 15 minutes with Keith to know that he's a Steelers fan. All right? Huh? Always. Always. That's right. It's on his car. If you go to his house, it's all over his dumb basement. Well, I don't even think he has a dumb basement anymore. He has like an apartment because he's building a house. But it's all over his stupid apartment. It's on his clothes. It's where he wears it. You go to his office, it's all over the place. It's everywhere. If you experience Keith, you experience the Steelers. And it reminds me of this verse in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 14, that says, We are led in triumphal procession by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. I love that verse because it's this idea that passively from us wafts this knowledge of God passively from, from Keith, unfortunately wafts this love of the Steelers. You just, it just is infectious. He just does. And what if we love Jesus in such a way? What if we wore it? And this is, this is so funny. I wrote this point before I knew I'd be wearing a gray sweatshirt that we're currently selling this morning. We're not commercializing this. I'm not making any money off of it. Actually, I get 5% of every sweatshirt. So please. Wear your gray stuff to the gym. Wear it to the soccer field. Put it in your office. So that when people come in your office, they know this person loves Jesus. Put it in your home. Put verses on your walls so that when they come over to your house, when your neighbors come over, they know passively this person loves Jesus. This family loves Jesus. This home is oriented around Jesus. Make it so that wherever people go in your life, when they encounter you, whether it's in your car with what you're listening to, with what you're wearing to different things, and I'm not actually saying that you should wear a grace logo every day to work. That would be ridiculous. But I think you get my point. Put it out there that if you know me, you know I love my Jesus. Regardless of church, wear it. Make it visible so that people passively know who you are allied to. Second is live it. Live it. In Matthew 5, 16, we find one of the most challenging verses in Scripture which which says, Let your light shine before men so that they might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. This is more than passive. This is if someone were to follow you through your day, just by seeing you move in and out of conversation and people, they would see that you are so different, that you are so other, that you are so holy, that they would want to know more about you and glorify your Father who is in heaven. If you want to be an evangelist, spread the good news of Jesus and what he's done for you. Live that out. Be kind to the cashier. Be patient in traffic. Be considerate of the co-worker that no one else likes. Be even-handed in your dealings. Have character in your deals. Be honest in your negotiations. Do not backstab your co-workers. Be forthright even when it's hard. Tell the truth even when it's inconvenient. Be loving to your spouse even when they're being a jerk. And they deserve to be clapped back at. You can talk to Jen about how to do that if you need some examples. Do not yell unnecessarily at your children. Do not lose your temper. Be people of a meek countenance and kind such that others see your good work and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. Live it out. The last way we evangelize is to love it. Do you know why Keith tells everyone about the Steelers? Because he loves the Steelers. And when you love them, it brings him joy. It's a maniacal, twisted joy that's harming to humanity. Nevertheless, it's what compels him. And here's what I would say to you as a challenge. If you find yourself convicted because you're not someone who evangelizes for your Jesus, maybe, maybe it's a love issue. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to soften it. Maybe if you found yourself loving him more, you would tell other people about him more. I know the reason that my buddy tells people about the team he loves is because he loves them so much that it brings him joy when you love them too. And if we don't love Jesus so much that it brings us joy to see other people begin to love him too, then maybe we don't love him enough. And if we want to be evangelists, instead of looking out, what we need to do is look in and ask the Father to cultivate a love for him and what he's done in our hearts, so much so that we are so compelled to go and tell it. So I'm going to invite up Aaron and pray. And we're going to sing Go Tell It on the mountain together. And we're going to mean it. Yeah? Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for Keith, I guess. Thank you for a Jesus who loves us so well, loves us so much. I pray that we would be so compelled by that love that we would go and tell other people about it. God, there's no easier time of year to spread the good news of your glory to our friends and to the people that we care about so much. So I pray that you would give us the wisdom and the insight and the courage to do just that. And that this season we would invite, we would compel, we would introduce, we would be courageous, and we would engage in conversations that maybe we're fearful of, but we know that we are so compelled by our love for you and our love for them that we want to see them love you. Help us to do that, Father. In Jesus' name, amen.

You don't even like the pack. What are you talking about? Of course, you're the most obnoxious in the room when your team's not even NC State. For those that don't understand what's happening right now, maybe you're new to the church and this doesn't make any sense to you. I'm a Georgia Tech fan. I grew up in Atlanta. Thank you. Yeah, good. My lone friends in the room. And listen, I will be the first to admit that over the years, I've been the pastor for eight years. I've given a lot of crud to the pack. I've made a lot of jokes. And even my Georgia Tech friends was like, you should open up with a joke at NC State's expense. I'm not even going to repeat the joke because I don't want to make it because it's dishonorable. I lost a bet with John Massey. John, raise your hand. He's the hero of the church. Yeah, there we go. He was going to have to usher in my Georgia Tech sweater this morning, except we lost. And so now I'm preaching in this. And I want you to know that more neutral things were offered to me. And I said, no, I want maximum red. I want a big logo. It needs to be as obnoxious as possible. I want to pay my bets. But that's what I'm doing. Here's the funny part about the bet. My wife wasn't here this morning when I got the options. I was brought some options, and I wanted to choose the most obnoxious. And so I grabbed Michelle, who's doing our announcements this morning morning and is just overall an untrustworthy person and I And I called her out to the lobby and I said before the service started and I said Michelle you need to be my wife this morning Jen's not here. She can't tell me do I look too fat in this and she said you look great and I told Jen I think she was lying to me and she's furthering my humiliation and having to wear this. But to my NC State friends, great game, wonderful atmosphere. We went to the game last night, and congratulations. That was a good win for you guys. This morning, we will continue with Daniel. I feel like stopping to pray, because now we're just like friends at a brewery talking about a football game. So let's do that. Let me just stop to pray to reset our mindset and then we'll dive into Daniel. Let's do that. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for friends and for fun and for football and for sports and all the things that unite us together. But God, we acknowledge that nothing unites us more than you. And so we pray that we would be united in you and in your presence this morning as we enter into the story of your servant, Daniel. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, I think I can start to preach now. Now, the book of Daniel is one, and I had shared this with you guys several months ago, that one of the things we did, we meet as a staff and we plan our series together and we just kind of go, where do we need to take the church? And I kind of went back through the last five years of what we've covered as a church and noted the areas of the Bible that we had never touched before, the really significant areas of the Bible that we had never touched. And maybe you could even construe that we were negligent in not touching those. And so we just wanted to include those as we moved forward. And one of the places that we hadn't touched since I started here was the book, excuse me, of Daniel. And Daniel is a really impactful, prophetical book in the Old Testament. Now, here's the thing with Daniel. I'm not going to tell you that I'm preaching through the book of Daniel because I'm not. Because Daniel's 12 chapters long. And I see some of you nodding your heads. You know the book of Daniel. The first six chapters of the book of Daniel are what we refer to as narrative. It's a story. This is just a recounting of the events that happened. The last six chapters of Daniel are prophecy. They're eschatological prophecy, which means in reference to the end times. And just between you, me, and the gate post, they're crazy. They're really hard to understand. So here's what I'm going to do is just not talk about them. We'll just let them be confusing together. And if anybody has questions, we can talk about those questions together. But what we wanted to do is focus on the narrative portion of Daniel and ask, what can we learn from Daniel's experience in Babylon? And this is an interesting series because we're going to do this one week in Daniel here and talk about Daniel and his diet in chapter one. And then next week we have a morning of worship that I'm very excited about. I love a morning of worship. And then we'll pick it up with Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who you know is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And then we'll look at Daniel and the lion's den. But we've not done those stories together as a church. And I think that we need to. And then after that, we're going to start our Christmas series, the name of which I do not know yet, but I do know what we'll be covering, which is kind of the songs that we sing. And we'll be looking at Christmas carols and what they actually mean and where they come from some scripture. So I'm very excited about that. So that's where we're going for the rest of the year. This morning, we arrive at Daniel. And so let me give you some context for what's happening at this moment in history, not just for Daniel, but for the nation of Israel. And then we'll look at some passages in Daniel to orient us in the story. Big, big overview. The nation of Israel is brought by Moses and then by Joshua conquering the land of Canaan and they claim it. Then they establish a nation. And after they establish a nation, it's ruled by Joshua and then some judges. And eventually Israel cries out for a king. And God says, I don't want to give you a king. And they said, well, we're going to be a middle school girl, and we're going to hold our breath until our face turns blue, and we're going to demand a king. And then God was like, okay, I'm going to give you one, but you're not going to want it. And then Saul was the first king. And then David, who we know, we know his story, David and Goliath, we know David, was the second king. And then the third king was Solomon. Solomon was the son of David, and he was the wisest man that ever lived. But after Solomon, his two sons, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, took over the kingdom, and there was a civil war and a split. And then from then, the nation of Israel existed as kind of this third world country that never gained international prominence and always struggled financially and spiritually and militaristically and all the ways. Militarily, that's probably the word that we want there. And all the ways, right? And then, eventually, the dominant powerhouse of the time takes over. And so Persia, Babylon, comes and conquers Israel. And when they conquer Israel, one of the things they do is they take the best and the brightest. They take the Ivy League students and they bring them back to, and the NC State students, and they bring them back to Babylon, and they begin to train them for service in the court. And part of the deal for that training is we have developed, Babylon, this is their perspective, we've developed a diet that is going to make you maximally healthy and helpful within the court, and we need you to adopt this diet. The problem with the diet was it went against the dietary restrictions of the Jewish heritage and of the Jewish faith. There were things that Daniel and his friends, Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah, were asked to consume that went against their conscience and their faith. And so they found themselves at this crossroads where they're essentially slaves and they're being asked to consume a diet that goes against their morals. So what do we do? And that's where we pick up the story. I'm going to read you a lot of verses this morning, but I want you not to hear a summary from me. I want you to hear exactly what's happening in the text, and then we will talk about it together. If you have a Bible, while I take a sip of this water, open it to Daniel chapter 1, and we're going to start in verse 8 and go through 15. If you don't have a Bible, it's in the seat back in front of you. Starting in verse eight, here's Daniel's response to the diet he was prescribed. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now, God had caused the official to show favor and compassion on Daniel, but the official told Daniel, I'm afraid of my lord, the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other men your age the king would then have my head excuse me because of you daniel then said the guard whom the chief official has appointed over daniel hananiah mishael and azariah please test your servants for 10 days give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the Okay, so this is the story of Daniel in Babylon. And we'll pick it up in verse 18 in just a few minutes. But in a brief interlude as we learn the story, and just so we recap that together, because sometimes when people just read passages to us, we kind of lose track. He's been put in this class of young men, my best guess is early to mid-20s to serve in the court in Babylon. And the king, Nebuchadnezzar, has left it to his officials to determine the best diet for these men to serve him well. And they've prescribed that to Daniel. And Daniel has said, please, can we not eat of that diet? Can we eat just vegetables and water? And give us 10 days. And in 10 days, you just tell us how healthy we look. Tell us what our skin looks like. Tell us how vibrant we seem. Tell us about our energy level and our sleep patterns. You watch us and you tell us how healthy we seem. And if we seem healthier, then let us just continue to consume this diet. If we don't, then we'll adopt yours, but just give us a chance. That's the premise of what's happening. Yeah, we understand that. Okay. So then here's after the chief official agrees to that, which was by the way, um, kind of him to do. Because he wasn't like, I could get fined or I could get detention. It was, if this doesn't work, the king will have my head. So it was high stakes. This is the favor that Daniel had built up by being a good guy. But he granted it nonetheless. And this is the story of Daniel entering Babylon is they said here's our standards of diet we would like you to adopt them and Daniel said can you please allow us to maintain our own and the results of that was they were healthier and King Nebuchadnezzar didn't find anyone else that could measure up to their excellence or their health. So the question is, as we read that as a church in 2025, what do we learn from that? And here's where I'll be honest with you in the challenge of the sermon this morning. This sermon, whether you realize it or not, maybe this is new information to you, but some of you, I suspect, already know where we're going with the content, which is Daniel and Babylon were surrounded in an atmosphere with different standards. We have to choose God's standards. What do we do? That's the sermon, and's what you preach. And oftentimes when I encounter passages and I find the cliche or the trodden path on which to go to preach it to you, I try to deviate and choose a new path out of respect for what you've experienced as listeners and churches before. But this morning and for this week, I found it important to just go ahead and tread the trotting. Go ahead and walk the path that has been cut for us because I think it's important and I think it matters. And so what I would have you understand this morning is, like Daniel, we are living in Babylon. Here's what I want you to understand. Daniel was a citizen of Israel. He was a Jewish man. He had Jewish parents. His lineage went back through the decades, maybe the centuries of Israel. And when he was taken to Babylon, he finds himself in a foreign land to which he does not belong, whose customs he does not know, whose rules he does not adhere to. He's an alien, a sojourner, and he doesn't belong there. And here's one of the things that I believe that Christians don't think about enough. I've made this point in previous sermons for previous reasons. But as Christians, we are aliens. We are sojourners. We are not citizens of the United States of America. We are not inhabitants here. We are citizens of heaven. Whether or not you understand this fully, when you decide to become a Christian, which is to faithfully acknowledge that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and is going to do what he says he's going to do, then you transfer your citizenship from whatever country you were born in into the nation of heaven. And so if you're here this morning and you're a believer, you would call yourself a Christ follower, then what I would say to you is you may by happenstance be a resident of North Carolina. You may by happenstance be a citizen of the United States. You may even be one of those super cool people who are always a little bit pretentious about it that have dual citizenship and you have a British passport. Good for you. But ultimately, when you become a Christian, your citizenship transfers to heaven. You're a citizen of heaven and an alien and sojourner here. And so like Daniel, we are not residents of Babylon. And here's why this matters. Because what we see in the story of Daniel is that the Babylonians had standards that they had established, that they believed in, that they espoused, that they thought were good. And they took those standards and they said, Daniel, Mishael, Hananiah, Azariah, now that you're here, live according to these standards. And Daniel said with all courage, I'm not a citizen of this place. I'm a citizen of Israel. In our vernacular, I'm a citizen of heaven. Those standards are not my standards. And here's the courageous part. Will you give me 10 days to live according to my standards? And if they don't work out better than your standards, I'll adopt yours. But can I live according to mine? And so the very easy lesson here, as we look at the story of Daniel is, if it's true that we live in Babylon, but we are not citizens here, what standards of Babylon that everyone else is adopting, are we tempted to adopt? To fit in, to get along, to go along, to not ruffle feathers. I mean, one easy standard is in Raleigh, I should become an NC State fan. I will not. I will be a Georgia Tech fan. And I don't even like being a Georgia Tech fan. It stinks. I'll tell you that for free. But all kidding aside, our communities, our culture impresses standards upon us from Babylon that are not the standards of heaven, our citizenship. Our culture impresses standards upon us about what's okay to consume, what's okay to watch, what's okay to joke about, what's okay to say, what's okay to participate in. Those standards are presented to us externally from the outside in. And then we're challenged as citizens of heaven to just go ahead and go along to get along, get along to go along, to adopt those standards. But they're different than the standards of heaven. Our culture has different standards for us and for themselves. And I say themselves intentionally to make it separate from our culture as a church. We are not citizens of Babylon. We're citizens of heaven. But what I want you to understand this morning is that Babylon has some standards that we don't have. And let me also say this transparently and honestly to you. This is a hard sermon for me to write. Because I never, ever want to preach in such a way that I am convicting you and asking you to get on my level. It is always, here's my conviction as I interact with this text. If you want to enter into this conviction with me, go ahead. And so I'll be the first to admit to you. I don't get it right all the time with adopting the standards of heaven versus the standards of Babylon. Sometimes the jokes or the language that I'm willing to use on a Wednesday are not exactly what heaven would choose. And I've adopted the standards of Babylon. Sometimes in what I consume is not the standard of heaven, it's the standard of Babylon. And so I stand before you honestly and hopefully humbly saying, if you feel like you haven't mastered this, neither have I. But I've always said to you, let's not soft pedal what the text teaches us. Let's bravely encounter it together and allow conviction where it's deserved. And so what I would tell you this week is, for me, and I know some of you pretty well, so I know you're in this boat too, buddy. For you, maybe we don't do the best job of parsing out the standards of heaven and the standards of Babylon and making the choice of Daniel and choosing the standards of heaven. And so this mourning is intended to be a compulsion towards holiness, towards choosing to be like God. Holiness is defined as other, different, outside of. God is described as holy, holy, holy, because he is other, he is different, he is outside of, he is different than us. And so as citizens of heaven, we are called to be different too. And there are myriad texts I could pull from the New Testament to illustrate this for us. But the one I would highlight for you this morning is 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 1, where it says, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and soul, perfecting holiness out of reverence to God. We are called to be holy. We are called to live according to the standards of heaven, not according to the standards of Babylon. And that's what I want us to see this morning, is we are not called to live to the standards of everyone around us all the time. We're called to live to the standards of heaven. And here's a short aside I would say. And I've debated about this because this is a little bit more in your face than I typically like to be. So I'm going to say it over here. I don't know if you remember, but I've set this up in previous sermons as my reckless speculation box where I'm allowed to just say things off the cuff here and you can't get mad at me. Over there is where I'm actually preaching and you can get mad at me for those things, but here you can't get mad, okay? We agree? Great. Here's what I've learned in life. Here's one of the things I've seen. And I don't mean it to be critical. I've just seen it. You take it for what it's worth. The older you get, the more your life contracts. The older you get, typically happens, what I've seen, maybe I'm wrong, but what I've seen is your circle around you gets smaller. And due to that, your circle around you tends to agree with you about everything. And then all of a sudden, you've reached whatever age old is to you, whether it's 45 or 95, and everyone around you agrees with everything you think too, and then you all look at each other and you go, we've nailed it, and everyone else is dumb. When we do that, and we don't take in new information, and we don't learn new things, and we don't have other standards, we adopt the standards of everyone around us and we become subject to Babylon. Okay. Here's the thing about the standards of Babylon that's really, really tricky. On the surface, on the surface, their food is better. On the surface, what Daniel was being offered was meat and probably potatoes and some sort of curry. I don't know. It was Persia. There was something over there that was better than what we have here. It was awesome. And wine. That's what he was being offered. And he said, no thanks. I'd like green beans, Brussels sprouts, and water, please. He said, I don't want any of that. I want just vegetables. And so on the surface, the diet of Babylon is more attractive. And this is something I personally struggle with mightily. Part of my job, and Jen actually makes fun of me for this. Part of my job is to go to lunch with people. I don't even care what we talk about. Let's just go to lunch. You say whatever you need to say, I'm going to enjoy this nice meal. Part of my job is to go to lunch. And I go to lunch once or twice a week. And when I go to lunch, I love food. I love food. I love it. Last week, I scheduled a dinner with somebody at Coquette. Coquette? Coquette? I don't know. Coquette. All right, great. Brasserie. And do you know what I did? Like right away, like as soon as it was scheduled and I got some free time, I got on my phone, I Googled the menu, and I decided what I was going to get. I got the scallions. They were terrible. Don't get the scallions. Scallops. I didn't just get a plate of scallions. That's a great point, Linda. Also, I would just say, objectively, if there is an option for just scallions, don't get those. Not so great. But I like to look forward to the food that I eat. And when I go to a restaurant to meet somebody, I want to get the French dip. If you go to Winston's, they've got an incredible French dip. It's really good. And the fries are good. And you get a side of horseradish because you don't care about your heart or living past 60 and you dip your fries in the horseradish and it's great. But the wise thing to do is to get the blackened chicken salad, which is also very good, but it's still salad. Like it's still what rabbits eat. And I don't want that. I want the French dip. I want the steak frites, right? I want the buffalo chicken wrap with the homemade fries and the blue cheese. That's what I want. And so that is more appealing. But here's what I know. And let me make this point in my notes before I say this next thing, because I think it ties in. Just for the record, God's standards bring us true freedom. God's standards bring us true freedom. So I want to talk to that for a minute. God's standards bring us true freedom. Here's what I know. And I know this experientially. You may not know this and I'm not applying this to anyone, but here's my experience. Is when I, for three months, eat what's most appealing in the moment. I have the French dip or I have the steak frites or I have the buffalo wrap or whatever it is in the moment lunch is better also I need a nap that afternoon and in the future my blood pressure is higher and my heart rate is higher and my health is lower and my energy rate is less and my sleep is worse and my indigestion is more when I make the decision to have the most attractive thing in the moment. And what I also know from the rare times that I've been able to do it is when I make the wise choice about what I'm going to consume, that my energy level is higher, my mental acuity is better, my energy is higher, I feel more capable and healthier. And even, if I can just be honest with you, my skin looks a little better. I don't know who cares about that at all. I just know it's true. So here's my point. Babylon has more attractive options in the moment. But if we choose the wise thing, we're going to be healthier in the long run. If we compromise our morals in the short term, and we consume the show that we really want to watch, or we engage in the conversation that's easiest to engage in, or I would say this too, we engage in political discourse the way that the world does in the moment, it satisfies us in the short term. But I could give you example after example of ways to compromise our heavenly values for the sake of Babylonian values, where in the moment, it's more attractive to indulge in this behavior because it's less attractive to stick to heavenly values. But in the long term, what I want you to see is you will be healthier long term to adhere to heavenly values than you will to Babylonian values. And I don't think that there's much difference in this story about the long-term health of Daniel physically than there is about taking it and applying it to the long-term health of us spiritually. If you want to be healthy spiritually, if you want to be free spiritually, eat the moral salad now so you can have the energy and the health and the longevity later. That's, I think, what we learned from this. And here's the thing, and this is what I said I was going to speak to, God's standards bring us true freedom. I think that we think that if I live according to the standards of heaven and not according to the standards of Babylon, that I'm limiting myself. I can't indulge in that pleasure. I can't experience that thing. I can't do that thing that everybody else around me, all my coworkers, everyone else in my life, they get to do it. Why can't I do it? I should be allowed to do that thing too. And so we think that following heavenly standards limits us and limits our freedom. And so we try to be good soldiers and sign up for that and go, yeah, God, I'm going to live it myself and live a worse, less enjoyable life now because it's the right thing to do and I'm just going to sacrifice for it. And what's actually true is when I spend six months eating French dips, I feel like crud after that. And I don't have the energy. And I don't exercise. And I don't have the joy and the vibrancy of life. And I don't feel as up for wrestling with John, my son. And I don't feel as eager to lay in bed with Lily, putting my nine-year-old daughter down and listening to her talk about her day and the one time during the day where she's willing to share. Because I'm too tired. When I choose unhealth, I'm not as willing to take the phone call from someone at Grace who's going through something. I'm not as willing to make the phone call to someone who's going through something. And so what I find in my life, and you decide if this is true for you, is that when I make short-term decisions to live my life according to the standards of Babylon, rather than according to the standards of heaven, that in the long term I experience less freedom than I would have if I would have chosen heaven in the first place. Does that make sense? And so this story from Daniel that seems simple and innocuous, I believe actually has a lot to teach us. And it's simply this. You're not citizens of here. You're not citizens of the United States. You're not residents of North Carolina. You're citizens of heaven if you're a Christian. And we have different standards for health than our community does. And we think erroneously that choosing those standards offers us less freedom. And what we learn experientially and from the story in Daniel is that the greatest freedom is found under the standards of heaven and pursuing holiness. And that's what your heavenly Father wants for you. So let's pursue those. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for your servant Daniel and everything he means to us and what we can learn from him. Father, I know that there are ways and places in which most of us or all of us choose the standards of the place where we find ourselves versus heaven. And so I pray that we would be people who choose the standard of heaven and we would reject the standards of Babylon. Let us be healthier for it, physically, spiritually, mentally. Let us be better servants and followers as a result of those choices and give us the courage and the foresight to be people who choose your home, our home, over this temporary one. In Jesus' name, amen.

I'm laughing with Aaron because after the last week, my name is Nate, I get to be the pastor. After the last week that I was here, I went to him and was like, hey dude, we're using that bumper a lot, can we get that shortened down to maybe 15, 20 seconds and go ahead and get to it? And he was like, yeah, I'll work on that. So I came up here and I was kind of getting ready and obviously obviously I'm jet lagged and stuff. I've been in Istanbul for a week. And I looked up and there's 10 seconds to go. And I go, this is the week you shorten it? And he goes, yep. And just smiled real big at me. Like it's his personal joke on me this morning to be caught off guard. But excuse me. Like I said, I spent the last week in Istanbul working with some Iranian pastors, and I'm going to tell you all about that, but I've had a lot of people ask about my safety. I'm so glad that you're home safe, which is a kind thing to think and to say. There was no real danger in Istanbul. As a matter of fact, for those of you who don't know, the president arrested the mayor of Istanbul. That's his biggest political rival, and so the youth took to the streets to protest and demonstrate and riot and there's a pretty heavy police presence I was just hoping that Jen didn't stumble upon the New York Times while I was over there luckily she did not but the second night of the planned demonstrations they were going to be in this place called Taksim Square and so we went down there early in the afternoon just to see it there's police barricades and SWAT vehicles everywhere with like crowd deterrent guns on top and things like that. And we thought that's pretty cool. And so then we went and we had dinner and it was probably about nine o'clock at night. And I looked at my traveling partner, Rue, and I said, Rue, do we do this smart? We're about 20 minutes south of Toxum at this point. And I said, Rue, by walking, should we do the smart thing and get on the subway and go back to our hotel? Or should we do the fun thing and go watch democracy die in Toxin Square? And he was like, he got his twinkle in his eye and we walked to Toxin. I was really hoping to grab a sign and protest as well. But apparently protesting and riots are a young man's game because it was like 930 and there was 20 people in the square and some getting off the subway. They were all younger than me. So I went to bed and I think the thing got really fun at about 11 o'clock. So I missed it, but I tried to go see it while we were there. But safety was never really an issue. The reason that I was there was through a friend of mine named Anaruda Sin. who goes by Ru. And so what I'd like to do this morning is rather than preach to you a sermon, what I'd like to take the morning to do, if it's all right with you, if it's not all right with you, tough. I mean, you can leave, but that's it because that's what's going to happen. But if it's all right with you, I'd like to just share about my experience over there and give you guys some takeaways of what I took away from it. Because I've just come back feeling incredibly full and incredibly blessed and profoundly humbled. And so I thought it would be better than preaching to you. And preaching, the point of preaching is to inspire and convict a change in hearts and minds for a change in that person. That's why you preach. But sharing is just to say, hey, I had this experience and I want you to hear about it. And I know that many of you will ask and many of you will want to know. And many of you did ask before the service, hey, how was the trip? And so I said, it's great. I'm going to tell you all about it. So if you have any questions for me after the service today, if you want to know more about who I went with or you want to know more about what's happening there, I would love to talk with you about that. And if it's too much for a lobby conversation, let's go out to lunch and we can talk about it more because I feel a tremendous passion for what I got to participate in. But a few years ago, I got to be friends with a guy who was introduced through a mutual friend to Roo. And Roo trains church pastors across the world in underdeveloped countries. So where I was exposed to him first was when he was training pastors who have churches in sub-Saharan Africa. There was a room full of about 60 pastors from about 10 different countries, and Roo was training them on how to build disciples and send them out to plant churches. And when you're talking about planting churches in underdeveloped countries, particularly in persecuted countries, which is who we're working with now, what you, what, how we would think of those churches is small groups. They meet in the home. The leader is considered a pastor. Some pastors can have two or three or four small groups. Tom Sartorius would be a remarkably successful pastor in underdeveloped countries because he has about eight small groups that he's in and lead. So he'd be great at that. But that's kind of the setup there. And so it's not quite the same as training up someone to go get hired at a church or to go plant a church the way we think about it. It's train up someone who can be a spiritual guide for 12 to 20 people and their children. So that's the process. And through that process, Roo, his network of churches plants three to 500 churches a year in India now for work that he started 10 years ago with no churches. So it's a remarkably effective way to spread the gospel in God's kingdom in these unreached people groups. And so a few years ago, Roo left the organization that he was working with to start his own organization to plant churches, not just in underdeveloped countries, but in persecuted countries. So now he works exclusively with pastors who lead churches in countries in which it is illegal to lead that church. And so a few weeks ago, he told me that he was going to fly to Istanbul and he wanted to bring me with him just as an exposure trip, just so I could see it and be blessed by it. He wanted to bring me with him. And so I had the opportunity to go and not help train. That's way too, that gives me self-aggrandizing. I did not help do anything. I was able to watch them get trained. And it was a group of seven Iranian pastors. Four of them brought their wives. Two of them brought their moms. We called them the grandmas and they were incredibly wise and incredibly wonderful. And so I had the opportunity to go over and watch him work with these pastors. And by the way, this is a ministry that is led by Summit Church. So there's a guy named Nathan, and I think his story is amazing. At the end of the service today, I'm going to show you a video, a message from one of the pastors to us that's translated by Nathan. I will not be able to show that to you online. We're going to actually cut the feed for the safety of the pastor in the video, and then we'll show it just here in-house. But in that video, you'll see the Iranian pastor, a guy named Yahya, and then you'll see Nathan. Nathan fled Iran when he was 19 years old due to religious persecution, came over to the States, and began a social media account and has a huge social media presence in the Persian world where he spreads the gospel to Iran and to the Iranian diaspora all throughout the world. And he has a huge following. And at one point or another, he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and he began to, he was a part of Summit Church. And then he loved J.D. Greer's sermons. That's a pastor over there. He loved his sermons so much that he started to retool them in Farsi and make the illustration something that Iranians could relate to and then preach them online and develop even more of a following doing that. And so then he went to Summit and he was like, hey, I'm doing this with your sermons. Is this okay? And they said, yes, of course it's okay. And he goes, by the way, I know a bunch of pastors that I'm still networked with, but they really need training. What can we do for them? And so they brought him on staff to help solve that problem. And then him and his boss, a guy named Chris Watkins, one of the missions pastors over there, started looking around for people who knew how to train pastors in underdeveloped, persecuted countries. And they found Roo. And now Roo has partnered with them to do what they're doing. And I got to tell you something. After being exposed to what Summit is able to do on a global scale, I've never cared about church growth. Not my thing. I care about church health and doing it the right way. But now I'm coming back and I'm like, y'all, we got to get in the building. We got to grow because we got to make a bigger kingdom impact. Invite your friends. Send out mailers. Let's make a video. Let's go. We've got to make a kingdom impact. Let's move it. I'm all about church growth. We're going to do some stupid Father's Day giveaway this year with a four-wheeler and a grill or something. So that's who I was with. So the first morning, I go into the room and I meet these pastors. And it was an incredibly humbling experience. Because every single one of the people in that room are risking jail time to do what they do. If their local authorities find out that they're having underground Christian services in their home, they can be arrested. If the wrong group of Muslims find out, and this is not a big if. This is not like me taking a chance going to Toxum Square on the 1.5% chance that somebody gets mad and punches me. It's not that kind of risk. It's a legitimate risk that if the wrong group of Muslims find out in their neighborhood what they're doing, they will beat them repeatedly until they stop. Or they will just murder them. And no one will care that that's why they were murdered. One guy told a story, Mikael. He said that they were talking about times that the Holy Spirit had guided them. And Mikael said that he had a neighbor that was harassing him and his family and his kids so bad, his wife and his kids so badly, that in the middle of the night he had to move away because he was fearful of what this neighbor might do. And he's so grateful that the Holy Spirit moved him to move on that night because the very next night, a lynch mob of Muslim men within the community stormed his house and burned it down in an attempt to kill him and his family. That's a real story that happened. And he told it like I would tell you I'm going to McAllister's for lunch today. And nobody in that room batted an eye. Nobody in that room said, oh my gosh, man, are you okay? I didn't know that. Like, if we share that story in an American small group, like the rest of the night stops and that's what we focus on. You share that in a group of Iranian pastors and they just go, oh, yeah, same. One guy made a joke. I couldn't believe this joke. And it crushed in the room. Everybody's laughing. This guy, Farh, was really funny. He said that he was sharing the gospel with somebody and the guy showed up at his house one day and was angry and he said, if God is real, how come my dad is dead? And Farood said, that's no problem. Mine's dead too. What else you got? It's just a joke he made. And it crushed like the whole room was dying laughing. They just live in a different world than us. Every one of them. They wake up every day. They kiss their wife and they kiss their kids. And the husband and wife don't know if they're going to see each other again for a while. Every day they could go out and the wrong person could find out what they've been up to and they will get arrested. And they'll be in prison for six to 18 months. And when they're in prison, they're away from their job. They're away from their family, they're away from their kids, they're away from their wife, they're away from their life, and they don't know what's going to happen to their family. And if you're an elder, there's three elders. If you're an elder and they find out, the Iranian government finds out that you're running a network, that there's other pastors underneath you, I was told that what tends to happen is you serve your 18 months and then within a year of your release, an accident happens and you're not there anymore. These men face beatings. They face arrest and ultimately they face martyrdom for their faith. So I was already prepared to be tremendously humbled when I walked into that room. And I had already thought about how ashamed I am of some of the things I complain about, having to sacrifice to build God's kingdom and to be a pastor when it isn't a fraction of what those men risk every day to build God's kingdom in Iran. So I already went in incredibly humbled by that. And then when we get there, it was pretty close to start time for session. And so we kind of say some hellos and we sit down. And then in the break between sessions, which those guys were getting it, we did four 90 minute sessions a day. It was a lot. In the first break, I'm walking down the hallway to find the restroom. And there's one, one of the hallway, and he's on his phone, and he looks at me, and he goes, and he walks up to me and gives me a huge hug. And while he's hugging me, and it wasn't like an American, like, how you doing, bro? It wasn't like one of those hugs. It was like how a grandfather hugs a grandson. Like, he just engulfed me, and I'm like, I guess this is what we're going for now. I guess I'm just settling into a Persian hug. While we're hugging in my ear, he says, my brother, my brother, every one of them came up and hugged me and learned my name and called me their brother, my brother, my brother. And it was so moving that by the time they were done, I had to get to the bathroom so I could close the door in a stall and just let myself gain my composure. Because I do not feel worthy of being their brother. Because what they do is so much harder than what I do. And those people that they pastor are your brothers and sisters too. And you'll meet them in eternity one day. They are our family. And it was incredibly moving to know that they so quickly regard me as their brother and you as their brothers and sisters. I was already ready and postured to learn from these pastors. As a matter of fact, that was the biggest thing that I went over there to do. My friend Rue had told me, which was very good for me. If you know me, you know this was an excellent exercise for Nate. He had told me as we were preparing, he was like, hey, listen, we're going to be in these sessions. I've got a translator. There's only one translator. He's working very hard. I've got a lot of information to get in. So, you know, just try to be really limited on interjecting or asking questions. Like, this is really not for you. It's for them. Like, you're an observer. And I said, got it. Speak when spoken to. And he was like, wasn't going to say it like that, but yes. And it was so, it was, y'all, I've never been around that many people for that long and used so few words. It was, I felt like Jonathan Poston. I just didn't say, I just didn't say anything at all, ever. It was crazy. You have a lot of time to think, dude. Like, I got to tell you. And so what I set myself about doing, because all I wanted to do is learn from them and their experience, is I had my laptop out and I wrote down every word they said. Every time an Iranian asked a question, every time they spoke up, every time they made a point. I wrote down the prompt that Ru had given so I would have some context for it. And then I wrote down their name and I wrote down a summary of what they said. Every single one. I've got a 9,500 word document on my computer of everything that they said all week long. So that I could listen to them and learn from them. And hear their hearts about ministry and how they do it. And here's my biggest takeaway from my time with those pastors as a group is just the vast difference in how the persecuted church behaves versus how the secure church behaves. There is a gulf of understanding and commitment between us, between American pastors, and the way that Iranian pastors think about their church and their mission. They use military language over there. The elders consider themselves the captains. The pastors, the foot soldiers. They have contingency plans in place. They are fighting a war. Discipleship over there isn't optional for them. It's urgent and necessary for them because Ruth would tell them, you are going to need to get beat up for the faith. And when you do, consider that suffering a gift from Jesus himself because nothing will spread the news of the gospel more quickly in your community than how you handle that beating. That was never said to me in seminary. They view themselves as soldiers in enemy territory trying to bring about a change as they build God's kingdom. They sincerely want to change the face of Iran. And I've said before that as you look through history, whenever you see a church in a persecuted area, that church is always thriving and always vibrant and always filled with the holiness and the fullness of God. And whenever you see a church that exists in a country or a culture where it's been allowed cultural primacy, where it's been set aside as this is our default setting. Think about Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Think about evangelicalism in the United States for the last 200 years. Whenever you see the church elevated to a place of cultural primacy, in walks corruption, in walks doctrinal issues, in walks power-hungry people, in walks greediness. In walks laziness. In walks the uncommitted. In comes the cultural faith that doesn't really mean it. When you are persecuted, you are lean and mean. And when you're risking your family and your reputation to step into that small church, you have to think twice before you do it. The bar of entry in American churches is so low that you can do it socially for your whole life and it not mean anything. So when I come back from seeing them and hearing them and writing down everything they said for five days, my overwhelming impression is just the gulf that exists between churches in persecuted countries and churches in secure countries. Which means that at Grace, it's our job to acknowledge that historical trend and to figure out how to be a church in a secure country that understands that our cultural Christianity is dying and should, but we want to rise from those ashes and taking on the mentality of a persecuted church. How do we do that? I don't know, but I know that that's our responsibility and I don't know what I'm going to do with that. I don't know if there's going to be a series or a training or just small things along the way. Or I don't know if I'll lose that conviction and just fall back into being fat and lazy and comfortable. I hope not. But we've got to do something with that. That's my takeaway from my time with the pastors as a whole. Now there's one pastor in particular that I want to tell you about this morning. And he actually illustrates the passage I knew I would be speaking about this morning. So if you have a Bible, turn to Mark chapter 9. We're going to be looking at verses 30 through 37. If you don't have a Bible, I would encourage you to pull out the one in front of you because I'm not going to have anything on the screen today. If you're using one of the blue Bibles, can you tell me what page this is on? Can you find it fast? And somebody just yell out the page. 1,000. I knew it. Perfect. All right. So page 1,000. Thanks, guys. That's the passage where we're going to be. This is the quintessential Mark passage. Okay. And I knew that I didn't want to prepare a sermon on this passage. I didn't want to prepare a sermon on this passage and not, do we have a different verse in the bulletin? Is that why you guys are laughing? Okay. I'll find out later. I didn't want to do a sermon on this passage without having that experience in Istanbul with the Iranian pastors, because I knew that if I were to write this sermon and then go over there and have that experience, I would want to change the whole thing. So I decided to wait until I'd have that experience and then come back and share with you what I learned. And so this is the quintessential Mark passage. The last two verses say that whoever wants to become great must be least, whoever wants to lead must be servant of all, okay? And so that is really, but there's one verse that summarizes the gospel of Mark, that's it. But I wanted to wait until this morning, and I'm waiting until now to bring it up in the sermon because there was one man that I met that personified this maybe better than anybody I've ever seen in my life, and that was the leader of their network of churches, a man named Yahya. I'm going to call him Yahya because that's what we called him. And to say Yahya sounds a little bit like an American going, I was in Colombia the other day. So I'm not going to do that crap. I'm just going to call him Yahya, okay, even though it's wrong, but we're going to agree to be wrong together. When I walked in and Ru introduced me to Yaya, and Yaya is probably in his early 60s, I would guess, maybe late 50s. When I saw him, he immediately looks at me, and Iranians have this thing they do where they go like this, my heart, my heart, I'm grateful for you. And he goes, like so many kind gestures. And he introduces himself, he holds out his hand and I shake his hand. He said, my brother, it's so good to have you here. Thank you so much for coming. And I'm like, are you kidding me? This is how many people get to sit in a room with persecuted pastors outside their own country and then get to meet the one that started this 20 years ago by himself? And this is only one network that Yahya leads. He has four or five groups of pastors that come to him for encouragement, for training, and he has his own churches that he leads. And the man runs a restaurant that's been in his family for generations. He's busy. Often, I put in front of you guys this verse from Colossians that says that we are led by Christ in triumphal procession and that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. I have met maybe four people in my life, Yahya being the fourth, that is the very second I meet them, that's the sense that I get. This man is full of the Holy Spirit. I've never met this man in my life, but I know that he loves me. And I know that he loves everybody in this room. And I know that he knows God in a way that I have never approached. And I'm lucky to be in his presence. I think sometimes about the heroes that we'll meet in heaven. Those faithful believers who just quietly did God's work their whole life in far-flung places where they can't write books and they don't do podcasts and there's no conferences and we never hear about them. But they quietly and faithfully and humbly and lovingly did the work of God their whole life, built his kingdom. Yahya is one of these men. And it is one of my great privileges to have met him. And so as soon as I met him and got that sense of him, I watched everything he did. Like almost like a weird stalker, like I was locked in. I watched how he interacted with his pastors. I watched how he interacted with his wife, Vicki, and with his daughter. I watched how he caught food and made tea and let everyone else go first. I paid attention to when he raised his hand and when he didn't. I paid attention to where and why it seemed like he chose to chime in in the conversation for a man that knows all the answers to the questions that are being asked. And most people would use that as an opportunity to show off and to know the answers and to say the right thing. And maybe I'll let my staff talk for a little while, and then I'm going to come in and I'm going to give the really wise answer. He never did that. As a matter of fact, most of the time when he chimed in to talk, it was to repent in front of his other pastors and to say, we don't do this in my churches, and we need to, and I'm sorry. I watched the way that man holds leadership, and it is the personification of the verses that we have in Mark chapter 9. So let's go there and read them and then we disciples did not yet have a full perspective and understanding of who Jesus was and what he came to do. They expected that the Messiah was going to come, that he was going to rise into a position of political prominence, establish an earthly kingdom in Israel, and rule over all the world from Israel. Their vision was too small to understand that Jesus came to die and reconcile us back to the Father and establish a heavenly kingdom to exist for all eternity. Their imagination for who Jesus was and what he could do was too small. And we see that all through the Gospels. Okay, that's just a little sideline that I wanted to bring your attention to because when we start talking about Easter and the resurrection, that becomes really important. Verse 33, He took a little child whom he placed among them, taking the child in his arms, and he said to them, Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes by Yaya, so I brought this up with me. Now we're going to go back and we're going to look at this idea of whoever wants to be great needs to serve. Whoever wants to be first must be last. But before we do, just as further proof that Yahya is the personification of this. Look at those last two verses. He took a little child and he placed it among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to him, whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me. During the second break, Yahya was near me again and I said something to him, and he says, Yaya, John. And I go, John? And he goes, yeah. And I joked with him, and I said, Yaya is way cooler. And he laughed and whatever. But then I thought, he seems like a sweet man. He'll probably like to know that my son is named John. So I went, do we have the picture? Okay, I went up to him, and I said,, yeah. And he looked at me and I said, I put my hand on his chest. I said, John? And he goes, yeah. And I said, this is my John. And I showed him John. I showed him this picture. And yeah, yeah, it goes. And I kind of pulled it back. He goes, oh my God, let me see that again. And I pulled it back up and he zooms in on his eyes. And he goes, he has the most beautiful eyes. What a blessing. Oh my God, John, that is so lovely. Praise God. What a blessing. And he says, I will pray for him. I said, thank you, Yahya. Three days later, I got to a session. You can take that down. That's just going to be distracting because he's so precious. Three days later, I got to a session early. I'm the only American in the room, and the pastors are all talking, and they start kind of laughing. And Yaya's daughter, who apparently has worked on English, says, they're all talking about your son, John. They've all been praying for him every day this week. It's just humbling. Let me just be honest with you. That is not how I respond to pictures of your children. Okay? That is embarrassingly far from my character. And they meant it. They meant it. And those men who have so much to be concerned about. I asked Nathan, the refugee, I said, what's their level of concern when they fly back into the country? What's their stress level when they're going through customs just to get home? And he said, as high as it can be. They know that one of these days they're going to fly back in country and one of them is going to end up in a security office. And I said, can I please get a text to know that they all got home safely? And when I landed yesterday, I had a couple of texts on my phone telling me that they had. So we praise God for that. They have so much to worry about. And they choose to spend their time in prayer, praying for my son. And I was told, Nathan told me, he goes, you're lucky. He goes, they're not kidding around. There's people that we dealt with three years ago and they committed to pray for them. And whenever I see them, they still ask me about those people. They will ask me about John for the rest of the time I know them. That's what it is to be the servant of all. Whoever wants to be great must be least. And I watched the way he held his authority. I watched the way he held his authority with those men and women in that room. How he supported them and put them first, and how very different it is from most of the pastors in underdeveloped countries that I've been to. This is a very sad truth, but most environments like that, these men get really competitive and they make the church about their ego. They even come up with titles. If you're a church pastor, if you have one church, you're a pastor. If you have more, if you have two churches, you get to be a priest. And if you have multiple churches, you're a bishop. And, and if you're, if you're a priest and not a bishop, you can't talk to a bishop. And if you're a, if you're a pastor, you can't talk to a priest. And if you're a pastor and a bishop is talking to you, you better listen or you'll be out of the church. It's very territorial and it's very sad. But it's not too different than how Americans hold authority either, is it? When we get positions of authority, we think about the rights and privileges that will be afforded to us by that authority. We think about what sort of things can I get to do. I remember vividly when I was 27 years old, I got hired as a Bible teacher and school chaplain at Covenant Christian Academy in Loganville, Georgia. And I remember after I got hired, it was the summertime and I had to ask, can I go begin to get my room ready? They said, sure. And I walked into my classroom for the first time. And I remember looking at it thinking, this is mine. I get to do what I want to in here. I'm going to, I think I have to design a bulletin board. How much can I, what's the least amount that I can put on that and not get in trouble? I was excited to come up with my own class rules. I'm the authority here. I get to, what I say goes. And so I sat down and I tried to generate some class rules and I landed on one class rule. This will surprise none of you. The one, the one class rule I had in my classroom was don't be dumb. That was it. I had it on the bulletin board and those stupid teacher round letters that you staple on. I had don't be dumb on my bulletin board. That was the one class rule. This made discipline very easy because when Aaron is in my class and he does something, he shouldn't, he cheats or he throws something at someone else or whatever it was. I pull Aaron outside and I say, Aaron, is what you did dumb? And he goes, yes, Mr. Rector. And I go, okay, so I'm going to have to punish you. Yes, Mr. Rector. All right, great. Let's go back in. It was very, very simple. But all I cared about in being an authority was what I got to do. And often this is how we hold it. Different than Jesus. Different than Yahya. When we get positions of authority, we think, oh, what do I get to do with this? What good things happen to me? How can I leverage this to continue to grow my authority? And when Jesus gives authority, and when Yahya receives authority, the primary question he is asking is, Father, how can I use this position to serve the people that you've entrusted to me? How can I use this authority to build them up? If we understand leadership to be intentionally deployed influence, which is how I understand it, then how do we use our influence to give away more influence to the people who follow us so that they can rise above us? This is how he holds his authority. Next week, I'm thinking about preaching about how that is possible. But for now, I'm going to leave this there. I told you I wasn't preaching to you this morning. I'm not driving to a single point. I'm sharing with you what I took away from this experience. And those are the two things I took away. First, we must learn what it would look like to behave as a persecuted church in a secure church culture. We must learn to behave more like them if we don't want to die on the vine like the rest of American churches. B, we must learn, I must learn to hold my authority the way that Yahya does. I must learn to hold my authority the way that Jesus tells us to, with an open hand, seeking to serve the people that we are in authority over, not seeking selfishly to make that authority about ourselves. We need to be more like the Iranian church and our leaders need to be more like Yahya. Let me pray and we're going to do a song and then I have a really special treat for those of you that are here in person after that. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for the experience that you gave me. Thank you for impressing upon Rue to invite me. Thank you for the way that it's enriched me. And God, I just pray sincerely that grace can be enriched through my enrichment. That from your fullness flows grace upon grace. And from the fullness that you've given me, God, let it flow onto grace. That we might be a church that behaves more like there's something to do here, like there is a war to fight, that there is a battle to be won. And let us start that by holding our authority and loosely holding it like Jesus tells us to, holding it like my brother Yahya does. Make us more like them so that we might serve you better, so that we might reach future brothers and sisters and bring them into your family. Thank you for the week that you gave me. I pray that I would allow it to change me profoundly and that that change would be communicated and connected to this church at Grace and that we would be exactly who and what you've called us to be. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. We're in the middle of a series called Mark's Jesus, where we're going through the gospel of Mark, looking at who Jesus is and what we know and learn and eventually come to love about him. This week, or when I sat down to write the sermon for this week, what I had scheduled was the kind of quintessential Mark sermon, which is what the gospel of Mark is known for almost more than anything else, which is to lead, you need to be the servant of all. And so I was going to talk about servant leadership and what that means. And we probably will do that one yet. But as I was looking for that passage, I came across another passage that I love. I think it's incredible. I actually think it's the most fantastical, awe-inspiring story in the life of Christ. And one of the most fantastic stories in the whole Bible. And we never really talk about it on Sunday morning, which is the transfiguration. So, if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Mark chapter 9. We're going to be looking at verses 2 through 10 today. The Transfiguration of Christ is, to me, one of the most remarkable stories in Scripture, and it's this picture of Jesus that we really don't get again until the book of Revelation. So, it's maybe the most remarkable story in the gospel outside of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So as I was preparing, I came across this story and I reread it and I went, yeah, I want to talk about this because we hardly ever talk about the transfiguration. I can't remember ever hearing a sermon on the transfiguration of Christ. I've been taught about it in theology classes and maybe a Sunday school type setting, but I can't remember hearing a sermon on it. Doesn't mean I haven't. I just don't remember one. And you guys may not remember one either. I know I've never preached on it, but something dawned on me as I was reading it. And I went, yeah, I want to put that in front of grace, and I want us to have a chance to respond to that. So I'm going to read it so that we're all on the same page about what happened. Some of us might need a refresher. Some of us might not know what it is or what I'm talking about yet, and that's perfectly fine. So I'm going to read through, and then we're going to reflect on it just aling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus. Okay, quick pause right there just so we understand what's happening. What's happening is what sounds like it's happening. Jesus says, hey, Peter, James, and John, come with me. I want to go somewhere. So they followed Jesus up a high mountain. And Peter, James, and John, just as an aside, are known as the inner circle of the disciples. So there was 12 disciples, but Peter, James, and John were the three that he was the closest with. James and John were brothers. Their nickname was the Sons of Thunder, which is just the coolest nickname in the Bible. So they go up to the top of the mountain with Jesus. Jesus is in blazing. He changes. He transfigures. His face starts to glow. He's dressed in blazing white, whiter than anyone could bleach. He starts to glow at the top of the mountain. And then Moses and Elijah appear next to him. Now, what's significant about that is Elijah is the only man to never experience death. God sent a fiery chariot down to scoop him up into heaven because he was so righteous he didn't want him to have to experience it. And Moses is the only man ever buried by God. He died on Mount Noab with no one around and God buried him himself and did the funeral himself. So these are the heroes of the Hebrew faith. And they're glowing like Christ is. All right? So that's what's happening on the top of this mountain. That's why I say it's a fantastic story. Then, pick it up in verse 5. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He did not know what to say. They were so frightened. Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the clouds. This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him. So now they're up there, these three fantastic figures, Jesus, Moses, and Elijah have descended back down from heaven, and they get to witness this. And then the cloud descends, and it's the voice of God. It's Father God now speaking. This is my son. I love him. Obey him. And that's significant because God came down in a cloud and appeared to Moses, and his face glowed so brightly that he had to cover it with a veil. So this is kind of a throwback to what God's done before. Now he's doing it for Jesus. And God appeared to Elijah in a mountain and spoke to him in a whisper. So he's done this to Moses and Elijah. Now he's doing it to Christ with the disciples near him. That's why it's a big moment. Suddenly, verse 8, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what rising from the dead meant. Which that last one is just a little bit of a hint that they still didn't really understand who Jesus was and what he came to do because they didn't know what rising from the dead meant. They didn't know that he would have to do that. So that's the story. It's this remarkable moment in the life of Christ nestled in the middle of the Gospels. I find it to be completely fantastic and completely awe-inspiring. And when you read it, you kind of go, okay, well, what do I do with that? So you can talk about the theological implications of what's going on there, and that's fine. What's happening here is this is a picture of the end of days. This is an acknowledgement from God that Moses and Elijah, Elijah represents the prophets, Moses represents the law, and it's God saying that Jesus, he's got the Father saying that Jesus, God the Son, is fulfilling both the law and the prophets and is the conclusion of the lives and ministries of Moses and Elijah, that he is the right heir to those things. And now he's coming in to do things for all time. So that's the symbolism of what's happening there. And we can talk about that. But what I'd rather talk about is this. And this is a hard right turn, but you'll come with me. What I'd rather talk about is when I was a kid and the first time I saw Luke Skywalker. When I was a kid, I'm sure that there were other heroes that I was aware of before Luke Skywalker. Spider-Man and Batman and Superman, I'm sure. But there was something about when I was a kid and I saw Luke Skywalker for the first time. And I watched those Star Wars movies for the first time. And here's this hero. I'm completely in awe of him. I'm marveling at him. He's incredible. He defeats the Empire. I'm terrified of Darth Vader. There's never been a better villain in the history of villains in any sort of story creation ever. And Luke, I just remember being enamored with him. I just thought he was amazing. And I thought that the Star Wars movies were amazing and captivating and sweeping in a way that I had never experienced anything before in my life. And so when I read this story and I think about the way that Jesus appears and what he does and how fantastic it is, it conjures up within me those wisps and hints of what it felt like to be a kid and to worship a hero and to marvel at a hero, right? So when I read this, that's what I see here. And what occurred to me is that now when I think about the Transfiguration and what I saw that I wanted to put in front of grace Was that the Transfiguration? Reminds us that we were made to marvel at Christ We were made to marvel at Christ that childhoodination, that fragrance of adolescence, of how I felt when I saw Luke Skywalker on the screen, about how I felt about having big, bold heroes that I loved and I wanted to wear their shoes and their shirts and all that stuff. The way I felt when I saw those things, that's conjured up within me when I read the transfiguration and I see the depiction of my Jesus up on to marvel at Christ. And what I know that is true of us is that we all have this inclination in us to worship a hero. We all, at some point or another, had that childhood wonder where we marveled at someone else, where we made someone else the object of our affection and our worship, whether it was a fictional character or a real person, we all at different times in our life have looked and have glorified heroes that we see. And here's how I know this is true. There's many, many ways I know this is true, but here's one, and I thought this would be a fun exercise. I would like you to raise your hand if in your childhood bedroom you had a poster of an athlete or a celebrity or a superhero? Yeah. Jeffy, who was yours? It was Theismann, wasn't it? Yeah, it was Theismann. Tom, who was yours? Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Yeah, there you go. We all did. I had Michael Jordan. I don't know why. I was not a Green Bay Packers fan, and I never even cared about the guy. I think I got it for free, like a leftover at the book fair. So Sterling Sharp, Green Bay Packers, number 84. Great. There you go. Go Pack Go. We all had that when we were kids. Some of us, maybe you still do. I don't know. It's cool if you have a poster. And then we carry this into our culture, even in adulthood. We have celebrity worship. We worship celebrities. We have whole magazines that are published to tell us about the lives of the celebrities. And I don't understand them. There's a picture of like, look, Ashlyn Tolbert gets coffee just like I do. Like, great. I wonder how she takes it. Nobody cares. But we worship these celebrities. We put them on a pedestal. We see them. We marvel at them, and we wonder at them. And we also see this, and I've got to thread the needle here, but we see this in our political figures too, where one individual can often become the focal point of an entire party and the focal point of an ideology that says that is our hero and they are going to do what we need them to do to maintain our standards and the life that we want or to bring about the life that we want for our country. But we aggrandize our politicians and we engage in a little bit of hero worship from time to time. I'm not saying you do that with your vote, but I'm saying if we both think a little bit hard, we can see that happening where people make politicians their heroes. And it's because of this inclination that we have within us that drives us to worship heroes, that drives us to want to marvel at somebody or at something. And because of that, you may think that this idea of worshiping a hero is actually not a positive one. It's not something that we should do. That's something that we should grow out of. That's something that we leave in childhood, and in adulthood, we're more realistic about the expectations of our heroes, that we place on our heroes. We look up to them, but we don't worship them. We don't marvel at them. And this culture that we can create where we engage in hero worship is actually not a healthy one. So maybe we don't even agree with, we were created to marvel at Christ. We were created to worship the hero that is Christ. Maybe we find that premise fundamentally problematic because we've seen the downside of hero worship. But to that, I would suggest this, that all perversion is misplaced desire. All perversion in life, whenever we see that, all it is is a result of misplaced desire. We were all created with the desire for our spouse. We were all created with a desire for someone else physically. We all have that. And so God in his goodness gives us spouses that become the correct vessels of that desire. They're the ones that if you're, if you're a married man, your wife is to be the receiver of that desire. She is the vessel to hold that. She's where you put that. And it becomes perversion when we put it anywhere else besides the gift that God has given us and our spouse, right? We can have a desire for food. We can have a desire and appetite for good Right? to you with this inclination towards hero worship is when we put it in an athlete or a politician or a fictional character or anything else that's not Jesus, all we're doing is perverting a natural inclination to marvel at a hero, something that we all carry. And so this morning, what I want to suggest to you is to just consider the fact that you were made to marvel at a hero. You were made to worship a hero. You were made to hear stories like the transfiguration about your Jesus and go, whoa. You were made to read Revelation and hear Jesus go, I am the Alpha and the Omega and I hold the keys to death and Hades and go, whew, that's great. That's a natural inclination that God gave you so that you would turn that in praise and marvel to him. And so I just want, you probably haven't thought about that in a minute, but I want to reacquaint you with that possibility that God created you to actually marvel at him and to worship him. And so that inclination is a good one. The problem is we've misplaced it so many times that we don't trust it anymore. And this is why the older you are, I think the harder it is to marvel at Christ. The older you are, the harder it is to be awed at something, to wonder at something. Because with every passing year, with every year that goes by, the older we get, the more we've seen our heroes fall. The more they've let us down. The more the people that we place on the pedestal and that we want to be like, we learn they're human too. And we learn that the fictional characters are fake. And that Luke Skywalker doesn't exist. And what hero worship does when it's misplaced, when it's not, when Christ isn't the vessel for that worship, and we make people or things or places the vessels for that worship, what happens is they lead to disappointment and disillusionment. I'm disappointed and I don't understand. And then we retract and we bring that instinct back into ourselves. And instead of expressing it in its proper way, we repress it and we displace it and we say that's not appropriate for adults I'm a 55 year old man I don't need a hero yes you do yes you do and you were given an inclination by your Creator to marvel at and worship that hero and the Transfiguration shows him in this full display that reminds us that he's the savior of the universe and that that is true and that is right and that that is good. But I think the older we get, the harder it is to allow ourselves to worship a hero. But I want to try to encourage you to think about maybe it's because you've repressed a good natural inclination because life has taught you so, not because that's not a good thing to do. So we need to get over that challenge to marveling at Christ. There's one more challenge that I want to mention that I think we can butt up against when we are trying to marvel at Christ and worship our hero. And that is committing the mistake of Peter. Now, I don't know if you caught it. And I don't want you to look down yet because it'll ruin the setup. I don't know if you caught what Peter's first words were when he got up there at the transfiguration. But this is, to me, the most hilarious, stupidest thing that's said in the whole Bible. I can't get over how obnoxiously, mind-numbingly dumb what Peter said was. Okay? Let's just make sure we understand where we're at. Peter, the disciple of Christ, the Messiah, the incarnate God, is following him up a mountain. As he follows, the only person who's ever been 100% man and 100% God, as he follows the Savior of the universe who holds the keys to death and Hades up the mountain. That figure begins to glow in bright white and take on his heavenly form. And Peter begins to get a glimpse of what he condescended from to take on flesh. He begins to get to see that. And he looks around, and there's only three humans in the world that get into this circle, that get into this meeting, into this place, that have this experience. And then after Jesus starts to glow, one guy who never died is just back on a mountain again. And another guy that God did the funeral for that represents the biggest hero in his religion is sitting right there. And they just start talking, it says. They start chatting it up. Peter is in the middle of that. And this is Peter's response. I think it's hilarious. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Jesus, listen, I know you guys are talking just real quick. Just want to mention, you're lucky I'm here. Would you like us to build you tents? It is a patently absurd thing to say. It is completely tone deaf and not self-aware at all. It would be like if I were somehow golfing with George W. Bush. And on the ninth fairway, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln just show up. And they start talking. And I went in, I was like, hey, what's up? Hey, George, do you guys have any questions for me? Like, it's the stupidest thing ever. Shut up, Peter. Shut up and marvel at your Jesus. But here's the mistake of Peter. Oh, this is one more thing that I think is funny. Parenthetically, verse 6 says, he did not know what to say. They were so frightened. So Mark, this is why it's funny. Mark is kind of Peter's right-hand man. He's kind of writing this on behalf of Peter, right? Mark wasn't a disciple. Peter was. And so Peter's telling him these stories. The transfiguration is in other gospels. And Peter's stupid comments in other gospels. This is the only one that says, hey, could you just put in there real quick? We were told we were really scared. We didn't know what to say. It's funny to me. But here's the mistake of Peter, and this is what we do. We tend to make it about ourselves and not our Savior. When Jesus shows up in our life, when he does amazing things, when we have a moment to sit back and marvel at our Savior, so often in those moments we make it about ourselves instead of shutting up and worshiping our hero, instead of being quiet and sitting down and marveling. What Peter should have done is fallen on his knees and worshiped his Savior and thanked his God that he was able to be here in this moment. But he missed it because he made it about himself. What he should have done is looked at James and John and go, are you seeing this? Holy smokes. But instead he made it about himself. Instead he said, okay, he immediately went to, what am I supposed to do with this? And there are times in my life when Jesus has shown up in an absolutely profound way. And what I do is I make it about myself. I make it about, okay, how am I going to take this and get over the next thing that I need to get over? How am I going to use this to move through? So often as a pastor, I go, okay, how do I teach this? How do I share this? I'm already starting to do it. On Saturday, I'm going to fly to Istanbul, and I have the incredible privilege of getting to work with a guy named Rusin and help train. I'm just going to be in the room with a group of Iranian pastors that lead illegal churches in Iran. And I'm going to sit in the room with that kind of faith. And I'm going to listen to Ru teach them and I'm going to watch them interact. I'm going to listen to the questions that they ask. And I can already feel my mind going to, how can I help in that room? How can I add value? How can I encourage them? What sermons should I bring back to share with grace? And you know what I probably need to do? Shut up and marvel at Christ and listen and be humbled by what he's doing in these places. There are times in our lives when Jesus shows up in an unexpectedly profound way, maybe through the birth of a child, through a miraculous healing, through times of great joy and times of great grief. And so often in those moments, because we don't know what else to do with ourselves, we miss it. And we make it about ourselves and not our Savior. When what we should be doing is shutting up and marveling at our Jesus and worshiping our hero. So as I was going through this and thinking through it and writing it, I realized that what I wanted to do this morning, rather than continue to preach to you through word, is I wanted to worship with you in communion and worship with you in song. So we're going to take communion together. And we're going to do that because what I want to do for the rest of our time together this morning is just stop and be still and marvel at our Jesus. I want us to stop and be still and worship our Savior. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take communion. So elders, you all can come up and get ready to serve that. And when we take communion, I'm not even going to pray to end the sermon because this is part of the sermon. Because as I was writing it, I went to Gibson. And I said, hey, man, I'm going to set you up. You finish the sermon in song. We will preach it in worship through communion and through song. And so as we take communion, I want to leave you with this thought of where we should focus as we seek to marvel at Jesus. He loves you. He died for you. He advocates for you. He waits for you. He loves you. He loves you enough to leave that form and condescend to take on human form. He loves you enough to die for you. He loves you enough to sit at the right hand of the Father and advocate for you as your high priest, and he loves you enough to wait for you where he's preparing a place. I don't know how Jesus has shown up in your life. I don't know what your moments are that you don't want to miss, but I would like to encourage you to take the next 10 to 15 minutes and marvel at your Savior. Look at the cross. Think about his love for you. Reflect on how he's shown up and what your gratitude is. But let's stop and shut up and worship our hero. So when we take communion, we do it because Jesus started this tradition before his death. When he took the bread that was on the Passover table the night that he was arrested and he broke it and he said, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. A way to phrase it this morning is every time you do this, marvel at me. Be awed by me. Wonder at me. Worship me. He's our hero, the savior of the universe. Then he took the wine and he poured it and he said, this is my blood that spilled out for you. Every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. So instead of me praying, what I'm going to invite you to do is to go ahead and stand. And I'd like to encourage you as you go through, you go out the sides and back up the middle. If you're not comfortable taking communion, just walk right past the elders. You don't have to do that this morning. But if you are comfortable taking it, take the bread and dip it in the grape juice and cup that in your hand and go back to your seat and sit down and you pray yourself and you allow God to prepare your heart to marvel at him. And let's finish the service worshiping him in communion and worshiping him in song. Go ahead.