Sermons tagged with Eternity

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, everybody. My name is Nate. Hey, who yelled that? Hey, Maker. Good morning to you, pal. Good to see you. I'm just going to keep this in my pocket and hope that works. This is Family Jammy Sunday. I love this Sunday. I love how festive everyone is. A couple thoughts about it. First of all, you may look at my good friend Steve Brown over here and think, dude, you're wearing a blazer. That's not very festive. In his defense, this is how he sleeps, okay? Those are his pajamas. He's being very festive today. I also think it's really funny that we got up and we showered and some of us did makeup and hair and everything and then we put pajamas back on. So I think what we should do next year is just all agree that those of us who are going to participate, because we like fun, are going to just go to bed in these pajamas. And however we wake up is how we come to church. Then we'll be a real family together, you know? Before I just dive into the sermon, thank you for coming to Grace. If you're watching online, thank you for watching wherever you are and whatever you may be doing. I want to stop and acknowledge this is our last Sunday together in 2025. And I think it's appropriate to pause and say that. This has been a good year for us. God has blessed us. He's blessed us with new people, with new families. I got a lot of comments. I can't remember if it was last Sunday or Sunday before last. They all blur together to me. Was it last Sunday that we did the kids sing? Was that last Sunday? I got a lot of comments from folks who don't have kids in the kids men that went, holy cow, we have so many kids. Yeah, we do. We have about 50 plus kids per week. It's amazing. God's been really good to us. We were able to announce that we're going to move forward with the building campaign or with actually getting the building out of the ground. We're in the campaign. We've got a little ways to go, but we've hit the gas and we're moving forward. And we hope that two years from now we'll be worshiping in the new building for Christmas. So that's really cool too. But God has been really good to us this year. So before I just finish, before we just finish the year without acknowledging it, would you stop and pray a prayer of gratitude with me and then we'll get into the sermon. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for what you've done. God, we like to say that we think you like this church. We don't know why you like us, but you seem to. And you always take care of us. And you always guide us down the right paths. And you always provide for us in unexpected ways. We thank you for the families that are here, for the leaders that are here, for the servants that are here, for the hearts that are here. And we pray that we would continue to do our best to be good stewards of the people you entrust us with. Thank you for 2025, for the year that it was. Thank you for walking with us through it in the high times and in the lows. And God, as we look forward to this next year, we pray that you would continue to walk with us as we attempt to continue to walk with you. In Jesus' name, amen. This morning in our series, Here We Go A-Wassling, where we're looking at different Christmas songs and finding the meaning within them so that hopefully it can imbue them with greater meaning for us as we sing them, not just this Christmas, but in the Christmases to come. This morning, we arrive at what I believe to be one of the most underrated Christmas songs ever. Now, when I call it this, I know that I run this risk. I may be up here trumpeting my own ignorance, and I'm aware of that. And you may be thinking, well, that's no different than any Sunday, Nate. And that is true, but those other Sundays, I might not be aware that I'm doing it. But this Sunday, I could be doing it because I could say this hymn or this Christmas song, and you'd be like, yeah, no kidding. That's one of my all-time favorites. But I think for many of us, this is not one that we think of a lot, which is Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. Now, I've heard some people mispronounce it, Come Thou Long Expectant Jesus. That's a different song, all right? That's not what we believe. Okay, so it's Come Thou Long Expected Jesus by his people. That's the song. Now, what you may not know about this song is that it was written in 1744 by a man named John Wesley. If you have a Methodist background, then you stand on the shoulders, or it was written by Charles Wesley, rather. You stand on the shoulders, thanks Liz, she's my walking, she's my real-time editor. Just, If there's giggles, I've said something incorrect, and I'll hear about it afterwards. When she walked in today, because I'm going to use it later in the sermon, I just grabbed her and I said, what's the name of the Grinch's dog? And she said, Max. And I'm like, all right, great, thanks. And she kept walking. It was written by Charles Wesley in 1744. John and Charles Wesley started the Methodist denomination, and it is said that over their lifetime, just allow me to be a history nerd for just a second, 9% of you will care about this, but those who do will deeply care. It's said that over their lifetime, they rode over 250,000 miles by horseback through the countrysides of England and the United States, traveling as itinerant preachers. They would go to a church in the morning, they would preach, then they would get on their horse and they would travel to the next town, they would get there and preach. And church just started when they showed up, which would be really nice, because I get here at about 5.45 on Sunday mornings, and if you could just all be here, we could get on with our days afterwards. The church just starts when the pastor shows up, but that's how it worked, and they would preach three, four, five times a Sunday and then make the circuit again, and that's how they spread the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the countryside. They have a really rich history of faith. John was more of the preacher, and Wesley was more of the poet, and he wrote hymns and songs and poems. And this, I believe, is one of his best ones. And it is absolutely dripping with scripture. It is so rich in scripture. It's so rich in scripture that as I've gone through these songs, I've tried to see like, what's the point of the song? Where is it taking us? And you might remember that a couple of years ago, we did a series called The Songs We Sing, where we looked at hymns, not Christmas songs, but hymns that we sing throughout the year. And we said, where are these coming from in Scripture? And generally, they're all coming from the same place, and you can kind of funnel towards the same direction. But as I got to this particular hymn, this particular Christmas song, it was difficult to pick one way to go because it's so replete with spiritual richness. You can tell that the man who wrote this knew his Bible incredibly well, and it drips out of the words. So rather than focusing our attention on one thing, what I want to do is walk through the way that we're going to sing it today, much to the chagrin of some. We're going to sing the first two verses and then a bridge, and we're going to talk about that bridge when we get there. But I want to go through it. I'm going to read through it line by line. Some of the lines are going to come up on the screen, and I want to show you where it comes from in Scripture. So here's what I'll say up front. Every point that I make this morning, every verse that I share, every insight that I have into a particular line may not be the one for you, but I hope that this morning you can grab on to something that will sit with you, that as you sing it, because I'm going to preach to the song. I'm not going to pray at the end of my sermon. The band's going to come up at a certain point. We have a carefully crafted cue. It's going to work perfectly, just like my microphone. And they're going to come up, and I'm going to step down, and we're going to go straight into song. The idea is for me to preach in such a way that we catch something of meaning that imbues this with something that stirs our hearts, and then we stand and we sing and we shout together in full-throated praise of God with a new appreciation of what this song is. So let's dive into it and look at the lyrics of the song. Of course, the first line that won't be on the screen is, Come thou long expected Jesus. That's what it says first. And so I want us to really understand what that is, what that means, why it's there. Come thou long expected Jesus. So let's put ourselves in the mindset of the contemporaries of Joseph and Mary. And someone we'll talk about in a few minutes, a man named Simeon. And John the Baptist. And Elizabeth. Let's put ourselves in the contemporary, in the place of the believers who lived at the same time as Joseph and Mary in the pregnant months and days before the Messiah was born. Now, they were Jews. And if you are a Jewish person, you are descendant from Abraham. And they were clinging to a promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. And if you've been here for any length of time, you've heard me say that you really cannot understand the Bible without having a proper appreciation and understanding of what happens in Genesis 12. A very quick breakdown of the beginning of the Old Testament. The first three chapters is the creation poem. That's how we got here. In the beginning, God created is the first sentence in the Bible, first stanza of the Bible. And that sets up the fundamental relationship for all of eternity. God is the creator and we are the created. God is the creator and we are the creation. And you'll see in those first three chapters, we have what's called the fall of man. And what was man's great sin? It was listening to his wife. But what was the wife's great sin? The wife's great sin and the man's was elevating themselves from creation to know, I want to be Lord like the Creator. I don't want to submit to Him. I want to be like Him. I can know right from wrong, and I can be my own Lord, and I can be my own King. That's the fundamental sin of all mankind. And anything that you have in your life that you might think of as sin or question as sin, the root of it is, nope, God, I'm not going to accept your standards and your lordship. I'm going to make myself lord of my own life. I'm going to put myself on equal playing field with you, on par with you, okay? So that's what the first three chapters address. Then after that, chapters 4 to 11 is what's called the prehistoric narrative. And we have two separate times where God is revealing himself to all of mankind in the exact same way, giving us the chance to respond to him in the exact same way. And one of them ends terribly with the flood in Genesis chapter 6. And then he says, okay, let's try again. Hamshim and Japheth, y'all go populate the earth. Those are the sons of Noah. Y'all go populate the earth. And then that leads to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, where they try to build a tower to reach the sky. Why? To be like God. And God says, I've given you your chance to come to me all at once by revealing myself to you all at once. Now the redemptive focus of God goes from the whole world down to one family, one man, Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans, which we know is the Sumerian dynasty. And God tells Abraham, I want you to go to this place where I will show you. And so he gathers up all of his things and he leaves with his wife Sarai at the time, later to become Sarah. And they go to what we know as Israel, the promised land. And when they get there, this is the important part, God says to Abraham, I'm going to make you a promise. I'm going to enter into a covenant with you. We know it as the Abrahamic covenant. That I'm going to give you this land that you're on right now, Israel, the promised land. God's kept that promise. The Hebrew people have it. And then he said, your descendants are going to be like the sand on the shore and the stars in the sky. God's kept that promise. The Jewish diaspora sprawls throughout the entire globe. And then he said, and one of those descendants is going to bless the whole earth. This is the messianic promise. This is the promise to which the descendants of Abraham cling throughout the Old Testament. And the span of time between Abraham and the birth of Christ, where we pick it up in Matthew, the span of time between Genesis 12 and Matthew chapter 1 is about 2,000 years. So for 2,000 years, granddaddies and dads and grandmas and moms would pass on their faith through oral tradition to their children. And they would take them to the synagogue or to the temple. And the rabbis and the priests would teach their children about this Messiah, amongst other things, about this Messiah who is to come. He's known as the coming one. And there's prophecies about him. And every generation, they wait and they look. And every generation, they hope and they wonder, is Jesus going to come? Is God going to keep his promise? Are they going to send the promise? Is the promised Messiah coming? Is he born yet? Is he here yet? Every generation looks with anticipation for this Jesus. So when we arrive in Matthew chapter 1 and in Luke chapter 2, these famous birth stories, what we have is 2,000 years of patient waiting for the Messiah to arrive. So this opening line, come thou long expected Jesus, that is what it's referring to, is that 2,000 year wait. Now here's where we can relate to this. You don't have to use your imagination to put yourself there. Unless you became a Christian last week, you understand that one of our hopes and one of our expectations is that Jesus is going to come again. Is that the Messiah will come back. And that he will come crashing through the clouds and he will get us. And he will take us to heaven. And there will be a new heaven and a new earth and that we'll be a part of it. So we have the same angst and agony and waiting that later we're going to talk about in Romans chapter 8 that they did in Joseph and Moses and Jerry's time. We'll go with that. In their time. We have that same anticipation and waiting. And do you not think that in those 2,000 years that there were kids that grew up in houses where mom and dad told them Jesus is coming, a Messiah is coming, a Messiah is coming, and that those kids went, I don't think he is. I'm out. Just like in our families that happens. You don't think there's some attrition over time and then some revivals over time in ancient Israel. There were. And there are now. So we don't have to stretch to relate to this line, come thou long expected Jesus, which is where we start. Then after that, I love this line, born to set thy people free from what? From our fears and sins release us Scripture that more adequately, accurately, and completely describes this dynamic than in Romans 6, verses 6-11. So read with me these verses. Here's what Paul's saying there. He's saying that before you knew Jesus, you were like a blind person groping in the dark and you didn't know where to go. Before you knew Jesus, you had no choice but to sin. You were a slave to it. He says in another book that our righteous deeds are as filthy rags if we have no faith. It's this idea that if we don't know Jesus, that even the good things we do are so marred with motives and a rejection of his lordship that they can't be considered righteous. We cannot do righteous things aside from Christ. We have, therefore, no choice but to sin when we are apart from Christ. But what Paul tells us is when we are buried with him in death and raised to walk in newness of life, this picture of baptism that we find in Romans 5 and Romans 6, that we actually walk in this newness of life where we are no longer slaves to sin. And because we know Jesus and because he's cleansed us and because he's sanctifying us, making us more like him in character, we now have the option not to sin. That the good things we do can be in submission to the lordship of God and motivated by the right things and a love for other people because we have Jesus in our hearts and we're no longer a slaves to sin. So the things that we struggle with and that trip us up, the things that we're ashamed of, the things that hold us in shackles, the things that we don't want anybody to know, when Jesus comes, we are no longer a slave to those. So Charles Wesley says, from our sins, release us. That's what he means, we're no longer a slave to sin. But he also says, from our fears. From our fears, release us. And it's covered in that verse too. Any society you go to, anywhere in the world, the greatest fear of everyone in the room is death. Now, Jerry Seinfeld has this great joke where some of you guys know it. I heard some giggles. Where he says that he saw a study recently where the number one fear of people is public speaking. And that just below that was death. And his joke is that means if you go to a funeral, the person speaking would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. That's a funny joke. It's also stupid. No one would rather actually do that. I've given plenty of eulogies. They're not that hard. You just read them. If you're literate and your mouth works, you can give a eulogy. So we all have this fear of death. And we have this fear of death because it seems so final. That when we watch someone we love wither away, and one day they close their eyes and they don't open them again, it feels so final and so done. If there's a tragedy and someone dies suddenly, it feels so final and so complete. But what we know is that those who believe in Christ are saved, and that we're resurrected to heaven, so that when we say goodbye to a loved one, we say goodbye for now, not forever. And that as we face death ourselves, as we grapple with our own mortality, we know that one day we are going to cross that bridge too, but when we do, we say goodbye for now and not forever. I don't know if you've ever had the privilege of watching someone slowly march towards their own death and cross that horizon. But I can think of three people, I will not enumerate them, but I can think of three people in my life that I watched in faith accept the fact that they were going to die in the coming weeks and months and it was unwavering and their joy was completely steady and their smile was constantly there and they were excited to meet their God. Why? Because Jesus has released them from their fears. So we sing that line, born to set thy people free from our fears and sins, release us. We're no longer slaves to sin and we don't have to fear death. That's a wonderful line. Then it says, let us find our rest in thee. That's an allusion to come ye all who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I am gentle and humble in heart and in me you will find rest. Let us find our rest in you. Then, I love this line and we may not know what this means at first, Israel's strength and consolation. Israel's strength and consolation is found most pointedly in Luke chapter 2, verse 25. This is the famous story of Simeon holding up baby Jesus. I'll read the verse and I'll explain to you what's going on. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was on him. Some of you may remember, I've done this sermon twice here, once at another church. And if it were up to me, I would preach this sermon every year on Christmas. I call it the zeal of Simeon. And I think it captures Christmas. And so you walk through all the eras of the Old Testament. Is the Messiah here? Is the Messiah here? Is it Moses? No. Is it David? No. Is it Elijah? No. And you walk through all of these people until you get to Jesus. And Simeon was a devout and righteous man. And he had pledged a vow of silence until he was able to lay eyes on the Messiah. And so Mary brought Jesus to the temple after his birth. And Simeon happened to be there, and he essentially says, I can die now. I'm happy, for I have received the consolation of Israel. Israel's strength and consolation. It always makes me smirk a little bit when I hear people talking about the state of our world and all the tragedies that happen. How can there be a God if there's this many hardships? If there's this much tragedy? And I think, well, it's a fair thought. And that's its own discussion. But if you look at the scope of history, you've got it pretty easy. We're like billionaires complaining that the air conditioning isn't exactly right. Do you know how much harder it was to live in ancient Israel than it is to live in America, in an ancient third-world country without running water or electricity? Do you know how much infant death they dealt with? Do you know what life expectancy was, mid-40s? Do you have any idea how hard it was to go to war every year? Do you have any idea how hard it is to tend your own crops just to feed your own family? No, we have no concept of how hard it was. Israel was a nation of slaves born in Egypt that had to be set free by God in a miraculous way. They went through a series of judges where they were oppressed by surrounding nations and the judges had to beat back the oppression. They went through a series of kings. They had kings for several hundred years and they only had three good ones. They were sunk into civil war. They were ruled by evil men. They got taken over by the Babylonians and by the Persians and carried off into slavery. They spent generations in slavery in Persia and in Babylon wondering if they would ever get back to the promised land that God had promised to them. Parents had to convince their children, God has not forgotten about us, we just have to wait on his timing. It was really hard to be an Israelite. They needed consoling, and they got it in the person of Jesus. Israel's strength and consolation. And I don't want to do the Olympics of suffering. We suffer too, and you suffer too. But if you want to talk to people who had known suffering and needed consolation, it was the people of Israel. But Jesus is our consolation too, and he waits on us as well. He is our strength and our consolation. Then we finish that verse kind of in summary. Hope of all the earth thou art, dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart, joy of every heart. And it reminded me of this verse. There's plenty of places we could look at for this particular ethic or idea, but this is where I go. You make known to me the path of life. You fill me with joy in your I learned the verse. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. During this time of year, you'll hear the word Emmanuel more than you hear any other time of year. And many of you know that Emmanuel means God with us. And so in Jesus' presence, we usher it down, and in so doing, we say, bring us your joy. We hope in you, dear desire of every nation, hope of all the earth thou art, and joy of every longing heart. So in him, we find joy. That's why we sing joy to the world. That's why this is such a festive time of year. And so that's how we kind of sum it up. When Jesus comes down, he brings joy with him. And so to sing to him and invite him in is to invite his joy, sometimes in a place where we need it desperately. Now we go to verse two. Born thy people to deliver. We've talked about that. And I love this part. Born a child and yet a king. This takes us to the most famous Christmas verse in scripture. And I believe that this is part of Handel's Messiah. Is that right? Does anybody know? Okay, good. Thank you. Liz knows. Of course she does. Would you like to just write my sermons, please? For to us, a child is born. And by the way, every year I try to get Gibby to do Handel's Messiah because it's amazing and I love it, but it requires a choir and an orchestra and he gets a little lazy, you know? Like he doesn't care very much about the church. He's just getting through it. So at the new church, I haven't told you guys this yet, we're actually going to have an orchestra pit. It's going to be great. I'm kidding, guys. We're not going to do that. We're going to seat 100 less people, but we will have an oboe. The verse says this, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. So, Charles condenses that to born a child and yet a king. But when you expand it and you extrapolate it, it very clearly comes out of Isaiah. Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. Because then it says, born to reign in us forever. Now thy gracious kingdom bring. Here, I would just point you to Romans chapter 10 verse 9. If you declare with your mouth is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring. I love this part, and this part's a good reminder. Because these two verses here, the first two, are focused on Christmas. And what Christmas is. And welcoming in this baby Jesus. It starts appropriately. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not there yet, Ms. Lynn. I know, I'm hard to follow. I don't give her any notes or anything. She just has to guess and she does a great job and I do a poor one. We have a lot of joy in this season. We celebrate a lot. And these verses point towards Christmas. They remind us of the coming Messiah. They start the exact right way. Come thou long expected Jesus. And then it tells us of the sentiments of Christmas and what we want to usher in. Born a child and yet a king. Call us to you. Reign in us. Reign through us. Come and claim your kingdom. But these lines remind us of something very important that we tend to overlook. At Christmas, we all have our celebrations, and we should do them, except for wearing a Steeler's hat. Anne Francis, you don't even like the Steelers. Keith, his disease is spreading. I know. I know. We all have our traditions. This week we went to, there's a street in Bedford called Winter Song. And you go and you park. It's awesome. It's absolutely incredible. And we would just walk down it and take it in. It's like it's from a movie. We like to go to this house where there's a radio station tuned to the different things in the front yard. I saw one in Falls River where it said tuned to like 97.3 and they had like four lights out there and I'm like, no thanks, pal. I'll just listen to my own Christmas music. But we have these different traditions and those are wonderful things to do with our families. I remember growing up, I loved Christmas. I loved Christmas. My favorite thing was we would go to my mom's family's house, the Greens, with three E's. You guys can figure out where the E's go. And we would go on Christmas Eve. We'd go in the afternoon. We'd take everybody's presents. Everything would be wrapped. And we'd hang out all afternoon. Mama was in the kitchen bustling. Papa was helping a little bit, but that was Mama's deal. She was getting dinner ready for everybody. And we're running around with everybody. It was my mom. My mom was the oldest of four. We had Uncle Degg, who in the 80s, his nickname was Flash, and his wife Sally called him Flash. Quick story about Flash, he got in a motorcycle accident and had to be rushed to the hospital with a broken leg. To visit him, his wife had to get wheeled in because both of her legs were broken because she was hanging her foot out of the car when she flipped it a few days ago. So that's just a good, fun story about Uncle Deg. Then we had Aunt Lori, and we had Aunt Deanna, and eventually we had Uncle Glenn when she met him. This is a deep cut, but Uncle Glenn and Aunt Deanna were the closest thing to Todd and Margo I've ever met in my life. They were pretty awesome. And then I had my cousins, Kim and Randy and Jeffrey and then my sister Amy and we'd run around all day. And then the next day we'd come back and we were allowed to bring our favorite toy that Santa brought us and we'd go back and we'd spend the whole day at Mama and Papa's again with everybody and it was awesome. But every third year we had to fly down to Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and have Christmas with my dad's mom and stepdad, and that was the worst. I hated it, and my weird cousins that I didn't really know, I hated going down there, and then I had to pretend to love my family, and I didn't. I still don't, and that's true. I love some of them. Uncle Glenn and Debbie, if you're watching this, I love you. You're one of the ones. They do keep up sometimes. But my favorite tradition was when I was at Mama and Papa's house in the afternoons. Papa would get this little mischievous grin on his face, and he'd get down on his hands and knees, and suddenly he became Max the dog, and I became the Grinch. And we'd sneak from his bedroom to the living room, real low, so nobody could see us, although everybody did. And we'd sneak over to the Christmas tree, and we'd grab up all of Mama's presents, and then we'd scamper, giggling like school children, back into their bedroom and hide them. And then that night, we'd go to open presents, and Mama played her part, made a big fuss, why didn't I get any presents? Where are my presents? She's very upset. We're giggling maniacally. And then we rush back, and we get the presents, because now my Grinch heart has grown ten times, and we give Mama all of her presents, and she opens them last. I loved doing that. And those are good traditions, and we should have those, and I hope that you do too. But let us not forget that Jesus didn't come to give us Christmas traditions. He didn't come to give us an excuse to celebrate and to gorge ourselves on food and to get gifts and to give gifts. He didn't come to give us the Christmas season. What he came to do is rule, and he didn't even come to be the Lord of the universe alone. He came to be the Lord of you. At Christmas, Jesus didn't come to give us an excuse to celebrate. He didn't come to give us traditions. He didn't even come for us to experience joy. He came to be the king of the universe, for the government to be upon his shoulder and provide peace for eternity. But let us not forget that he also came to be the king of you. Remember that fundamental relationship? He came to remind you to set it straight. So let's have our fun at Christmas. But Jesus came to be Lord of your life too. Yeah? Now, we're going to move to the bridge. Before we do, three quick points. First one, we got a little preview. The first two verses in this point us towards Christmas. I noticed this as I went through the song. These two verses, they're backward focused. So we look in the rear view mirror, we remember Christmas, and we put ourselves where it was and what it was, and we remember all that it was. And so we appreciate Christmas. So they point us to Christmas. And what I love about the bridge that we're about to go through that was added on subsequent to in later years by other artists is that this, the end of the song points us to eternity, which is the ultimate point of Christmas. So now we focused on Christmas and what we're about to do in the song is look forward to eternity. And that's the point of Christmas. The point of Christmas now is to remind us this, that Christmas reminds us that God keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that God keeps his promises. For 2,000 years, for 2,000 years, next week we're going to look at this line in O Holy Night, long lay the world in sin and error pining. For 2,000 years they looked forward to the reception of this Messiah. Then they received him. Now for the last 2,000 years, we anticipate his return. So Christmas every year is a reminder, God kept his promise once after a 2,000 year wait. He'll keep it again. Okay? That's what Christmas is for. Now, I'm tight on time, so I want to go through this quickly. The first several lines, you draw the hearts of shepherds, you draw the hearts of kings. Even as a baby, you were changing everything. You called me to your kingdom before your lips could speak, and even as a baby, you were reaching out for me. Those are wonderful lines, but I want to focus on what follows. Because when we sing it, you're going to feel the song start to build as these lines come up. And you're going to kind of, that's when I want to kind of jump out of my shoes and just really let it go. And here's what we sing. And now we are awaiting the day of your return. See, now we're focused on eternity. Yes, celebrate Christmas. Now we're focused on eternity. It reminded me of these verses. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. So what we have is this great group of verses in Romans chapter 8 that says, we know that all of creation has been groaning for the return of the King, for the return of the Messiah that came and then left and is looking forward to his return. Not only that, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies. We were designed to long for Christ. And so Christmas orients us in Christ's coming and then points us towards his future return. That's what it's for. All of creation groans for that. When every eye will see you as heaven comes to earth. I'm going to go through this one, Lynn. I'm not going to read this one. As heaven comes to earth, this is from Revelation 21, 1 through 4, where it says God will be with his people and his people will be with their God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. It speaks of this kingdom, this new heaven, and this new earth that we anticipate as we look towards eternity. Until the sky is open, until the trumpet sounds, that's all from Revelation. This is another reason why it's pointing us towards eternity. This whole last stanza is rooted in Revelation. It's looking forward to the second return of Christ. And then this line that feels like a throwaway line, but man, it's such an important one. And I want to rest here for just a second, if you'll indulge me. It says, the bride is getting ready. The bride is getting ready. Revelation 19, 7. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Charles pulls this right out of Scripture. And we're told several times that the church is the bride of Christ. And men, if you have a hard time thinking of yourself as a bride, I heard a pastor say that women have to deal with this all the time. I walk into a room and I say, hey guys, how we doing? And women just have to accept that they're a guy now. Okay? And that in the Bible that they have to just be a part of mankind, not man and womankind. So like, they deal with it a lot. So if your fragile ego has a hard time being a bride, talk to a therapist, all right? We're the bride of Christ. And I'll just say as an aside, when we think about the bride getting ready, it's gotten a little ridiculous, hasn't it? I can remember growing up. Raise your hand if you can remember growing up. Whoever went to a wedding reception in a fellowship hall. Yeah. And what did they have in the fellowship hall? They had dinner mints. They had chalky dinner mints. Thank you, Bill. They had, let's play this game. What else did they have, Bill? Nuts. Yes. Punch, yes, the church ladies did punch, and no one spiked it at Baptist churches. They had the little sandwiches. They had the little cucumber sandwiches. Who eats cucumber sandwiches? Who made that? Or egg salad sandwich or pimento. Yeah, pimento cheese, and you have to say it the right way. It's not pimento. We're not carpetbaggers here. It's pimento cheese, yeah. Sorry, those of you who say it correctly and are carpetbaggers. The whole thing with the dress was like a thousand bucks. And now, holy smokes, it's unbelievably expensive. The social media has ruined not the brides, but their poor fathers who have to pay for this. Do you know, I've done about 150 to 200 weddings in my life. And do you know one of the things I find most absurd about weddings is now most brides make their dad buy silk pajamas for their bridal party. And those pajamas match, right? And what they do is they all wear the pajamas to the venue so they can get ready at the venue. But here's the thing about the pajamas. Did they sleep in them the night before? No. They got up and they put on a little bit of makeup so they can go put on more makeup. Yeah? And then they wear the pajamas, they get in the car and they drive to the venue and then they get ready. They got a hair stylist there and sometimes makeup and whatever or aunt whoever and then they all get ready. And no one sees the pajamas except them. They put them on to ride in the car and then to go take them off and to put on the dress. It's the most, and they've got to cost, every time I see it, I'm like, those have to cost $500. I don't know why we're spending money on these pajamas. But there's so many little things like that. But here's the thing. We might think of the bride as getting ready the day of the wedding. But you better believe that from the day of engagement to the day of commencement, that bride is getting ready. As soon as she says yes, that bride begins to get ready. She begins to make plans. They begin to, they look for a florist. They look for the right officiant. They get a DJ. Are we going to do live music? They go to their dad. What's the budget? And the dad gives them the budget knowing full well they're going to exceed it by 20%. So if he's a shrewd negotiator, he will underscore it, right? They do the florist. They do the catering. What kind of food do we want? We've got to go to a cake tasting. We've got to go do this. We've got to go tour venues. We've got to see when the date's going to be. What are your colors? I don't know because I don't know if I'm getting married in the summer or in the fall. And that matters a lot. Am I going to get married indoor or outdoor? It's all these decisions. And so from the moment of engagement to the moment of commencement, that bride is getting ready. And in this line, as we expect, as we say, come thou long expected Jesus, come and claim your bride. What is our job? To get ready, to pursue holiness, to welcome him, to ask for him to come, to live expectantly, knowing that one day he will come and claim his bride. And so as we sing that line, the bride is getting ready, let it remind you as a church, it is our job to pursue holiness and to pursue our Jesus and to pursue righteousness so that when our Jesus comes, we are ready to receive him. As the bride of Christ, let Christmas remind us to get ready. And then it says this, as it says the bride is getting ready, the very next line is, the church is singing out. And then we go back into the first verse. And so when it says, the church is singing out, guys, let's let it rip. Let's sing with full-throated praise to our God. And we have a chance again to shout to our Lord. Come thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free. From our fears and sins release us. Let us find our rest in thee. Come thou long-expected Jesus. Please stand and let's sing that together like we mean it.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on Labor Day Sunday. Thank you for joining us. If you're watching online, must be nice. Maybe next year I can live stream from your place. But for those of us here, I hope we're having a good Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series in Moses that we've been going through all summer long. And so I believe that this is the 13th installment. It's 12th or 13th. So thank you for hanging in here with the life of Moses. And I hope that it's been rewarding for you and encouraging to you to go through that life and see how much we have to learn from this miraculous man and figure in the Bible. This morning, as I was trying to decide where are we going to land the plan on the series, where are we going to focus, I thought it most appropriate to focus on the death of Moses, because Moses has, I was going to say pretty unique death, but it is a unique death in Scripture and in history, I believe. And so I thought it would be appropriate to focus on that. Not only because that's where the story ends as we end our series, but I've always found the story of Moses' death to be one of the more puzzling stories in the Bible. It's one that it took years for me to wrap my head around and felt like I even understood God's actions in it. Because I think that there's some stories in the Bible where the actions of God perplex us a little bit. What we know about God, or more often than not presume about God, would lead us to believe that what he did is out of step with his character. It's out of step with who he says he is. We can't make sense of it. And because we can't make sense of it, we kind of think, well, maybe, maybe God got this one wrong. And I think that this is one of those instances. So before the death of Moses, Moses is punished. God tells him that because you did this thing, I'm going to punish you. And we see this punishment being levied in Deuteronomy chapter 32. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Deuteronomy. And I would tell you to go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 35, because we're going to cover almost that entire chapter before we're done here today. But in Deuteronomy chapter 32, we find this, and I'm going to read you a lot of verses, more didn't stumble over any of those names, so I am very happy. Second, more importantly, here's the context for what God has said. So, God says, you and Aaron sinned against me in a river, in a particular land a few years ago. Because you did that, you will not enter the promised land. And so here's the offense. You can find this offense in Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 through 13, if you're interested. The offense is they have been moving through the desert for, at this point, plus 30 years. 35 years, I don't know. They were in the desert for 40 total years, and this is towards the end of the journey. And the Hebrew people had this very familiar, consistent refrain and grumble, which was when things got hard, when food got scarce, when they couldn't find water, they would cry out and they would say, Moses, why did you bring us to the desert to die? We were better off as slaves in Egypt. We were better there. And they were upset that they had been freed from their oppressive masters to come and wander in freedom in the desert because now desert life is hard. And Moses, frankly, got tired of it, as anybody would, as any leader would, with people coming and complaining to you all the time about everything. And so he went to God. They came and grumbled to him. And so he went to God. He says, your people are thirsty. Can you provide water? And God says, yes, go to the rock in this river and speak to it or go to the rock in this place and speak to it and water will flow from it. And so Moses says, okay, got it. And he walks out and he gathers the people, the assembly around this rock and he chews them out and they deserve to be chewed out. You whiny little babies. God always provides. He's going to provide again. Here, look. And he hits the rock with his staff twice. Because the last time he brought water from a rock on behalf of God, that's how he did it. He hit the rock with his staff. But this time God told him to speak and he didn't. But in anger and frustration, he hit it twice and water flew forth from the rock and the people were satisfied. But God pulled him aside and Aaron after that. And he said, because of your impertinence, because of your sin against me, because you struck the rock and you did not speak to the rock as I instructed you, you stole some holiness from me. You impugned my holiness and my dignity. And because you did that, I will not allow you to reach the promised land. And just so we're clear on what kind of punishment that is for Moses, Moses is, according to Scripture, probably about 110 to 115 years old right now. He got called out of being a shepherd at the age of 80 and told to go lead God's people. He performed miracles. He led the plagues. He confronted the Pharaoh. God used him to destroy the Egyptian army. He performed miracles in the desert. He set up something to heal from snake bites that we didn't even get to in this series. He went on top of a mountain and met the very face of God, so much so that he shone for three days afterwards. He was the one charged with bringing the tablets down the mountain, with issuing the law to the people. The first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses forevermore. He had been a faithful servant and everything in him was journeying to the fulfillment of his life, which is going to be to enter the land that was promised to his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he was going to get to be the one that did it, and he was going to finally get to set feet on this land that he had never seen in his whole life, and it's what he lived for as he served God. One day, I will be on the promised land. And God says, because you hit that rock two times instead of speak to it, you can't do that, which feels unfair. Does it not? The punishment feels like it very much outweighs the crime. And I hate it when that happens. I feel bad for anyone when that happens. And when I was a senior in high school, it happened to me. I was in class one day, Jen, I'm very sorry for this story. I was in class one day, and I had a friend, she was sitting a couple desks over, and I just got a wild hair that it would be funny to write her a little note and see if I could make her laugh in this class where we had a really strict teacher and you weren't allowed to do that. So I was trying to mess with her. And so I wrote her a note and in the note, I proposed to her that maybe after school, we'll meet at my car and we'll engage in teenage activities. Not married people activities, okay? It wasn't crass. Teenage people activities. Now, important to the story is I went to a very strict Christian school. That was not a lot. And it worked. She laughed. And then we laughed about it later. Well, fast forward six weeks. Some stupid eighth grade kid finds the note and reads it and is so deeply concerned in their conscience about it that they hand it to a teacher. The teacher confronts me. and she says, I don't know what to do about this. This could get you in big trouble. And I said, I can't tell you what to do with it, but it was a joke. I won't do it anymore. And she's like, okay. The next day, I get called into my principal's office, which happens to be my soccer coach. And he calls me in, and he says, Nathan, because I was Nathan at the time. By the way, my name became Nate instead of Nathan when I began to work at Macaroni Grill at the age of 19, and I had to write it on the table, and it's just shorter to write Nate. That's the only story there is for that. So he says, Nathan, I saw this note. It's completely unacceptable. And listen to me. I wish I still had it. I would let any of you read it. And you would think, this is funny. You would not think a teenage person deserves to be punished for this. But he was like, I don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, well, what's the normal punishment? He says, well, I need to suspend you. And I was like, oh, that's a bigger deal than I thought. And at my school, if you got suspended, you couldn't participate in athletics for three weeks. Well, I was the captain of the soccer team, and we were about to enter into the state playoffs. We won the state championship last year. We were probably favored to win it this year. And I was Allstate, okay? I was good. But being Allstate in that league is like being the best toy on the island of misfit toys, okay? I was never good. Sometime post high school, thinking I was good at soccer, we played a team that gave away scholarships and they were actually good at soccer. And I was oh I'm not athletic so not bragging I'm just saying in the moment this is how this is how big it was for me this was my moment right and he suspended me and I didn't get to play in the playoffs my senior season and it always felt incredibly unfair and to me that's what this punishment feels like from God. And if you're watching closely, yes, I am comparing myself to Moses. That's what this punishment feels like from God. And in my case, in my case, one of the things that helps me reconcile that is first of all, it really wasn't my principal that suspended me. It was my dad. Because my principal called my dad and made me read the note to my dad. And then my dad said, what would you do if he wasn't on the soccer team? And my principal says, I'd suspend him. And my dad said, suspend him. And he kind of hung up the phone. But one of the things that helps me reconcile that is knowing that there's probably a dozen other things that I did that deserve suspension that I did not get caught for. So it kind of worked out in the wash. But for Moses, that's not the case. This is what is said about Moses. In Deuteronomy 35, these are the last words, these are the last verses of Deuteronomy. These are the last verses of the books of history. I believe every Christian or faithful person who's lived since then who looks at the story of Moses, if Moses were to make an appeal and say, God, can you let me off with a warning for the whole rock hitting thing? Can we maybe look over that one and still let me put my toes in the sand of the promised land? Can maybe we still do that? I think all of history would be like, God, he makes a good point. Like of all the people that God should let off the hook, why doesn't he let Moses off the hook? And you would think that maybe he said that early on. He said that at the river when it happened or at the rock when it happened. But then eventually over time, it would wear off and he'd be like, all right, Moses, you're fine. Like you've lived a good life. You can still enter into the promised land. Like you'd think he'd let him off the hook, but that's not what he does. Look at the beginning of 34. This is the tragic story of the enforcement of that penalty. Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land. Now these words you're about to hear and read are, these are the tribes of Israel. These are, this is the territories of the different tribes. This is like someone taking us up on a mountain, God taking us up on a mountain and saying, that's where North Carolina is going to be. and that's where Virginia is going to be, and that's where South Carolina is going to be, and that's where Tennessee is going to be. That's what that means. So he says this. The Lord showed him the whole land, from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Eph He said to I'm not going to let you in. And then he didn't. He took him up like he said he would. And he said, I wanted your eyes to see it. This is what it is. This is what I promised on oath to your forefathers. This is where you've been leading my people. And I know that you thought you were going to lead the procession in. But I'm only going to let your eyes see it. I'm not going to let your feet touch it. And so I've struggled with what to do with this story. Because it seems out of sync with the character of God. But I do think that here's one of the things that we can take from this story. And it's a very simple thing, but it's true, and it's not something we like to confront very often. But the reality is actions have consequences, both natural and punitive. The things that we do have consequences. Both natural and punitive. And so when we commit a sin, when we make a choice, those choices have consequences. And that doesn't go away because we're thousands of years removed from this. It didn't go away when God applied the law to his people and said, if you were guilty at one point, you were guilty of all, which Moses did. You're guilty at one point, so you are condemned. That was the deal. It's a picture of why we need salvation, because we are guilty in at least one point. And that's why we can't get into the promised land by ourselves, because we have sin in our past. But that sin and those actions have consequences. And we don't like to think about that, and we don't like to deal with that. And I think sometimes we have an attitude of, yes, I've done this, but God, if you would please expunge the consequences from my future, that would be great. But the truth is that our actions have consequences. And those consequences are both natural and punitive. And if you're a parent, you understand what that means. This makes sense to you intuitively. When you're a parent and you're guiding your children to become who they need to become, who God created them to be, you have to either allow consequences or you have to apply consequences. Sometimes you watch your children or your child doing something and you know they're cruising for a bruising, right? You know this is going to end poorly. But you think that the best way to love them as a parent is just to let it play out and let them learn from their own consequences. One of my favorite things about grace is that every Sunday, all the little kids are running around the room and I think it's great. And it brings life and vibrancy to the church. And I don't mind that they bang into the wall. And sometimes we'll somebody, we have a kid one time that just took a marker and ran down that whole wall. Just the whole, just, they just, we needed a racing stripe. Okay. Um, I don't mind that. And they knock over people's coffee. They bump into us out there. I don't care. I think it's, I think it's fun. And one day I was in here and my son, John is four. And he was over in this corner and I was standing up there next to the doors. And I looked over and he was running up to a child that was sizably larger than him. And John likes to hit right now. He just, and he hits like that. And so he ran up to this kid and just hit him in the back. And instead of running over and grabbing him and say, we don't hit, you know, I thought, let's just see how this plays out. And the kid turned around and was mad and hit John back and knocked him on his butt and made him cry. And John came running to me. Daddy, so-and-so hit me. I said, yeah, I saw. This should teach us not to hit people that are bigger than us. Don't do that. Don't do that, son. You see me? I've never picked a fight in my life. You know why? Because I don't like to cry in front of other people. And so I could have run up and I could have stopped and not let the other kid hit my son. But I thought the best thing to do was just to let the consequences play out. And so sometimes we watch our kid cruising for a bruising and when they fall on their rear end, we pick them up and we go, yeah, don't do that again. The reason you're in pain now is because your actions chose it. Our actions have consequences. Other times as parents, we need to make the consequences punitive, don't we? We need to punish, to teach a lesson so that they don't do that again, to help them remember that that's not the way they're supposed to act or behave or the attitude that they're supposed to have. In our house, screen time's a big deal. You bring up screen time and there's tears right away before you even say how much screen time is going to be lost. And some actions require a punitive consequence. When they get older, you take the car keys or whatever it is. But as parents, we understand these things. That when we're in charge of a child and we're in charge of raising them, it is absolutely irresponsible to try to raise them in an environment in which their actions do not have consequences. It is completely unhelpful for life. And in understanding this principle, we understand that this is what good parents do. And so the other thing is, this story reminds us that God is our father and we are his children. God is our father and we are his children. God is the father of Moses and of the Hebrew people. And when Moses, one of his sons, sinned, God had to apply a punitive consequence. It was not a natural consequence that Moses experienced. By all accounts, he could have gotten there and gone across the river. But God applied this punitive consequence for this action to correct it. And to set an example for the rest of his children that no one gets off the hook. God is a fair God. But because God is our Father, he must also, as he looks down on us as his children, apply to us both natural and punitive consequences. God cannot run over and protect us from the larger child when we choose to take an action that we shouldn't. He's not going to do that. He will allow us to experience natural consequences of our choices. If we choose, and I know this from experience and unanswered prayers, if we choose to eat like a garbage can and avoid exercise for a couple of decades, we're going to end up in poor health. And we can't just pray that God will make us magically healthy. These are consequences of our actions. If we volunteer for everything and we say yes for everything and we overextend and we can't say no to anyone and we end up stressed and exhausted, that's not God punishing you. That's the natural consequence of your actions and your choices. But sometimes we like to blame God for things that we brought on ourselves. I remember at my last church, this was easily over a decade ago, and my last church, it was a larger church, it was about 2,000 people, and I was on staff. I was a staff pastor. And if you called the church and you said, I need to talk to a pastor, they funneled that call to me, which makes total sense because I ooze tenderness. And so I took a call this one day. I don't know why y'all are laughing so hard at that. Jeepers. It's a little funny. I didn't know it was that funny. I take a call one day from this guy, and it's like early 30s. And he says, hey, I just need to talk with a pastor. I just got something going on in my life. I just can't make sense of it. I was like, all right, what's going on, man? And he says, well, because I got this girlfriend that I really love. I'm like, well, that's good. And he goes, yeah, but I've also got some problems with drug addiction, and I'm kind of in and out, and it's a real struggle for me. And a few months ago, she gave me an ultimatum. She was like, you know, clean up or I'm out of here. And he goes, and I just messed up a couple more times, and she left me. And I'm devastated. And this is the kicker. I just don't know why God would allow this to happen to me. What? And I was nice. I didn't just be like, you're dumb and hang on the phone. But I tried to say, like, our actions have consequences. But I think a lot of times in life, something difficult will happen to us. And sometimes we can throw ourselves a pity party and we can think, why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God make this happen to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? And if we look, it's like, well, you took some steps to lead to this consequence. God didn't allow that business deal to go bad. It was a bad business deal. God didn't allow you to lose your job. You just underperformed for a few months or years and your boss got sick of it. Like sometimes there's natural consequences in life. Other times God does bring, we see in scripture, punitive action into our lives to correct our behavior and direct us to the right place. We know this is true because not only do we see it in the life of Moses, but we also see it in the life of David. When David, the second king of Israel, you may have heard of him. He's a pretty big deal. He got towards the end of his life. And in 2 Samuel chapter 16 and 17, David has this conversation with God. And he says, he says, Father, I want to build your temple. You'll remember from the story of Moses that God instructed them to build a tabernacle, which was a fancy tent with a big square tent in the middle. And the Holy of Holies was half of that tent. And that was where the presence of God rested. And it was built to be nomadic, to be able to take it up, move it, and set it back up. That was the job of the Levites, setting up the tabernacle, taking down the tabernacle, moving the tabernacle, setting up the tabernacle. That's what the Levites did. And so when they finally got into Israel, into their promised land, into Jerusalem, and David's sitting on the throne. He says, Father, I want to build you a permanent home. And God says, David, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands. That's a punitive consequence. I can't tell you exactly what sins are involved in too much blood on your hands, but David did a lot of killing. And if you read between the lines, he did a lot of sinning. And so God said, no, you're not the one to do this. You haven't lived the life of the person that I want to allow to do this. So you can't do it. That's a punitive consequence. And we know it's punitive because before he died, he gathered all the materials, everything that was needed, all the cedars of Lebanon and all the rocks from the quarry were put on the job site so that when the next king became king, he could say go and he could have the honor of building the temple. So by all accounts, he could have built it by the end of his life. This was not a natural consequence of his actions. This was punitive by God. The biggest result or example we see in Scripture of someone suffering a punitive consequence is that. It's Jesus on the cross. He was being punished. He was being punished as a consequence of our actions, of your actions. That's a punishment that we deserve. That's a punitive consequence that should have been laid on us, death. But God chose instead to punish not his children, but his child. Do you see? So we know in scripture that God exacts punitive punishments for consequences of our actions. Now, I don't know how to tell you how to parse out what in your life is a punishment and what is a natural consequence. I really don't know how to tell you to do that. I thought about it this week and I'm like, I'm not even going there. I don't know how to tell you to do it. I just know that both are true. But that far more often than not, the hard things that we are experiencing are natural consequences of our actions. And so we see in the story that our actions have consequences. Our sin has consequences. And it makes me wonder, I wonder what our sin has prevented us from. I wonder what our sin has prevented us from experiencing or doing. In the example of Moses and David, Moses, God took an opportunity from him. You will not enter the promised land. David, God took an opportunity from him. You're not going to be the one that builds the temple. The opportunity, the thing that Jesus had to give up is staying in his perfect divine form forever. He had to take on human form. He had to condescend to become flesh. And so if that's what happens with sin in the Bible is opportunities are removed from us. God's going to use us in smaller ways or in different ways. I wonder what I've missed out on because of my sin. I wonder what opportunities I've squandered because of the way I've chosen to behave and exercise my faith for the last decade. I wonder if you think it might be possible that you've missed some opportunities in your life because of some actions that you've taken in the past. And I don't know that God is ever going to take any of us up on a mountain and go, do you see what you missed? But maybe it'll happen in heaven, I'm not sure. But it makes me wonder, the story makes me wonder, what opportunities am I missing out on because of the actions that I've taken in the past? But here's the thing I love about this story that dawned on me this week as I sat with it and for the past couple of weeks. This isn't just a story about punishment. This isn't just a story about consequences. This is also a story about comfort. Let me show you. In a second, we're going to look at verse 5 in Deuteronomy 34. You'll remember the first four verses are God taking him up and going, this is the land of Gad, and this is the land of Naphtali, and this is the land of Ephraim, and this is the land that I swore on oath to Abraham.? I'm going to let you see it with your eyes. You cannot touch it with your feet. But then he takes him. He's the only person I'm aware of that died in the presence of God. And he's the only person in scripture that's buried by God himself in a secret grave that no one has ever found. And so what we see is that we have this God of consequences, but we have a God of comfort. And so in this passage, what I see is God holding consequences necessarily in one hand, because if he doesn't, he's not a loving father. But in the other hand, he holds comfort. And as he's exacting consequences on Moses with one hand, he's immediately comforting him with the other. I think that's amazing. So because he loves us, he holds consequence in one hand and comfort in the other. This is true of the story of David too. This is true of the story of David. When he says, David, no, you cannot build my temple. There's too much blood on your hands. The immediate thing coming after that, in the passage, the immediate thing that God says is, but I will allow your son Solomon to build it. And my son, the Messiah, will sit on your throne for all of eternity. Consequence, you can't build the temple. Comfort, here's what I can promise you. That's the passage that becomes the Davidic covenant. Consequence in one hand, comfort in the other. Now here's what's really cool. I told you the example of Jesus being punished for us. Consequence in one hand. But Jesus, but that's our punishment. Those are our consequences that he's holding. But in Jesus, we also find our ultimate comfort, right? We also find our ultimate comfort in Christ because on the cross, death was defeated. I did a funeral the other day and I got to say, as you get to say at funerals of people who believe in Jesus, this is not goodbye. This is goodbye for now. There's hope here. We know where she is. We know she's looking down on us. We know she loves us and that she's seen the face of her Savior and that we should be jealous of her and where she is. So on the cross, death lost its sting and sin lost its chains. And so it is the source of the greatest comfort for anyone in the gospel. That because of our actions, we deserve profound consequences. And whether they seem disproportionate to us or not, Jesus paid for those. And in that payment, he also becomes our comfort. And so God doesn't have to say, this is going to happen, but this is going to happen. He says this is happening. This, to me, is what the story of the death of Moses is about. I've told you repeatedly, everything points to Jesus. And I believe that this story points to the gospel in multiple and profound ways. And I want us to remember as we go, whenever we are experiencing consequences, whenever we feel like life is hard, life is dark, like life is deep, in our darkest days where our sin is so great that we feel we can't move. And I've had those days when I was so wracked with guilt for my sin and my choices that I felt ashamed of who I was and I didn't want anyone to know and I didn't want to look anybody in the eye. When we have those days and we are experiencing the consequences of our actions, we can always, always, always look to the cross and be comforted that God still loves us, that he covered this too, and one day we will be in eternity with him. Whenever we experience consequences, we are also offered comfort. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a good father. It may be odd to pray and scary to say, but thank you for consequences. Thank you for the things that direct us. God, I pray that in our lives, when hard things are happening, that we wouldn't immediately blame them on you, but we would stop and assess ourselves and say, well, maybe this is my fault. God, if there are instances where we do think maybe we're being punished, God, I pray that we would trust you in that punishment and that we would remember in Hebrews that we're told that the Lord disciplines the ones he loves. We're so grateful that you're a good father. We're so grateful that every story can be woven in such a way that what we find is it's really pointing us towards your son and your love for us. Thank you for loving Moses the way you did, and thank you for loving us the way you do. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. So good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. I've got to tell you, I'm really touched by your attendance this morning. Really and truly. Normally I make a joke on holiday weekends about people coming. And this morning I woke up and I got my email. I had a Duke alert that there's going to be some power outages. Shane, you work for Duke. Fix that. Make sure 9-2-2-1 Kirk Hill is not affected. And I was like, man, it's a holiday weekend, and we have a tropical storm bearing down on us. No one is coming. And look, here you are. This is really, really touching and great, and that was really good worship. If you saw Gibby and I talking as I was setting up, I was laughing at him for messing up in the last song and just crying out Jesus in the middle of a line. Thank you, Kristen. You saw it too. And he said, no, no, I didn't mess up. I was just excited about Jesus. And I don't believe him. But I also do know that he is excited about Jesus. I'm also excited to have the princes here with us this morning. They're here with us for a few weeks. Sarah, you're hosting for us when? Next week? Perfect. And she's going to give us an update and tell us everything. So come back then. Well, I'm so happy to have you guys in town. And we are so happy to be the church that you are part of. We talk a lot about building God's kingdom. And you guys are in South Africa building God's kingdom, and it's a part of our heart that's out there, and so we're glad that you guys are with us this morning. So thanks for joining us. If you don't know them, who cares? It's not a big deal, but we're glad to have them, and you should say hey to them after the service and get to know them a little bit, but they're going to be here with us for the next three weeks. Yes. Perfect. So it's a, it's a big morning and I'm happy to have you here as we continue in our series. And if you're watching online or you're catching up later, thanks so much for doing that. That means a lot to us as you enjoy this weekend, doing whatever it is you're doing. We're in our series in Moses and this series, if I'm just being honest, has been a little bit different for me as a pastor and as someone who has to write sermons every week. You guys make me do this. Typically, when I choose a series, I kind of choose a series, and if you're in the meetings with us with staff, we'll have a series idea, and I'll go, that's a great idea, but then I immediately go, what are the sermons? How do we make this compelling? And the way I think about it is, will that preach? Can I make a sermon out of that? But for this series, it's been a little bit different of an experience, because in this series, I'm telling the story, we are telling the story and going through the story of the life of Moses. And we're telling the story really of the Genesis of the nation of Israel. And so it's really less about will that preach? And it's more about what are the essential elements of the story? I heard somebody say one time, this just comes to mind, the radio sports talk guy, that people should go in the Hall of Fame if you can't tell the story of that sport without their name. Then no matter what they did, they should go into the Hall of Fame. Thank you, Zach, for affirming that. And so this kind of works like that. What are the things, if we're going to walk through the life of Moses together and tell the story of the origin of the Hebrew people together and their exodus from Egypt and their intro into the promised land, what are the elements of that story that we just absolutely cannot pass over? That was Freudian there, the Passover. Look at me. What are the elements that we cannot skip that we must include? And one of those elements is the provision by God in the desert of manna. And a little subtext in that story is the provision of quail. You cannot tell the story of Moses. You cannot tell the story of the birth of the nation of Israel without talking about the provision of manna in the desert by God. You have to tell that part of the story. And so this really isn't about does that preacher, does it not? This is about, we have to tell this part of the story. And then what I'm encumbered with rather than does this preach, is this inspiring? What I'm encumbered with is why does this matter to us now? That's wonderful. It's good to learn about our God. And at a baseline, if all we do is look at the stories and learn about our God and his character and who he is, that's enough. And that's a good exercise and it's time well spent on a Sunday morning. But I think we should press further and say, but what do we learn from it that matters to us now? How does that impact me today? So we're going to look at this story of God's provision, but we're going to be asking the question, how does this impact me today? And we're going to do that by looking at two big questions that really, for me, as I read the story, jump off the page and make me go, why is that the case? And I think if we answer those questions and we can find a way that this really impacts us and should matter to us today and our daily lives as we interact with and hopefully pursue God. So I'm going to point to some scripture in a minute. And actually, this morning is the first time this has happened. I bought this Bible. This is called the pastor's Bible. It's got three tassels that hang out of it, which is an obnoxious amount of tassels. And who would ever need three tassels? But now I have exactly three passages from three different books, and I'm using all three tassels, and I'm so excited. So I've used the first one. That one's out of the way. We're in the book of John. That's where we're going to turn first. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. But before I start jumping around to the passages, I just want to make sure that we know what's happening. Moses is moving the Hebrew people through the desert. They've escaped Pharaoh. Pharaoh's army has been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds. And now they're wandering through the desert being've escaped Pharaoh Pharaoh's armies been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds and now they're wandering through the desert being led by God a pillar of cloud by day a pillar of fire by night they're following the pillar they're walking towards God if you look at the way that they're supposed to be arranged this tribe next to this tribe in this direction and yada yada yada they were actually marching through the as one enormous cross, which is pretty cool with Jesus in the center of it as the bronze serpent. So, and we'll get to that story. But there comes up the question of numbers and I think it's relevant this morning. There are different scholars say different things. No one's sure. There's a figure in the Bible where it said there were 600,000 men. And so then you extrapolate that out to women and children. And so some scholars say that there was as little as 300,000 people moving through the desert. Other scholars say there was as much as 2.5 million people walking through the desert. So that's a large delta of difference. But regardless of where you would land on that, and I don't expect anyone to go home and really drill down on the number of Hebrew people in the desert, but if you were to, what you would arrive at is there was a lot. There's a lot. And those are mouths to feed. And some of you know that I like history. I like to study empires. I like to read biographies. Last year, I read a biography on Napoleon Bonaparte, who was, by the way, my least favorite general I've ever studied in my entire life. I can't stand that guy. But he's famous for saying, an army marches on its stomach, meaning the secret to war is supplying your army with what they need. And if you've studied history and you've studied war and you've studied people moving across continents, what you know is they are only as good as their supply chain. They can only fight as hard as they have fresh shoes and fresh socks and fresh food coming to them. And if you disrupt that supply chain, you disrupt the army. By the way, this is what made the Mongols so incredible is they didn't need a supply chain. They just ate everything that they saw, and they were the most fascinating force in the history of history, just for the record. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But an army marches on its stomach, meaning throughout history. One of the biggest challenges of moving a large group of people transcontinentally is sustaining them. And this is the challenge that Moses was facing. He's got between 500 and 2.5 million people that he's responsible for, and they have to be fed. And they grumble. This is hard to do. It's hard to sustain ourselves in the desert. I would assume that each family left Egypt with some amount of sheep or cattle or something to sustain them. But eventually those resources start to dwindle. And so they grumble that they're not being supplied for, they're not being cared for. And this is a sufficient gripe, right? Moms and dads, you're in the desert, wandering, following a pillar. Moses says we just go that way. In your head, you're thinking, we should be there there by now and you're not. What's going on? You're worried about your kids because you can't feed them every day. You're worried about your mother-in-law because you can't feed her every day and frankly she's cranky when she's hungry. So it'd be really nice if we could take care of her. Some of you are sitting next to your mother-in-laws. Don't laugh at that joke. I just saw somebody turn their head. Sorry. This is a reasonable gripe. We're hungry. We can't feed each other. And so God says, okay, I'm going to provide you with something. In the morning, you're going to wake up and there there's going to be this white, flaky substance on the ground. Gather it up, and that will be all that you need. But only gather what you need for that day, which we're going to come back to that idea, because I think that's interesting. Only gather what you need for that day, and every day I will provide for you. And they called that substance, it was like a doughy bread, but it was flaky. And they called that substance manna, which to my knowledge means, literally, what is it? It's like the terrible mascot for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Izzy. I've never been more disappointed in my life. As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I was so excited that the Olympics were coming to my city. It was such a big deal. And by the way, Andre Agassi and Brooke Shield stayed at my friend's house in their basement because they were a host home for the Olympics, which was really cool. I'll tell you about that sometime. But the mascot, when they revealed it, sorry, I know it's stupid. The mascot was named Izzy, which means what is it? And it's like, the mascot's Manna? This is dumb. What a stupid mascot. But that's what they named the bread because they didn't know what it was. So they called it what is it? And that became the name Manna. That was God's provision. And then at one point or another, after God was providing the Manna, they would go out and they would gather it. And we'll see in a little bit that some of them gathered more than they should. And they incurred the anger of Moses and God. And then at some point or another, they said the reasonable thing, the thing that we would say, God, it's so nice that you're providing this for us. I'd like some steak. Like, I'd like some meat, some protein. I'd settle for fish. I'll go to Long John Silver's if you'll just make it available, like anything, God, besides just this bread, just this daily bread, right? And so they said they wanted some protein. And so God responded and he sent them some quail. But it turned out that that was kind of a bad ask. And we're going to see that part in the narrative. I'm going to pull that out. But for a portion, God provided some quail. And then they decided they didn't want quail anymore. God got his way, and then they were back on manna, and that's what sustained them through the desert. And the import of this gesture and this provision echoes throughout Scripture, which is why we cannot tell the story of Moses without talking about the manna that was provided. The biggest reason is this. The manna was a picture of Jesus. The manna was a picture of Jesus. Many of you know this. And so I'd like to remind you of this and pull your mind back to it. Some of you may not. But the manna was a very intentional picture of Jesus. And this is one of the things that marvels me about our God and his sovereignty. We know that God sees into the future. We know that God knows all things. We know that God is sovereign, that God plans. And I say often, sometimes things happen in our life, we can't see what's down the road, but God can and he knows and he's guiding us down this path. And I think even as we acknowledge that truth, that sometimes in our limited brains and in our limited ways of thinking, we think to ourselves, yeah, God sees six weeks down the road or six months down the road, or maybe six years down the road. But in this one, he's seeing 6,000 years down the road. And we don't think about God thinking like that, but he was because he knew that this manna was an intentional picture that he was painting of his son. It's an illustration of what Jesus is. And just so you know, that idea isn't something that scholars came up with. There wasn't theologians reading the Old Testament and then reading the New Testament and going, goodness, this seems really similar. I think those two things are connected. No, these are the words of Jesus himself. And we find them in John chapter six. Sir, they said, always give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Direct correlation. Jesus is talking to a Hebrew people who are entrenched in their culture and know it well. And so when he says, my father sent you bread from heaven to sustain life because of their natural culture, national culture and institutions, they immediately go back to the time of Moses. We as Americans just got done celebrating the 4th of July. In my house, in my kitchen, we had some friends over and I insisted. I put Lee Greenwood, I'm proud to be an American, on the Alexa as loud as it would go and I made everyone hold their hand over their heart and sing every word that they knew to the song. And it was super fun. And when we think about America, we have some things on the 4th of July that we all celebrate, whatever it means to us. The reality of it is this is the great experiment. This is the great democratic experiment. It's the greatest country to ever exist on the planet. It's the most powerful military to ever exist on the planet. And it's the most wonderful and the most free place to ever exist on the planet. And we ought to be grateful for it no matter what we think about our current state, yes or no. This is a great place to be. And so when we celebrate the 4th of July, we draw upon the history of where we are. In the same way, when Jesus says, you remember God providing in the desert, they draw upon where they had been and where they were. And they immediately understand and go back to God's provision in the desert of manna. It's a direct correlation. And Jesus says, my father gave you bread daily to sustain your life, to give you life. And now he gives you me. I am the bread of life. And the picture is very clear. We are told that when we do not know God, when we are separated from him, that we will surely die. This is the penalty in the Garden of Eden. And so Jesus comes that we might have life and have it to the full. He comes that life might be restored. And so he says, my father sent me to restore our life. Right? He sent me to restore your life and to give you life. He is acquainting himself with the manna and he is saying, I am the bread of life. This is all throughout scripture. So we know that the manna is a picture of Christ. And it's well and good and appropriate that at the end of this sermon today, towards the end of the service, we're going to take communion together. And when we take communion together, we're going to break the bread. And Jesus at the Passover, before he's arrested, takes the bread and he breaks it and he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. That is not just a quaint illustration of what's about to happen to him. It is an intentional connection to what the Hebrew person understands as the sustenance of God in the desert providing life for them. It is a picture of God's provision. So the first thing we see and know about the manna that matters to us very much is that it's a picture of Jesus and God's provision and how he cares for us. We must lock that in. With that being true, there are two questions for me that jump out of the narrative that I think if we can examine them and maybe wrestle them to the ground, at least that's what I tried to do this week as I prepared, that it can illustrate and illuminate for us how this story matters to us today. The first to me is the question of stockpiling. God put a very specific provision in there. You are not allowed to stockpile the goods. You cannot keep more than one day's provision. As a matter of fact, this is what it says in Exodus 16, 19. So I, so I can orient us towards this thought. In Exodus chapter 16, verse 19, after God has said only take enough for the day, then Moses said to them, no one is to keep any of it until morning. However, some of them paid no attention to Moses. They kept part of me or not, but my largest pet peeve in life is any form of inefficiency. My second largest pet peeve in life, just for the record, is when you impose your noise on me. I don't want to hear your phone in a public place. But I loathe any form of inefficiency. And so this directive to only gather what you need for today goes against what I believe wholeheartedly about efficiency. Doesn't it make more sense? Carter, I know you agree with me on thinking. I know you agree with us. Doesn't it make more sense on Monday for you and the able-bodied people in your family to go gather as much as you can for the rest of the week so you don't have to do it every day and you know that it's there and you have the sense of security that it's there. And it's not like there wasn't enough. We're not talking about being selfish because we're told there in scripture that whatever was left over fades away, that when the sun comes out, it melts it away. So there's more than enough every day, which means if your family wants to go out and get enough on Monday to last until Wednesday, or maybe even Friday, you can do that. And isn't this how we handle our daily sustenance anyways? When you go grocery shopping, do you shop for one day like a lunatic? Or do you shop for the whole week? You shop for the whole week. Of course you do. And if you're really crazy, you shop for the month at Costco, which we went to Costco the other night and it was closed because the power was out. And I've never been so disappointed in my life because we were at Costco without kids and I was so excited to go. We ended up wandering around the mall aimlessly. But this makes sense to us. This is how we think. We don't think about daily, I'm just going to go to Sprouts and get what I need for one day. That's what crazy people do. You shop for the week so you don't have to do it anymore. So it makes the most sense to stockpile it for the week, right? But God said don't do that. And I don't understand why. Because besides the practicality of it, it would also give you the sense of, okay, food has been sparse. It's been difficult to feed my children as a father, as a wife, as a patriarch of the family. I'd like to know my family's provided for it. It makes me feel good to know that we have five days rations. And there's even a provision, if you read the text, of an amount that you can gather for each eating person in your home. So there's a provision for that that God lays out. And when I read this story, I kind of wonder, like, what's the big deal? Why can't you stockpile manna? And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it's because of this. Because you cannot stockpile Jesus. You cannot store up enough Jesus. If manna is a picture of who Jesus is, and it was always to be intended not just to feed this small group of people relatively for 40 years, but to echo throughout the centuries as to God's provision and what it is, then it's important to know and understand that you cannot stockpile Christ. You cannot gather enough of him on a Monday to sustain you on a Wednesday. You can't go to Christmas and Easter services only and expect that amount of Jesus to sustain you throughout the year. Which right now I'm talking to a group of people who have come to church on a holiday weekend with a tropical storm looming. So you get this. So if you're listening online, this is for you, pal. But in Christianity, I think we do this a little bit. We come to church on Sunday. I get my fill of Jesus. My kids get their fill of Jesus, and we're good. And then I'm going to go throughout the rest of my week and do whatever it is I need to do. And the next Sunday I'll get my fill of Jesus. But that's not how Jesus works. That's not how manna worked. And if you think about it practically, that's not how diets work. If you say you're going on a diet and on Monday you manage against all odds to eat salads with some sort of vinaigrette dressing that's not even good. And then the rest of the week you eat Reuben's and fried foods, which I'm not speaking from experience there, I'm just saying hypothetically. That's not a diet. You can't eat healthy enough on Monday to be healthy on Friday if you don't do it again. And I think the picture that God is painting here with the daily provision and sustenance of Christ is we cannot get enough Jesus on Monday to make us healthy on Wednesday. We should still wake up craving him. This is why at Grace we say one of our five traits is we are people of devotion. And I say often, and I have not said it often enough lately, but this is why I say it, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, and I'm completely convinced of this, is to wake up every day and spend time in God's presence through his word and through prayer. There is not a single greater habit that anyone can develop than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. It's the most important thing. Every day when I get into my office, most days I fail sometimes, but most days the very first thing I do when I get into my office is I get in my office and I shut the door and I read my Bible and I spend time praying over that day. I try to do that every day. We have to do that. We need to get, we need to think of it. Think of a daily devotion in this context of this story as gathering our Jesus every day. Every day we spend time in prayer. Every day we spend time in God's word. Every day we spend time worshiping. And that looks different at different seasons. Sometimes that means you go on a hike, you just walk, or you go on a run and you take your earbuds out and you don't listen to any noise and you just talk to God and you allow God to talk to you and you experience him that day. I'm not saying it has to be formulated every day, but every day we need to be in the habit like the Israelites. This is what the picture is for. It's not to sustain them. It's to remind us for generations of what we should do. We should wake up and gather Jesus. And it's not lost on me that this happened in the morning. Because when the sun gets hot, it melted away. I've always told you, you have your quiet time and your devotional time whenever it works for you. Morning, afternoon, evening, just do it. But that's a little bit insincere because I can't back this up with paperwork, but I kind of think you should do it in the morning anyways. I don't care if you're a night person. Just saying. We should wake up every day and gather Jesus. And we should understand we can't gather enough Jesus on Monday to make that enough on Wednesday. It has to be a daily practice. And so what God's provision reminds us of and what his prohibition reminds us of is we cannot gather enough Jesus to stockpile him for the week. As believers, we must pursue him every day. We must wake up daily and gather Jesus. It's vitally important. The other question that comes up to me in this story, this one's a little bit trickier. It's the provision of the quail. At one point, though God is providing daily, the Hebrew people say, hey, we'd like some variety. Can we get a little bit of a buffet situation going on? Maybe I'd like some Chinese. Like they just want something else besides this manna, this nutrition brick that they get every day. And so God gives into them and he says, okay. And in Exodus, we're told that God provided quail for a little while, but in numbers, we actually get an insight into this portion of the story that provides a lot more color and it becomes very interesting. And it makes me ask some questions. Numbers chapter 11 verses 18 through 20. This is after they've requested the quail. Tell the people, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow when you will eat meat. The Lord heard when you wailed. If only we had meat to eat, we were better off in Egypt. Now the Lord will give you meat and you will eat it. You will not eat it. This is the funny part. This is crazy. You will not eat it for just one day or two days or five, 10 or 20 days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it. Gracious God, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have willed before him, saying, Why did we ever leave Egypt? I got to be honest. When you read that, it really reads like a vindictive elementary school kid, right? Who's just mad. You want quail? I'll give you quail until it comes out of your stinking nose, you son of a gun. You whiny little cuss. It's just funny, man. And so when I read it, I'm like, what gives, God? Why are you doing that? It seems like a pretty reasonable request. Maybe nutrition bricks get old. And they'd like to eat some meat. That seems fine to me. But it angered God. And he said, I'll give it to you until you're so sick of it that it comes out of your nose and you loathe it. Why did he do this? Well, the answer is right there in the text. If you have implicit rejection of his provision already. It was an implicit rejection of his miraculous provision. They had become used to it. They had grown to expect it. When Jesus first arrived in their life, when they first experienced God's provision, it was a miracle and they were blown away by it. Look at this. Look at all that we have every day. Oh my gosh, look, I don't have to struggle for my family anymore. I don't have to worry about my kids anymore. It just shows up every day. And I don't even have to worry about gathering enough for tomorrow because I know that it's going to be there tomorrow because God's blessings renew daily. I know that this is going to be great. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And then eventually they get tired of it and they're like, yeah, we need some more of God. And they fall into the terrible habit that we do. We have a terrible habit of asking for Jesus and. Don't we? We have a terrible habit of making Jesus not enough. God has miraculously provided for our salvation and for our peace. And his mercies are new every morning. He gives us our daily bread that we can eat of and hunger no more. He makes us a path to righteousness for his name's sake. He makes it so that this life can be viewed as a wisp or a vapor. And that the tragedies that we endure are called by Paul momentary difficulties. God renders those things true by giving us his son, the bread of life. He gives us a hope for a future where all the wrong things will be made right and all the sad things will be untrue. He's provided us everything that we need. He gives us his peace in all situations so that his servant Paul wrote, I have learned what it is to live in little and I have learned what it is to live in much. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He has given us peace in every situation. He has defeated sin and shame and death so that we do not need to fear those things anymore. He has given us all that we need, and yet we get Jesus. And we say, but can I also have some quail? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also be comfortable? Can I have you, Jesus, and also go on nice vacations? Can I have you, Jesus, and also drive a car that I'm proud of that signals success to the people who see me? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that no one in my family ever gets sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that I never get sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and can you make sure that my marriage is perfect and that it never struggles and that I never have any problems? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a spouse? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a child? Can I have you, Jesus, and also these other things that I want? Don't we have a terrible habit of craving Jesus and? There have been times in my life when I've been worried about how things were going to go. Where I've been worried that I wasn't going to be the servant that this church needed. And I've thought, maybe I'll lose my job. Maybe I'll need to quit. Maybe they need someone else. Maybe I'm not serving it well. There's been times over the years, for good reasons or bad, that I feared that I would lose everything. And do you know what brings me back to peace in those thoughts? To think, well, I could lose my job. I could lose my house. I'll still have my family. I'll still see my kids every day. Nothing can take their love away from me. Nothing can take my family away from me. My wife and my children. I'll have that. And at the bedrock, no matter what happens, I'll have them. And I'll have their love. And I have some friendships in my life that I know that no matter what happens, that can't be taken from me. And I'm sure that some of you have been there too. If you haven't been there yet, it's just because you're young. You will. But the provision of the quail and the anger of God, I think, reminds us that this is how we ought to think about the provision of Christ. No matter what happens in my life, I have Jesus. No matter what sickness befalls me, what tragedy befalls me, no matter what situations happen in life, no matter what I have or I don't have, whether I live in affluence or I live in poverty, no matter what happens at the end of the day, I have Jesus, and he is enough. And I don't think in our Christian lives we readily enough default to that foundation of love and provision. This is why God gets angry at the request for quail, because it's an implicit rejection and entitlement to what he's already provided us. And so here's what I want to press on us this morning. That when we see this in the Bible, when we encounter manna through Bible lessons or podcasts or sermons or whatever it is we listen to, when we encounter this idea, what I would love to press upon you is this, that the manna in the desert and the provision of the quail should remind us of this. Let's daily gather Jesus and let him be enough. Like the Hebrew people, let's daily go out and gather Jesus in the morning. I need him today. I'm going to spend time with him today. I'm going to appreciate God's provision today. I'm going to reflect on what that means for me today, both today and in eternity. And then let's let that be enough. Come what may, no matter what else happens, I've learned to be at peace with plenty, and I've learned to be at peace with little, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Let's let God's provision each day of Jesus be enough. Let me pray for you, and then we're going to take communion and celebrate that provision. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for how you've provided for us. Thank you for your son Jesus. For who he is and for what he means and how he's our daily bread. Thank you that we can eat of him and not be hungry again. God, I pray that we would be people who are people of devotion who daily pursue you and who daily pursue him. Let us diligently, as your children in the desert did, go out and gather him every morning and be nourished by his love and by his peace and by his forgiveness and by his mercy and by his grace and by his humility. Let us be people who pursue him. And God, I pray that he would be enough. There's so many other things that we want, God, and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not, but they're nothing compared to him. We consider all things rubbish compared to the surpassing goodness of knowing Jesus. I pray that that would be true of us as we gather him and as we pursue you. I pray that you would also help us to remember that he is enough, that your miraculous provision is enough. Please let us never grow entitled to what that is, but to always marvel at your goodness and at the miracle of your provision. In Jesus' name, in the name of the daily bread, we pray. Amen.