Sermons tagged with Flesh

All right, well, good morning, everybody. I see you all came at once, so I hope the sermon is good. My name is Nate. It's good to see everybody. Thank you for making grace a part of your Sunday. If you're watching us online, thank you for doing that. As we continue in our Gentle and Lowly series from the book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund, I hope it's touched you, moved your heart, compelled you towards Christ. Before I just jump in, I did want to acknowledge and praise God for the safe return of our Mexico team. We're glad that most of them are back with us. Some of y'all could have stayed in Mexico. It would have been fine with the rest of us. But for the most part, we're happy to have you. Karen, it was a good trip, I hear. Yeah. The other thing I'll tell you guys, just because we like to laugh at things, is I see Susie's here. Hi, Miss Susie. Susie Shank recently lost her husband, Mike, and we did the funeral here for that. That was just a few weeks ago. And Mike is a guy with my kind of sense of humor, so we got along very well. And he's a big Bills fan, and I'm a big Falcons fan. And last week week they played and that was the next game coming up on the schedule when I did the funeral service. It's possible that I said some disparaging things about the Bills in his service, which I was thrilled and delighted to get away with. Then the day of the game, I get a text from the deceased Mike Shank on my on my phone and I'm going what in the world and the text says this is a message from heaven go Bills screw the Falcons one of the better jokes that's ever been executed Suze that was fantastic I may have texted something back after our victory but that's neither here nor there. But yeah, that one was too good just to keep all to ourselves there. This morning, we, like I said, continue in our series, and we're going through that book, Gentle and Lowly, where we're looking at the heart of Christ. And there's a theme here that's building with the heart of Christ towards us. And next week is the final week of the series. And I'm going to land the plane in that theme. But as I was approaching this week, I chose the chapter that's entitled Rich in Mercy. It reminded me of this time in my life where I realized that my view of something, because what I want to compel us towards and where we want to land the plane today, I'll just tell you where we're going, is I want us to see how very impoverished our view of God's mercy is. And so I was trying to think of another time in my life. When did I realize, oh my gosh, I thought I understood what this was. And I really didn't until this moment. And it was, I thought I understood what love was until we had a kid. If you're a parent and you can remember back that far, you know that when your child is born, when your first child is born, there is this love that overtakes you that you never understood. And so when, when Jen and I were pregnant with Lily, like we knew that we were going to love this child. Obviously we're not psychopaths. We knew that we were going to love this kid. We knew that this was going to be a kind of love that we didn't understand. People would tell us you're going to love them so much, you're not going to believe it. And I would mentally assent to that. Yes. Yes, I'm sure that that is true. And you begin to wrap your mind around what it's like to have a child in your life and what it must be like to love them. But you really, nothing can really prepare you. You can't intellectually get there until you experience it. And I still remember the night and then the morning where we had Lily. I went to bed. Jen was very pregnant. And at about, and listen, Jen's not here this morning. I got a cold in the middle of the week and then I got over it and gave it to them. So all three of my family members are home now with a cold, sick. Jen texted me. I just made the children cry. I'm at my wits end. Please come home. Well, I got to preach, but I'll be there soon. So they're all home sick. So she's not going to know what I say here. And if I know my wife, she's not going to go back and listen to this. Okay. So this is, if is if I can trust you this is our secret she doesn't have to know I talked about this it's up to you guys jerks she her water we were sound asleep her water broke at 2 33 o'clock somewhere around there she got up got out of bed took shower. She didn't bother me. Took a shower, did her makeup, put on some nice clothes, put in earrings and a necklace. She was ready for dinner, man, at 3.30 in the morning when she woke me up. That's just the kind of girl she knew there was going to be some pictures made, you know? And so she had to be, she had to be ready. She wasn't going to be looking haggard at the, at the, at the, at the hospital. So she gets herself ready to go out to dinner at three 34 o'clock in the morning and then just gently jostles me. My water broke. We've got to go to the hospital. What? We go to the hospital. We're in labor. We is generous. She, she was very much in labor. I very much not. Um, and, and I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there next to her and we're trying to bring this baby into the world. And I'm, I'm Jen's, you know, in front of me and I'm in a chair facing this way. I'm looking at her face because I don't know, different husbands process this moment in different ways. I did not want to be facing the other way. I just, I want to be facing this way. So I was facing this way, and I'm just looking at her face. I'm holding her hand, doing the best I can to encourage her in this process. And we're sitting there. She's doing her part. And out comes this baby. And I can hear the baby crying. And then they, and it's Lily, and then they put Lily on Jen's chest. And Lily's little face is facing me. And now listen to me. I do not care what anybody says. There is no such thing as a cute newborn baby. Those things are gross and they look like space aliens. And something happens in your mind, I think from God and his sovereign design, that you in the moment as a parent, you think this is a precious child. It's not, it's disgusting. That's a gross, gross thing. But this crying, greasy alien gets placed on Jen's chest and not even looking at me because she can't look yet, just facing me. And I can see her face. And in that moment, it was like the Grinch happened in real life. My heart grew ten sizes. In that moment, I knew I would die for that little girl. And it took nothing. I'm getting worked up about it right now. It took nothing. I loved her so much with a love that I had never understood before. And for those of you, and for some of you, some of you really want to experience that love and you're not yet. And I'm so sorry because I know stuff like this is painful and I walked that journey for a while too. But before you have kids, people tell you you're going to love them. And you understand that you will. But when that space alien landed on Jim's chest, I have never felt more love in my life more instantly than I did then. Instantly, I would die for this kid. I would love her. Now my heart exists outside of my chest. And I was telling this to Kyle. He was our student pastor. Now he's our family pastor. And Aaron Winston, our former children's pastor, is now our discipleship pastor doing some other things. Some of y'all know that Kyle and I have been working together, been friends for 10 years plus. He worked for me at my previous church. And Kyle's like a little brother to me. I love him so much. And when he and his wife Ashlyn were pregnant, I was telling him, like, your heart's going to grow 10 sizes. Like, you're not ready for this. You're going to love this kid so much. And the kid's name now is Hayes, and I don't know how old Hayes is, a month and a half, two months, something like that. He might be a year old. I don't know. I'm bad. I'm bad with ages. And I told him, this is going to happen, man. And the day or the day after Hayes was born, I called him and he was crying. He said, you were right. You're right. I said, you understand it now? He goes, yeah, I understand. Your heart just, you realize how impoverished your view of love was because of how this overtakes your life all of a sudden. And then I remember when we were pregnant with John, once we started getting close to the date, I started feeling bad. I started feeling bad because I'm like, there's no way I'm going to love the second one like I loved the first one. There's no space left. And as a first child, I found that to be true. I found that to be true. Your love gradually diminishes the more children that you have. Faith and Phil Leverett, they're not even here. I'm picking on them. They've got five kids. They don't even know the fifth one's name. So I was already feeling bad because when I have John, when we had John, I was already kind of apologizing to him. Like, I'm sorry, kid. I don't know how to love you like I love Lily. I'm sure God will get me there. And then as soon as that space alien landed on my wife's chest, my heart grew again. And it expanded. And I would die for that one too. And I love it with my whole life. And there's nothing quite like that in life to acquaint you with what love really is. I realized in those moments I had an impoverished view of what I thought of was. And I bring that up because I believe, and Dane asserts in the book, that we have an impoverished view of God's mercy. We're aware of it. We're aware that God's mercy exists. Most of you in here, I would be surprised if anybody came in here this morning, even if you're just here visiting with family or you wandered in or this is your first time in church in 20 years and you consider yourself agnostic, whatever your situation is, I doubt anybody in here is surprised to hear that we as Christians, we ascribe mercy to God. We say that he is rich in mercy. We know God's a merciful God. But I'm not, and so we give mental assent to that truth, but I'm not sure that we really understand what his mercy is. And so let's see if we can't gain on it a little bit today. The way we're going to gain on it is to look in Ephesians, because Ephesians chapter two, we're just going to look at verses, we were going to look at verses 1 through 10, but we're just going to do 1 through 5. As I went through it this morning, I found a place to stop that I felt was more appropriate. So if you have a Bible, please open it up to Ephesians chapter 2. This is my favorite kind of sermon where we just go through the text and I kind of tell you how it hits me and hopefully hits us this week. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. You can open that up and we'll be in the text of Ephesians chapter two, verses one through five. Shoot, I wasn't planning on crying and make my nose run talking about my kids at the beginning. I should save that stuff for the end so I'm not sniffing the whole time. In Ephesians chapter two, Paul has this 10 verse discourse. That's one of the more famous passages in scripture. And he opens it like this. As for you, verse one, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Let's talk about this for a minute. Jim Price, would you mind giving me a tissue, please, sir? Thank you. It's going according to the flesh, gratifying its desires and thinking its thoughts. He's, he's describing a people who don't know Jesus. And because they don't know Jesus, they live according to the flesh in Pauline theology. Paul wrote the book of Ephesians. Paul two-thirds of the New Testament. Most of the letters in the New Testament were written by Paul. And so theologians have developed a theology. Oh, that's hilarious. Good. Someone apologize to Jim when he gets back from his very important errand. Jim, we found some. I'm so sorry. They were right behind here. I know. Go home. All right. Within those letters, theologians have developed a theology based around Paul. Anything that Paul did is Pauline, the Pauline epistles, Pauline theology, things like that. And so within Pauline theology, there's this idea of being dead in our transgressions and in our trespasses. And there is this idea that before we knew Jesus, we had no idea. We had no choice but to sin. We were creatures of the flesh. In Philippians, he says that they were, that their bellies were their Lord's. And they basically did whatever they craved and whatever they desired. And that's how he's describing people before they knew Jesus here in Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three. He's saying that we were dead in our transgressions because we just indulged in the flesh. There's life in the flesh in this theology, and there's life in the spirit. And life in the flesh is to live life as if God didn't exist, to just do whatever our nature wants to do. And life in the spirit is to live in light of the very real existence of God that's been infused in us and given us life and live according to God's desires and God's thoughts and God's standards. So when we're living according to the flesh, we're living according to our own standards and our own thoughts and our own desires. So think of it this way. Think of living according to the flesh is somewhat akin to living as an irresponsible college student. Okay. Now I'm not talking about the responsible college students, the ones that like go to class and take notes and study and care about their future and their GPA and are trying to get a good job or trying to get into a good grad school. I'm talking about students like me that didn't care about any of that. Students that just live for fun. What's the next fun thing we're going to do? What's the next hedonistic activity in which I can engage? And I don't want to paint the wrong picture of me as a college student because some of us, we think of irresponsible college student, our mind goes to partying and that's a thing. But that wasn't my thing. I went to Bible college. I was a pastoral ministries major. My rejection and hedonism looked like playing Madden instead of going to class or just going and playing Frisbee. Because in the early 2000s, you could not be a youth pastor if you could not throw a Frisbee. It was part of the deal. So if you were there at school, you're throwing Frisbees. You're doing all kinds of stuff, you're playing sports. I'm skipping class all the time. My GPA was incredibly low. You guys, you'll love this. I was one semester away from getting kicked out of my Bible college for poor chapel attendance, and then I became a pastor. How do you like that? And my thought is, make chapel better, and I want to go. You don't hear me guilting you into being here, do you? Some of my friends haven't been here for weeks. We all have ways in which we're irresponsible. And we remember those friends in college who were just, their Lord was their belly. They just kind of jumped from fun thing to fun thing, from activity to activity. They were unmoored by wisdom and rules and considerations of the future. They lived in the moment and they did what they wanted. And some of us were that person and some of us were friends with that person. But the reality is, in different times and ways, we've all been that person. All of us. There's nobody in this room who looks back on the last 5, 10, 25 plus years of their life and thinks to themselves, I pretty much nailed that. There was never a moment when I wavered from God's path. I can't think of a season in my life where I just meandered and I did what I want and I lived according to the flesh. Especially when we don't think of living according to the flesh simply as seeking pleasure. Because living according to the flesh can be to seek numbness or escape or stillness or comfort. And the reality of it is sometimes we did our sinning in college and then we get it out of our system. But sometimes we just figure out more nuanced ways to keep feeding that monster and frat parties become country club outings. And it's all the same motivation and it's all the same stuff. And it's still the same lack of discipline. It's the same lack of wisdom. We're still living according to the flesh. Our flesh has just found a way to adapt itself into acceptable adult society so we can still be responsible, productive members. But if we're being really, really honest with ourselves, we know we've all had seasons where when we look back at that time in our life, and maybe, maybe you're in one right now where if you're being honest, you're wandering, where you're living according to what you want to do, not what God wants you to do. We can remember times when we lived according to the flesh and its desires, and we jumped from fun thing to fun thing, from excitement to excitement, from numbness to numbness, from escape to escape. And we piddle our days away on our phone, dopamine-ing ourselves to death while we do nothing for the kingdom. There's nobody in here who hasn't had one of those seasons. And here's the thing that I want to point out. In this passage in Ephesians chapter 2, and those first verses, this is clearly a reference to people before they knew Jesus. He says, you were once like the others, following the prince of this world and the desires of your flesh. And the implication is, but now you know Jesus, and so you live according to the Spirit. And so it makes it seem like, well, before I knew Jesus, I messed up, and I lived according to the flesh, not according to the Spirit. I jumped from hedonism to hedonism, whatever it might be, and now I'm better, and now I'm saved, and now I live according to the Spirit. Except none of you in here have that experience, do you? If you've, let's do a show of hands. If you've been a Christian for over a decade, I would like for you to raise your hand right now. If in that decade, you've never once wandered away from God and lived according to the flesh. Raise your hand if since you got saved, miraculously, sin has not been a problem for you. I can't believe Bill Gentile didn't raise his hand for fun. Right? That's not our experience. But here's what's wonderful about that not being our experience is that wasn't Paul's either. And maybe the most human passage in the Bible at the end of Romans chapter 7, Paul says, the things I want to do, I do not do. The things I do not want to do, I do. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And what he's just claimed in Romans 6 is we are no longer slaves to sin. We are free to walk in newness of life and live life in the spirit. And then in Romans 7, he laments that he can't do it. That if Paul were sitting in this room and I had asked that question, he wouldn't have raised his hand either because he continued to sin. So it's a human passage. And I love that phrase, oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Because it's hard to be a Christian because we feel like we should be doing better and not living according to the flesh anymore and living according to the spirit. But we don't all the time. We have these pockets where we're living according to the spirit. And those are wonderful pockets and sometimes seasons. But we all walk through times when we are exactly what these verses say. We gratify the cravings of our flesh following its desires and thoughts. So, when we read this this morning, let us not render that for people prior to Christ, but let us render it to ourselves, knowing that these verses apply to us and we are in them. This is us. And this is important because of what follows. I stopped reading in the middle of verse 3 the first time. This time I'm going to read all of verse flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Because that's us, because of the times we've lived according to the flesh and not the spirit, we are by nature deserving of wrath. Now, wrath is not a thing that we like to talk about. None of you got in the car today and said, what's the sermon about? I hope it's on wrath. That's fun. Maybe we can sneak some hell in there. We don't like talking about wrath. We don't like the reality that by our nature we deserve it. And I've laid some groundwork for this in this series, so I'm not going to belabor the point in that way here. But a few different times in the series, I've invited you to imagine what Jesus's attitude towards us could be and by all rights should be. That there's a creator God in the universe, in heaven, that creates the universe to share himself with it and with us. He creates us in his image to glory in him and for him to glory in us. And we mess it up with our sin and he sends his son to rectify the situation and we kill him. What could Jesus's right attitude be towards us? Of course it could be wrath. If you accept the Christian narrative, it only makes sense that Jesus would be wrathful towards us as would God for our rejection of him. And so by our very nature, we are objects of wrath. But let me tell you another reason why we are objects of wrath that's actually within this passage that I find very interesting this morning. This discourse ends in verse 10. Verse 10 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It's one that I remind you of often. It's one that I pray over my children. It's one that I pray for parents as they try to guide their children because this is our goal. And this is how this discourse ends in Ephesians chapter two, verse 10. Four, we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. The way I memorized it was the ESV and I like the word workmanship. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works before time that we might walk in them. So here's the idea, is that God created each of you specifically and on purpose. You were not an accident. He calls it his handiwork, his craftsmanship. You were not his throwaway. He did not whittle you and go, oh, look at that. Okay. He, you were his craftsmanship. You are artisanal. You're fancy. If you were bread, you would be inside two plastic wrappers. Okay. Not the one, like the fancy bread. He made you on purpose. He made you intentionally. You're good with people because God made you that way. You like to serve because God made you that way. You're a people pleaser because God made you that way. You're an extrovert because God made you an extrovert on purpose. You're an introvert because God made you an introvert on purpose. You're an omnivore because God made you an omnivore on purpose. Do you understand? You're big and imposing because God wanted you to be big and imposing. You're small and frail because God wanted you to be small and frail. You have a big, strong voice. You have a weak voice because God wanted those things. You're shy because God wanted you to be observant. You're outspoken and boisterous because God wanted dinner parties to go well for his children. Do you understand? Everything that you have was intentionally given to you and bestowed upon you by God. It is not an accident of evolution. It is not an accident of your parents falling in love. The Bible says that he knew us before we were knit in our mother's womb, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. So every ounce of you was made on purpose by God. You are not an accident or a collision or a coincidence of biology. You were intentionally made by your creator to be exactly who you are. And the reason he made you that way is for your good works that he prepared for you before time that you might walk in them. He knit you together the way he did because he has prepared a path for you to walk of good works and it is your job to be who you created you to, he created you to be so that you might walk in the good works that he determined for you before time, which is how we know that you are not an accident of biology or people falling in love in the seventies. Do you understand? So here's the thing. If that's what God did, if he made you on purpose, if he knit you in your mother's womb, if you were fearfully and wonderfully made, and when he made you, before time, he knew the good works he wanted you to walk in in 2025. And he crafted you in such a way to prepare you to walk that exact path that he has for you. Then let's understand this. When we live according to the flesh, we pervert creation and reject God and his intentions. When we take all those things in our alchemy, that amalgamations of gifts and strengths and weaknesses, and we use that for what we want and not what God wants. When we take all of those gifts and abilities and we leverage those for ourselves to acquire for ourselves whatever it is we might want, love, fame, attention, money, power, whatever it is. When we take those gifts, God's handiwork, and we leverage those things to live according to the flesh and what we want, rather than what God wants, we pervert creation. Or maybe even worse, maybe we don't take those gifts and abilities that God gives us and leverage them for our own good, nor do we leverage them for the good of God. We just ignore them and we numb ourselves and we do nothing. It's even worse. Revelation says that because you're neither good nor bad, but lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. It's even worse to ignore the ways in which we're created and use them for absolutely nothing. But when we live according to the flesh and its thoughts and desires, using everything that God's made us to be to make ourselves happy and to keep ourselves content, rather than using everything that God has given us and made us to be to build his kingdom and to live according to the spirit, this is important. We pervert God's perfect creation. And we reject God and his intentions simply by the way that we live. This is why we are objects of wrath. Because we've taken this good, wonderful thing that he gave us and we've used it for our own ends, and we've muddied it up, and we've mucked it up. So when that passage concludes, we are like them objects, by our nature, objects of wrath, that's why, because we deserve it. Now, if we understand that and we're there together, that's what makes verses 4 and 5 all the more impactful and resounding. They say this. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. So there's a lot there. But, that's the way the verse starts. But, I always say when you're reading your Bible and you see a therefore, you have to ask, what's it there for? Romans chapter 8 says, therefore. It starts out therefore. So why is that there? Because of chapters one through seven and what was covered there because of that, this, but counteracts what was just said. You were created by God. You are children of the flesh. You live according to his desires. You used to do that. You are, you are deserving object of his wrath. But in spite of that, because of his great love for us, and there's no love to compare that to in humanity than the love of that baby landing on the chest of my wife. And knowing you have never done a single thing for me, and I will die for you. Because of his great love for us. Last week, Aaron Winston did a great job talking about how God yearns for us from the inside out, this yearning love, this pursuing love that God has for us. And because of that love, because God loves us like that, he pours out his mercy grace and mercy, and many of you can define these, but so that we're on the same page, we understand what we're talking about. Mercy is when you do not receive a punishment that you have earned, that you deserve. Grace is when you receive a gift that you did not earn and you do not deserve. Because of these countervailing forces in God, and because of his great love for you, he was compelled to make a way for you. Because of his richness and mercy, God is only described as rich in two things, grace and mercy. Dane asserts in the book that being rich in mercy is the only time in the Bible that God is described as rich in anything, which I'm sure if I could talk to him, it would make sense. I'm not trying to pick on him. I wrote down, I was going to put it on the screen, that God is only rich in mercy, but then in the same passage, it was said because of the riches of his grace. I'm like, OK, well, he's rich in grace, too. So it's those two things, grace and mercy. And listen, I want to share this thought with you. His mercy expressed and personified by Jesus has literally brought us from death to life. His mercy and his grace, expressed and personified by Jesus, has literally brought us from death to life. So we were deserving of wrath, but God, because of his great love for us, because of his richness and mercy, made a way for us to be restored to him, made a way for us to be restored to our former glory. Made a way for us to live a life without sin. To be buried with him in death and be raised to walk in newness of life. To live according to the spirit. To live as a new creation, anticipating our heavenly bodies and being restored with him. He made a way for restitution and restoration. And he did that by sending his son to die on the cross for us. His son is the personification of his mercy. And we, most of us, have heard this dozens and dozens, if not thousands of times. And we give intellectual assent to it, but I'm not sure if it clicks in what that actually means because we're numb to it. And so I was trying to think of a way that we could get just maybe a glimpse of how impoverished our view of mercy might be. And I came up with this, so we'll see if it works. Let's pretend that somewhere in high school or college, you started smoking cigarettes. Now, who among us didn't have a brief smoking phase in college? Alright, we're not here to cast aspersions. But let's say that you picked up a habit in high school or college, and you've got a best friend, really good buddy. And you start to pick it up, your buddy doesn't really say anything, They keep hanging out with you. But they notice kind of an uptick. Like it used to just be like socially or on the golf course or whatever. But now it's a little bit more. And they go, hey, I'm noticing you're smoking a lot more lately. Maybe I'm not here to make you feel bad, but maybe you shouldn't do that. Maybe that's not good for you. Maybe you can cut back a little bit. And you go, yeah, you know, I hear you. I know it's not good, but it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. Like, I've got it under control. Okay. So a few more months or years go by, and you and your buddy are still around, and your buddy goes, hey, listen, you really haven't tapered back. Like, This is going to become a problem. And I don't want that for you. This is not healthy. It's not good for you. Love you. It's not good for you. Maybe you want to consider making some better choices about this. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you're right. I need to quit. And so you quit. But you quit for three, four days a week. And then you start sneaking them again. And your buddy smells you. And they love you. And they go, hey, are you back on the horse? Yeah, been firing up some lung darts. Sorry about that. And you get back into the habit. And the years go by. And every now and again, your buddy gently prods. He says, hey, you should stop that, man. That's not good for you. And then once you're up to a pack or two a day, it gets real bad, and your buddy convinces you to go to rehab. I don't know if they have rehab for smokers. I'm sure the health care apparatus has figured out a way to get money for that. I don't know if you can actually do that, but in this story, you do. You go to rehab. It's really serious. You get clean. You come back and you're off. You're not smoking for a while, but eventually you start back up again. Your buddy gets your friends and family around, and they implore you, please, you're killing yourself. You've got to stop doing this. Yeah, I know, you're right. There's tears. You feel terrible. And you stop the best you can. But before you know it, you're doing it again. And you're doing it again, and you know you shouldn't. You're hiding it from your buddy because you don't want to disappoint him. But you know you're killing yourself. And then one day, you're at your house. Your buddy happens to be over. You start having a coughing fit. The last thing you remember is you're on the ground coughing and you're having a hard time breathing. And your buddy calls the ambulance and you're trying to wave him off. It's fine, I don't need it. He says, yes, you do, you're dying. And then the next thing you know, you wake up and you're in a hospital bed. And you look down and there's a scar down the middle of your chest. And the doctor comes in and you go, what happened? The doctor said, well, you were in pretty bad shape. You were living through machines. You had died. What's this scar for? You needed a lung transplant. Did I get one? Yeah, you got a lung transplant. Whose lungs are in me? What happened? Those are your buddy's lungs. Well, if these are his, how is he alive? He's not. He said it was more important to him for you to live. Not only did he want you to live, but he wanted you to experience what it was to have lungs that have never smoked. He wanted you to be able to play with your kids with lungs that could breathe really well. He wanted you to be able to experience the rest of your life as if you had never made any of those mistakes that you insisted on. And he wanted to give his life to do that. If we can get ourselves there, maybe we can grab a taste of how impoverished our view is of God's mercy. Because the truth is, that's all of us. We live lives of the flesh. We do what we want. And Jesus, our buddy, in children's church, we tell them, Jesus is your forever friend. Your forever friend walks alongside you and says, hey, that's not good for you. Hey, you're killing yourself. Hey, you're hurting yourself. Hey, you should stop. Hey, we need to get friends and family involved because your sins are not helping you. And what to me is so powerful about that illustration is that in the smoking illustration, those are choices that you made. And he warned you against over and over and over again and you kept making them. And then you wake up and there's a scar. And your buddy wanted you to live life as if you had never made any of the mistakes you did previously. Every single one of us has a scar down the center of our chest. For where Jesus died for us, because he wanted us to live a life as if none of the mistakes we made previously applied to us anymore. And he gave his life so that we didn't have to. So that we can be with our families and our children and our loved ones and our friends in such a way that we know what it is to walk in true love with them because none of our past mistakes apply to us anymore. That is the richness of God's mercy. That is the richness of His grace. We are all of us scarred and have received that transplant. So that we might experience what life is without our sins dogging us all the time. That's the richness of God's undeserved mercy. And I think that Dane sums it up best in this quote. I'm going to read it and then I'm going to pray and we're going to move into communion. Dane says this, God's mercy. It means on that day when we stand before him quietly, unhurriedly, we will weep with relief, shocked at how impoverished a view of his mercy-rich heart we had. Oh God, may that be true. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your mercy. Thank you for finding its personification in Jesus. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for yearning for us, for loving us, for lavishing your love upon us. God, we do not deserve it. We are by nature objects of wrath, a deserved and earned wrath, a deserved frustration and anger. And you watch us run ourselves into the ground and you die for us anyways. I pray that this morning we would have just a little bit more of a rich view of what your mercy is and what it means and how wonderful and miraculous it is. Help us walk in gratitude and humility towards you. In Jesus' name, amen.