Sermons tagged with Freedom

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday. This morning, as we were getting ready for the service, I looked at the chairs and I went, it's the summer months, crowds are going to start to dwindle. I don't want people to show up in the room to feel cavernous. So I took a chair off of the end of each row. Yeah. And then I was talking with Shane and Phil, who've been here longer than me. And they said, hey, next week, maybe leave all the chairs in there. And I said, yeah, I'm going to consult with you two before making any more rash decisions about this. So I'm as surprised as you are that it's crowded here. And my standard joke is if you had a hard time finding a parking space, or if you had to make your own, you know what time it starts. So that doesn't feel like it's my problem. Welcome to Grace. Several years ago, I was at my previous church. And at that church I served essentially as an associate pastor, but one of my roles was to serve as the family pastor. Hang on, this is driving me nuts. I was not the IT guy, just the family pastor. One of my roles was to serve as a family pastor and in a larger church staff, it was a larger church at the time, the family pastor oversees the children's ministry and the student ministry and the people who run those ministries. So in that capacity, I had a guy that worked for me named Alan. He was a youth pastor. And Alan, it was getting to be the summertime, and we told him that he could hire some interns for that summer. And one of the guys he hired was a kid named Aaron. And I don't really know. Aaron was young, in his early 20s. I don't really know how he found the church. I think he just kind of started coming and volunteered and wanted to get involved in the youth ministry program. And Alan wanted to hire him as an intern. And so I heard that he got hired. And so I kind of went and met Aaron. And he was one of these guys that just immediately upon meeting him, I thought to myself, I don't like this dude. I like this guy. I don't like him. I don't like the way he chooses to present himself to the world. I like the way he looks. I like the way he talks. I'm not going to describe any of those things, lest I offend some of you. But the biggest thing I didn't like about this guy that rubbed me the wrong way was that everything he did, everything he did, he may as well have worn a t-shirt every day that said, please like me. And he was one of these people that had gotten involved in youth ministry because in my estimation, he had never been around people that liked him a lot. And he thought, well, then I'll shoot fish in a barrel. I can win middle schoolers over and get them to like me. So it was like he was in ministry as his own personal ego project to make himself feel better about himself. So he wanted to be cool. He was never cool. So I'll go into youth ministry so kids will like me and I'll feel cool. And I'll be honest with you. I've been at this a while. It takes one to know one. Early on, I had to repent of that same attitude of I just want to be respected and I want people to like me. And I think a dirty little secret of being in professional ministry and all I did is go pro with my faith. Okay. That's all I did. We're all supposed to be ministering. We're all supposed to be Jesus's ambassadors. I just decided I'm going to take my talents to the professional level and get paid for this. Okay. But everybody's supposed to do the same thing. And a lot of the people who get into ministry early on, it's an ego project. I want to feel important and respected, and God sanctifies that and massages that out of us. So hopefully we can minister out of a gentle and contrite spirit and a humble heart and genuinely want to usher people towards Jesus and towards his kingdom. But what I sensed in this guy, Aaron, was that he was off the charts, look at me, like me guy. And I thought it was gross and I didn't like it. And I went to Alan and I said, dude, I said, I like that guy. It doesn't need to be around youth ministry. Nothing nefarious was going on. I didn't suspect anything nefarious. I just suspected that his motives for ministering were wrong. And I didn't want that around our ministry. That's not why we get involved in what we're doing. I was like, I don't like him, not comfortable with him. You need to get rid of him. And he kept defending him, but all summer long, he was just one of these guys that immediately when I met him, I didn't like him. And it makes me wonder if when I start talking about people that you just don't like, if any of you can think of somebody right now that you just don't like. And I would ask you, besides the older gentleman that greets at the front door, Ron Torrance, that's mine that I'm thinking of right now. So y'all aren't allowed to pick Ron, you have to pick somebody else. I think everybody in this room has somebody they can think of when I say, who's somebody that you just don't like? And now maybe immediately our minds will go to celebrities or people that we've never met, but we've seen in different medias and we just don't like them. I'm not talking about them this morning, although that is an ancillary application of this. I'm talking about people in your life that you know that you don't like. Now, some of us are like Kyle. This morning, I asked Kyle for some sermon research before the service. Hey, man, can you think of anybody that you just don't like? And he was like, I'm sure if you gave me a minute, I could come up with somebody, but no. And then there's other people I talked to this morning were out of nowhere. I was like, hey, don't you know so-and-so? And he says, he's a good buddy of mine, and he says to me, yeah, I do know him. You would not like this guy. I can't stand him. So there's people on different, and I said, you're going to like the sermon this morning, dude. There's people on different ends of the spectrum, but no matter where you sit on that spectrum, we can all think of people that we've met in our life that we don't particularly care for. Sometimes very justified, sometimes small, silly reasons. I don't like their attitude, whatever it is. I don't like the cut of their jib. Whatever it might be, we have people that we don't like. And because that's a reality of life, because the reality of life is from time to time, we will meet people, we will be surrounded with people, we will be in close contact with people that we don't particularly care for. A co-worker from time to time, our spouse, our parents can rub us the wrong way sometimes, our children can rub us the wrong way sometimes. But there are people, those people we kind of bring back into the fold because we need to, but there's some people that we will just write off. Like, I just don't like that person. Don't want to deal with that person. A neighbor that is your mortal enemy, whatever might be going on in your life, we have those people that we simply don't care for. And a question that has come up often in my life as a Christian is kind of this theoretical question, is it okay as a Christian to not like someone? Is that all right? And so that's really the opening question of the day. There will be some people you simply don't like, but is that okay? There will be some people that you simply don't like, but is that, as a Christian, is that okay? Now this comes in the middle of a series, or This is actually the last part of the series called In Light Of. We've been going through Romans since February. We went through the first eight chapters, which meticulously build a case for humanity's need for Jesus. And then there's the culmination of those chapters in Romans 8, where we do need Jesus very much, and then promises are made to us that nothing can ever separate us from his love. And in light of this wonderful truth that Jesus accepts us, loves for us, paved a way for us to spend eternity in relationship with Almighty God, how should we then live our lives? So every week we've been looking at a different chapter in Romans 9 through now 15. In light of that truth, how should we live our lives? And so this week we come to Romans 15, and I believe it asks this question, or at least it answers this question, one that we deal with from time to time. As Christians, is it okay for us to have people that we simply don't like? Now, if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, thank you so much for being here. And I have good news for you. I'm not preaching to you this morning. If you're not a believer this morning, you are free to not like whoever you want. You do not have to hold yourself to the standards of this. But if you're a Christian, that may not be our answer. So to that question and to the unavoidable reality that from time to time there are people in our life that we simply don't like, is this okay? Are we allowed to do that? Paul writes this, Romans 15, verses 5 through 7. May God, who gives endurance and encouragement, give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 7. Accept one another then, just as like people? And sometimes it's for very justifiable reasons. But as we approach Scripture and say, is it ever okay for a Christian to simply not like someone? This is the instruction. Accept others as Christ accepted you. What does he say in verse 5? He wants to give you the same attitude of mind towards each other as Christ has towards you. So in two different ways, when we ask the question, is it okay to have people in my life I simply don't like? And I want to be very clear here. Obviously, obviously, we're not asking the question, can I be openly mean to them? I don't like them. Therefore, I feel like it's my right to ridicule them and belittle them in the workplace until they quit in shame. We're not preaching against that. I'm going to assume you know that. If you don't know that, there's a great fourth and fifth grade class right over there that might be on your level. Obviously, we know it's not good to ridicule people, to treat them poorly because we simply don't like them. Hopefully, we are of an elevated morality and sense of character that even when we don't prefer somebody, even when we don't like somebody, we find it within the magnanimity of our generous character and spirit to be nice to them from time to time. We have probably executed that. That's how we get around in society, is we learn to at least be cordial to people, even if we don't prefer them. And we tend to think as Christians that this is an okay model. As long as I'm not a jerk, then I'm fine. But that's not what Romans says. What Romans says is we should have the same mind towards others that Jesus has towards us. That we should accept others as Jesus accepts us. Which is different than if you just don't like somebody, try to be nice to them. No, no, no. We should think of them as Jesus thinks of us. So let me ask you this. How do you think Jesus accepts others? Do you think that Jesus is in heaven? And when some cranky old lady dies, he looks at Paul and he's like, Paul, I can't think of a name that's not offensive right now. So I'll choose one that is. Karen just died. Paul, you're welcome. Thank you for being the foil for that joke. Paul, look at this. Karen just died. And both Jesus and Paul go, oh, geez, this is going to be a handful in heaven. Do you think there are people that pass away that Jesus is like, I was really hoping that they wouldn't accept me because they were going to be Satan's problem. And now there's eternity with this person. I'm going to talk my ear off. Do you think Jesus does this? Don't you think he likes people? Don't you think he likes you? Do you think that when you get to heaven, you'll be like, Jesus, man, that I could be. I've already given the example of Aaron, and we're going to come back to that story and redeem it a little bit. But you think I'm going to get to heaven and be like, Jesus, like, for real, dude. Aaron, he was the worst, right? And you think Jesus is going to be like, I know, thanks for bearing that burden for me, brother. No, no, obviously Jesus likes everybody. And some of my Bible scholars in the room may go, well, hang on, he didn't seem to like the Pharisees very much. And I'll give you that. He was stern with the Pharisees. But we also see a Jesus that when one of them came to him in John chapter 3 named Nicodemus and wanted to talk with him and ask him more questions, and he asked to meet Jesus at night. Why? So that his Pharisee peers wouldn't see him meeting with Jesus and so bring shame upon his good name. He wanted to meet with Jesus in secret, and Jesus knew that. And what did he do? He didn't say, no, I don't care for you. I don't like your kind. You want to talk to me? You talk to me in the middle of the day in front of everybody. No. He said, all right, let's talk. And he had an open, honest, generous conversation with Nicodemus. Well, he didn't seem to like the Pharisees very much. Okay, well, he was stern with them from time to time. But do you not think that Jesus wanted to see them in his kingdom? Do you not think that Jesus knew who they were inside and out and wanted to see them come to faith and use the influence that they had been given to usher other people into that faith? Do you not think he saw the best in them and wanted the best for them? I think it's a really, really difficult argument to make that Jesus simply doesn't care for some people. That Jesus has an attitude towards people of, you know, I really don't like them very much, but I'm going to be nice to them if they're around. I'm going to try to think positively of them, which should really inform the question for us, am I allowed to simply not like someone? Well, all I know is that we're instructed in Scripture to have the same mind towards others that Jesus has towards them. And we're told to accept people as Jesus accepts them. So let me bring this more personal, if we're still having a difficult time with the concept, and ask you this question. How did and does Christ accept you? This is a really important question. Because you're here this morning, it's a Sunday, most of you woke up and showered, you put on decent clothes, you're presenting yourself. This is an environment in which it is imminently easy to be liked. All you have to do is shake the hands of people who look at you. If someone says good morning, you say good morning back. If someone says, how are you doing? You say, good, I hope you are, or good, how are you doing? It's really easy to put on the facade. Just be nice to everybody, you'll leave likable. It's harder with the people you see every day. It's harder at home. And it's harder for the people who know you the best to like you the most. That's why we love to be fully seen and to be fully known. To be fully seen by your spouse and to be fully known by them is this great picture of love, to really know your kids and know what they're capable of and understand all the ugliness in them and go sweep it aside and love them deeply anyways. And for people to offer you that is exceptional love. And it is very rare for someone to know us deeply and yet still like us. That's what makes friends and spouses so deeply important and meaningful in our life. But even those people who know us the best don't know us completely. They don't know every racist thought we've ever had. They don't know every pretension that we hold. They don't know every time we look down on someone else and so elevate ourselves. They don't know what we really think of that person that posts that thing on Facebook. Even the people who know us the best don't know everything that's happening in us all the time. And the reality is that for most of us, we think and feel pretty confident that if they did, they would not still like us. Jesus knows all of those things. And Jesus likes you, accepts you completely. He knows what's worst about you. He's been with you through the Holy Spirit. His presence has been brought into your lowest moment where no one else was and that you never talk about. And Jesus is excited for you to come to heaven with him. He likes you. So I would ask you again, those people in our lives that we don't like, we're told by Scripture to accept them as Christ accepted us. So how did and does Jesus accept you? And I love thinking about this. Jesus accepted you when you accepted him, knowing everything that you would be and become after that, the good and the bad. And he still likes you. He still wants you around. So that's how we are supposed to accept other people. This is difficult, right? And I know that some of us might go extreme with this. Do you mean that Jesus really likes the terrorists from 9-11, Nate? He really likes them? I believe that Jesus loves them. I believe that Jesus was hurt deeply for them. I believe that Jesus saw impressionable young men that were deceived by evil and led to believe things that were fundamentally untrue to a place where their life was defined by hate, which is the exact opposite of what Jesus wanted for them. So I believe that he grieved for them, that he did love them. Many of us in our life have people who have hurt us deeply. Nate, it's easy for you to say that I'm not allowed to not like somebody, but you don't know what my dad did to me. You don't know what my mom was like. You don't know what my ex-husband did. You don't know what my ex-wife did. You don't know how awful my brother was growing up. You don't know that. I have a right to my disdain. I have a right to my dislike. You probably do. You probably do. All I can tell you is that Paul prays that we will learn to accept them as Christ accepts us. All I can tell you is that Paul tells us that we should have the same mind towards them that Jesus has towards us. Now here's, and I want to say this before I move on. I believe those extreme examples are the exception, not the rule. I believe when I asked you to think of somebody in your life that maybe you just don't care for, that for most of you, that answer was not from some place of deep wounding and hurt. For most of you, it was an answer similar to me. I didn't like this guy. He just rubbed me the wrong way. I never did prefer him. But for both examples, how do we find a path towards that generosity and magnanimity of spirit where we can actually find a way to like people that we don't like? Well, I would like to invite you to learn to ask what I think is a very important question. What are their actions telling me they really need? When I see someone acting in a way that I don't like, what are their actions telling me they really need? When I was looking at Aaron and I immediately decided I didn't like him, not Aaron Gibson, our worship pastor, I still don't like him, but Aaron from the example, the youth intern. And I immediately, I decided I didn't like him. Why did I not like him? I didn't like him because he was trying to get approval from kids and that's not where you should get approval, man. That's not the reason to get in here. So you need to get your fragile ego out of here. I didn't like him because he wanted approval and acceptance. Because he wanted to feel like he was enough. He had never felt before in his life like he was enough. And he didn't, And here's the thing. Everybody wants that. Everybody in this room wants that. Everybody in this room might as well tattoo across their chest or across their forehead, am I enough? We all wonder that. So how could I not like somebody for asking the same question that I do? It's just that some of us figure out how to get that question answered in more socially acceptable ways than he did. But if I would have stopped and just said, what do his actions tell me that he needs and wants? I would have very quickly arrived at, Aaron just wants to be enough. And that's not really something worth condemning him for. Maybe I should show him instead of withhold from him. I've seen clips going around recently about people losing their minds in public places. Groups of people losing their minds in restaurants, yelling at waiters, yelling at owners, throwing things in Chipotle, yada, yada, yada. And it's easy to watch that and be like, those people are completely unlikable. And that's the most mild way I can summarize my thoughts in that moment. We have every right to disdain them and their behavior. But if you ask this question, what do their actions show me that they need or want? What their actions show me is that they want to feel respected. They want to feel like they have some sense of control. They want to feel like their needs are valued like everyone else's. And for whatever reason, something's happened in their life to make them think that nobody cares about them. And so rather than sit back and quietly take it, they're going to be vocal about demanding it. Who among us does not want to feel in control from time to time? Who among us doesn't want to be respected? Who among us is happy with taking a backseat to everyone else if that's the paradigm that we feel like we live with? And so when we ask this question, what do their actions tell me that they need? It gets us to this place of empathy and understanding, which kind of paves the way to liking them. And so I want to ask you this question. What would happen if we chose empathy over disdain? What would happen if we chose empathy over disdain? If when we see somebody that, and we go, I don't like them. I don't like people who vote that way. I don't like people who post that way. I don't like people that agree with that, that are of this political party. I don't like people who whine about this or carry on about this. I don't like high maintenance people. I don't like low maintenance people. I don't like tough people. I don't like weak people. Whatever it might be, the people that we don't like. Stop when we feel ourselves not liking someone. I want you to test this out. For some of you, it's going to happen very quickly. You're going to be leaving the aisle and the person in front of you is going to be going slow and you're going to feel rage well up within you. Why are they moving so slowly? Pause. What are their actions tell me that they need? Time, you jerk. That's what they need. They're old and they need time. And you will be too one day and you will need time. So relax. Next time you feel yourself tempted to not like someone and give in to that, pause. What do their actions tell me that they need? And is what they need really that condemnable? With the people that have hurt us deeply, what do their actions tell me that they need? Some of us, I'm sure, and I don't want to speak too lightly about it, but what we know from research and experience, some people grew up with a dad that was violent. What do those actions show you that he needs? He probably needed a good dad too. He probably didn't have that either. He probably needs to be understood. He probably needs somebody to love him enough to sit him down and say, hey man, this is not the way you should be, but he's never had anybody who loved him enough to say something. I'm not trying to excuse away abusive behavior at all. I'm just saying that there is a way to begin a path towards empathy by asking ourselves, what do their actions tell me that they need? And then beginning to understand what motivates the bad behavior, not defining them by the bad behavior. At the end of Aaron's tenure, he finished being an intern, and he wanted to come on as a youth assistant in a full-time capacity. And I wasn't going to let that happen. And so he asked to meet with me to know why we chose not to hire him. And I told my youth pastor to take the meeting. I didn't want to do anything. No, I'm just messing around. I took the meeting. And leading up to that meeting, I thought to myself, you know, I have to love him enough to tell him the truth. I have to respect him enough as a human to tell him the truth. And we met and he said, why can't I move forward at this church? And I said, and I told him, I said, man, here's what I think. I think that you need to take a break from youth ministry because I don't, I don't think that you're really happy with yourself. And I think that you're in this to try to gain the respect of others, but getting the respect of some students is really not going to make you feel okay about yourself. So I think that you need to get involved in a small group of your peers. You need to let God speak to you. You need to pause and consider whether youth ministry is really the career that you need to take or if you're just doing this for selfish reasons. And once you've reconciled with those things, I think you should move forward with whatever path God gives you. But right now, I think you're trying to get into ministry for the wrong reasons and you're going to end up crashing and burning. And he thanked me. And he went on and he, honestly, he followed my advice. He did what I told him I thought he should do. He took some time off, got involved in another church, met a nice girl, decided ultimately to go back to school to get a Bible degree and to get into ministry. But he called me years later and he said, I just want to thank you for that conversation because you were right. And God did have some work to do on me. Now here's what's really important. That story works out like I'm the hero, but I never tell those stories because I'm not. Here's where I failed him because I let my dislike get in the way. I could have had that conversation with him in May. And I could have been a part of helping rehabilitate him, helping him grow through that. And in September, he didn't have to experience the rejection that I imposed on him because I refused to love him enough to tell him the truth about himself. And because I was a coward, and because I didn't love him enough, I was happy to just sit and dislike instead of asking myself, what do his actions tell me that he needs? And then acting according to that empathy rather than disdain. I withheld from him. And the other way I withheld from him, and this is awful, nobody needs my approval. Nobody cares what I think about them. I'm not here to claim that. But if you just think about the dynamic, here's a young 20-something kid, he's 21 years old. I'm at the time 36 or 36. No, I was 34 or 35. And I had, by all measures, accomplished what he wanted to do with his career. I was what he wanted to be. Now, that's just a position. It's not me personally. It's just the position. We understand the dynamics of someone early in their career, seeing someone that's progressed in their career going, I want to learn from that person. Meaning because of my position, realizing that all he wanted was to be told that he's enough, I could have gone to him and I could have said early on, hey dude, Jesus loves you. You are enough. I think you're going to be great. Here's your challenges to what greatness could look like. Here's where your character may be getting in the way of what God wants to do with you. But I believe that if you're willing to be open about that and move on from them, that God can do some powerful things with you. So you stick by me and we're going to tackle this together. How much better does that look than just simply choosing to not like him for justifiable reasons for the five months that he was in my care? What does choosing to not like him win me? What did I prove to him? What did I prove to myself? What benefit is it to us to have people that we've simply reconciled to ourselves? We're not going to like them. None. But here's the benefit if we do. I'm skipping two points in your notes if you're following along. The last thing is the result. Verse 7, complaining about. The result of refusing to dislike someone, even when it's justifiable, but offering them grace and searching for empathy instead and seeking to understand what their actions tell us that they need and loving them for what motivates them, not judging them for their behaviors. The result of that is that people bring praise to God. The result of that, if we can practice that here, is to create an environment where everyone feels loved and everyone feels accepted and everyone feels like they're part of the church and everyone feels like they're welcome here and everyone wants to be a part of what they are. And because they're so accepted here, they will accept other people. The result of that is not just about grace. It's about the kingdom and the community of God. What if God's children would quit seeing it as an option to simply not like people because we can and we don't want to? But what if the kingdom of God took upon itself to see people with grace and with empathy and to understand what lies behind the behaviors and to love the person that has the same motives we do, to like, to be loved, to be known, to be respected, to be cared for? What if we began to see people for that and how we were instead of seeing them as the world was and looking for reasons and excuses to disdain them? How much more attractive and fragrant would our faith be? How much more praise would be brought to God if we would simply quit letting ourselves dislike people for reasons that ultimately don't matter and start making ourselves ask for God's empathy, for God's acceptance of them, for Jesus's mind towards other people that Jesus has towards other people. What if we started becoming people like that? What if the kingdom of God started offering empathy like that? How much more praise would be brought to the God that we all serve? So let's stop not liking people. Let's knock it off. Let's find paths to empathy so that we can accept everyone with the same mind that Jesus does. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for these seniors that have graduated and are moving into a new phase of life. God, I pray specifically that you would be with each of their moms as they worry here for the next several months, probably in a continued way. Give them your peace of spirit as their children go and step into these new phases. Lord, I pray that we would be a people who like folks the way you do. That we would find paths to empathy and understanding so that we might think the best of them. So that we might love them well as you do. God, where there are roadblocks to this, where there's difficulty there, where we just have a person that we just can't get around to liking, I pray that you would help us begin to break down those walls and show them your love and your acceptance and your grace and your goodness. In Jesus' name, amen.

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.

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

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and if I hadn't got a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that. Thanks for coming on Time Change Sunday. I know that we're all, our wagons are dragging a little bit, but that's all right. Before I just launch into the sermon, I do have a bit of a retraction to print. Last week, I maliciously and falsely accused my wife, Jen, of smoking a cigar in college. We did not agree on the story, and that afternoon, she texted her friend Carla, her roommate, and I know Carla very well, and she asked her to confirm her side of the story, and Carla said, no, I was there. You pretended and gave it to me, and I'm the one that smoked it. It was a black and mild. It was disgusting. So I was wrong. Jen, as usual, was right. She's at home now with a sick kid. So anyways, if you see her, let her know that her character has been restored. One thing that is true that Jen and I do, and I bet that you've had the same conversation with your spouse if you have one of those or you're a good friend or something like that but I don't know about y'all but for us every time the a Powerball lottery gets up but like a ridiculous amount like 330 million dollars or something like that like so much it gets so big that your mom starts buying lottery tickets just in case it's God's will that she have that money to use it for his kingdom. You know, that's how we Christians justify the lottery ticket purchases. But every time we see that, when we'll see the billboard or mention it or something like that, then what conversation do we immediately have? Right, nodding heads. What would we do if we won the money, right? So then we get to have that fun conversation, and it goes, by now we've had it enough times that it goes in some very predictable ways. Out of the gates, you know, you have to sweep aside, get rid of the practicalities. Like, don't tell me how you're going to invest it. That's boring. Don't be a nerd. Like, what's the fun stuff you're going to do? What are the extravagances that you're going to allow yourself? And it always starts small with us because we're trying to be humble because we're trying to be humble people. We're not going to be ostentatious. But the one extravagance I always lead with, this one's consistent for me, is a private chef. I want a private chef to just live at my house and make me food all the time. That's what I would like. Jen will eventually admit that she wants to get a condo in Manhattan. And those are our extravagances. And then I'll be like, and maybe, you know, I mean, the car's got a lot of miles on it. So maybe I need a new car. Maybe you need a top of the line Honda Odyssey. You know. You guys know that's what I want. Maybe for travel, we should just buy into a private jet, like a share, not our own, but maybe we'll just share. We try to stay humble, and then as we have the conversation, it just gets more and more absurd until we're the Kardashians, so then you just laugh and whatever. But those are, that's fun to do. That's a fun game to play. What would life be like if? And then you imagine this life that maybe you would have one day, and I don't know what you guys would do if you hit it big, but it's fun to play that game of imagining what life could be like if. But one of the things that we all do, even if you're not ridiculous like Jen and I and daydream about what it would be like to win the Powerball, what I am convinced of is that every person in this room, every person who can hear my voice, does have plans and hopes and dreams for their life that are real, that are substantive, that actually matter to you because they're actually attainable. This is so ubiquitous in our culture that we have a name for it. It's the American dream. People move to this country in pursuit of what you have access to because we live in a place where we are allowed to dream our own dreams, we are allowed to make our own plans, and we are allowed to begin to pursue those. And so everybody here has hopes and plans and dreams for their life. And those are less funny. Because I'm probably never going to have a private chef. Probably not. I might be able to hire one for ad night to make me stay. I'm probably not going to ever have a private chef. I'm not going to mourn that. We'll probably never have a condo in Manhattan. I'm not going to mourn the loss of that potential condo, but I do have hopes and dreams in my life that if they don't come to fruition, I will mourn that. If I don't get to do Lily's wedding, that's going to make me sad. If I don't get to meet my grandchildren, that's going to make me sad. If I'm not still married to Jen in 30 years, that's going to make me sad. So we all have hopes and dreams that we marshal our resources around, that we pursue with our life, that we intend to execute. And some of us are less detailed than others. Like I've got a good friend in Chicago, and they were as meticulous as when they were first married before they had kids, they moved to Chicago and she had an opportunity to get her master's at Northwestern, get her MBA there, which is an expensive prospect. And they basically said, hey, if we do this, and we're going to borrow that money, then we are committed to both of us having full-time jobs and using our resources to pay for a nanny. That's just how our family is going to be. And they said okay, and they executed that plan and they've done that. And now they have three kids and a two bedroom condo in Chicago off of Lake Michigan. And their plan now is in 2026 or maybe 2027, they're going to move to the Atlanta suburbs to be closer to his family, to be closer to his mom. So they've got their plans mapped out like that. And maybe that's how you do your plans, and maybe it's not. But you all have them. You all have, if you have kids, you have hopes and dreams for your kids. It could be as minuscule as the kind of job you want them to have. It could be as broad as the kind of person that you want them to be. If you're married, you have hopes and dreams for that. If you have a career, you have hopes and dreams for that. But we all do this. As soon as we kind of come online somewhere in adolescence and realize that one day our life is going to be our own, we begin to imagine how we want to build it. Nobody in this space doesn't have plans and hopes and dreams for themselves, however broad or humble they might be. And I bring this up because the passage that we're looking at today in Mark chapter 8, if you have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter 8 verses 34 through 37 is where we're going to be focused. As we continue to move through Mark, we arrive this morning at one of the most challenging teachings in scripture. It's this incredibly high bar of demand that Jesus sets on our life. And it is one that we may not even be familiar with. It's one that I am certain that we don't consider enough, that we don't come back to enough, that we haven't wrestled with enough. It is one of the most impossibly high bars that Jesus sets in his ministry. And what we see in that bar is this, is that God has a dream for you, and it's better than yours. You have hopes and dreams for your life. You have things that you want to see come to fruition. Maybe you want to have a long marriage. Maybe you want to have a good career. Maybe you want to be a generous person. Maybe you want to be a good friend and a good member of the community. Maybe you want to see your kids flourish. These are all good things. Very few of you, if any, have terrible dreams for your life where you want to go do evil things. I'd like to be like Vladimir Putin. I don't think anybody's doing that. We all have good things that we want to see come to fruition. But here's what I'm telling you, and here's what I want you to begin to think about this morning. God has different plans for you, and they're better than yours. All right? With that preamble, let's look at, bless you, let's look at what Jesus has to say as he's teaching the crowds and the disciples, and let's look at what this high bar is for us. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Here's what Jesus says. He gathers the crowd around him. He gathers the disciples around him. And he says, if anybody wants to be my disciple, they must take up their cross and follow me. Now there's a lot about that statement that we need to understand. As kind of an aside to the flow of the sermon to where I want to go, I do want to stop here. And I want to look at that word that Jesus chose to use. Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up their cross and follow me. Whoever wants to be my disciple must do what I'm about to ask you to do. And one of the things that we've done in Christianity, in Christian culture and church world, is we've taken the terms Christian and disciple and we've made them mean two different things. We've said that a Christian is someone who's got their foot in the door. A Christian is someone who's going to go to heaven. They are saved. They are in right standing before God. They believe God is their father and Jesus is their savior. The way we talk about what it means to become a Christian at grace is to simply believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And once we believe those things, we are ushered into the kingdom of God as a Christian. And then at some point in our life, if we want to begin to take our faith very seriously, then we can become a black belt Christian, which is a disciple. Yeah? Like, Christianity is like discipleship light. We've separated those words. We've made them two different things. I'm a Christian. Are you a disciple of Christ? I don't know. That's pretty serious. Let's not get crazy. And listen, you know I'm right about that. And here's the thing. That is not how Jesus defined those terms. Jesus never used the word Christian. They were known as the followers of the way for years after his life. We made up Christian. Jesus called them disciples. And that's what he told the disciples to do. The end of his life, the great commission, go into all the world and make disciples. Right. Not Christians. Not converts. We think Christians are converts and disciples are people who take it seriously and try to make more converts. And to Jesus, he says, no. You are all the way in being a disciple of mine, following me, becoming more like me in character, doing the work that I do, becoming a kingdom builder, building the gospel, reaching people with the gospel. You are all the way in, or you're not following me. But we've made it possible to be a Christian who's not a disciple. And I just want to point out this morning, it's not the point of the sermon, but I just wanted to stop here and point out, that's not how Jesus defined it. So if in our heads we separate those terms, then we don't understand them the way that Jesus does. And we should have to decide if we think we're right or he's right. But he says, if you want to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me. Meaning, you must take up your life, you must take up your sacrifice, you must take everything that you have and walk it to Calvary with me. And sacrifice your life with me for the sake of the gospel. The way we say it here is you must become a kingdom builder. Quit trying to build your own kingdom. Start getting on board with building God's kingdom by growing it in breadth and depth. He says, if you want to be my disciple, it's not about getting in the door and becoming a convert. It's about taking up your cross, taking up your life, taking up everything you thought you wanted, laying it down at the altar and following me and letting me do with your life what I would like to do with it. And he says it. It's very clear. It's explicit in the text. For the sake of the gospel. And he even uses the term, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save it. Jim Elliott, famous missionary, I believe in the 40s and the 50s and the 1900s, died trying to reach some Ecuadorian tribal people who were cannibals. And he said, prior to that trip in his writings, that he is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. It is absolutely in keeping with this teaching of Christ. If you call yourself my disciple, here's the tax. You give up your life. You give up, listen to me, you give up your hopes and your dreams and your plans. You give up the career you thought you wanted. You give up the goals for your children that you created. You give up who you thought you were going to be. You give up your finances and your time and your treasure. And you set those aside. And you go, Jesus, what would you have me do with these things? Are these the things that you want in my life? Or do you want now to choose a different life for me? But that's why I say that this is an incredibly high bar. Because he says, listen, if you want in, if you want in, let me tell you what the tax is. Let me tell you what it's going to cost you. It's so funny. When I was growing up, I used to hear this phrase all the time. Salvation's a free gift. Can't be earned, can't be deserved. And I'd always go like, yeah, but it does cost you something. Jesus tells you. It costs you your life. That American dream that you have, you've got to give that up. That's what Jesus is demanding. In fact, what we see from this text is Jesus insists that we trust his dream more than our own. Jesus in this text insists, you've got to trust my hopes and dreams and plans for your life more than you trust your own. That's the tax. You've got to give up your own. You've got to let me replace my vision for you for your vision for you, and you've got to go. And you've got to get to work sharing the gospel for the sake of the gospel. That's what he asks us to do. And this is a remarkably high bar, particularly for those of us who come into faith as adults, or even for those of us who begin to take our faith seriously as adults, because the toothpaste is out of the tube. We're already down the road. We got a mortgage. We got things that we're responsible for. We already have our life ordered, and so it's a really difficult thing to hand our life plans over to Jesus and go, if you want to change them, if you want me to do something else, if you want us to go somewhere else, to live somewhere else, if you want to change the way I raise my kids and what our values are, if you want to change the way I'm married, whatever you want to do, do it. I trust you. And in a sense, give up our plans for our future. That's a really tough ask. I sat with someone this week, a dear friend who in the last several years, her marriage has just become really, really bad. Just really awful and hard. And it's to a point now where it's very clear that the best thing for her and for her children are to not be in the house with him. Because that's not a good environment. And that's a really tough decision to make. And as I sat with her this week, she said, you know what? I'm not even really sad about him. I fell out of love with him years ago. But I'm grieving the life I thought I was going to have. And finally admitting that I'm not going to have it. She sat in the playroom and watched her children divide up the stuffed animals, deciding which ones were going to mommy's house and which ones were going to daddy's house. That was not her plan. That was not what she wanted to experience. When she walked down that aisle, her hopes and dreams and plans for her life were to be with him for the rest of their life, to see their grandkids and go on trips with them together. That was their hopes and dreams. And so now she's in the middle of mourning what she thought she was going to have. And so it's, I'm acknowledging, it's a big ask, midstream in life, to hand over everything that you had planned for yourself to Jesus. And so you do with this what you want. And if that causes you to mourn something you thought you wanted or you thought you needed or you had marshaled your resources around pursuing, then so be it. But Jesus says, go ahead and mourn. Get it over with. Because we've got work to do. And it's here that I want to say this. As we listen as adults and we try to process this and think through it and how to integrate it into our lives, what do we do with it if we want to apply the truth? As I mentioned a little bit ago, the reality of it is that the older you are, the more challenging this instruction becomes. Until you retire, then it's like, whatever you want, Jesus, I've got all the freedom. At least that's how I assume retirement is. I don't know. But the further down the road you are, the harder this gets to be obedient to. You know, I think about Zach and Haley over here. I just did their wedding in the fall. They don't look at them. They don't know anything about anything. They don't know nothing. But they're also at the cusp of life and can respond to this in a way that has more freedom than the way that others of us can respond to it. So we acknowledge that. Here's what else that implies because we have a lot of parents in the room who are still raising children. You can get ahead of this. You can get ahead of them creating their own hopes and dreams for themselves. You can start to raise them, reminding them all the time, God has plans for you. God made you on purpose. God's gifted you to do things in his kingdom. And it's my sacred duty as your parent to guide you to those. I remind you guys all the time of the verse in Ephesians, Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. My most sacred duty, I believe, as a father, is to tell Lily and to tell John as often as they will listen, you are Christ's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that you might walk in them. My sacred duty is to help you see those good works and walk in them. It sounds counterintuitive, especially for Americans. I don't want John and Lily to create their own dreams for their lives. I want their biggest dream for their life to be to walk with God. Hold me close and teach me to abide. We just sang it. I want their biggest goal for their life to be to abide in Christ. And that one day, when they get to heaven, to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. That's what I want for them. I'm really not very interested in them creating their own dreams. Because God has bigger ones for them that are better than theirs. And this makes sense, doesn't it? So I'll get there in a second. But to the parents, you raising your kids, you have a chance to get ahead of it now and to help them become young adults who know my life is not my own and God has plans for it and his plans are better than my plans so I'm going to follow them anyways. We can get ahead of this, guys, for the rest of us, as we try to integrate these things into our life. The problem is, that's exactly what we tend to do, isn't it? That's exactly what we tend to do. This isn't revolutionary information. It might be packaged in a way that we haven't thought about in a while, but it's not revolutionary information that Jesus asked for our life and wants us to live our life according to his plans. But when we hear that, trying to be good Christians who we don't yet know if we're disciples, we try to integrate Jesus' plans into the nooks and crannies of our plans, right? We try to take the life that we're already living and the path that we already chose. And then we try to work Jesus into those things so that being obedient to his word and choosing his dreams over ours doesn't cause very much pain. So we don't have to mourn a possible future. So we don't have to change a lot of things. So we don't get too uncomfortable. We just do a tiny little course correction and we feel better about ourselves because now we're giving Jesus this part of our life when that's not what he asks for. Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Follow me. If you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. If you don't, you will lose it. And here's the thing that I was thinking about as I was thinking through this. As we think about the idea of choosing our plans for our life or choosing Jesus' plans for our life. Your plans, I know this is a little whatever. So go with me or don't. But my hunch is your plans are just an amalgamation of who you were in childhood and who your parents were and who your friends were when you were in high school and college and you were developing your values. Your plans are just a hodgepodge of stuff that you receive from the people around you. If you had good parents, you wanted to be like them. If you had bad parents, you didn't want to be like them. And so that's at the correction of your life. If you had good friends in high school and college that had decent values, they pointed you in one direction. If you had bad friends, they pointed you in another direction. Very few of you ever sat down with a legal pad and research and wrote out a plan for your life in a thoughtful, meaningful way. Your plans are an accident, man. That's my point. Whatever you think you chose you wanted to intend, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. You stumbled into it by accident of birth and culture. But we cling so tightly to the plans and the dreams that we have for our life that were made by flawed, finite brains. When what Jesus is offering to us are plans that were made by a perfect, divine brain that sees everything all at once. And yet we still stubbornly and ignorantly choose our own. C.S. Lewis once said that the kingdom of God is like you're a child in your backyard. He said making mud pies, which I guess is what you did for fun in like the 1910s, is you're like, mom, I'm going to go play with mud. Okay, be safe. He said it's like being offered to go on a one-year holiday, on a one-year vacation around the world to see all the greatest sights in the world, and instead we choose to sit in the backyard and play with mud. Here's the thing about these plans that Jesus has for you, about his desire for you to spend your life building his kingdom, not your own. And here's why it's okay for him to ask him to give up everything you thought you wanted for what he wants, because they're better than yours. And Jesus is not a tyrant. He's not a dictator. He's not interested in making your life worse at all. In fact, we have verse after verse in Scripture that assures us that Jesus actually wants us to have a good life. One of my favorite verses that's in my office, I use it a lot, it brings me comfort a lot, is John 10.10. The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come, Christ says. I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus wants you to, literally, he wants you to have the best life possible. Now here's the deal. He probably doesn't define best life like you currently do, but his definition is better than yours. A couple more, and then I'm going to make a point and we'll wrap up. David writes in two different places in Psalms. In one place he writes, better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. And then in Psalm 1611 he says, at your right hand, God, there are pleasures forevermore. In your presence there is fullness of joy. Does this sound like a God who's interested in making you miserable? Does this sound like a God that doesn't have better plans for you than you do? Your plans are an accident. His are intentional and divine. Lastly, in Scripture, I often point out to you the Ephesians prayer, Ephesians 3, 14 through 19. We did a whole series on it last January. I pointed it out at the onset of this year. It's my prayer for grace and my prayer for you. And the heart of the prayer is that everything that happens in your life would conspire to bring you closer to God. That's the prayer. But I always stop when we go through it at 19 because you have to stop somewhere. But if you keep reading and you get to 20 and 21, you see one of the most amazing, encouraging little passages in scripture. It says this, it says, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. He finishes up that segment of the letter by offering the prayer to God, by him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. I know it's a high bar for Jesus to set, to say, I want all of your hopes and dreams. I want all of your plans. I want you to sit down and prayerfully consider with your career if that's what I want you to be doing. Prayerfully consider with your finances, is that really how I want you to invest in those? Is that really the future that I have dictated to you, or is that what you want? Jesus asked that we sit down and we think through these very difficult things that the answers could potentially make us deeply uncomfortable. But here's what we know. He's going to hand you better plans. He's going to hand you better dreams. And here's what I know experientially. I would never ever pretend to be someone who's always living life according to Jesus' plan. I would never ever pretend to do that. And you may be thinking, you're a pastor. You've committed your life to Jesus' plan. Not really. I became a pastor because I wanted people to respect me and think I was cool. That's why I became a pastor. Just full disclosure, that came out in counseling like six years ago. I know that that's true. God has sanctified those motives. Now I don't care what you think. That's not true either. But God has sanctified those motives and helped me not do this for myself and for the sake of others. So I know what it is to not live according to God's plan. I know it very well. But I've been blessed in my life that there have been pockets where I did accept his plan over mine and I did live his plan for me rather than my own plans and I can tell you without reservation or hesitation or exception when I am living my life according to God's plan my life life is richer, fuller, better, more lovely, more wonderful, more alive. Without exception, my friendships get deeper. Without exception, my marriage is better. Without exception, I find it easier to get up and I'm more motivated to do the things that God has put in front of me that day. Without exception, I hold my children tighter. Without exception, I cry more happy tears and experience a fullness of life that never comes when I live by my plans. And I don't want to paint a falsely rosy picture here. You can live according to God's plans and experience pain. You can mess up and pursue your own plans that weren't God's plans, and as a result, you're in a ditch somewhere. As a result, your life got sidelined. As a result, you were in the middle of great pain and hardship. But make no mistake about it, that's probably not because you were ardently following God's plan for your life. It's probably because you're following your own and he's trying to get your attention. But those of you who have lived your life according to God's plans for even a season cannot deny that that season in your life was one of the best ones. And that those seasons are some of the best ones. And there will be pain in the midst of living according to God's plan. We do not judge the raindrops of tragedy because we're believers. But, on balance, if you invest your life following God's plan for you rather than your own, if you take up your cross and follow Jesus and give up your life for the sake of the kingdom, I promise you, you will live a better life if you do it. I promise you it will be more rich and more full and more lovely. I promise you it will be immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine for yourself. I promise you. So as we finish this simple thought, and then I'll pray. Jesus is asking for your life. Do you trust him with it? Do you trust him with it? Let's pray. Father, you are lovely and good and wonderful and we are grateful. God, it is a scary thing to hand our hopes and dreams over to anyone else outside of our control. But Father, I pray that we would trust you with ours. Help us trust you with our children, with our careers, with our financial goals, with our friendships, with all the things we want to accomplish, all the things we want to acquire, and all the things we want to accumulate, God. I pray that we would trust you with those things. Give us the strength and the courage to ask hard questions and to receive hard answers and replace our cruddy hopes and dreams with your incredible ones and help us be people who live our lives for you. In Jesus' name, amen.