Sermons tagged with Generosity

I was going to say it's an enormous privilege to be here and speak this morning. However, now that the cat's out of the bag and you realize that this entire morning is about service and missions, those of you who know me, when you saw me walk up here, might have immediately thought to yourselves, huh, he's an odd choice to speak this morning. He's never struck me as one of those super sweet, unselfish, salt-to-the-earth, missions-type people, always concerned about others, rarely thinking of themselves, always busy, busy, busy collecting things in the foyer, taking people meals, building habitat for humanity homes. On the contrary, whenever I've dealt with the guy, he's always seemed pretty self-absorbed. Now, if you did have these thoughts, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't blame you. Sadly, I'm not any of those things. Yet, strange as it may seem, I'm not that odd a messenger at all. First though, let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people. Thank you for this morning. Just help me and use this morning to shake and stir our hearts as you see fit. And again, thank you for the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours and it's in Jesus name we pray amen to begin let's look at four passages from Scripture which I'll read and we will come back to them Matthew the first ones Matthew 6 19 through 21 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal Verse 21. There your heart will be also. The second is from Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. And then from Isaiah 58. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. I'm going to have to raise this because I keep losing my place. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. And finally, from 1 Timothy, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant and put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Those are all beautiful, profound passages which we will come back to. But first, I'm going to make an assertion, which I don't think is particularly controversial, although you might. Most Christians, certainly including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. I'll repeat that. Most Christians, including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. Let me explain. Raised in a conservative Midwestern Bible church, my earliest conceptions of faith could be summed up with one verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That was really good news to me, but also indelibly etched upon my young mind was its corollary, that having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was supposed to be as good as possible from now on. And as I understood it, being good meant doing a bunch of things I didn't really want to do, as well as not doing a bunch of things that I wouldn't mind doing and that other kids had no problem doing. This sense that the Christian life was largely one of deprivation and opportunity costs only became more pronounced as I grew older. This all simmered on a low boil until I got to college in the mid-1970s, which is when the levies gave way, and I wandered far off the reservation for the next dozen years or so. Billy Joel had a hit song at the time, Only the Good Die Young, whose lyrics perhaps best captured my mindset. They showed you a statue and told you to pray. They built you a temple and locked you away, but they never told you the price that you pay for the things that you might have done. Only the good die young. They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better, but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young. But as edgy and rebellious as I might have thought myself, I was not breaking any new ground. In fact, the notion I was wrestling with, that God wants to put us in a straight jacket and walk the straight and narrow and denying ourselves of otherwise good things, goes all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. It's exactly the approach taken by the serpent, the devil himself, when he tempted Adam and Eve. The serpent preyed upon Eve by suggesting that God, in fact, did not want the very best for her, but was holding something back, something potentially good, and that the boundary God had set for humankind, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a loving one established for our own protection and well-being, but was oppressive and a constraint on our own pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. This idea that God doesn't want the absolute best for us was a lie back in the garden, it was a lie when I was in college, and it's still a lie today. Nevertheless, a nagging doubt was planted in Eve's mind about God's goodness and gracious intentions, one that she was unable to shake. Convinced that she might know better, Eve and Adam opted to trust in their own judgment and their own understanding of what was good for them, what was bad, what was in their best interest, and what was not. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves what made the most sense. And that's exactly what they did, as has every human being since. The legacy of Satan's first lie to humankind, the one I fell for in my late teens, still echoes and reverberates today, even among the most genuine and faithful followers of Christ. Perhaps the most subtle yet insidious form of this lie manifests itself in this pervasive view among believers that being a Christian requires us to be utterly and completely selfless in all we do, always placing the interests of others above our own. As with most effective and pernicious lies, there's a lot of truth embedded in it. After all, self-giving love is the fundamental tenet of Jesus' entire mission and ministry. And we, as his followers, are repeatedly called to imitate his example by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, losing our lives to save them. Whoever wants to be first must be last and the servant of all, and on and on. But the genius of this lie and why it's still such an effective tactic in Satan's efforts to mess with us and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ is that it's only a half-truth telling only half the story. It focuses entirely on the unselfish part of the Christian experience and the self-sacrificing love we're to show others, but entirely avoids any mention of what following and becoming more like Christ might offer to us in this life and beyond. Let's be honest. For me, at least, it paints a grim picture of the life of faith, a long, slow slog in which I, against all odds, must risk my teeth and persevere, hanging on to the very end, give, give, give, and no take until finally, exhausted and spent, I'm rewarded in heaven when I die. I would bet for most of us, at a minimum, it results in an attitude toward mission and service derived more out of a sense of obligation, a must-do or a should-do, rather than of an opportunity, privilege, and joy. It makes the Christian life just not that appealing or motivating, which is its whole point. It's a lie designed to diminish, undersell, and underwhelm. And the lie is in what it omits, how it does not reflect the full testimony of scripture, which is actually brimming with all sorts of lavish promises of the good that will accrue to us if we seek it with all our hearts. We are consistently encouraged to relentlessly follow Christ and be more like him precisely because it is in our own best selfish interest. So in truth, and perhaps surprisingly, despite all the teachings in scripture about self-sacrificial love, the reality is that most of us are not selfish enough, not self-serving enough, not self-interested enough to seek all that a life in Christ has to offer. Rather, because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life, we remain trapped in the land of the lukewarm and the half-hearted. This is by no means a new insight. In his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, delivered at Oxford University in 1941, the author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis stated the following, and I quote, The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. End quote. Unquote. End quote. Unquote. What's the expression? End of quote. End of quote. It's locked in now. But a tragic consequence of our fallen nature is that it's left us with a constricted and impoverished view of God's goodness and what he desires for us, both in this life and beyond. Our field of vision is far too narrow and our view way too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis described, playing in filthy, muddy puddles, thinking it's great, when all the while there's a gorgeous Caribbean beach vacation just waiting for us. This maligned and diseased view of God's goodness so profoundly limits our imaginations as to what life following Christ could be like that it tempers our pursuit of him, making it so much easier and more likely that we get sidetracked and lured away. By so completely underestimating the joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that a life wholeheartedly following Christ offers, we make trusting in our own judgment much more appealing and tempting by comparison. And that, of course, leads us to prioritize other things. So, if that's all true, where does it leave us? If the real surprise is not that we expect too much from this life, but settle for so little. If our struggle to take God's extravagant promises of truly abundant life at face value leads us to never pursuing or experiencing those promises to the full. What is the remedy? What are we to do? How do we overcome our constrained view of God's goodness enough to want to go all in on following Christ? How do we move all our chips, or at least more of them, to the center of the table? We need help. Thankfully, God, in his remarkable love, grace, mercy, and wisdom, does not leave us to our own devices. It comes to our rescue, once again, with what I'm going to call a secret formula. Although it's not very secret, just overlooked and underutilized. Since the advent of the smartphone, I've become somewhat of a sucker for shortcuts and secret formulas. Always intrigued when someone touts a quick and supposedly effective way to become smarter, healthier, financially more secure, better looking, a better spouse, a better parent, a better gardener, etc. Because I am a sucker, my phone is now bombarded unceasingly with tempting prompts carefully curated just for me. For example, I recently discovered the one fruit I should eat every day. It's the kiwi. The three thoughts truly happy people think each day. The five must-have perennials for any southern garden. The seven behaviors to say goodbye to if you want your kids to appreciate you as they get older, to name a few. But the one hook that never fails to grab my attention, drawing me like a moth to flame, is belly fat. Or more precisely, any sight purporting to know how to lose one's belly fat. That is my holy grail. And as I refuse to consider any changes to my heating, eating, or drinking habits, I'm basically just left with exercise. Downloaded on my phone, I would show you, but it's too small, is the app Lose Your Belly Fat, a six-pack in 30 days. Let me tell you something. If not completely false, this app is certainly misleading. And I've even become a bit disillusioned. Now well into my fourth year, roughly... Seriously, roughly 1,200 days in, not 30 days, 1,200 days, there is no six-pack to be seen, not even the faint glimmer of one on the far-off horizon. But unlike my app, there's no false or misleading advertising with God's secret formula, which is revealed in those three short verses from the book of Matthew that we read earlier. treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also we are called to follow Christ and become more like him so that's what we try to do but if you're anything like me it is a struggle not only are we hamstrung with a maligned and far too small view of God's goodness, which makes it that much easier to want to trust in our own judgment, as we've discussed, there is also the problem that it's hard to make yourself feel something that you don't. As the great country singer Bonnie Raitt lamented in her song, I Can't Make You Love Me, she observes, because I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous, honest, and sad songs ever written. It acknowledges a fundamental truth about the human condition. It's hard to genuinely make yourself more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous, more kind. I've been a Christian a long time, and Christlike is not the self-description that first comes to my mind. Knucklehead, yes. Christlike, not so much. But in these three verses in Matthew, Jesus cuts straight to the chase by essentially saying, you're doing it all wrong. Of course you can't make yourself feel a certain way. You can't manufacture that on your own. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can start moving your treasure. That's the ticket to becoming more like me and having a heart like mine. We worship a God of great mystery, one who is far beyond our full comprehension. But that does not mean we are somehow mysterious to him. Having conceived of us, created us, and imbued us with life, he knows exactly what makes us tick, which is why Matthew 6.21 is so powerful and potentially life-changing. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The beauty and the power of it, the secret formula part of it, is that you don't have to feel a certain way to begin. You just begin moving your treasure, never mind how you feel about it, or if you're ready. The feelings will ultimately take care of themselves. When we start spending our time, our energy, our financial resources on the things that God thinks are most important, as night follows day, our hearts will follow. And that means so will our priorities, our passions, our hopes, and our joy. When we take steps to invest our treasure in more lasting and eternal things, we inevitably become more like Christ as we increasingly view things as he does and care about the things he cares about. We also begin to remedy and rehabilitate our fallen nature's view of God's goodness by experiencing it firsthand. Perhaps Psalm 34.8 captures this dynamic best. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. By moving our treasure, even in small ways, we place ourselves in a position to taste and see God's goodness, which in turn helps us to take another step. Ideally, our time on earth becomes a lifelong journey of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, transforming our hearts along the way to become more like Christ, caring for what he cares most about. And when we do put ourselves out there, tasting and seeing the Lord's goodness, we begin to grasp how the inherent contradictions of scripture's lavish promises, that on the one hand, we are to love sacrificially and be the servant of all, yet on the other hand, that very posture is the best thing that could possibly happen to us, can both be true at once. And the more we move our treasure, the more we taste and see God's goodness, the more we experience this paradoxical truth that giving of oneself leads to life. Far from being all give and no take, the promises contained in such sweeping passages as found in Isaiah 58 become more credible and real to us. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. In closing, God, in his love, grace, and wisdom, offers each of us the life and eternity-changing privilege to transform our human hearts and begin to experience life to the full. Moving our treasure surely looks a bit different for each of us. What I do know is that it's a process incomparably worthwhile embracing and that there is no better time than the present. As we most resemble our Savior. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Let's take hold of life that is truly life. Thanks so much for listening.

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. As Mike said, if you're on vacation and you're watching us online, thank you for doing that. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Right now, I want to continue in our series called Mark's Jesus, where we are looking at Jesus through the perspective of Mark's gospel, asking God and expecting God to prepare our hearts and minds as a church to celebrate Easter here in a few weeks. This week, we come to a pretty famous story in the gospels. It's not just in the gospel of Mark, it's in the others as well. It's the story that we probably think of as the rich young ruler. So I'm just going to ruin it off the bat for you. I'm just going to tell you the story really quickly because I think that there's some common ideas that we have about this story that if we will examine it further, we might find to be a bit erroneous and unhelpful. But the story of the rich young ruler for the unindoctrinated is a rich man goes up to Jesus and he says, Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, you have to follow the Ten Commandments. And he says, I've done this my whole life since I was a boy. At which point we all kind of roll our eyes like, nobody can follow the Ten Commandments. What a pretentious guy trying to make a point about who he is and yada, yada, yada. And we kind of demonize him, villainize him a little bit and judge him for his hyperbole about his faith. And Jesus says, okay, since you follow the commandments, since you're a little boy, sell everything that you own and then follow me. And the man hangs his head and he walks away because that's too high of a price for him to pay. This is the story and this is the story that most of us know or are familiar with. You may not have even heard it told before, but as I went through it, I bet even if you're unfamiliar with that part of scripture, I bet it was ringing some bells and you thought, oh yeah, I've heard this before. And we tend to, like I said, villainize the rich man. He didn't have enough faith. He was pretentious about how faithful he was. And then he wasn't willing to part with his possessions to follow Christ. And then we apply that however we apply it. And typically we tend to say, well, you don't really have to sell everything that you own to inherit eternal life, to get into heaven, to be a follower of God. You don't really have to do that. It's about a mentality. You have to be willing to do that. And then we all do what mental exercise. We all trick ourselves into believing that we would give away all of our things for eternal life, that we would happily. I'm open-handed. The lake house is God's. I let a pastor stay there two days a year. And so it's God's lake house. It's a service for him, right? This is what we do. I don't need this car. It just gets me from point A to point B. I can't help that it costs $65,000. We convince ourselves I'm totally willing to give up everything. And then in reality, we don't. So we kind of shy away from the story a little bit because I think it makes us uncomfortable. But I think that if we'll reflect on it, is that Don Sutherland back there? Don. Hey, pal. Last time I saw Don, he's in the hospital. Yeah, praise God. This is great. He was getting calf implants. It wasn't anything big deal. Don't worry about him. Don, you screwed me up. Where am I? Oh, yeah. So here's how I think we can actually relate to this story and to this man in more ways than you probably realize. I don't know how many of you in your life have ever felt wealthy. I don't know how many of you would ever describe yourselves as rich. I know that in this room, we run kind of the gamut of middle class America. There's some of us that are on the bottom end of middle class. There's some of us that are on the high end of middle class. And maybe you are someone who would say, you know, I've been fortunate and I am wealthy. And that's great. But what I want us to reflect on this morning as Americans, this is a point that I've made before. to people to ever exist on the face of the planet. Do you understand that? Even if you wouldn't consider yourself wealthy and you've never thought that you were rich. I remember the time when I felt the most wealthy in my whole life was when I was 15 years old and we bought a new house. We moved into the nice neighborhood where the cool kids were that had a swim in tennis. Evergreen Crossings. It was a new development. In 1995 or 6, the house was $235,000. We bought this house. It had a basement. I had a pool table. We hung out at my house. My dad bought an Acura. Okay? Right. We were highfalutin. We went to Outback like once a month. We were a big deal. That's the wealthiest I ever felt. And then at some point I was, I knew I was going to go into ministry. I can remember laying on my bed, looking at my room thinking this is the nicest house I'm ever going to live in. I'm not going to be able to afford this stuff. so you better get while the getting's good, buddy. But that was the only time in my life I felt wealthy, and I had no perspective of what it actually was. And I don't know if you felt that way or not, but what I want you to see is, historically speaking, everyone in this room is incredibly wealthy. A Roman senator would come to your house and marvel at the conveniences at your disposal. You mean you can just do this and fresh water comes out? You can just drink it? You don't have to send somebody to a well to get it? No, I can watch TV. Your air is conditioned? Talk to me about this. What is that? You have your own soft chairs that you buy on Facebook Marketplace for virtually nothing? This is unbelievable if you think about the extravagances that you have in your life. Last night, do you know what I had for dinner? I had Mongolian beef. I had Mongolian beef. 200 years ago, if you wanted Mongolian beef, do you know where you had to go? Frigging Mongolia. That's where you had to go. I went to knee Asian kitchen and my mom paid for it with her credit card. It's not even real money. It's just pretend money that future dad has to worry about. I don't even care. I ordered all the Chinese food I could. It was delicious. Do you understand how privileged we are? Do you understand how wealthy we are in that? How little we are concerned with things and the conveniences that exist at all of our fingertips. See, I think when we read this story and it says that a rich man came up to Jesus, that we immediately go, not me. That story's about someone else. That story's about someone else talking to Christ. Because not very many of us call ourselves rich. And even if in the back of our head we know that we are, we tend to not think of ourselves in that way. And so I think what's probably true is that for most of your life, when you've encountered this story, that story has been about somebody else that lives a different life than you. But what I want you to see, Americans, is that this story is about you. This is you leaning in and talking to Jesus. This is you asking this question. What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do to follow you? This man is us and he's us in more than one way. I'm going to show you. Look with me at Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 20. We're going to go all the way through verse 31 so you can leave your Bible open and I'll be coming back to it. But I just want to look at these first four verses real quick. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony and shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother. Teacher, he declared. All these I have kept since I was a boy. Okay. So we know that he's rich. That's undebatable, indisputable. That's a fact given to us in the text. He's a rich man, comes up to Jesus. But I don't know if you're like me in that. I've always kind of postured him as someone who is trying to show off to the crowds and elevate himself. What must I do? I want to follow you. I'm righteous. I want to be good. And Jesus says, follow the commandments. And he says, I've done that since I was a boy. I've always kind of read this as him posturing a little bit. But when you look at the story, that's not what he's doing. First of all, it starts off and it says, look at the text. It says he ran to Jesus. He saw Jesus and he ran up to him, which was undignified to do. You didn't run in the ancient world. You guys don't run now unless you put on certain clothes and then you get on the sidewalk and then you jog for a certain amount of time. It's okay to run then, but it's not okay to run anywhere else in your adult life. So he runs up to Jesus. And what does he do? Does he posture in front of everybody? No, he falls on his knees. And he says, what must I do to follow you? So right off the bat, what we see from this man is not someone posturing so that he looks good in front of some crowd that he doesn't know. What we see is this sincere faith and questioning of this man who runs up to Jesus and falls on his knees and says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Then Jesus says, follow the 10 commandments. And he says, I've done them since I was a boy. And again, I think we're tempted to condemn him for hyperbole here because no one follows the commandments perfectly. But I think if we rephrase it and we think about ourselves, especially if you are like me and you don't have any memory of life outside of church. My memory doesn't go back beyond church because I've been in church since the day that I was born. So for me, faith has always been a part of my life. And if you were to ask me, Nate, have you always lived according to your faith? Have you always lived in your faith? Have you always trusted in Jesus? Have you always kept the tenets of the Bible the best you could? My answer would be sincerely yes. Sincerely I have. And I could say like he said, I've been doing them since I was a young boy. I don't think that he's implying that he's done it perfectly. I think what he's saying is this is the only faith I've ever known. I've done my best to uphold the Ten Commandments my whole life. And so what we see here is the sincerity of his faith. And this is where I think we can relate to him. I want to put it on the screen because I want us to read it and I want these words to matter. We are rich and our faith is sincere. This man was rich and his faith was sincere. Grace, I've been your pastor for eight years. You are rich, whether you feel that way or not, and I know in my heart that your faith is sincere. I have seen your sincere faith. I have seen your true desire for Christ. I know that you relate to this man. I know that you want to follow Jesus. I know that you want to do the things that you're supposed to do, that you want to do small groups, that you want to serve, that you want to help, that you want to reach your community. I know that you care deeply about your faith. And because I know that, I know that you can relate to this man who is not posturing, who is not positioning himself, who is not trying to show off. He went to Jesus and he asked a sincere question, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, live faithfully according to what you've been taught. And he says, I have since I was a boy. And many of you have. And as long as you've known Jesus since he converted you, whether it was as a child or as an adult, you've faithfully followed him your whole life. And in that way, you're just like this man asking Jesus, what should I do to inherit eternal life? And listen to me. Here's how else I know that his faith is sincere. Do you understand what he is having to do to even ask that question? He grew up Jewish. He grew up following the laws. He grew up with a sincere faith. Presumably, he grew up going to temple, learning the Torah, following a rabbi, making his sacrifices, knowing the law. And now Jesus is saying, I am the natural conclusion to that. This is a seed change. This is considering leaving your old religion and following a new religion. This is like you converting from an old faith and transitioning into a new faith. Those of you who have walked from Catholicism into Protestantism and just how reckless we are with our liturgy and everything that we do, it's a shock to the system. It's even more than that to go from being a practicing Jew to this is Jesus. You're the Messiah. I want to follow you. What do I do? Do you understand the radical change that he's undergoing to do this? This is not posturing, guys. He's sincerely going to Christ going, I believe you are who you say you are. I want to follow you. What must I do? And this is the question that we ask Christ. I believe you are who you say you are. I want to follow you. What do I do? How do I do it? Every time we come to church, we're asking this question implicitly. Every time we go to small group, every time we open our Bible, every time we pray, that's the implicit question in our actions. Jesus, I want to follow you. I believe sincerely in who you are and who you say you are. What do I do? And Jesus' answer is tough. But before he gives this answer, sell everything you own and follow me, we get this glimpse into Jesus. And I've never noticed it before until I was studying for this sermon. And I think it's profound. So we're just going to look at this one sentence at the beginning of verse 21. After he said, teacher, all these things I have kept since I was a boy, the beginning of 21, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus looked at him and loved him. I'm going to come back to this verse. We'll read the whole thing. But I want us to stop on that sentence. This man came to Jesus. In sincerity of faith. Said I believe you are who you say you are. What do I do to follow you? And Jesus says keep the commandments. And he says I've done that. I've lived out my faith. And then Jesus looks at him and is filled with compassion for him. He loves him. And he empathizes for him because Jesus knows what he's about to say. And he knows that when he says it, it's going to discourage him so much that he's going to walk away because it's a price that's too high for him. But before he says it, he looks at him and he loves him. And I want you to know that if we are in this story and if we agree that we are rich and we agree that our desire for Jesus is sincere, then we read ourselves into this text And we put ourselves in that moment. And if Jesus looked at him and loved him, then I'm telling you, he looks at you and he loves you. Jesus looks at you and he loves you. He cares for your soul. And here's why I think he had so much compassion for this man. Because Jesus understands this. Your wealth inoculates you from your faith. I started off by saying we are rich. All of us. And I want you to reflect on that affluence. understanding that the reason that Jesus looked at this man with compassion, because his faith was sincere, is because Jesus knew what he was about to say. He knew he was going to tell him, sell everything and follow me. Show me I'm the most important. And so before he said it, he looked at him and he loved him. And Jesus, this morning, American Christian, looks at you and he loves you. Because what he understands, and what I want you to understand, is that your faith inoculates, or your wealth inoculates you from your faith. You understand being born into American affluence serves almost like being vaccinated when you're a baby against faith, because we have so few times in our life where it's actually required of us with so few times where it's actually required of us. With so few times where it's actually required of us that we actually need to use our faith. I want to read you the rest of this story and then I want to reflect on it together and talk about this idea of our wealth inoculating us from our faith. Serving as a vaccine that prevents us from growing faith. So let's finish the story and then we'll reflect. At this, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Verse 21, one thing you lack, he said, go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. And at this, the man's face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard is it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? The disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said again, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were even more amazed and said to each other, who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man, Then Peter spoke up. No one who is left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields. Along with persecutions. And in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. That's the whole story. But Jesus looks at him and he loves him because he knows he's going to tell him, sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and then come follow me. And he knows that he's going to drop his head and walk away. And then Jesus says, and this is a verse, Americans, that should haunt us. It is more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man. Or it's more difficult for a rich man to enter a kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Jesus says intentionally, the wealthiest people among us have the biggest difficulty with faith. And I'm pressing this this morning because I don't think it's something that we think about. I don't think that this idea is something that we're cognizant of. I don't think that we've ever thought of our wealth inoculating us from our faith, preventing us from having faith. And when I say that, here's what I mean. I can remember one time in particular when I was what I call relegated to prayer. Some of you know this story already, so I'm sorry for repeating it, but it's the best example I have of this. Jen and I struggled a long time to get pregnant with our first child, about eight years. And I think it was the fall of 2014, in October, we learned that we were pregnant. We were overjoyed. This was the answer to a lot of prayers. I remember telling my mom in her garage and having to catch her because she about passed out. She's excitable. She's an emotional lady. The whole family was overjoyed. But in December, we learned that we had miscarried. And it was the most profound sadness i've ever endured it was a it was a dark season and i'm grateful for it because as a pastor i've walked with people through their miscarriages and through their struggles and it makes me infinitely more empathetic. But it was a hard season. And God in his goodness, by about Mother's Day the following year, allowed us to become pregnant again. And I can remember finding out that Jen was pregnant and doing all the research I could. What can I do as a father to help bring this baby to term? How can I help? Can I get two jobs? Do I need to stay up 24-7 and help Jen in some way? What can I do? I wanted desperately to do something. I wanted desperately to have some measure of control and some measure of influence on bringing this child to term. This child that would become Lily, that was Lily. I wanted to do, there was nothing I could have been asked to do that I wouldn't have done to try to protect that child and bring them to term. But here's the thing. I was relegated to prayer. There was nothing I could do but pray. And so I prayed. And it's one of the few times in my life that I felt like I had no choice but to have faith. I had no choice but to fall on my knees and pray. See, our money buys us the mirage of independence. It buys us the mirage of independence. It makes us think that there's always something that we can do. It makes us think that there's always a string to pull. There's always a switch to flip. It's the American dream of independence. We are culturally. I can't think of another culture. I was talking about this with my men's group this week. I can't think of another culture in the history of the world that prizes independence as such a high value as we do. We are the American cowboys. We are independents. We pick ourselves up, buy our bootstraps, and we do it ourselves. And part of the way we do that ourselves is we amass wealth around us. And we take care of things. Something goes wrong, we get an attorney. The car's broken, we call our insurance. We don't know what it is to pray that a storm won't come so that the crops last and the next three years aren't terrible. We don't know what it is to be at the whims of Mother Nature living out in the open. We don't know what it is to be impoverished and to hope God will provide the next day. None of us, very few of us, if any in this room, have ever had to be concerned about where their next meal was coming from. You don't know what it is to be food insecure. And so in our wealth and in our affluence, we are so rarely relegated to faith. We are so rarely relegated to prayer that we can almost not relate to people who have to daily live by faith. This is why Jesus says it's more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle because our wealth inoculates us from our faith and buys us the mirage of independence that we don't have. It's only in life's most extreme moments of cancer or brokenness or addiction or abuse. It's only in our moments of helplessness that we allow ourselves to be relegated to prayer. And we lose the mirage of independence. And as American Christians, I just want us to see the chasm between us and the faith that our life requires and the vast majority of human history and the faith that their life requires because ours requires so very little. And a lot of times, it's the fault of our wealth. This is why I think we can juxtapose this story of the rich young ruler and the story of the widow, giving the widow's might. In Mark chapter 12, this is another famous story, 12 verses 41 through 44. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on. We know this story well. It's a remarkable testament of her faith. We use it for giving sermons. When I scheduled this, this was going to be a giving sermon. But as I studied it, that is not the point that I wanted to make. And I don't want to use the story of the widow's mite to guilt you into giving or giving more. I just want us to reflect on her faith. And here's what I'm willing to bet you. That this wasn't her first rodeo. She gave all she had. I bet it wasn't the first time. She gave all she had and then she said, God, I need you to take care of me. Please. I bet that's not the first time she prayed that prayer. What I'd be willing to bet is that that woman had many days where she was relegated to prayer. That she had many days where she said, God, I have nothing. You're going to have to take care of me, please. She had many days where she just opened her hands and her arms and said, I'm in your hands, God. I hope I can eat today. And so what we see here in this story is very likely not a first time occurrence. What we see, I believe, is a faith that was hard won over time from her daily relying on God over and over and over again for simple provision so that when she gave that day, that was no big deal. If we went, if we all went and cleared out our checking account, just your checking account, not your savings account, not your Bitcoin, just your checking account. If we wrote a check for that total amount and gave it to something that Jesus was doing, said, here, Father, take it, we would be nervous. We would be scared. That would be a life-altering event for us. We would remember that for the rest of our years. I'm just guessing. I don't know. It's not in the text. I can't say it with authority. I bet that lady forgot that day. She cleared out her checking account like she probably had so many other times and simply chose to trust God. So this morning, I don't have an application for you. I'm not preaching this to try to get you to give. I believe God wants us to be generous people. I believe it's biblical. I believe we should. That's not what this is about. I don't want you to feel bad for your wealth. God gave it to you. He made you a steward of it. It's a huge responsibility. I'm not here to guilt you about it. I'm not here to tell you to sell everything and give it to the kingdom, unless you want to build that building, then go ahead. I'm not here to tell you to do that. I'm not here to leverage the widow's might to get you to become a more faithful giver. I'm just here because I want you to consider where you sit in history. I want you to consider how much you actually do relate to this man, that you are rich and your faith is sincere. And I want you to consider as I pray, God, how has my wealth, how have my resources, how has my independence inoculated me from my faith in you? How is it impacting me in ways that I don't see? And how can I step towards living a greater life of faith so that maybe one day I will have exercised my faith muscles enough that I can have the faith of the widow and the widow's might. I'm just here to encourage you to reflect on that. Please do that as I pray and we'll finish up the service. Father, thank you for these stories. Thank you for being honest with us, for helping us as rich Americans see the peril that we exist in. God, I pray that you would use this morning to grow our faith. I pray that we would find ways to be more reliant on you, that we would not allow the resources that we were born into, the culture into which we were born, the things that you've allowed us to acquire, the blessings that you've given us. God, help us to see those things for what they are and help us to see, God, that sometimes they prevent us from having a necessary faith in you. Make us more like the widow, more willing to rely, more easy with our faith. And God, draw us near to you as we finish this service today. In Jesus' name, 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.

Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you had a hard time parking, get here sooner. I don't know. I don't have anything else I can tell you. All right, we've got so many spots. That's it. And then you're at Big Lots or whatever that's about to be. Thanks for continuing with us in our series in Mark. As we approach this week's sermon and text found in Mark chapter 7, you can go ahead and turn your Bible there if you like. Many of you know, if you've been coming since the beginning of the year, that I started going to the YMCA this year. I started going to the YMCA in January to exercise. Brad Gwynn sees me there. He's my accountability partner. I'm told that there has been about six people who have checked in with him to say, is Nate really going? Is that really a thing that's happening? Yeah, I'm going. And I like it there. I like going to the gym at the Y. There's a lot of things about the Y that I like. I like when you walk in, there's a sweet lady named Miss Ellen that says hey to you and learns your name. And when you leave, she tells you to have a fantastic Monday or have the best Wednesday. And then she hits a little secret button under the desk and it opens both the doors for me. So I don't have to touch them. That's fantastic. There's the soft, there's a soft, chewy ice that you can get as soon as you walk in that normally you have to overpay for at Chick-fil-A, and now it's just there, free. It's great. And you go, and then you work out. It's so fun. But my favorite part, my favorite thing about the YMCA over there on Six Forks, or off Six Forks in Bailiwick, is, and this is why it's probably my favorite gym that I've ever been to, is there is not a single person in that gym that's good looking. Not a single one. Every single one of us are just middle-aged, average people trying to stay on top of things, right? Just trying to get the blood pressure down. That's all we're doing. There's nobody in there preening and praning and taking pictures of themselves. There's no cute outfits or chiseled bodies. We're all just moms and dads trying to get ahead of it. That's all we're doing, and I love it. And it's different than the other gym I used to go to. I used to go to another gym down the street. It's a little bit more expensive than the YMCA. That's a fancy gym. And I was easily, without question, the ugliest person in that room every time I exercised. Except sometimes I'd run into Alan Morgan and then I had some company, you know? But for the most part, it was just me and all these millennials that were chiseled as all get out. And I'm just like, they, to me, those people, those people work out to get better at working out. You know, at some point or another, like you got to exercise to be healthy. You have to, you don't have a choice. Somebody told me that when you turn 40, you get on a downward escalator and the, unless you exercise, you can't even stay at the same level of health that you were. So you've got to exercise to be healthy to some degree. And everybody at the Y is there to be healthy. People at this other place, they're there to look better than everybody else. You know, they've got their phone set down and they're taking pictures and they're looking at themselves in the mirror and they're doing all of this stuff. And the stuff I would never be caught dead doing in my whole life because I have dignity. And also no muscles to speak of because that would be a waste of time. But I look at those people and it's like, gosh, you're working out to get better at working out. You're exercising to get better at exercising. Like at some point or another, there's a diminishing return on the health value of this. and now you're just making your whole self about it just so you can get better at exercising. And then sometimes, and not all those people, I know some people who exercise to exercise, they're in tremendous shape, and they're wonderfully generous, kind, great people. But then there's others who really highly prioritize it, and then that kind of becomes their value system. They start to judge other people based on how good they are at exercising and what you're allowing into your body and what you're doing. And I'm doing this thing and I'm eating, I'm eating nothing. But what are those things that Aaron has in the refrigerator next door? Protein balls. I'm eating nothing but protein balls. This is a thing now. I thought it was leftover cookie dough from something and I threw it away. I got in trouble because I downed her lunch. But that becomes like a whole subculture where they exercise seemingly just to get better at exercising and then to let other people see how much better they are than them at exercising. And it's not the kind of exercise that I want to do. And I bring that up because in Mark chapter 7, I believe that what we've got here is an instance of the Pharisees acting like some folks who exercise just to exercise. My thought here is the Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. The Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. They based their spiritual worth, their holiness, their spiritual maturity, their spiritual health, and the spiritual health of others on how well they exercised, on how well they followed the rules, on how well they performed their faith. And I'm going to show you what I mean. In a minute, I'm going to read verses 14 and 15. But the preamble, excuse me, I'm going to do that a little bit, getting over a cold this week. The preamble begins in verse 1 of chapter 7. And you can look there if you want. Jesus is sitting down with the disciples. This is somewhere around the Sea of Galilee. So some folks from Jerusalem had come up to talk to Jesus. And they sit down and they're eating a meal together. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that the disciples didn't wash their hands before this meal. And so they go up to Jesus and they go, why is it that your disciples don't honor the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before they eat. They are unclean and should not be eating that food. Not to mention the laws from our elders about ritualistically washing pots and kettles and cups and plates. They are violating all sorts of rules right now, and you don't even seem to care, Jesus. What's the deal with that? And Jesus says, essentially, yeah, the rules you're talking about were made up by men. They were made up by your forefathers and our ancestors and our elders. And now you apply them as if they're gospel truth, but those are not the rules of God. Those are the rules of man. And you've gotten so good at following the rules of man that you are willing to set aside the laws of God and not follow them so that you can follow the laws of man. You have it exactly backwards. What's going on in this Pharisaical culture and the culture of the Pharisees is that they based spiritual health on how well they exercised. It was a competition to see who could follow the rules better. In ancient Israel, there was 630-ish laws. You have to say ish because rabbis don't agree on how many they are, which is, you know, that sounds about right with the rabbinic culture. So the Pharisees knew every single one of these by heart. They knew what they were. They knew how to follow it. They knew what it meant. They knew how to stay in line with it. And they followed every one. And they were meticulous in their rule following. Down to the types of garments they would wear during the day. Some of them considered it work. If you had a nail in your sandal, that was metal and you can't lift that on the Sabbath. So you can't wear those sandals on the Sabbath. They were that strict about it. When the Pharisees, when the super religious would tithe, they wouldn't just tithe from their money. They would go into their pantry and tithe off their spices, their thyme and their cumin and their paprika. They would go in there and they would literally tithe 10% of everything that they had to the temple. And they took great pride in how well they followed the rules. And they took great pride in following the dietary restrictions and only eating what they're supposed to eat and only eating after they've ritualistically cleansed and only eating off plates that are approved by God and by their elders. They were incredible at following the rules. And the problem with this is they got so high-minded about it that they just followed the rules to get better to follow the rules so that they could remain in power and oppress the people they were supposed to be serving. So they're supposed to serve the children of God and spur the children of God on towards God and encourage them and model for them what it is to walk with God in a mature and godly way. And instead, they lorded the rules over people and criticized them for not being as good at it as they were. And they discouraged the populace. Can you imagine growing up in that kind of environment, what your response would be as an independent thinking kid, you wouldn't want any part with your parents' religion. I can't imagine that this would turn generations on to the idea of following God. It pushed them away, and it made God more untouchable, and it was just a way for them to establish their power and their superiority and keep their thumb on the people of God. That's what they did. And so Jesus says, God didn't make up those rules that you're worried about. People did. And then he says this. This is the statement of the day. Mark 7, 14 and 15. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me. Everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. So Jesus gets everybody together. He's been questioned by the Pharisees in front of a crowd of people. And so now they went public with it. He's going public with it. He says, hey, hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Listen to me. Nothing that goes into the body from the outside can defile it. What defiles somebody is what comes out of their body. And so the Pharisees are saying, no, no, no, we're righteous and we're holy because we refuse to eat these things and we wash these things and we follow these practices and nothing comes into our body that's not ritualistically clean. And Jesus says, yeah, that means bupkis. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is what comes out of your body. Think about it this way. God is far more interested in our productivity than our receptivity. God is far more interested in what we produce from our bodies than what we receive in our bodies. He's far more interested in producing within us the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He's far more interested in watching you increase in those fruits in measure over the course of your life and your walk with him. And God is far more interested in the fruit that you produce than what you choose to drink at the end of the day. He's far more interested in what you say and what you do and what you produce than what you intake. He's far more interested in how you treat other people than what your threshold is for what you will and will not watch on Netflix. He's far more interested, our God is, in what you produce with your body than he is in what you receive with your body. And when I say what you produce with your body, I think back to what we talked about last week and this idea that I harp on as much as I can and I will continue to do it. My biggest prayer for anyone that ever calls grace home is that you would increasingly understand yourself as a kingdom builder. We have the simple concept that everybody spends their life building a kingdom. Everyone does. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you going to build? Are you going to build your own temporary kingdom that will fade away and ultimately not matter? Or will you invest your life building, being part of building an eternal kingdom that will never fade away? My goal and prayer for each of you for as long as you call grace home is that you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you were created as a builder of the kingdom of God. And so when we say productivity, God is interested in what we produce and in what we do. What we mean is we want to produce godly character, fruits of the Spirit. We want to be sanctified, grow closer to Him. But He also wants us to produce for His kingdom. And last week we talked about this. It's a good segue from last week into this week. It's funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. That to produce in God's kingdom, to build God's kingdom, to be productive in it, is to grow His kingdom in breadth and depth. To grow it in breadth by reaching people and inviting them to Christ and inviting them to church and having spiritual conversations with them. And in today's day and age, simply showing them that it can be normal to be a Christian and you don't have to be an unreasonable nut job. We can kind of hold it together. And to grow the church in depth. To grow us in our spiritual depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, breadth, discipleship, depth. So it is our job to be productive in that way. And last week, I challenged you. Think back to the wake of your life. Are there people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus now because I met that person. I'm closer to Jesus now because God moved them through my life. That's the kind of productivity that God wants to see in his kingdom. And he's far more concerned with how well you love other people and push people towards Jesus than he is with how well you follow the rules and how buttoned up you are. And this is hard because as believers, we tend towards legalism. We always do this. We want to know what the rules are. We want to know how well we're supposed to follow them so that I can be either good or bad. When I was growing up, there was a phrase, and if you did this, you were a good kid, that I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. And if you did that, you're a good kid. Now, I'm so glad that I changed my standards on that because Jen smokes like a freight train and I love her to death. The joy of my life. I think she tried a cigar one time. Did you try a cigar one time? Yes, you did so. You lie. I'm in trouble. That's all right. Well, we always like to set up these standards about personal holiness and the rules that we should follow because it kind of gets easier. And then we start following the rules to get better at following the rules. And we forget that it's far more about what we produce than what we receive or how buttoned up we live. God cares about us loving our neighbor towards him. He cares about us being people of grace and kindness and authenticity. He cares far more that you are a person of generosity than he cares about how much you chose to spend on your car. You understand? He cares far more about how you treat other people than the specific language you use when you're treating them in a certain way. He cares far more about what comes out of you, about what we produce, the love that we produce in others, than he cares about the standards that we would hold for ourselves. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Because the Pharisees are the far end of rule following equals spiritually good. And what Jesus is showing them is you're hypocrites and your hypocrisy is actually destroying your faith and the faith of those around you. This is why Jesus says that he wants people who worship in spirit and in truth. And when I think of productivity, what I want to produce in my life, there's these two verses that haunt me because they make the bar so very high and I am so very far from hitting it. But I've always said I'd rather look at the standard and be honest about not meeting it than lower the standard so I can feel better about myself. And I've always invited you to do that with me. But there's a passage in Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that others might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that we should live our lives in such a way that people who come into contact with us, even if they don't speak to us, even if they don't ask us about our God, even if we don't get to talk to them about church and about faith and about what we do and why we do it and what we believe, even if we never get to do that, all they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the co-worker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the coworker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is watch us, but that we should let our good work shine before men so that by simply watching us interact in the world, they would see our good works and so glorify our father who is in heaven. What God wants for his children is for your walk to be so radical and your love to be so noticeable and your generosity to be so mind-blowing and your kindness to be so unusual that as people watch you, they go, that person is different and I want what they have. That's the productivity that Jesus is talking about. He's far more interested that people would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven than we would follow the right rules at the right time. The other standard I think of, and I love this one, is in Colossians 3. It says that Jesus leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You know when you walk past somebody that smells good? You weren't thinking about it. It just kind of wafted over to you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's nice. That's how it should be when people interact with us in the world, That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That simply by interacting with us, by moving past us, they would go, huh, that's different. That's nice. It's this standard that's so high and so seemingly impossible to reach, but that's who Paul tells us we are in Colossians, and that's what I want us to be. What if, what if, Grace, we were like this so much. What if we held ourselves to that standard that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This unaggressive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive just scent that wafts off of us that these are people who know and love God. What if that was so pervasive that somebody brings a friend to big night out and they go, these people are different, this community is different, and I think I want to be a part of it. What if that fragrance were so pervasive in us that by someone just coming to our worship or by someone just sitting in with us or by someone just watching us interact before and after a regular Sunday service, when none of us did anything intentional, they got an impression that these people know and love God. What if we were that productive in our faith? That's what God is concerned with, not the rules and how well we follow them. Now, this so far is a particularly grace message because grace people are not rules not rules people. I don't know how long you've been here, but those of us who have been here for a while, we don't care for the rules. We don't follow them. They're there to be broken. We're pretty irreverent about the rules. And so, so far, all the grace people are like, yeah, this is great. God cares way more about productivity. And if we were the kind of church that said amen sometimes, we would have said it by now. Because this is what we believe in. Yes, absolutely. I need Bill Gentile here this week. Bill Gentile, some of you know him, about four times a year, he says, man, I was so close to amen this morning. I needed him here this morning. Bill, darn you. We like that message. God doesn't care about the rules. He cares about love. And so the implication is, so go do whatever you want. I mean, go behave however you want. Go consume whatever you want. Go put whatever you want in your body. Go watch whatever you want. Go do whatever it is you want. Just make sure that what comes out is love. Here's the problem with that. The right results demand the right input. The right results demand the right input. If what my real goal in my life is, is that through me would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God, how is that possible if I am not daily consuming his word? If I am not daily pursuing him in prayer? If I am not daily tracking down older, wiser, more experienced people in my life who've known God longer than me and asking them questions about how they know God and how they follow God, how can the fragrance of the knowledge of God permeate out of me and into the people around me if I'm not spending my days pursuing that knowledge? How can someone see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven if you're too busy to do those good works? If you're not focused on pursuing God yourself. How can someone see the way you interact with a cashier, the way that you handle things in traffic, the way that you interact with a coworker, the way that you de-escalate something tense at work? How can people see you do that if you're not pursuing God and you're not growing in those areas? How can people see the fruit of the Spirit in your life if you're not walking in the Spirit? So I'm not here to tell you what Netflix shows you should and should not watch, but here's what I know. There comes a point at which too much of that one thing, too dark of that one topic, too much of that kind of input is going to begin to affect the output. It's going to begin to affect how we love and what comes out. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I'm not here to tell you what language to use and not. I'm not here to tell you what you should consume and what you should not. But what I am here to tell you this morning is what you consume through your eyes and through your mouth and with your body, the receptivity, the things that you receive from the world into you, what you consume absolutely makes a difference in what you produce. We know this to be true. So this is not a sermon begging you to come up with standards. It is one that is telling you that they matter. And when we read passages like this and Jesus says, listen, the rules don't matter. It's about what you produce. Yeah. That's why he reduced all the laws down to one thing. Go love others if I have loved you, which is the most impossible law to follow in the world unless you're following the essence of the other 630. We have to be people who love God and love others. And that has to dictate to us what we allow to come into our bodies and the kinds of things that we are receptive to because how can we ever possibly be the Christians, the kingdom builders that Jesus calls us to be if we're not consuming him and the things of him always. It reminds me of that verse that I love, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatever things are good, right, noble, trustworthy, of good report, think on these things. If that's not our standard for what we're consuming and what we hold ourselves to, then how can we possibly expect to produce what God wants us to produce? How can we possibly expect to hold up our end of the bargain? See, what we like? We love the no rules thing. We love the standards don't matter thing. That's fun. But if that's really what we think, how can we ever become the people that God has created us to be? How will the fragrance of the knowledge of God ever waft out of us if we never, ever, ever care about the standards that we set for ourselves and what we pursue? And I know this is true because Jesus says this in Mark slander, evil, malice, lust, adultery, lewdness, folly, all those things, they come from inside of me. They come from a value that I've espoused in my own heart. They come from the people that I allow to be around me. And all that stuff gets in there from what I consume, from what I watch and from what I joke about and from what I read and from what I talk about and for the kinds of friendships that I have and for the standards that I hold. All that stuff gets poured in. And if I hang out with people who love money more than anything and love success more than anything, then I am going to adopt their value system. And in my heart, I will allow that seed of greed to grow, that seed of arrogance to grow. And I will begin to make decisions about money and about success and about power and about career that are not in line with producing the righteous life that God desires. Out of me will come that selfishness. Out of me will come that influence from other people. But here's what I think has to be true. If these verses are true, 20 through 23, then the converse must be true as well. If malice and slander and greed and arrogance pour out of my heart because of what I've poured in, then the opposite has to be true, right? That when love and kindness and generosity and mercy and grace flow out of my heart, flow out of my mouth. It is because of what God has placed in my heart. It is because of an earnest pursuit of God. It is because of a healthy sanctification and desire for him. It is because of intentional choices. See, we don't get to produce that fruit by default, okay? You don't just become a Christian and then go about your day as normal, not changing a thing, and then all of a sudden just pouring out of you is love and generosity and kindness. No, there's intentional, difficult decisions that you have to make about how you want to prioritize your time and your talent and your treasure so that God can get a hold of you and move you forward. Last week, I talked about how one of the greatest tools of the enemy is that we're so distracted. We're never quiet anymore ever. We've lost the power to think and to ponder and to wonder. How can we produce what God wants us to produce if we won't stop and take in from him? So when we hear this story in the future, because this is a famous one, when Jesus says what goes into a person doesn't defile them, what comes out does. Often we use that to decry the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of their life, and the rules don't matter, it's all about love, and that's great, and that's true, and it is. But what I think grace needs to hear more than that because if we're going to, listen, church, if we're going to miss the mark on this, we're going to miss it in favor of love and do what you want. Okay? That's our culture. So what grace needs to hear is, yeah, love, but that pours out of what we pour in. That comes out of what we let in. So I have two things for you guys to think about as we wrap up today. First one, and I asked you this in another form last week, but I want you to think about it again. Am I producing, as honestly as you can, am I producing what God wants me to produce? When I look back the last one year, three years, five years, do I see an increase in the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Do I see myself growing in generosity and kindness and patience? Do I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on me and that I've subjected myself to him? Am I producing in the kingdom? Am I pointing people towards Jesus? So it's well and good to not care about the rules. It's well and good to understand this and be like, yeah, I don't have to judge my spirituality and my spiritual health by how well I follow the rules. That's fine. But how well are you producing? And then the second thing I would leave you with this morning is this question. Are the things that I'm consuming helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? Are the things that I'm consuming in my life on the screen, the radio, the phone, the scroll, through the conversations, what I expose myself to willingly and habitually, are the things that I'm consuming in my life helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? I'd love for you to think about those two things as I pray for you, and then we sing to finish up. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the way that you work in our lives. Thank you for being a God that, yes, doesn don't know if I'm producing what I'd like to be producing. I don't know that I'm being used like I'd like to be used. God, would you create in them a fire to make some intentional decisions to put their hand to the plow in your kingdom? Would you show them and show us what we can do and how you'd like to use us? And would that begin by just a simple pursuit and step towards you. And God, as we consider the different things that we consume, I know as I've thought through it, convict us where it's needed. Let it move us to better choices. And God, with the conviction, with that seed of conviction from your word, land on good soil that takes root, that isn't a flash in the pan, that isn't emotional, that doesn't get swept away. But God, as we consider those things in our lives, help us be people that stick to it. We thank you for your son. We thank you for your sacrifice. And we thank you for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.