Sermons tagged with Gratitude

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

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you for joining us at Grace. I was late into the service this morning. Anecdotally, I'm just indulging myself. This has nothing to do with anything. I was just happy with the moment. When I was growing up, I got in trouble at church all the time. Me and my best friend, PJ Smith, we got kicked out of every ministry that ever existed at our church because we were troublemakers. And my senior pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, used to, in Sunday night service, back when we encumbered our pastors with having to preach two sermons on one Sunday, he would call me out, Chris, stop talking to Karen, or do I need to get Donna to come down here and sit between you two? Like that kind of stuff in the service. And as a 12-year-old, that's mortifying. And I just remember that as what my pastor did. And I was next door refilling my water and getting ready to come over here. And there was a kid that got a little sideways. And the teacher had to pull him out. And the kid wasn't really listening to the teacher. And so I had to crouch down and get real stern with said kid and say, you're going to get right. And he says, she's not my mom. And I said, yeah, you're right, but she's your teacher. And if you don't listen to her, I'm going to go get your mom. And it was just like, and she said, thanks, Nate. I was like, you're welcome. Also, Carly, it was your, no, I'm just kidding. It was not, it was not, it was not. This morning, we're in our second part of Daniel, where we're going through the first portion of the book, the narrative portion of the book, and looking at these stories and asking what we can learn from them and what they have for us now. This morning, we arrive at the story of the fiery furnace, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, in the Old Testament, and I'm thrilled to arrive at it now. It's a story about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but years ago, I went to Honduras on a mission trip, and I got to know a man named Mark Searcy, who's a custom home builder in western North Carolina. But in his teenage and 20, in his late teens and 20s, he was a missionary to Haiti and has this missionary background. And he's really southern and really. And one of my favorite humans I've ever met. And he's, he told me that, uh, that I'm not going to tell him what, I'm not going to tell you what he calls, uh, Nebuchadnezzar. I'll tell you if you ask me after the service, I'll tell you, but I'm not going to tell you from here. Uh, he, and he said that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are the demon names for those boys because their real names were Benadab, Mishael, and Hananiah. Those were their Hebrew names that all meant some sort of praise to God. And they were renamed by the Babylonian government, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, what we know them by. And those are their demon names because those give praise to the Babylonian gods. And I'm not sure how convinced I am of Mark's perspective, but I do think it's interesting that there is, that there have been a dad, Mishael and Hananiah. Those are their God given, the names given by their Jewish parents that give praise to God. And I do think it's good as we remember the story to know their real names. But in the Bible and in the story, they're referred to as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So we will refer to them as that. And here's the situation. Last week, we talked about the exile and basically Jewish slaves being carried to Babylon to serve in their court and that they took some of the elite, the cream of the crop, young men, and they installed them in the government. They put them through a training process and then they installed them in the government and gave them different roles. And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have been prepared for that, and they've now been installed in their roles, and they've reached the upper echelons of government. And as such, they've made their peers jealous of them. So there are native Babylonians that are now working with them or even under them that have become jealous of their progress and of their success. And that's the environment. And in the midst of this environment, there's an edict that goes out. King Nebuchadnezzar erects a gold statue of himself. And there's an edict that whenever music is played, and in the Bible, this is where in Daniel chapter three, I'm going to look at some verses in a minute. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, that's where we are. But it says in the Bible that whenever these instruments, the lyre and the harp and the whatever, and the trumpet and whatever are played, then you should bow and worship the golden image or just bow towards the golden image and worship Nebuchadnezzar, who has now deified himself. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego don't agree to this. Whenever the music plays, they don't worship. And I was thinking about this as I was rereading the story and reacquainting myself with it. It's difficult to believe that they would stand in the city center obstinately going like this and saying, we're not going to worship. It's more easy to believe that they would discreetly and respectfully move off to the side and just kind of let everyone else do their thing. I certainly don't know what the situation was, but I seriously doubt they made a big show of not worshiping. I think they just didn't worship. But some of their peers noticed this and told on them. They went to King Nebuchadnezzar and they ratted them out. They told on them. And this is a lesson for all the, everybody, if you're in here and you're under 15, raise your hand. Snitches get stitches. All right. That's a real thing. Don't do this. Don't tell on people. That's for you. They told on them. And they said, hey, whenever the music plays, these people aren't worshiping you. They're not honoring you. And the text says that Nebuchadnezzar was enraged. He was an emotionally volatile man from everything we can tell from the text. Nebuchadnezzar was enraged, and he calls them in. And he's furious at them. And he says, I've heard you guys. I've brought you in. I've supported you. I've trained you. I've elevated you. I've progressed you. I've given you success. I've given you affluence. And as a thank you, you refuse to worship me. He's furious at them. He says, if you don't worship me, I'm going to play the music. I'm going to turn on Spotify. And if you don't worship me, I'm going to burn you in the fiery furnace. That's the threat. So that's the situation and that's where we are. And this is their response to King Nebuchadnezzar. And I think it is a remarkable response. Daniel chapter three, verses 16 through 18. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to him, King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we. That's the most important phrase in the story. But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. So he brings these young men before him. He's this enraged king surrounded by guards. And he says, if you don't worship me, I'm going to throw you into the furnace. I'm going to burn you alive. And their response is, we do not need to defend ourselves against you in this matter, which is difficult to parse out. And different theologians would say different things, because with this limited story we get from the text, it's difficult to know exactly what their intent is. And so this is a guess. But my guess is that they believe that Nebuchadnezzar knew of their faith. That they believe that he knew, like, hey, we're worshipers of the Hebrew God. We're not worshipers of other gods. We don't need to defend ourselves against you. I don't think it was defiant. I don't think it was, no, no, no, I'm not going to talk about that with you. You don't deserve that. I'm not going to answer that question. It was, it was more of, I believe, you know who we are. You know who we worship. That's not going to change. And that God that we worship is going to protect us. Throw us in there. He'll protect us. And even if he doesn't, we're going to continue to believe in him. And we will not worship you. That's their response. When they responded in that way, Nebuchadnezzar is so angry that he looks at his guards and he says, make the furnace seven times hotter, which is a hilarious command. Because if you're on fire, you're on fire. You know, does it get worse if it's seven times? Like if your arms on fire and then you make it seven times hotter, is that a worse fire on your arm? Like I don't understand that. And I also don't understand in ancient Babylon how you gauge what seven times hotter is. But that's what he says. Make it seven times hotter. And it was so hot that one of the guards that bound them and threw them into the furnace burned up himself because he got too close to the flame, which is a really tough way to go. But that's what happens. And he throws them into the flame. And then he's watching them in the flames, expecting to see them burn up. I don't know if there was like a bulletproof, like double-pane glass that was heatproof that he could see through, or if it was just like an open furnace. I don't know how it worked, but he's looking in and he's seeing them, and he notices something. And this is what the text says, Daniel 3, 24 through 26. Then King Nebuchadnezzar leapt to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, weren't there three men that were tied up and threw into the fire? They replied, certainly, your majesty. He said, look, I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods. Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace there three people in the house, but only are there three people who are unharmed, but there's a fourth. And the text just says he looks like a son of the gods. And here's a thing that I like to do with the Old Testament. We don't know who that was. We don't know who the fourth person was in there with them. It could have been an angel. Some people think it could have been Jesus himself. And here's what I do as a highly trained theologian. Whenever... Shut up. That's great. I'm a very lowly train. I'm not a pastor, theologian. That's crazy. Anyways, just the snicker from the 26 year old was deserved. It was deserved. Whenever we have the opportunity in the Old Testament to put Jesus in a place, we should. So maybe it was an angel. But I think it was Jesus. I think he showed up with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he said, I'm with you. You have faith in me. I'm with you. And he protects them from the fiery furnace. You can extrapolate that out however you like. But I think Jesus was there. I think Jesus was there in the form of Melchizedek when Abraham showed up in Salem and gave a tithe to him. For me, it's just cooler to allow Jesus to show up wherever it seems like he does. So who knows who is there? And who knows who wrote Hebrews? But let's make guesses. And I think that was Jesus there in the furnace with them. When Nebuchadnezzar sees this, he calls them out. Come out right away. And the ties that bound their hands were done. They were burned up, but they were unharmed completely by the flames. And his response, if weadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel and rescued his servants. They trusted in him and defied the king's command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own god. Therefore, this is important, I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of them must be cut to pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rub is, if you honor God, you will get a promotion. He sees what happens. Also, that's false. He sees what happens and he calls them out. And he says, he gives praise to this God that he was moments ago committed to defying. Do you see? And so that's the story. And then God gets the glory. So that's the story of, and that's all the rhyming I'm going to do. That's the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. And it's a wonderful story. And typically, when I preach a sermon, I'm really, whether you've noticed it or not, doing my best to try to get us to like one point to think about. I'm trying to drive the ship to this one thing for us to consider. And I'd love to do that with this story, but here's the problem. It's too grand of a story to reduce to one point. I've also been your pastor now for eight years, and this is the first time I've preached on it. I don't see myself getting back to it anytime soon. So instead of just saying one thing, I want to pull out three things from this story that we learned for us to consider this morning. And I would encourage you to weigh them with equal weight and to decide and determine this morning. We don't have the capacity to apply three things to ourselves and do three new things in our lives and all the things. So one of these three things, I think and I hope and I and I pray will connect with you. And I would invite you to just grab onto the one that does. And maybe you'll get to the end of them and be like, is there a fourth one? I don't, none of those mattered, but hopefully one of these three will be something that relates to you. So the first thing we see in this story is simply this. Holiness matters. Holiness matters. It matters in life. It matters to God. It should matter to you. Holiness matters. Last week, this is what we talked about. We talked about Daniel being trained by the Babylonians and being offered this new diet. And with this diet, he was encouraged to eat stuff that was outside the purview of the Jewish laws in which he grew up. And so he said, I'm going to refuse that and choose this vegetarian vegan diet. And let's just see how it goes. So he chose holiness. And when I say holiness, here's what I mean, because this is what the Bible means. The word holy means different and more accurately, it means other. So when we say holy, and when God said, when we say about God, holy, holy, holy, what we are saying is different, different, different, other than us, set aside from us, not the same as us. And so when we say we act with holiness, we pursue holiness, what we're saying is we're pursuing being different. And what we talked about last week is we're pursuing being different from the society in which we find ourselves entrenched. We are not citizens of the United States. We are not citizens of North Carolina. We find ourselves residing here. We are aliens in those places, and we are citizens of heaven. And so our behavior and our standards should be not in line with the given standards of North Carolina or Raleigh or North Raleigh or wherever it is you find yourself. Our standards for ourselves should be in line with what scripture says and who God tells us to be. That's what holiness is. Now, I had lunch with a friend of mine this week. And, excuse me, and he he was saying how does a leaf get up on this stage like all the way in looky there I had lunch with a friend of mine and he was saying that he enjoyed last week's sermon but that he wanted when I got I got to the holy part, to the diet, he wanted to say, what's the diet? Give me the standards. Tell me what to do. He's like, I don't know how everybody feels, but sometimes I like to get kicked in the teeth on Sunday morning. Like, make me feel a little bit bad. Like, ruffle my feathers a little bit and tell me what the standards should be. Tell me what we should watch and what we shouldn't watch. And tell me what we should think and what we shouldn't think. And tell me what practices in my life, like get on to me a little bit. And I said, I'll never do that. I'll never do that. That's not what I'm here to do. Because holiness, this is going to sound odd, is gray. It's different things for different people. I'm never going to get up here and tell you what it looks like to be holy as if I am that. You guys are smart, responsible adults with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Most of you. I believe in your capacity to decide what holiness is for you. I'm not going to sit up here and list standards off by which you should live. I'm going to trust you to establish those for yourself. And here's one of the reasons. I've given this example before. Years ago, I found myself, and I still do, as a big fan of NBA playoff basketball. I hate the regular season. I think the mid-season tournament is one of the dumbest things I've ever encountered in my life. That joke's going to land with 5% of you, but you know who you are. But I would watch the NBA playoffs because I like it. I like sports. I watch all the sports. And I like the playoffs. But the playoffs would keep me up because of the West Coast games until 1, 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning. And by watching them every night, I was getting up later than I needed to. And sometimes it would cause me to either miss my quiet time, which you've heard me say a hundred times. The most important habit anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in his presence through prayer. You've heard me say that over a hundred times, if you've been here for any length of time and by staying up late and watching those games, it was causing me to wake up late and either have a truncated quiet time or none at all. And so it was impacting me spiritually. So it became unholy for me to stay up watching basketball games. But I'm not going to stand on this stage and tell you it's unholy to watch sports. That's how it's great. You have to determine how your behaviors impact you and how they push you to God or not and what diet is right for you. But here's what I know based on this story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, is that holiness matters. Here's the second thing I know from this story. God is always working for his glory. God is always working for his glory. You see in the story that they get into this scenario where they've been told on. It's a bad scene. And they could have justified their way out of it, couldn't they? They could have said, God, I'm going to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar so I don't die. And so that I can remain in this place and influence in the right way. I mean, if I die, they're just going to replace me with a godless Babylonian. You don't want that to happen. So like, I'm just going to do this. I don't mean it, but I'm going to bow down. They didn't do that. They were in a tough spot. And they had this standard because they chose holiness of I can't bow down to Nebuchadnezzar. And at any point, God could have intervened and saved them. But he waited until the very last minute to save them in the fiery furnace. And so they were in this predicament that was preventable, but God didn't prevent. He allowed his servants to continue to suffer. And what we see at the end of that is that God was working for his glory because what's the result of the story? The result of the story is Nebuchadnezzar declares, no one will ever blaspheme the God of the Hebrew people. No one will ever blaspheme the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And by allowing them to go through this difficult phase and rescuing them at the very last minute, God made his own name great. Do you see? It was declared throughout Babylon because of that. There's an edict that went out that we will honor this God now. So it's important for us to hear from the story that whatever God is doing, he's doing it to work his own glory. I have a friend who, when he graduated, he got in with an accounting firm. And he began to just work and work diligently and work hard and do what you do in that stage of your career and kind of rise in the ranks and yada, yada, yada. And he ended up making partner with two other folks. And so now he's a partner with two other people, but he feels a sense of injustice because they don't work as hard as he does. They have this kind of mentality that once you make partner, now you have employees to do the work and you get to make the money off of what they do. And he felt like, no, you have to outwork your employees. And then he looked at his partners who he viewed as lazy and they are not working as hard. And this frustrated him and it caused years of frustration. And then eventually what happened was, and he's, by the way, going to church, he's a deacon at his church. He's, he's one of these people and he's getting frustrated with the situation because it feels unjust and it feels unfair. And he's like, God, I'm honoring you. Why are you, why is this happening? And then there's a personal fallout and he actually gets kicked out of the partnership and he has to start from scratch. And so he finds himself in his mid-30s with children starting from scratch and going, God, how is this happening? Why is this happening? This seems unfair. But he starts from scratch and he builds a new company and develops new partners. And you fast forward another 15, 20 years after that, and his firm exists and gives 20 to 30% of their profits to nonprofit organizations building God's kingdom around the globe. And he has people on his payroll whose entire job is to do the finances of nonprofits for free. He had to go through a hard time and be recalibrated. But it was to be recalibrated for God's glory. So that this person could be, so that my friend could be used to bring glory to God in his kingdom in a greater way. Some of us in here may find ourselves going through times that seem hard and seem preventable. God, if you wanted to fix this, you could. God, if you wanted to rescue, you could. God, if you wanted to restore, you could. If you wanted to repair, you could. If you wanted to heal, you could. And maybe he's not. But God doesn't work in days. He works in decades. And he works in centuries. And here's what I know about God based on this story and many others. God is always working for his glory. And he will involve you. In that path. If you stick with him. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So God is always working for his glory. Here's the last thing. And this one. I said consider them with equal weight. But this is my favorite one. And I stole this one from a friend of mine who I hadn't talked to in years. And I actually called him this week and I said, Hey dude, he's a guy, his name's Alan Smith. He's on staff at my last church. He's still there as a campus pastor. And he and I worked together. And I remember him preaching this sermon. This was the first sermon that he preached. It was on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when he had a chance to preach at the last church. And I called him this week and I said, dude, I'm preaching that story. And I remember the point you made. And I'm totally stealing it. But I'm going to give you credit. Like just so you know, I'm not going to pretend like this is my idea and my insight. and we had a good catch up and whatever. But this is not from me. This is from Alan. Not that Alan. This is from another Alan. Here's the question that I come out of with this story. And this is the thing I want to leave you with. Do you have, even if, faith? Do you have, even if, faith? I told you those words were the most important words in the story, and I told you that we were going to come back to them. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said, Nebuchadnezzar, O king, if you throw us in the furnace, our God will protect us. But even if he doesn't, we will still worship him. Do you ever see the power of that? I believe my God can heal my dad. But even if he doesn't, I'm going to worship him. I believe my God can repair this. But even if he doesn't, I'm going to worship him. I believe that my God can make this better. But even if he chooses not to, but even if he doesn't, I will remain faithful. Do you know how hard it is? Many of you have walked through it, and you know what even if faith is. Do you know how hard it is to feel let down by God and say, but even if he lets me down and he doesn't do the thing that I think he's going to do or that I want him to do or that I need him to do or that I'm desperate for him to do or that I'm weeping for him to do, even if he doesn't do it, I will still choose him. That's even if faith. I had a conversation this last week and it made my week, man. I used to be a high school teacher. And Honeymoon is a football coach, Mike Devine. And I got really close with a particular class. And there were some of the kids, some of the guys that I got really close with. So close that I'll tell you this. One of my greatest regrets, this guy's name's Alex Williams, and we went to the lake. I took them to my in-law's lake house. And we were joking about getting tattoos, and I don't have any tattoos. We were joking about getting tattoos, and Alex said, I'll get a matching one with you. And I said, what do you want to get? And we decided that it would be great to get 100% awesome written on our butt cheek. I wish I had that tattoo. Golly, what a miss. That would be great. But I don't. But Alex and I were that kind of close. And in his junior and senior year, Alex's dad was dying of cancer. And I have a vivid memory of bringing in some of the other men and dads from the class into my classroom. And we gathered around Ron. And we prayed for God to heal him. And God did heal him. He just healed him in eternity. He didn't heal him here. And so Alex lost his dad. After losing his dad, his mom, understandably so, kind of went off the rails. And his two elementary age brothers had to move in with Alex at 19 years old. And he found himself as the caretaker for them. He had a hard go. And Alex always loved Jesus, but this was a hard season. And I lost touch with him for a while. I would see him on Facebook. He's got a wife. He's got a young family. He seems to be doing well and be thriving. And I got a Facebook message, which I don't check very often because it was two weeks old. But he reached out to me and he said, hey, I'm doing okay in life. And I want to give to people who need it. How do I do that? And so I said, this is a great conversation to have, dude. Let's talk. And we talked and he said, and this is, you guys will find this funny. Um, and it's sad that it's true. He said, you're the fourth pastor I've talked to. I'm involved in the church. I've talked to three other pastors. Can you guess where they told me to give my money? And he said, I knew you wouldn't do that, so I called you. And I said, 10% of everything we give goes to you. We had a great conversation. We caught up. We shared stories about the time I got too excited as a football coach and punched him in the stomach in the middle of a game. Not because I was mad, because I was pumped up. I was like, let's go get him. And I accidentally hit Alex. Anyways, it was a wonderful conversation. And he's coming to Raleigh. He's doing a bid on our church. He's a general contractor. He might build our church. Who knows if that's what God is orchestrating. But he's going to come here, and when he comes here, I'm going to lay out in front of him six nonprofits that I know of and say, whatever God directs your heart, get involved in these. But these are good people and they're doing good things. And I'm so thrilled to be able to do that. But here's the point of that story. That's even if faith. Isn't it? Even if you don't heal my dad. Even if my mom goes off the rails. Even if I adopt my brothers at the age of 19. Even if I have to go through trials and I can't go to college. I will find a way, and when I do, God, I'm going to honor you. As soon as you give me the means, I'm going to honor you. That's even if faith. So that's the question that I would leave you with today. Do you have even if faith? Let's pray and we'll take communion. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for this wonderful church and group of people. Thank you for the way that you allow us to love you and one another. Thank you for speaking to us through the stories of the Old Testament and this morning, hopefully, through the story of Ben-Hadad, Mishael, and Hananiah. Thank you for your servants then and your servants now. God, as we move into this time of communion, we just pray that we would reflect and be grateful for the way that you love us, for the way that you're always working for your glory. I pray that we would pursue holiness and that we would, if we don't have it now, progress towards an even-if faith. It's in your Son's name we pray these things. Amen.

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

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being a part of our Sunday. Welcome to Grace. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. If you're here and it's your first time and I haven't had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. You're here on the perfect Sunday. It's Hootenanny Sunday. So as soon as the service is over, we're going to clear the chairs out to the wall. We're going to throw down some tables. We've got a huge grill out there to grill some hamburgers and some cheeseburgers and some hot dogs. If yours feels a little bland when you have it, I mean, they are the frozen bricks. Katie McWilliams right there brings her own seasoning in her purse for all of these events. So I'm sure there's plenty to go around. She's not selfish. So just ask her. If you're wondering where is this section of the church, they're around the grill. Like there's 20 dudes just staring at the grill. No one's doing anything, and they won't do anything for another 45 minutes. But they're all out there because that's where men go. It's just like moth to a flame. That's what they're doing. And just as a point of order to my Panthers friends, fans, congratulations. You really gave it to us last week. I was telling somebody I was coaching a soccer game at the end of the Falcons-Panthers game. And for those that don't know, last week I ran my mouth about my Falcons cup because I'm a Falcons fan. And now everyone is in Panthers gear. There was a baby shoved in my face wearing a Panthers onesie. People who have been wearing Panthers t-shirts have forced themselves on me with hugs. Which, this is the Lord's house, alright? We need to be serious about this. But I got, I was coaching a game, and so I wasn't looking at my phone, and the game ended while I was coaching the game. And then I checked my phone after the game, and I had 27 texts from you jerks. One of you, and this one was my favorite, just no words sent me a picture of a Panthers cup. That was it, which is really good. A few weeks ago, we're continuing in our series, Gentle and Lowly, looking at kind of loosely working through the book, Gentle and Lowly, by a guy named Dane Ortlund. And so this is the fourth part of the series, and I'm going to be focused on chapter five, where it talks about Jesus as a high priest. A few weeks ago, I did a wedding, and as normally happens at weddings, I have the same conversation with Uncle So-and-So. Uncle So-and-So, one of the uncles, one of the dads, is going to, at some point or another, about half the time, half the weddings I do, is going to come up to me and say, it's always these questions, it's always in this order. Do you have a church? Yes, I have a church. What's it called? It's called Grace Raleigh. Oh, where is it? It's near Triangle Mall, corner of Capitol and 540. Oh, that's cool. What denomination is it? Every time. Those questions in that order. And so I had this conversation. And he said, what denomination is it? And I got to explain one of my favorite things about grace, which is we are not non-denominational. And I don't know if you know this. We are not non-denominational. We are inter-denominational. And I didn't learn that word until I came to grace. But the people who started it told me what it was, and I think it's beautiful. So I got to explain it to Uncle So-and-So what that means. And what it means is we acknowledge. We're not non-denominational. We don't expect you to. If you grew up in a particular denomination, the gentleman I was talking to was Lutheran. And then when he said Lutheran, I said, okay. He said I was sprinkled as a baby. Does that count? And then he wanted to have the baptism discussion. Just right there. That's what happens in my life. But I was able to explain to him that we're interdenominational, meaning in our church body, we have represented just about every mainline denomination in the United States. We have Lutherans. We certainly have Presbyterians. We have Baptists. We have Pentecostals. We have Catholics. We have people that have converted from Judaism. We have everything represented in this church. And rather than being non-denominational and leaving all of that wonderful heritage at the door when you come in, we say that we are interdenominational, meaning we find beauty and purpose and truth in every segment of God's church. And we believe that people from all kinds of different denominations have something to offer here and that those denominations have beautiful, wonderful things that we should be humble and learn from. We have not cornered the market on truth at grace. And I got to explain that to Uncle So-and-So, and that's one of my favorite things about the church. But because of that, because we're interdenominational and because we have people from all different backgrounds, when we hear the word priest, we think of it totally differently. Many of us think about it in many different ways. This week we're looking at Jesus as our high priest and what that means. But before we can appreciate what that means, we have to appreciate what it is to be a priest. Because if you grew up Catholic, you have a very good idea of what you expect a priest to do and be. If you grew up Jewish, you have an understanding of what a priest is, but it's different than the Catholic view. If you're like me and you grew up Baptist, I only know priests from TV shows and clips and what my very conservative professors would say about the priesthood. I don't have the good working knowledge of what it means to be a priest and why that's important. And so I understand that in this room, if I were to ask 10 of you, what is a priest? What's the role? What do they do? It would, they would be probably similar answers, but probably not the same. And I doubt any of us are succinct about it, which is why I appreciate this quote at the beginning of chapter 5 when Dane explains what a priest is. He says this, and this is how we're going to understand it this morning. Chapter 5 opens like this. I think it's a wonderful description of a priest. And he asserts, and I think this is in part right. I don't think it's the only thrust of the book of Hebrews, but it was written in part to show us what it is to have Jesus as a high priest. And I love that imagery of on in earth, the king is God's representative to the people, but the priest is the people's representative to God. He goes and advocates for us. That's why it's such a big deal that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father advocating for you and I. He is our high priest. And I also love the thought that it is in the shadow of that great priest that all other priests, pastors, ministers, leaders stand. And it is to him that all other priests, pastors, ministers, leaders should point all the time. You should come here and I should point you to Jesus. And lest you think this example is just for me because I'm the only pastor speaking in the room right now. So this is just for me. In 1 Peter chapter 2, Peter acquaints us with this idea called the priesthood of the believers. Meaning if you are a Christian, if you call God your father and Jesus your savior, then you are in the priesthood of the believers. You are in the holy priesthood. It is your job to minister to the people around us. So in a sense, if you are saved, you are also in here a priest, which means you stand in the shadow of our great high priest. And it is your job to point back to that great high priest. Now, as I think about Jesus as a priest, I think about what would his demeanor towards us be? If you were the priest, if you were perfect, divine, and you were the priest of all of the Christians on the planet and you represented them, what would your demeanor towards them be? Don't you think you'd be a little disappointed? Don't you think you'd be a little frustrated? Don't you think Jesus has the right to get exasperated with us? We get a hint of this in the Gospels when the disciples offer some dumb answer for a question and Jesus says, how long must I put up with this faithless generation? Just this little glimpse of Jesus getting a little bit worn out with it, fed up with us. And I think to be our high priest and to watch us wallow in the mud and like is depicted in the Bible, we are like dogs that return to our own vomit when we sin. To watch my children do that over and over and over again, wouldn't that be exasperating? Parents, you know this to be true. There's things in my house that are absolutely unnecessary behaviors. One of my children is in a stage where they like to pinch you to get back at you. They pinch their sibling to get back at them. And I have told them, do not pinch your sibling. Don't do that. You don't have to do it. You never have to do it. Don't pinch your sibling. Another one of them likes to put their feet on the other one. Just randomly, just rest my foot on your head. What a jerk move that is. And I've told that child, do not touch your sibling with your feet. Don't do it. Just don't do it. And there's other things that they do that test my patience, but nothing makes me lose my mind when I look over and child A is putting their feet on child B and I'm like, knock it off. Stop. You don't have to do that. They hate it. I hate seeing it. Feet are gross. Never touch me with them. By the way, men over 30, you should never have your toes exposed if you are not directly adjacent to water for any reason. Do not wear flip-flops to dinner, guys. Knock it off. It's gross. Nobody likes it. Anyways, I wasn't planning on saying that. You do what you want with your toesies. But it drives me nuts when they do a thing that I've told them not to do over and over and over again, and it's an easily conquerable behavior. They don't care. And if that drives me nuts, how much more nuts must we drive Jesus as he watches us in the squalor, returning to a defeatable behavior over and over and over again? Wouldn't you, if you were him, just want to slap you on the back of the head and go, knock it off? What are you doing? This is preventable. Stop it. I would expect Jesus's demeanor towards us to be one of exasperation. And yet this is not how he is described by the author of Hebrews. Hebrews 5.2 describes our high priest. I'm going to read one as well. Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He, this is Jesus, is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This Jesus that has every right as our high priest to approach us with exasperation chooses instead to approach us with gentleness, chooses instead to have what's known about him and written about him in the book of Hebrews be that he is our high priest and he is gentle with us because he shares in our weaknesses. He's been tempted like us before. He's a human like us. We talked about this last week, which causes our high priest not to be exasperated, not to be angry, not to be frustrated, not to be fed up, not to be disappointed, but to be gentle with us. And this falls right in line with how Jesus describes himself. I'll remind you, this is the keystone verse for the whole book. Matthew 11, 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble or lowly in only way Jesus describes himself is gentle and lowly. Ortlund's assertion in the book is that there's no other place in the Gospels where Jesus describes himself, where Jesus tells you what he is or what his assessment of himself is or what he wants you to know him for. This is the one place. And what does he choose? Gentle and lowly. And so this morning, we're going to really hone in on that gentleness. We're going to marvel at it. We're going to look at the effect that it has on us and think about how we can be more like Christ and our gentleness as well. But it's miraculous to me that this all-powerful, perfect Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father, who lived a perfect life and died a perfect death and has watched. Can you imagine the frustration just banging your head against the wall, watching generation after generation after generation of Christians commit the same sins and the same atrocities and the same mistakes and run into the end and stub their toe on the same objects generation after generation? Can you imagine what it would be like to watch you wanting what's best for you and watching you hurt yourself over and over and over again? And yet, despite all of that, despite all that generational sin, despite it spilling down through the centuries and the millennia, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and his demeanor towards you is gentle and humble. And here's the thing that I want us to catch. If you look back at the verse, it says he is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray. And when you read that at first, it says that Jesus deals gently with those who are ignorant and going astray. And in our Christian brains, many of us have been believers for a long time. And so in our longtime believer brains, more than a few years, we've been walking with Jesus or at least claiming to, trying to, varying degrees of success. We read that verse and I think we flag it. Jesus is gentle towards new and non-believers. He's gentle towards the ignorant who are going wayward, the people who don't know any better. I remember Jesus's prayer. I think of Jesus's prayer on the cross when they're casting lots for his garments and they're torturing him. And Jesus prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. They're ignorant in their sin. And so this verse, when he just, on a surface reading, it looks like that he is gentle towards those who are ignorant to their sin and therefore are wayward and wandering away from Jesus. Meaning for us, for mature believers, those of us who've been walking with him for a while, we know better. I bet for many of you, whatever your sins are, they're not ignorant. You know what you're doing. You know the choice you're making. You know you're choosing to harbor a wrong attitude, to commit a wrong action, to say a wrong thing, to withhold the wrong thing, whatever it is. Most of us, once you've been walking with God for a little bit, your sins are no longer ignorant. And so maybe this Jesus isn't gentle with me. But I love what Ortland points out in this chapter of the book. When you get into the sentence, and this is always tricky, and I don't do a lot of translation stuff, and I'm not going to go deep in it now, but it's always tricky to translate Greek into English. Everything's different, right? Well, when you really get into it, what you find is that the author intended to identify two different categories of people. So think of it this way. Jesus deals gently with the ignorant, with those who sin without knowing it. A few days ago, John held up his middle finger at me and said, Dad, what's this? And I said, it's a thing we don't do, buddy. That was ignorant. Typically, you could consider it a sin to hang the bird at your dad. That's not good. But I don't condemn John for that. He didn't know it was in ignorance. And sometimes we do things in ignorance. We hurt people in ignorance. We didn't mean it. We didn't know we did it. And God forgives. Jesus is gentle for us for that in our ignorance. But then there's the wayward and the way that is best read is. And Jesus is also gentle with the wayward, with the ones who are wandering. He's gentle with ignorant sin and he's gentle with intentional sin. Meaning we can say for sure Jesus deals gently with all sinners. Jesus deals gently with all sinners, not just the new believers, not just the non-believers, not just the innocent four-year-old asking a question. He deals gently with the ignorant, and he deals gently with the wayward. So Jesus, our high priest, deals gently with all of us, which is an incredible comfort. And I believe that there is a method to this. I believe there's a method to this because he could be harsh. He could be rough. We deserve it. He has every right to it. And yet, he chooses to be gentle. He chooses to be kind. He chooses to be meek. And I think that there's a reason for this. When I was in high school, I went to a really small private high school. I like to joke, Jen, my wife, she graduated 43rd in her class. There's like 775 people in her class. She was a really, she was an assiduous, diligent student, really committed, worked hard. I used to try to get her to like skip homework and skip class in college and she never would. She was really a straight straight liner and she worked really hard. She got 43rd in her class and I always like to brag that I didn't even try that hard and I got 24th in my class but there was only 25 people in there. But numbers are numbers. I did learn that in school. And so it was this small familial atmosphere and it was kind of fun and I actually liked having the experience of doing school like that. And there was one, it was the first day of school, my 10th grade year, and children in the room, I'm not advocating this kind of behavior, I'm just saying that I did it. It was the first day of school, 10th grade year, and we got a new Spanish teacher. It was our first day of class with her. She's writing her name on the board. I'm going to really try to not say her name. She's writing her name on the board, and we're talking, I guess. I don't know. We're in, like, 10th grade. Of course we're talking we're talking. This is a new teacher's first day of school. Everyone's happy to see everybody, whatever. And something happened, something innocuous. My buddy Clint wouldn't be quiet. And she turned around and within the first 90 seconds of class at a new school, absolutely screamed at him to be quiet and to be respectful. Just let him have it. Like I've never seen a teacher act in my life before or since. And we were all blown away. Now, what effect do you think that had on our class? We like this lady. We're going to behave the best we can for her. Lord, no. It was like, okay, you pick the fight. We're going to finish it. And we gave her heck. I remember one instance in particular, a year or two later, it was either my junior or senior year. She was late to class. And I kind of stood up and I looked at the rest of the folks in the class and said, hey, guys, listen. When she gets back in here, when she turns her back and she's writing on the board, just do what I do. Okay? Just do what I do. And they're like, all right. So she gets in and we're all kind of like looking at each other, you know. And she turns her back to the board. She starts writing. Turns back to the class. Rather, she starts writing. And I just start going like this. That's it. Just like that. And she turns around. And there should have been 25 people doing it, but there was only 23 because Dawn and Marcy were the valedictorian and salutatorian, and they were lame. And I still have not forgiven them for their betrayal. But she turns around, and there's 23 seniors. Just going like this. In unison. And she's kind of, stop, stop it, stop, stop, stop it. So we stop. Then, a few minutes later, she turns around to right, and I start going like this. She turns around. There's 23 kids doing this. Stop it! Stop! Right? Then, a few minutes later, she turns around again. I'm in my desk. I start going like this. She turns around. There's 23 kids going like this. Awesome. And she finally just goes, Nathan! Nathan! Go to the principal's office. I'm like, I'm not doing it. I'm just doing what they're doing. She's like, it's your fault. Go! She was right. So I go to the principal's office, also known as my soccer coach. And he said, what'd you do? And I told him. And he was like, that's pretty funny. Why don't you just stay in my office for the rest of the time? She was so harsh that at no point did that engender any sort of alignment with her. As a matter of fact, her harshness engendered within us resentment and rebellion. If you're going to treat us like this, this is how we're going to act towards you. That harsh treatment does not work. And you know this to be true, parents. When you get harsh, when you verbalize, I call it when you yell over your kid to get their attention. In my house, I'm not applying this to you. You do whatever is right with your kids. But for me, I call that verbal bullying. I know that that can work on my nine-year-old daughter, but when she's 16, I better have a new tactic. I better have something better than that because that's not going to work. She's going to leave and go to her boyfriend's house, which is my nightmare. So I have to figure out how to be calm now because that harsh attitude doesn't work. On the flip side of the Spanish teacher was my English teacher, Mr. Totten. I loved Mr. Totten. I loved him so much that a while back, a couple months ago, I was just, for whatever reason I thought about him, I Googled him. He's still at the church from which the school sprang. He's an elder there. I got to listen to one of his sermons, and it was so good to hear his voice. Now, Mr. Totten was the strictest teacher in the school. He was absolutely stern. He put up with nothing, absolutely nothing. He was straight-laced in that classroom. But when you would get out of line, which I did increasingly less over the years because of how much I loved and respected him, he would call you up to his desk or he would quietly take you into the hallway without embarrassing you. And then he would tell you, you know, you can't do this. That's not how you want to be. That's not the young man you want to be. And I can't, if I love you, I cannot allow you to act like that in my class. And I cannot allow that to go unpunished. So you're going to get some demerits. That's what we got at my school. You're going to get some demerits. I have to do it. Do you understand? Yes, sir. I'm sorry. Go back in. I'm good. He was gentle. He was kind. Had nothing to do with the standards. The standards could be raised because he was gentle with us. And we all respected him and walked in lockstep. Harsh treatment from people engenders rebellion and resentment. Gentle treatment aligns us and inclines us towards the person treating us with that gentleness, particularly when we are aware that we do not deserve it. I believe that among many reasons, I believe that gentleness is just the very nature of Jesus. He has no choice but to act with that gentleness, to act gently towards us. But I also believe that it's something that he does intentionally because he knows that it inclines us to him. Paul says it this way in Romans, or do you show contempt in the hallway and we're going, you're right, I am sorry, that is not who I want to be. I've dishonored you and I've dishonored myself with the choices that I've made and I will make those choices no longer. Thank you. That kind of gentleness inclines us towards Christ. It's his kindness that leads to repentance. And I would say this and then tell you a little bit more about what I mean. Think about this. Aren't you grateful the Lord has dealt with you gently? And doesn't that incline you towards him? Aren't you grateful the Lord has dealt with you gently and doesn't that incline you towards him? Here's what I mean. I don't know if you have any of these moments in your life. I would argue that if you've been paying attention to your life and done some self-reflection, that you have. But I know I've had a few of these moments, and I've never pretended to be perfect as your pastor. I've had a few of these moments, maybe two, three, four times in my life where I was wayward. I had allowed sin in my life. I was intentionally choosing that sin. That sin was driving a wedge between me and Jesus and I was wandering off because I was choosing a sin. I began to hide things in the shadows of my life. And whenever that's happened in my life, whenever I've had something in my life that's causing a separation and is rendering me wayward, there is a necessary light that must shine on the shadows. That stuff always comes to light. It always comes out. It's always something you have to deal with. And when I think about the times in my life when I have things in the shadows and I'm ashamed of them, I don't want anyone to know about them. I don't want anyone to see them. I certainly don't want to have to talk to Jen or my friends or whoever about those things. I'd like to just deal with them privately and not deal with the shame of it. Whenever light has been shined in those places, in the moment, it's so hard. That's a bad day. That's a hard night's sleep. There's a lot of gross that stirs up in that. There's a lot of pain when light hits the shadows for the first time and you're exposed. But as I think back on those times, what I marvel at is the reality that for me, when that has happened, when God has brought the dark things into the light in my life, every single time that's happened, I can tell you, God did it in the most gentle way possible. He did it in the most kind way possible. Yeah, things were brought to light. And it was hard and it stunk and I felt shame. But it could have been a lot worse than it was. It could have been a lot worse. Jesus could have dealt with that in a different way. He could have shed that light in the dark places in a totally different way that would have absolutely humiliated me or cost me something or whatever it is. He could have done it worse. But every time I've felt the kindness of God compelling me towards repentance, every time he and his goodness has brought something in the dark into the light in my life, as I reflect back on it, I realize that he did it in the And what's been in the shadows is brought into the light. And I wonder if it's not true that if you think back on that hard day, that hard season, did God not do that in the most gentle way possible to protect you and the people around you? I bet he did. I bet he did. Because we have a gentle high priest who calls us into the hallway and tells us in private who holds us. And we talked about at the end of Moses, we talked about we have this God that has justice in one hand and a desire for our conviction in one hand and comfort in the other. He holds conviction and comfort and then he embraces us with both of those. This is how our gentle high priest treats us. So we marvel this morning at the gentleness of Jesus, our high priest. Now, here's the question for you. Sometimes I will just end there and say let's marvel at the gentleness of Jesus. But I have a question for you because I think we can press it just a little bit further. If Jesus is characterized by gentleness, shouldn't his followers be as well? If Jesus is characterized by gentleness, shouldn't his followers be as well? We talk at Grace about the sanctification process. The time that elapses between justification and glorification. When we become Christians and when our salvation is made complete because we are in heaven with God forever, we are in glory. The time between, I almost said betwixt for fun, The time between is the sanctification process. Sanctification is to become the process through which we become more like Christ in character. Every single one of you in here who claims Jesus as your Savior, you are in the process, the slow, muddy, troublesome, difficult process of becoming more like Christ in character as God molds you over the years. And if we are going to become more like Christ in character and the way that Jesus is depicted over and over and over again and the only way that he depicts himself is that he is gentle, should we not also be gentle? Should we, church, be characterized by our gentleness? And now let me make this point too. There are some weeks when I preach to y'all, but most weeks I preach to us. Most weeks I'm here. I'm not up there. Do you know how convicting this was this week for me? If you guys just go out into the community and someone asks you about your church, and you say you like your church, and they go, oh yeah, do you like your pastor? You're like, yeah, he's all right. Tell me about your pastor. Let me tell you what I know. It's not coming out of your mouth. Dude is gentle. Like one of the most gentle souls I've ever known. I wouldn't even say it's way down on the list. It's not on the list. All jokes aside, I've been sitting with that all week. Sometimes I'm harsh with people. Sometimes in my house I'm harsh. I lose my patience. But guys, isn't it true that if our Savior defines himself as gentle primarily, that if we want to become more like him in character, that we should be too? And if that's how our Savior depicts himself, is that not what his body, the church, should be known for? Our gentleness in our communities? In different spheres of life? And I'm afraid that that's not what the church is known for right now. Big C Church. And we can't impact Big C Church very much. But we have total control over what this little C Church does. We can begin with gentleness here. And so I have three things for you to think about. If we're going to be gentle people, if this is going to matter to us, if we're going to allow God's kindness to convict us towards seeking to intentionally be more gentle people, three thoughts for you. The first thought is think of gentleness in what I call concentric circles of concern. So think of gentleness to the general public, the cashier, the server, people in traffic, folks that you see out at the ball field, people that you walk past grocery shopping. Think about being gentle to those people. It's probably the easiest to be gentle to those people, if we're being honest. Then with your friends friends and your acquaintances do they know you for being gentle with them do they know you for being kind and for being considerate so we should think about how do we be gentle to our co-workers how do we be gentle to the people we see on a regular basis to the people who know my name and I know theirs how can we be gentle towards like Jesus is gentle? And then where it gets the toughest is how can we be gentle towards our family and our intimate friends and the people that we love the most? Because I'll tell you, if everybody in the general public thinks I'm kind and gentle, if everybody in this room, my outer circle of acquaintances, thinks I'm kind and gentle, but my kids think I'm a jerk, I've failed. Right? I've failed. It's easiest to be nice to the cashier, and then it gets harder and harder. There's one more layer to that, but that'll be the third thought. So the first way to think about gentleness is outside in. And where the rubber meets the road is when you're kind and gentle to your family and the people who you love the most and who also get under your skin the most. Another thing to think about is this. We are gentle both inwardly and outwardly. We are gentle both inwardly and outwardly. It occurs to me that it's possible to treat someone with gentleness, to be kind to someone in the public forum, while inwardly you're dog cussing them. Yeah? You ever done this? You're nice to somebody? No, not you, Tom. I saw you shake your head. I would never blame you for that. We're nice to people. I've been in conversations. I shouldn't tell you this, but I've been in conversations where on the outside I'm being nice and I'm engaging in the conversation. And on the inside, I'm going, wrap it up. Like I got, I lost interest five minutes ago. I can barely hang on. Please hurry. And then I leave and I'm like, I'm not talking to that person again. Like maybe I was gentle on the outside, but on the inside, I gave them a very poor estimation. And we do this, don't we? We're outwardly kind to somebody. I think about my passive-aggressive friends. I think about my conflict-averse friends, where you're going to do whatever you have to do to be nice in the moment, but in your head, you cannot stand this person. And then you go home to your spouse and you complain about them. So if we're going to be truly gentle, we have to do so inwardly and outwardly. And the last thing to think about as we think about being people who are gentle is actually one concentric circle of concern tighter than our family and our friends. It's yourself. I have no doubt that this room is filled with some grade A self-loathers. Some of you are so hard on yourself. Some of you are so mean to yourselves. Some of you have this voice that says awful things about you, that tells you that you can't, and that you shouldn't, and that you won't, and that no one will believe you, and that you're not worth anything. And if you heard someone talk to your friend the way that you talk to yourself, you would never forgive that person for how rude and mean and critical and harsh they were. And yet you talk to yourself like that. Your Savior is gentle with you. His estimation of you is gracious. It's kind. And some of us who refuse to be gentle with ourselves, I believe it hurts the heart of Jesus to know that that's how you're talking about his daughter. That's how you think about his son. Because he did not create you to do that. And he does not want you to do that. So this morning, let's marvel at the fact that we have a high priest who treats us gently. And let's understand that that gentleness inclines us towards him, that we might be more desirous of him and exist in a state of gratitude for about if he is gentle, then we ought to as well. And we ought to be gentle in concentric circles of concern outward in until we get to us and we are generous with ourselves and we allow Jesus to tell us the truth about ourselves, not that voice in our head that lies to us and makes us feel like crud. And let's go from here and let's be people who are gentle. I expect the kindest, most generous teardown of the chairs and standing in line for the hootenanny after this sermon this morning. Everyone's going to be like, no, after you, after you. Let's be a church that's known, as Jesus was, for being gentle. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for the opportunity to celebrate everything that you've done here and what you continue to do here. Thank you for a church that we can call home, where we can love you, where we can be honest and we can be ourselves. Thank you for treating us gently, for inclining us towards you and drawing us in. Thank you, Jesus, for being our high priest and advocating for us. And as we are about to go here and eat, go from here and eat together, God, I just pray that you would bless the food, that you would bless the meal, that there would be good laughter, there would be good fellowship, and that we would see you as the author of the joy that's taking place now and will take place then. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that as well. Just a little disclaimer. Panthers fans, it's a total accident that on the day that my Falcons play your weak-willed Panthers that I brought this cup and then face the Falcon towards you. I didn't mean to do that. Here, I'll do this so it doesn't distract you. But you know. We are in the third part of our series called Gentle and Lowly where we're looking at the character of our Savior. And we're seeking to learn more about him. By going through, this is a book, Gentleman Lily is a book by an author and pastor named Dane Ortlund. We had 60 copies. You guys took all of those, which is wonderful. And when I say took, I don't mean steal. I mean, you took them, and I presume you paid for them. I have not looked into the numbers because I don't know how. But if you would like to get a book and read along with us, there's a reading plan for the book and it's available. And if you don't know how to find it, let me know or let us know and we'll help you find it. But before I just jump into what we learned about Christ this week, I wanted to approach it this way. Sorry, now every time I do that, you're going to remember my dumb joke at the beginning of the sermon. I wanted to approach it this way. I think one of the things in life that's really fun to think about is the things that you find to be underrated. I think car rides and silence when you're by yourself, not like with other people, because that's weird, although that is also underrated, because you don't have to talk the whole time, you know. But car rides and silence are underrated. I drove from Atlanta to Raleigh one time without listening to a single thing, and it was actually pretty nice. I think not owning a pet is underrated. I think we overvalue that. But here's one of the things I realized, Jen and I realized was vastly underrated a few weeks ago. Chili's. Chili's, as a restaurant, is crazy underrated. So when Jen and I were in college, any time we would want to go on a date, and this was like 2001, 2002, when we met, when we wanted to go on a date, Jen, where do you want to go? Chili's. And she'd get the same thing every time. And I'm trying to bounce around the menu, and we went enough times that A, I knew her answer. B, please don't make me go to Chili's. I hated it. Just like now, as a grown-up, I hate sushi. I didn't used to hate sushi, but it's what Jen chooses every time, and it may as well just be a tasteless nutrition brick for me. I don't care for it anymore. But I think it was during the summer. Jen had the kids, and we were texting back and forth. We're like, let's meet for lunch. And so I said, where do you want to go? We were kind of bouncing ideas. And you know that exercise when you're trying to decide where to go with your spouse. I don't care. Yes, you do. What you'd like for me to do is play the game of guess the places you don't want to go. And I don't want to play that game. So eventually, one of us said, how about Chili's? And we said, fine. So we go to Chili's, and we get our normal order there, which is chips and queso, a triple dipper with Southwestern egg rolls, sliders, and boneless buffalo rings, hot sauce, sometimes honey chipotle if we're feeling crazy. The kids get their thing. Then all four of us share a molten chocolate lava cake. We get out of there for like $40, $ bucks. Everybody ate everything. And then here's one of my favorite parts about Chili's is they have the kiosk on the table now because my least favorite part of any meal when I'm out to eat is waiting for the check and then waiting for the check to be brought back to me. Because when I, when I ask for the check, when I swipe the card, I am, I'm. I'm a fast leaver. People sometimes offer me rides places. Hey, we're going to the same place. Do you want to ride? No, thanks. Because I don't want to leave when you want to leave. I want to leave before you do. So I'm a fast leaver. So when the check comes, I'm ready to go. And if it's slow service during the apps, when you bring the mains, I will ask for the check right then. Because I don't want to wait on you at the end of the meal when I'm full. Anyways, they've got a kiosk. You swipe your card whenever you want. You get to decide when you leave. You don't have to wait on anyone else's permission to go get in your car. It's great. So then after this Chili's experience, Jen and I looked at each other in the car as we were leaving and she was like, you know what? Chili's is always good. And I was like, it is. It always satisfies. Then, like a month later, we went on a date. Or a couple weeks, I don't know. And when you go on dates, you do the thing where you look around, you find the locally owned, you do the Yelp, Raleigh's Top Restaurant. You find somewhere fancy and nice and worthy of the occasion, and you go. And so we went to some restaurant, I don't remember where. And it cost twice what Chili's did for two people, not four. And we get in the car and we're driving home and I was like, how was that? And she's like, it was good. It's fine. And I was like, yeah, mine was fine too. It was good. It wasn't twice as good as Chili's. And so now, when we go out to eat, should we go someplace fancy? Maybe try Chili's. I would encourage you. There's one right across the street, Triangle Mall. Go there for lunch. Tell me I'm wrong. You're going to have a great experience, okay? I just think it's underrated and that we're too fancy for it, and I think that's funny. And I wanted to introduce this idea of things that we underrate because as we sit here in this series and we focus on the character of Christ, we focus on the theology of Christ, and we try to get to know our Jesus a little bit better. I think that there is a thing about the theology of Christ, about the character of Christ, about the miraculous experience and life of Christ that we as believers deeply undervalue. And I think it's this. We do not properly value the condescension of Christ. I do not believe that we properly value the condescension of Christ. I do not believe that we properly value the condescension of Christ from heaven to earth. And when we hear that word condescension, I think we tend to think of it in negative terms. I try to never ever preach in a way where you're condescended to, where I've put myself on some level that you're not yet at, although that's a little bit difficult to say since I'm literally on a level that you are not right now. But figuratively, I work really hard to never condescend to you, which is super easy because I really don't think I'm better than anyone in this room. As a matter of fact, I think there's plenty of ways in which I'm worse than a lot of you. And we as a church do not condescend to each other. We're all humans. We're all equal. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. We all have our triumphs and our failures. We do not value person to person condescension. And when someone condescends to you, it ticks you off. And when you see someone else being condescending, you think they're a jerk, and you're right. But this word is good when we apply it to Christ, because he literally did condescend. He went from heaven to earth. He went from deity to human. He gave up his divine being to take on human nature. And I intentionally didn't say he gave up his divine nature to take on human being, human nature, because he did not give up his divine nature. Because we believe in our theology, whether you know this or not, we, Grace, would embrace a theology that says Jesus was 100% man and 100% God and the same being while he was here. This, if you like fancy words, is referred to as the hypostatic union. So he never gave up his divine nature, but he did give up his divine being to come and be with us. And I think it's important to choose the word condescend because it kind of arrests our attention because of the negative connotation we give it. But it forces us to deal with the reality, no, no, no, he really did. He really did give up a great deal to be placed on par and live as equals, as an equal with us. And I think that there's two big reasons, maybe even three, why we don't properly value the condescension of Christ. And the first I want to point out this morning is I think we fail to think about what it cost him to come down here. I think we fail to think about what did Jesus give up to become human? And he gave up his divine being, at least for a time. He gave up being in heaven forever. He's the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He holds the keys to death and Hades. He lived in heaven in a perfect union with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, surrounded by angels. In Isaiah chapter 6, we have a description of the throne room of God in which seraphim are flying around the throne, and there is no roof, and the robes of God fill the temple with glory, and we are told that Jesus sits at his right hand, and the angels are singing, holy, holy, holy, glory to God in the highest. He left that for Nazareth. And I was trying to think, what did Jesus give up to come be with us and live in our squalor? And there was no apt comparison. And the reality of it is, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what heaven is like. But here's what I'm certain of. That if one day, if we believe in Jesus and we go to heaven, when we get there, we will marvel at the fact that our Savior gave up this to come to this. And I don't think that we often enough reflect upon, as believers, what it meant for Jesus to give up divine being to take on ours. And I'll tell you, I tried to think of an example or an illustration of this, and they all fell so woefully short and fell apart so easily that I thought, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to say we don't know, but it's a lot. I think we fail to consider what Jesus gave up to condescend to us. I also think we fail to consider what we gain by his condescension. Because I think, we think, we immediately go to the cross. We immediately go to, well, yeah, Jesus was supposed to do this because that's the story of the Bible. As Christians, we encounter scripture and we're told the story of the Bible and it's very quickly within this story that we realize God had sent his son Jesus and so we just kind of accept it as reality. I think it's the same way that we think about being born in the United States versus being born in Afghanistan. Do you realize how much better your life is because you were born in the United States than if you were born in Afghanistan and how random that lottery has to be? Like, I don't think any of us, maybe July 4th. What a good country. But other than that, we don't walk around in gratitude for it. I'm not saying that we should. I'm not being an advocate for that right now. I'm just saying, comparatively speaking, our lives are easier than people who were born in less fortunate countries. And we were born in the fortunate country of Christianity, and we just accept the facts and truths of Christianity without ever considering how fortunate we are to exist in them. And the place that we miss that the most is what do we gain from the remarkable condescension of Jesus Christ to take on humanity? And I think that the answer to this question is best summed up in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15, where the author of Hebrews writes, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. And I'm going to read 16 too, because we're going to come back to it later. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. So in this verse, two things I see that we gain. The first thing we gain is that statement, he's able to empathize for our weakness, for he has been tempted in every way, just as we are. Do you understand that his temptation is just the same as ours? There's this famous story in the Gospels where Jesus is tempted by Satan. He's fasted in the desert for 40 days, and Satan comes to him, and he says, you're pretty hungry. This is paraphrase. He says, you're pretty hungry. Why don't you see that rock? Why don't you just turn it into bread and eat it? Satiate your hunger. And Jesus refuses to do that because he's going to honor God and he's going to keep his commitment. And this temptation is probably more ubiquitous to us because none of us, I don't think, have fasted for 40 days. We fasted for a day or two and we understand the pangs of hunger. But we might look at that and we go, I can't relate. But here's how you can. What Jesus did in that moment is choose holiness over his appetite, is choose discipline over what he wanted. He refused to be led by his appetite. Instead, he chose to continue in his service to the Father. And in Philippians, Paul is condemning people. And the way that he condemns them is he says their God is their appetite. Their God is their belly. And what he means is whatever their little heart wants, it gets. They're like, we're like spoiled children with rich parents who give us whatever we want so we'll be quiet. And what that verse means is they gave way to their desires, whatever they were. They wanted more drink, they had more drink. They wanted more food, they had more food. They want to experience that pleasure, they will experience it. They want to be tempted by this person or by that person, they will give in to that temptation. They want to be lazy, they will do that. And as humans, we know. We constantly give in to our appetites. We constantly give in to whatever our little heart desires. And in Jesus, we have an example of someone who fought that temptation, representative of myriad things. Then, Satan says, bow down to me, and I'll give you the kingdoms of the earth. He tempts Jesus with power. Compromise yourself in this way and I'll grease the skids of success over here. Compromise yourself in this way and life will go a little easier. Compromise yourself in this way and you'll save a little bit of money. Do I need more examples? Where we're tempted to compromise ourselves in such a way, compromise our morals and our standards and what we believe God wants us to do and even things that we told God we would do so that we might have things easier on the other side, right? Then in the last one, he says, you're God. Throw yourself off this cliff and let the angels come and rescue you. He tempts him with ego. Oh, you think you're God? Prove it. Right? Someone condescends to you. What do you want to do? You want to get them right back. Someone sends you an email, a customer, a client, a co-worker, a family member, sends you an email that condescends that you don't really appreciate, what do you want to do? Right? And I'll confess, sometimes I type those out. I just get it out. And then I look at it, and I send it. No, I'm just kidding. I press delete. I press delete, and then I give it 24 hours and I type it again. We are familiar with this temptation. In word and action indeed. Jesus faced all the temptations we do. To put a finer point on it. I know this is weird to think about Jesus in this way. But Jesus was a single man. Jesus was a powerful man. Jesus was a man that a lot of people liked. You don't think he ever thought about talking to a woman? You don't think that never occurred to him? He was around wine. He likely consumed wine. You don't think he thought about one night just giving in? Having more than he should? Or maybe he abstained totally, but he was around it. You don't think he ever considered it? You don't think he ever considered when the crowds thronged around him and he was exhausted? You don't think he ever considered going, get away from me. Do you understand I'm the savior of the world? Do you understand I don't have time for this? I'm exhausted. Can you just talk to my assistant? Talk to Andrew and he'll set up an appointment for you. Will you leave me alone? You don't think he ever considered being rude or impatient? Here's one that just occurred to me. If I were Jesus, I'd be tempted when everybody around me was hungry to just be like steaks, you know? You don't think he was ever tempted to do stuff like that? Of course, of course he was tempted. Of course he was. And here's why that's such a powerful truth. Have you ever been in a room, a group of friends, a small group, and watched someone confess something that was hard, that was embarrassing, that was private and in the shadows, and they brought it into the light? Have you ever watched someone do that? And then every time I've seen that happen, which has always been people confessing things to me. I'd never have anything to confess to others. But every time I've seen that happen, I've never, I've never, ever seen it not met with comfort and grace. And what's the most powerful thing that can happen in that situation? Even if there's someone who doesn't struggle with that, but they meet you with comfort and grace, how much more comforting is it when they go, I know I struggle with that too. I've watched in groups of men and in circles, small and relatively large, where someone will say, can you just pray for me and my wife right now? We're in a really difficult season. This and this are happening and we're two ships passing right now. And it's not good. And then watch someone else in that circle go, brother, us too. We are too. Or somebody goes, we did that two years ago. We did that five years ago. I've walked that path, man. I understand. And, and the whole space is washed with grace and comfort. You've seen that happen. I think with women, it's, it's more typical that typical that one of them would finally let their mom guilt break through and say, kids suck. And I don't know if I even like mine or want them. I heard John yell one time, I hate having a sister. And I was like, I don't understand that. Sometimes the family is hard. And then there's this sense when a mom will say that, I feel like a terrible mom. I feel like I'm not doing a good job. I feel like I don't enjoy my kids enough. That someone else will heap their mom guilt out too. And then there's this message of grace and comfort that washes over the room. And the reality is marriage is hard and parenting is hard. It's just true. But there's a special thing that happens when we can share with someone else that's had our experience. One of the things I say, and I'm sure it's true of your industries as well, but when I get to talk with another senior pastor, it's just a different conversation. Because they understand things in a way that if you haven't done this, you just don't know. That's not condescending, that's just true. When you talk to someone who has shared your temptations, that's just comforting in a way that can't be expressed. Hebrews tells us that we have a Savior that has. And even though he hasn't given in to them, he understands what they are. And so in his temptation, he offers us grace and compassion. Because of his temptations and because he's faced them and because he's born with us in our weaknesses, we can go to the throne of God. Now here's what else is implied in this about the wonderful condescension of Christ as far as what do we gain from it. It's implied in this verse, I think. It's implicit. And it's explicit throughout many scriptures. Namely, Isaiah 53, calling him Emmanuel, God with us. What we gain from his condescension is his humanity. The fact that he became human at all. Because in his humanity, he offers empathy, condolence, and comfort. In his humanity, he offers us empathy, condolence, and comfort. I pointed out to you the verse John 11, 35 to highlight his compassion. He weeps with us. He's present with us. He's human with us. I've watched people experience great loss. And in that great loss, maybe a wife loses a husband. And it's far too soon. And so she's experiencing this depth of grief. And I've seen people, I've heard people offer her comfort. And it's well-meaning and it's wonderful and it's good and she receives it and she's gracious. But then I've watched somebody come up to her and say, I've walked that path too. I've been a widow for a decade. That's a different level of connection and comfort. Jesus has experienced our grief. Jesus experienced loss. I don't know if you've thought about this. Jesus had a stepdad. So either his dad Joseph, his earthly father Joseph, passed away, or he had an earthly stepdad. Which, by the way, it occurs to me that maybe there was a time when Jesus' stepdad said, look, I know I'm not your dad. And Jesus thought to himself, you have no idea how layered that is. There you go. But if you've lost a dad, or you've had parents divorced, or if you grew up with a stepdad, maybe it was wonderful, maybe it was painful, I don't know. But what I do know is that Jesus has experienced that. Jesus had half-brothers. One of them wrote a book of the Bible, which may be the greatest proof there is of all time that Jesus was who he says he was. Because what would you have to do to get your half-brother to write a book about your deity? He's experienced our pain and our grief and our sorrow and our loss. He's experienced joy. He's experienced triumph. He's walked through all those things. He lived as a human just as we did. And in those things he shares with us. That's what we gain from his condescension, is we gain the fact that he's faced temptation similar to us. We gain the fact that he was a human just like us. And so all the things and all the emotions that go along with humanity and all the ailments that we could experience that go along with humanity, he has too. That's the miracle of his condescension. That's what we gain. Here's another thing that we gain. He chose to experience death so that we don't have to fear ours. He chose to experience death on the cross so that we don't have to fear ours. No passage, in your notes it says Romans 8.39, but after I sent in the notes, I was considering it, and this passage is so much better. It's 1 Corinthians 15, 55 through 57. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We're told in response to the death and resurrection of Christ, death, where is your sting? Sin, where is your victory? There's an old song that says, hell has been defeated. The grave could not hold the king. In his death, he defeated our fear of our death. In his death, he unshackled us from sin. He said, we don't have to be fearful of death. Last week, last week on Tuesday, one of our wonderful partners, Mike Schenck, passed away from cancer. And before he did, when he was in hospice and incredibly lucid, I was able to go visit with him and his family. It was a wonderful visit. And one of the things that was remarkable to me was the fearlessness, courage, and faith with which Mike was marching to his grave. He knew what was going to happen. And there was no sense of fear in him. He joked. He was confident. He knows his Savior. Looking forward to meeting him. And then Susie's faith was remarkable too. Because if we're being really honest, and I don't mean to be too crass about it, but she's the one left holding the bag. It's worse for her than him. Because now she has to figure out how to do this life post-Mike. But they both had such faith and peace about the horizon they were approaching because Jesus chose to die so that we didn't have to. And now that in and of itself is a remarkable thought. Because death is a ubiquitous experience of all creation. Everything on this earth that was there and that has existed and that did exist faces a death of some sort. Whether it's the slow erosion of a mountain, the eventual fall of a tree, an animal, a bird falling to the ground, or us. Everything dies. It's an experience of creation. It is not an experience of heaven. And what we know about death is it's all awful. There's ways that we die suddenly and we never knew it, and so maybe that experience wasn't bad, but the people around us mourn. But most ways to die are terrible. Some of us have watched people wither away and so much pain that they wish for death. Jesus chose. This is an experience he never had to have. He didn't have to do it. But he knew that by condescending to become one of us, that he would die. And he knew exactly how he would die, which is one of the worst ways humanity has ever cooked up. And he chose that death when he didn't have to. And I don't know how much we think about the fact that he never had to do it in the first place. He came here not only to experience our temptation and our humanity and live in our squalor when he was in heaven. He chose that life, but then he also chose to take upon himself death. It was a choice that he didn't have to make. It's like if I said, hey, after church today, you've got option A, option B. Option A, you go to lunch with people you like. You do Chili's. Thank you. We go to Chili's. We get triple dippers. Let's flood the place. Option A, you go to a meal with people you like. You go home. you watch football, it's peaceful, or you take a nap, or you read, you do whatever your thing is. And then have dinner with the family, have dinner with people you like, go to bed when you want to. Nice, peaceful day. Or, we're going to put you on a plane, and we're going to go let the Taliban interrogate you for information. Which would you choose? Option A or option B? Jesus chose torture. He chose torture. He could have stayed in heaven and had a meal with people he liked, sat at the banquet table. He chose torture, and he didn't have to. And I don't think that we all the time adequately appreciate what it means for Jesus to have condescended to humanity. Because we don't realize what he gave up, and we don't think about what we gained. And what we gained, what he gave up is his divine being. What he gave up is his peace. And what he chose instead is what we would gain. Which is comfort and empathy and temptation. Condolence and compassion in our humanity, and then the possibility to walk towards death without fear, to walk towards death with courage, to walk towards death with peace, and to no longer be shackled to sin. So the condescension, humanity, and death of Christ are a forever reminder of God's provision. The condescension, humanity, and death of Christ are a forever reminder of God's provision, of the way that God provides for us by sending his only son to become those things for us that we could not be, by sending his only son to redeem creation back to himself so that he might create a pathway back to him. And this is the greatest miracle of his condescension because everything that I've just told you gives us peace and comfort and hope in the 40, 60, 80, 100 years that he gives us on this earth. All of that's temporal provision for a time when Paul describes as but a mist or a vapor. He says that we experience discomfort for a short time. Compared to eternity, it's nothing. So Christ's condescension doesn't just provide for us in the short term and in the temporal. It provides for us for all of eternity. It provides for us because he hung on the cross, because he redeemed creation and made a path back to our Father. That is ultimately what Christ's condescension means, but I don't want us to miss what it means for our life on this earth. And so what this all means, and where I want us to go and what I want us to consider is because of the miraculous condescension of Christ, we can in all things look to him. We can look to him in sin. We can look to him in triumph. We can look to him in grief and sorrow and joy and anguish. We can look to him in all things. When we fail, we can look to Christ. No matter how far down we go, we can look to Jesus. No matter how far high we are, we should know we need to look to Jesus. No matter how stressful things are, we should look to Jesus. No matter how broken our marriage or our children are, we should look to Jesus. No matter how much of a failure we feel like, we should look to Jesus. No matter how successful we might feel like we are, we should remind ourselves to look to Jesus in all things. His condescension reminds us that we can look to him for his provision and for God's provision at all times. That's what that miracle means. Now I'm going to pray for us and we're going to have communion together to celebrate that miracle and understand the bread is what was broken, is what was given in the desert to signify God's provision, and we will celebrate God's provision in that way now. Let's pray. Father, thank you for sharing your son with us. Jesus, thank you for condescending to us, for choosing to become one of us, for being tempted like we are, for being a human like we are, for doing that just so we can run to you. Thank you for breaking the shackles of sin and muting the sting of death. Thank you for everything that you do for us here in this life, but most of all, Jesus, thank you for what you will do for us in the next and already have done. May we reflect on that and properly appreciate your coming down to earth and taking on human form. May we walk in gratitude to you with an appreciation of this important part of your character. In Jesus' name, amen.