Sermons tagged with Intentionality

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

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

All right, well, good morning, everyone. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. If you're in the back there, that looks pretty crowded. You'd like some more room. We got two completely empty rows right here in the front. Just get up in front of everyone and come sit right here. That's where we make the latecomers sit, so we parade you in front of everyone. This is the first part of our new series called Mark's Jesus, where we're going to be going through the Gospel of Mark for a long time. For about 12 weeks, it's going to carry us all the way until Easter. And so I'm excited to kind of steep in this book together in Mark's Gospel. As we approach the gospel, it begins in a way, at the beginning chapters of the gospel of Mark, there is a story that's ubiquitous in all of the gospels, and they all have this towards the beginning. And it's kind of, in my view, a story about people who had disqualified themselves from a particular service. And we'll talk about why in a minute. But it reminds me of a time when I disqualified myself from something, which was my freshman year of college. You may not know this about me. I got my degree from a small Bible school called Toccoa Falls College that I would not recommend to anyone. That place was boring. I did meet Jen there, though, so that's nice, but we both hated it. But my freshman year, I went to Auburn University. I went there because it was February or March, I think, and I had not taken the SATs or applied to a college yet, and one of my good friends that I played volleyball with every afternoon said, hey, I'm going to Auburn, would you like to be my roommate? And I said, do you have an application? And he goes, yes. I said, will you fill it out for me? He goes, yes. I said, great, send it in. And so then literally two weeks later, I get home from school, and my mom's like, what's this? It's an acceptance letter from Auburn. It was never even on the radar screen so I'm a freshman year I go to Auburn University Auburn does not have an intercollegiate men's soccer team but they did have a club team and for those of you who don't know what a club team is it's it's a glorified intramural team you try out for it and then you go play other schools in the area that also have club soccer teams and so I thought I'd go out for this team because I play, I'm not trying to brag, I played all four years in high school. I was a four-year letterman at Killian Hill Christian School. Now, it didn't matter to me that the entire high school consisted of about 100 students. Roughly 50 of those are boys. Roughly 20 of those have ever touched a soccer ball in their life. And about five of us had, like, played consistently. So that didn't factor in. I thought I was good at soccer. My junior year, we won the state championship. I was the MVP of the state championship game. My senior year, I made All-State. So I go to tryouts at Auburn thinking I'm somebody. Michelle Massey's back there grinning at me because she even played actual Division I soccer and knows the difference, right? She knows what I was about to walk into. She succeeded where I failed miserably. So I go to tryouts the first day and there's like 250 people there. 250 to 300 grown men are there. I had, the most people I'd ever seen at a tryout was like 25 and everybody made it,. The coaches took him because he felt bad for him that's why we got pudgy seventh graders with state championship patches on their arm right now because the coach felt bad for them. So I go to tryouts and I'm looking at my competition. Now when I was a freshman in college this may be hard to believe but I was a hundred and fifty five pounds soaking wet. All right I it's a little, I put on a few since then. I was a skinny little nothing. And I'm looking at these guys that I'm now trying out against and they have like hairy chests and muscles and stuff. And I am out of my depth. And I was just immediately so intimidated. And that was the, that was the day where I realized I wasn't an athlete, right? I had, previous to that day, previous to that tryout, I had always thought I was pretty athletic. And then when I went to that tryout and I watched other athletes actually do athletic things, I realized you're a coordinated white kid. You are not an athlete. And so I did the best I could to go through the tryout, had a good attitude, tried to keep my head up, do the best that I could. But by the end of it, I just realized this ain't it. And so they got us together and they said, hey, listen, we're going to whittle. There's 250 of you. We're going to whittle it down to 50. If you're invited to the tryout tomorrow afternoon, we're going to put your name on a list in the student union. Go to the student building, whatever it is. go there and the Foy Student Union Center and We're gonna post a list of 50 names if your names on the list you're invited to come try out again tomorrow We'll whittle it down to 25 Well, I got up the next day and do you want to know what I did not go do? That's right walk to the Foy Student Union Center to see if my name was on the list I knew pretty good good and well it wasn't. I took myself out of the running for that. I went ahead and told them, you don't fire me, I quit. Before you, even if my name's on the list, I'm not trying to, I don't like your attitude. Like I'm not going. I knew that my name wasn't on that list, not even worth the seven minute walk across campus to figure it out. I completely took myself out of the running. And what we see at the beginning of Mark is something that we see when this happens in the other Gospels, where we have some people who have either been told by themselves or by others, you're not good enough to make the team. You're out of the running. You're disqualified. Now, as we dive into Mark, I would be remiss if I didn't give just a little bit of background on it. I'm not going to do much because not much is required, but every gospel, all four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are written to different audiences. Mark is written to the Romans and it depicts Jesus as a servant. So Mark is the fastest moving gospel in the Bible. It's very quick, very fast paced from task to task to task because Mark is painting Jesus as a servant. That's what he's doing, and he wants to see that this is where we see like he must become greater, I must become less. This is where we see the greatest, whoever is greatest of you must be the servant of all. Those are Mark's words. And I would tell you if you've never read a gospel before, Mark is a great one to start with. It's incredibly, as far as gospels are concerned, action packed. It just goes from event to event to event. He doesn't dally in the inefficient details. But that's the gospel of Mark, and that's where we're going to be. And the series is called Mark's Jesus. This is the Jesus that Mark saw as he heard the stories from Peter. And so in this first chapter of Mark, the other gospels tarry a little bit at the beginning. Matthew and Luke kind of focus on genealogy and the Christmas story and the early years. And then the Gospel of John focuses on the ministry of John the Baptist kind of paving the way for Christ. But Mark jumps right into it. And halfway through the first chapter, Jesus is already calling his 12 disciples. And we have maybe the most famous call here in Mark chapter 1, verses 16 through 20, where Jewish educational system. Because if we don't understand the Jewish educational system, then some of what happens here doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right? Some of what happens here is curious. Have you ever wondered why the disciples just immediately, he's in the boat with his dad. He's doing his job. This is his future. And Jesus says, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. And he's like, see you dad. And he goes, he leaves his job. We'll talk more about the call of Matthew, the tax collector, but Matthew's collecting taxes when Jesus calls him and he gets up from his career and he follows Jesus immediately. Have you ever wondered why they do that? I think when I was growing up and I was, and I encountered these passages, I just assumed that it was because they know who Jesus is. Jesus is Jesus, and so they want to be around Jesus because they've heard about Jesus and they want to follow Jesus. And that's not true. They didn't know yet that he was the Messiah of the world. They didn't know yet what that meant. So they're not following Jesus because he's Jesus. There's something more at play there. And when I explain to you kind of how the educational and rabbinical and discipleship system work, I think it might make sense to more of us. So I'm going to get in some details a little bit, but this helps us understand the calling of the disciples and then therefore our call so much better. So if you grew up in ancient Israel, if you grew up at the time of Christ, then you would start Jewish elementary school at about five years old. And Jewish elementary school would go from the age of five to 10. Boys and girls would do it together. And in these first five years, you would study the first five books of the Old Testament, what they called the Tanakh. And this was the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. You'd spend the first five years of your education studying those five books, and the goal was to memorize those five books. This is a culture with oral tradition. Memorization is heavy. People aren't writing things down and taking notes. So the idea of memorizing large swaths of text like that is not as anathema to them as it is to us. It was very approachable for them. We've lost that part of our brain a little bit with the ability to write things down all the time. But they would try to memorize the first five books of the Old Testament and become a master of those. Then at the age of 10, you would graduate to what I believe was called Beth Medrash Middle School. From 10 to 11, the girls, the Jewish girls, would learn Deuteronomy. They would focus more in on Deuteronomy for the worship aspects of it, and then they would look at Psalms, and they would look at Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, the wisdom books, because the women in Jewish history at this time carried the bulk of the load for the worship. So they were the ones that led the worship at the beginning in the temple. Now you guys can do what you want to to make jokes about Aaron's profession in your head, all right? I'm too dignified to do that, so I'm just going to let you do it. But that was the women's responsibility early on. And so from 10 to 13, middle school girls focused on that. And at 13, middle school girls graduated. Now help your mama, help your grandmama participate in the gathering, participate in the leading of worship. That was the role. But little boys would study the law and the prophets. So they would study the rest of the Old Testament or the Tanakh, and they would try to become masters of that. Then at 13, they would take a little break and they would go home and they would learn their father's profession. So if your dad was a fisherman, you'd go, you went home and you learned how to fish. If your dad was a tax collector, you'd go do that. If your dad, if your dad was a carpenter, you'd go be a carpenter, right? That's why it's important that we know what Joseph's profession was because that was Jesus's future had he not stayed in the educational system. So you would go and do that. And then around age 15, if you wanted to do more than that, if you wanted to continue your education, you would go find a rabbi that was legally allowed within the church to have disciples. And you would say, can I follow you? Will you be my rabbi? And if that rabbi said yes and accepted you as a student, which was very exclusive and very, very difficult to get into, listen to me, this is not an exaggeration. To become a disciple in ancient Israel at the time of Christ is not dissimilar at all from getting a scholarship to an Ivy League school. It's not dissimilar at all from going to Harvard or Yale or Georgia Tech. It was really like elite. For the new people, NC State stinks and Georgia Tech's the best. That's the basic line of joking that's been present for the duration of my tenure. But it was not dissimilar to getting to go to an Ivy League school. Your future is very bright. And only the best of the best get accepted, get taken on as disciples. And you wouldn't wait for the rabbi to come to you. You went to the rabbi and you would say, can I follow you? And what that question really means is, can I be who you are? Do I have what it takes to do what you do? And the rabbi would decide yes or no, whether or not to take you on as a disciple, as a student. And then from 15 to sometimes as late as 30, which makes sense why Jesus's ministry started at 30, you would train under your rabbi And he would teach you to do what he did. And there was a saying, may you be ever covered in the dust of your rabbi. May you be following so closely behind him on the dusty streets of Israel that his dust is kicked up on you and you are covered in the dust of your rabbi. You're following him to learn to do what he does. Okay? Understanding that, looking back at the text that we read, when Jesus sees Simon, Peter, what are they doing? They're fishing. What does that tell you about where they were in life and what the educational system had told them at some point? Because if at any point you weren't progressing as a student, if you're doing middle school and your teacher's like, nah, you're not really getting it, that's okay. Go home, be a godly fisherman, come to the temple and tithe and serve God in other ways. We're going to let the more elite students serve you in that way. If your rabbi said you're just not getting it, go home at 20 years old, be a godly carpenter. We love you. You're a good person. Serve the Lord in different ways. You're not qualified for this way. So the fact that Peter and James and John are at home with their dads fishing tells us that at some point or another, voices from within or without disqualified them from further education. And make no mistake about it, it's not as if they weren't interested. The ancient Hebrews, ancient Israel, didn't have professional sports. There was no gladiatorial arena. There was no way to make it. There was no way to ascend to the next level of society. There was no way to make your name great. There was no way to get famous. The only path forward to do any of those things, to make something of yourself, to be somebody, was to be a rabbi and hopefully elevate to Pharisee or a member of the Sanhedrin. That was the only way to climb the ladder in ancient Israel. So every little boy wanted to be a disciple one day and wanted to be a rabbi one day. And every father wanted their little boy to be a disciple who becomes a rabbi. That was the almost ubiquitous dream of ancient Israel. And so Peter and James and John fishing with their dad tells us that at some point a voice from within or without told them that they were not qualified to continue in service to God's kingdom in that way. Do you see that? And when I say from within or without, it could have been a voice within, like my voice at Auburn, going, dude, you don't need to go look at that list. You're not making it. Maybe they never went to a rabbi and said, can I follow you? Because they just knew what the answer would be. Or maybe they did go to a few and they kept getting shot down. But for some reason or another, what it tells us is that a voice from within or without had told them that they were not qualified. Somebody told them they weren't talented enough to do this. And then I also think of Matthew and his call. Matthew, who's the author of the first gospel in the New Testament, was a tax collector. Tax collectors were deplorable in ancient Israel. They were deplorable because they were turncoats and they were traders to their people for the sake of their own pocketbook, for the sake of their own greed. Here's how the tax collecting system worked in ancient Israel. Israel is a far-flung province of the Roman Empire, headed up by a likely failed senator named Pilate, because you don't get sent to Israel to be the governor from Rome unless you're terrible at your job and the emperor doesn't like you anymore. It's like being the diplomat to whatever the heck, okay? Go out here. We're going to put you in the wilderness for three years. Pilate's leading ancient Rome. His only, or leading ancient Israel, his only job is to keep the peace and keep the money flowing. That's it. Squelch rebellion, keep the income coming in. How do they make income? They tax the people. They tax the people at a rate that they had never been taxed before in their history. And this rendered many, many, many of the families in Israel as completely impoverished. They are living lives of what we would say is abject poverty. And the way that those taxes got paid is the tax collector, you'd go to the tax collector to pay your taxes, and Rome said it's a 20% tax on all goods and income, and the tax collector would go, oh gosh, looks like it's 22.5% this year. Looks like it's 25% this year. They would just tack on a few extra percentage points to make whatever they could make to get money off of you by being a toy of the empire of Rome. They were turncoats who rejected their people for the sake of their own greed. They were disrespected. They were considered sinful and sinners. They were considered unclean because they handled money all the time. To be a tax collector is to disconnect from your spiritual heritage. It's to choose to live a life that you know disqualifies me from service in God's kingdom. I have put that thought away. I will never think about it again. So Matthew was a person who had chosen a path in life that was completely separate from a religious path and had at some point or another inevitably made the decision due to the cognitive dissonance of the two existing of, I am not going to embrace that religious faithful life anymore. I'm not good enough for it. I cannot do it. I cannot serve it. That is not me. I'm going to make a decision for myself to live greedily and selfishly and indulge in my own sin and in my own desire. That's what he did. So he had chosen a life that anyone around him, including himself, would have said, I am not worthy to be used in the kingdom of God in any way, and I'm good with it. And yet Jesus goes to him and calls him too. Now here's what's remarkable to me about the calling of these disciples. One of the things. Jesus had every right as a rabbi who had achieved an authority that allowed him to call disciples. He had every right to sit back and wait for young men to come to him and ask him if they could follow him. He had every right to stay back and say, hey, I'm a rabbi. Now's the time. If you want to come work for me, let me know. And he doesn't do that. We see him pursuing the disciples. He doesn't wait for Peter to come to him and say, Jesus, may I follow you? He goes to Peter and he says, would you like to follow me? He goes to John and James and says, would you like to follow me? He goes to the tax collector who would never, ever, ever have the audacity to go to Jesus, the rabbi, the son of God and say, can I please follow you? No, he would never have the audacity to do that. His life of sin had disqualified him from approaching Christ. And Christ doesn't wait for him to get over that to invite him. No, he goes to Matthew in his sin, in his deplorable life, in his feeling like crud, and he says, would you follow me? And what do they all do? They all immediately throw down everything and follow Christ. And what we see here is that Jesus has a remarkable pattern of pursuit. Jesus, like his dad, has a remarkable pattern of pursuit. In the Old Testament, God called out to Abraham and told him what to do. He showed himself to Moses in the burning bush and told him what to do. He showed himself to David and told him what to do. He pursued his children in the nation of Israel over and over and over again, generation after generation after generation, despite their rejection, despite their betrayal, despite their refusal to obey him and to follow him and to serve him. He pursues and pursues and pursues. And when that pursuit isn't enough, he sends his son as a personification of divinity to pursue us in human form. It is. That's very good. If you didn't hear that, somebody's phone in the front row, Siri, just to find personification for us in case you didn't know what that was. It's in the back next week. We see Jesus early in his ministry display this pattern of pursuit where he goes to the disciples. He doesn't wait for them to come to him. We see later on when Jesus teaches about the 99 and he says that a good shepherd leaves the 99 and pursues the lost sheep. We see him telling a story of a rich man whose son went off and squandered his money on wild living. And as he came back home, the rich man saw him far off and he went running to him. He pursued him. Our God does not sit back and wait for us to come to him. Jesus says he stands at the door and knocks, waiting for us to let him into our lives. Our Jesus chases after us. He pursues us. He does it gently, but he does it relentlessly. And many of you, I would wager all of you, at one point or another, even at your worst, sometimes especially at your worst, have felt this gentle, relentless pursuit of Christ, have felt Christ whispering to you in the shadows and in the isolation that he still loves you, he still cares about you, he's still coming for you. You've seen how he pursues people in your life. You know experientially how Christ never gives up on you. There is no barrel that has a bottom too far down for Christ to not chase you there. He has an incredible pattern of pursuit. And Jesus continues to pursue us to this day. He continues to pursue you. And what I want you to hear this morning more than anything else is, that invitation that he extends to these disciples that he pursued, Come and follow me. Very, very simple invitation. It's the same one that he extends to you this morning. Come and follow me. Come follow me. Now, here's what's so important to understand about this call and this invitation. The disciples, Peter, James, John, Matthew, Andrew, the rest of them, Thomas, they did not know then at their call, Nathaniel and Philip, they did not know at their call that Jesus was the Messiah and they didn't know what it meant to be the Messiah. The only person on the planet, I believe at this point in history, who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was marry his mother. I don't think anybody else had an accurate clue what he was doing. So the disciples definitely don't know that he's the Messiah and they don't even really know what the Messiah is. They don't even yet know that he's the son of God. That has not been revealed to them yet. Jesus has not made that public yet. And what we see in the three years of ministry, what we'll see throughout the rest of the gospel of Mark is this progressive revelation and understanding amongst the disciples about who Jesus is. We fast forward a year in and Jesus comes out on the boat and he calms the storm, right? He says, wind and waves be still. And he calms the storm and he goes back down into the hold and he goes to sleep. And what did the disciples say? Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? The last week of his life, Jesus is walking into the city of Jerusalem and James and John are lagging behind him arguing about who gets to be the vice president and the secretary of defense. They still don't get it. So when Jesus calls them and they receive the call, they were not encumbered with all this sense of belief that we encumber that with. They simply responded to who he was and said, okay, I'll go. They didn't know all there was to know about Jesus. They didn't even fully believe in Jesus yet. But they responded to his invitation and they followed. And the same invitation with the same parameters and expectations around it is extended to us and every generation through the centuries to simply follow Jesus. Here's another thing I love about this invitation from Jesus to follow him. He didn't just give them protection. He gave them purpose. He wasn't just offering them, because when we think about Jesus extending an offer, us follow me and I'll make you fishers and men, come follow me, come let me in, I stand at the door and knock, let me into your life. When we think about responding to the invitation of Christ, I think we typically take that to the moment of salvation. I'm going to respond to the invitation of Christ by letting him into my life and I'm going to become a Christian. That's typically where we go with that. But I would say, first of all, I think that this is a daily response to choose to follow Jesus every day. Second of all, when we reduce following Jesus, that moment of salvation to just now I'm in, now I'm a Christian, and that's it. When we make that the inflection point, we reduce the call of Christ down to mere protection. Protection from hell, eternal separation from God, protection from our sins, I no longer have to pay the penalties for those, protection in taking us to heaven, protection in overcoming sin and death. If we've've lost a loved one who also knows Jesus then we know that one day we get to see them again that when we say goodbye to them on their deathbed it's goodbye for now not goodbye forever so we're offered protection over sin and death and sometimes we reduce the call of Christ down to this offer of protection follow me and I will protect you from your sins and from the judgment of God and from the pains of death. And then one day everything will be perfect in eternity. Just hold on until we get there. But no, he doesn't just offer them protection. He offers them purpose. Because what does he say after he invites them to follow me? Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Follow me and I will imbue your life with a greater sense of purpose than you've ever had. Follow me, I have things for you to do. Follow me, I believe in you. Follow me, we're going to do great things. And I'm going to equip you for everything that I want you to do. And he imbues us with purpose that he's got plans for us in his kingdom. And just like then when Jesus asked them to follow and said, come and follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. He also tells us vicariously through the Great Commission, the last thing that Jesus instructs the disciples to do, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Don't go into all the world and make converts. Don't go into all the world and offer my protection and that's it. Go into all the world and offer them my protection and my purpose. Make disciples and train them to do what I trained you to do. Go and make people who contribute to the ministry and the kingdom of God. We're all kingdom builders pushing this thing forward. That's how we talk about it around here. So he imbues us with purpose. And the same invitation to the disciples there is the one that he offers us this morning. Jesus is not, when he comes to you and he says, follow me, just follow me, just do what I'm asking you to do. It's not a simple offer of protection. It's an offer to imbue your life with purpose. I'm going to make your life matter in the kingdom of God. I want you to experience what it is to do my work and to love my people. It's a remarkable, remarkable invitation. And even as I articulate those things, I am certain that most of us in this room have already found ways to disqualify ourselves with the voices from within and from without from this call of Jesus. I'm certain that there are plenty of you who are sitting there during this sermon, hopefully thinking along with me, nodding along with me. Yes, believe all that. Yes, he calls us and he equips us. Yes, I agree with that. Yes, Jesus offers that same invitation. Yeah, they were unqualified. I feel unqualified, but I'm not yet sold. This sermon is for other people with more talent. It's for people who are younger than me. It's for people who are more charismatic than me. It's for people who have more potential than me, who are better looking than me, whatever it might be. So yeah, I agree, Nate, with the points that you're making, but that's not really for me. And what I want you to see is that that's your disqualifying voice coming from within or without that's telling you stuff that's not true about yourself. There's got to be a handful of us in here who go, yeah, I'm just a mom. That's what I do. I'm just a mom and my world is so small. God can't possibly have a plan for me to be used in incredible ways to build his kingdom. That's not true. We're told that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. God has a plan for you. God has something he wants to do with your life. He has a way that he wants to use you. He has a load that he wants you to carry joyfully and gleefully as you go through your life doing his work. He's created you for that. The problem, and he invites us this morning just as he invited the disciples to walk in that purpose and in that usefulness. The problem is we continue to have these voices that we believe in our head that tell us that we're not good enough, that we're not smart enough. I'm too old. I just teed off on 18, buddy. Like I'm looking at the sunset. That's a young man's game. Let somebody else do that work. I'm coasting it in, loving my grandkids. That's not for me. Or I'm too young. No one's going to listen to me. Or I don't have enough education. I'm not qualified enough to do this. Or I'm too inconsistent in my walk. Or I feel like Matthew and the choices that I've made in life have utterly you that you're not qualified for service in the kingdom of God do not come from God. They come from the world. They come from you. And they come from the people in your past who, well-meaning or not, damaged you and told you you weren't good enough and that you couldn't do it. I carry myself plenty of wounds from people that I respect a lot who indicated to me directly and indirectly that I would never make it in ministry. You've had people in your life, well-meaning or not, who have indicated to you in different ways, directly and indirectly, that you don't really have a lot to offer the kingdom of God. You've told yourself that so many times that you now can't even sort out the truth of where these voices are coming from. But here's what I want you to understand this morning. We are not qualified for ministry by our talent. We are qualified by our Savior. We are not qualified for service in God's kingdom by the gifts and abilities that we bring to the table. We are qualified by our Savior and by him alone. Do you think for a second there was anybody in Peter's life? If you know what you know about Peter, Peter was ready, fire, aim. That was him. Peter having nothing to say, thus said. He was always the one out in front, sticking his foot in his mouth. Do you think anybody looked at Peter at this point in his life on the banks of the Sea of Galilee outside the city of Capernaum and went, you know what this guy is? This guy's probably going to be like the very first head pastor of this movement that Jesus is about to birth with his perfect life and death. I bet he's going to be the guy. Nobody said that about Peter. Do you think anybody looked at John, who was maybe 10 to 15 years old at the time of his call? Do you think anybody looked at John and went, you know what John's probably going to do? John's probably going to write a gospel that's different and more influential than the others. He's going to write three great letters that are going to be included in the canon and printed for all of time. And he's going to write the apocryphal book in the New Testament that tells us about the end times. And he's going to die a martyr. He's going to be the last of the generation of disciples to die on the island of Patmos, an honorable death. And he's going to be so close to Christ during these next three years that the Savior of the universe is going to refer to him as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Not even John's mom thought that was possible. Nobody thought that was going to happen to the two boys called the sons of thunder, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Nobody looked at Matthew collecting taxes and thought, you know what? This degenerate, who's totally rejected religion religion and the world and rejected his community and the people around him, he's going to become a disciple that writes one of the four gospels that's read by more people in human history than any other book. That's probably what Matthew's going to do. Nobody, nobody but Jesus looked at those disciples before their call and had any clue or any vision about how he could use them in his kingdom. Nobody but Jesus would have believed the plans that he had for those young men. So who are you to look at Christ and tell him that he can't use you? Nobody but Jesus knows what path you can have from this day forward. Nobody but God has the vision for what your life can be in the years that he is giving to you. Nobody knows what your potential is, least of all you. Our talent does not qualify us for service in God's ministry. Our Savior does. But we're so busy avoiding the walk to the student union because we are certain that our name is not on the list, that we don't even try, and we disqualify ourselves from service in God's kingdom. And I just want to remind you of this, that God alone can cast you aside, and he's promised never to do that. You can't disqualify yourself. Only God can do that. And he's promised to never forsake you. Only God can cast you aside and he will not do that. So quit casting yourself aside. This morning comes down to two simple thoughts. Whose voice are you going to believe about who you are and what God has planned for you? The world's or God's? Because a lot of us have been spending a lot of time listening to the world, believing that God's voice is for other people beside us. And the second one is this. Will you accept that simple invitation that tumbles down through the centuries from our Savior, that is the same now as it was then? Will you accept Christ's invitation to follow him and go where that leads? Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a God who pursues. Thank you for being a God who chases. For a God who believes and equips and calls and qualifies. Lord, I lift up those of us in this room who feel particularly unqualified. Who feel that our poor choices, our bad decisions, our lack of discernible skills, at least according to us, disqualify us from any kind of use in your kingdom. Father, would you help our eyes open to the reality that no one but you knows what your plans are. No one but you knows what you can do with a willing servant who will simply follow you. No one but you knows the potential of use and blessing and life that exists in this room. And so God, I pray that we would follow you. And I pray that we would begin to choose to listen to your voice about who we are and what we can do. And that we would refuse to listen to our own that doesn't tell us the truth. Help us to be followers of you and imbue us with purpose to build your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and every now and again, as your pastor, and as a part of Grace, I just kind of get overwhelmed at how good God is to us. So this isn't the sermon, but one of my favorite parts about communion is just getting to see everybody walk by, and I get to know names and stories. And Jen commented to me, we've got about five very pregnant girls in the church right now. And each of those babies was prayed for fervently and is being prayed over. And what a blessing it is to see that happening. Bert, I'm about to start crying. If you could get me some tissues from the coffee bar, that would be great. I'm being serious, Bert. Snap to it, please. We've got folks in the church fighting cancer with relentless faith, recovering from strokes with faith. We've got faces, thank you, sir, that I'm happy to see every week, including birds. We've got tremendous friends and friendships and communities. And we are just tremendously blessed. We are chock full in our children's spaces. We are parking people at big lots. And it's just an exciting time to be a part of grace. And it's also a humbling time to be a part of grace in this community. So I just wanted to express that and hope that you feel it too. I also wanted to pray at the beginning of my sermon, so this kind of works out, because we've got a team going to Mexico Saturday. How many years have we had a relationship with faith ministry? A lot of years, decades. We've got some really sweet relationships down there. Unidos, unidos. Right, Jeff? He's got the t-shirt on. How many people are going this year? Okay. So we're going to pray for them. We're going to express some gratitude for grace. We're going to pray for the families that are about to grow. And we're going to pray for those fighting hard through difficult times. And then I'm going to try to get it together and give you the sermon I'm supposed to give you this morning. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this place and this family. Me, maybe most of all, this morning. We thank you for the love that's represented here. We thank you for the young women who are about to be young mamas and the young men who are about to be fathers. God, we thank you for those in our midst who are fighting hard with faith through challenges that they did not foresee and do not welcome and yet embrace as a part of a journey for you. We thank you for the growth that we see in our children and our children's ministries. And we just pray, God, more than anything, that we would be good stewards of those young souls for the time that they are entrusted to us. And I pray the same thing over everyone else that calls Grace home, that we would take good care of the folks that you have entrusted to us. We lift up our team going to Mexico and we just pray that you would continue to further those relationships and that those who are going would be moved towards you and that those who are going for the first time would be indelibly impacted by what happens there. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, let's try this again. Run the bumper again. Let's just do that for funsies. I'm being serious. Do it. I'm going to mute my mic and blow my nose, and then we're going to have like an actual sermon. All right? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This morning we are finishing up our series called The Traits of Grace where we're answering the question, if you're a partner of grace, which we don't have partners, we have members. We walked through that for a week. So if you're confused, you can listen to that sermon. If you're a partner of grace, this is what we want you to become. This is what we're trying to build you into. If you were to ask what should define someone who's been a partner of grace for many years, it would be these five traits that we've been walking through for the last five weeks. And so this week we arrive at what I believe to be the ultimate trait of a partner of grace. I think all the other traits build to this one. And so I'm just going to come right out the gates with it. If you're taking notes, you can write this down. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. We've got these five traits now emblazoned on the wall over the glass doors and the windows out in the lobby. As you walk out the center door, the one in the dead center on purpose is kingdom builders. This is something that we want every person at Grace to become. And this idea of being kingdom builders began to germinate for me about a decade ago in a staff meeting at my previous church called Greystone Church. Greystone is a church in suburban Atlanta. It's one of these kind of big multi-campus churches where you get simulcast out to multiple campuses when you preach, that kind of deal. And we took a staff retreat down to a lake house. And there's about 25 or 30 of us. And we're sitting in this brainstorming session where the lead pastor, Jonathan, who in many ways has been very gracious with me over the years. We're sitting in this brainstorming meeting where he's asking this question about Greystone. What defines people at our church? What do we want to instill in them? What defines us as people? What's in our DNA? And I kind of broke in and raised my hand and I said, I think we need to build a church of kingdom builders. And I kind of explained why I thought that, which is going to be some of the things that I explain to you in a minute. And Jonathan, like he listened to me. He was kind. He goes, yeah, that's great. That is super important. And then he didn't write it on the whiteboard. And I don't know if you've been in those meetings, those brainstorming meetings where you have an idea, you feel like it's a good idea, you say it, and whoever's in charge of the meeting goes, that is good. That is very good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Does anybody else have any ideas? And it doesn't go on the whiteboard. And when that happens, it's infuriating. And I know because I watch my staff get angry with me when I don't put their ideas on the whiteboard. When you do that, it hurts a little bit. So I thought maybe he didn't understand me right. So a few minutes later, I kind of approach it in a different way. You know, I'm nothing if not persistent. And he's like, yes, that's a good idea. Not right now. And then we move on again. And I thought maybe, I know, I know what'll do it. And so I explained it in a different way and because this is a Mike Tomlin's he's a coach of the Steelers he says that young young people getting involved in their profession have all the ideas and none of the responsibility that was me I had all the ideas and have any of the responsibility of execution so I mentioned it again until finally he said, Nate, we've heard you. It's a great idea. That's not going to work with what we're doing. We don't need to talk about that anymore. Okay. That's kind of what it takes sometimes for me to hear you. So I said, okay. But I couldn't let go of this idea that this seems so clear to me. And then about, I would say, seven years after that, I'm in a meeting at my church with my staff asking the same question. What are the traits of grace? What's important to us? What do we want to produce and who do we want to become? And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but it occurred to me. And so I said, hey, I just want to throw this out there. I think we were meant to be kingdom builders. And I explained why. And the staff responded enthusiastically. Yeah, that's good. Put that up there. And I know that often when there's someone leading a meeting and there's people who work for that person, that they are incented to support the ideas of that person. So that might not be authentic. But I will also tell you, and Aaron Gibson's in here somewhere. He will tell you if I'm lying, that sometimes I present ideas in staff meetings and it's just met with crickets. Just uncomfortable silence because no one wants to tell me it's a bad idea. And I go, okay, that didn't get any traction. We won't do that one. So I do feel like I can trust him. And then I presented it to the elders and the elders liked it too. So that became one of our traits, kingdom builders. Then maybe about a year after that, I was in a conversation that I believe I've told you guys about before with someone who was going to become a very good friend. And this guy was pressing me on grace and on my leadership. And he was saying, what do you want for grace? What do you want grace to be? What do you want to be true of grace in five years, ten years? What's your vision for grace? What's your vision for your leadership? What do you want to be true of you? What do you want to be true of you in five years, ten years? And I answered by saying, well, I've had these experiences in the past and I don't want to replicate those for people who work with me or for people who come to church with me. I've seen church do these things. I don't want to do those things. And after a while, he stopped me and he said, I've heard a lot about what you don't want to be, but I have no idea what you do want to be. And I realized in that moment that I had really never had a greater vision for grace than simply being healthy. And that grace required a greater vision than that. So I chewed on that for months. And finally, I came to this conclusion that this is why this idea has been germinating all along. Because I believe that grace needs to be filled with people who are passionate about building God's kingdom. I believe that the best work that we can do is to produce people who want to spend their lives building the kingdom of God with every ounce of energy that they have. And really what I would say is I want to produce a church full of people who are or are becoming John the Baptist. I want to produce people who have the same mindset that John the Baptist had, who are becoming more and more like John the Baptist in practice. And here's what I mean. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. That's an incredible statement and a remarkable stance, and it's worth wondering why does Jesus think that, and I think, I think that this is why. John the Baptist, about 30 AD, was an elite rabbi that was allowed to have disciples. So I don't know how much you know about Jewish culture and Jewish context, but at this time in history, in Judaism, the rabbis were the pastors. Rabbi simply means teacher. And there was presumably hundreds of rabbis in Jerusalem at the time of John the Baptist, but there was this elite class of rabbis, the best of the best, that were allowed to have disciples, and John the Baptist was one of these elite rabbis because we see him having disciples with him. And he had built, in our words, in our terms, in our context, a very successful ministry. He would not, John the Baptist would not identify this way or with this, but in our context, the way to understand him best is to say that John the Baptist was a very successful pastor. If he were a modern day pastor, he would be invited on all the podcasts. He would speak at all the conferences. He would have a large church with multiple campuses. He would have this huge ministry. He'd be a best-selling author. And listen to me. I don't think that anything that I just said defines true success for a pastor. I have a much deeper respect for men and women who humbly serve their community in the name of God, in the being virtually unknown but faithfully pour their life out into a community and manage to retire as a pastor because they kept it between the ditches the whole time. I have a much greater respect for those people, for those men and women, than I do for people that have skyrocketed into Christian fame. Not that I don't respect that. I just don't think that's how God measures our success as people, how big our ministry is. But by the world's standards, what I want you to see is that by every measure, John the Baptist was a popular pastor with a successful ministry. He was baptizing people. People were following him and listening to him every day by the hundreds. Hugely successful and locally famous. And then Jesus comes on the scene. And John the Baptist actually baptizes him in the Jordan River. And Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. And just so we're clear, John the Baptist is different from John the Apostle. John the Apostle was a disciple of Christ. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wrote John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and Revelation. That's a different John. John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus who paved the way for him and was prophesied about and who was eventually beheaded by Herod. Different Johns. And people started peeling away from John's church, again, crude language, but for us to understand, started peeling away from John's church and going to Jesus' church. And some of his disciples come to him, and they go, hey, you're losing members. People are not following you anymore, they're following Jesus. And this is John's response. And I think the heart of this response is why Jesus thinks John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. Verse 26, chapter 3 in the book of John. And said to him. And they say, John, that guy that you baptized, Jesus, people are following him now. They're leaving you and they're following him. And John the Baptist says, good. That's the way it's supposed to work out. See, John had spent his adult life building a kingdom, amassing a ministry, building a following, establishing a name for himself, becoming successful. He had spent his life building a kingdom. And then Jesus comes on the scene and Jesus begins to peel off portions of that kingdom for himself. And John's disciples come to him and they go, hey, this kingdom that you've been building, it's shrinking. And John says, no, it's not. It's growing. It was never my kingdom. Those were never my people. I was always just holding them for Jesus. I'm part of the bridal party. He's the groom. When he shows up, I don't get disappointed because everyone's paying attention to him and not me. That's dumb. I did a wedding yesterday and I'm in line to walk everybody in and the groomsmen are talking about, is it right over left or left over right? And I looked at them and I said, doesn't matter. No one's looking at you at all. John the Baptist knew his place. He's in the party. He's not the party. And so when Jesus shows up and his disciples say, hey, he's taken your kingdom. John the Baptist says, no. He's just claiming what's his. It was never mine to begin with. They were never following me. I was a conduit to Christ. I was never baptizing them in my name. I was always baptizing them in his name. And then he says that remarkable phrase, he must become greater and I must become less. That rings true in so many different scenarios for so many different reasons. And I would say in our life, one of our great challenges as Christians is to really understand what that means, that he must become greater and I must become less in every situation. So here's what I want you to see this morning. And here's why I believe this idea is so crucial and critical. Because I talk about people trying to build ministries, talk about people trying to build kingdoms, and I know that at least over half of us, if not more of us in here, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to build a big ministry. We're not trying to build a big kingdom. We've got very humble goals in our life. But what I want you to see this morning is this. We are all building a kingdom, all of us. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? We are all building a kingdom. Make no mistake about it. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Even if you're sitting here and you're going, my life is small. I have humble goals. I want to raise a good family. I want my children to love me when they grow up and want to come back home. I want to love my spouse and love and serve them well for the remainder of my days. I want to be a good friend to the people around me. I want to be a good part of the church that I love. We might have humble goals, but make no mistake, that's still our kingdom. It's a kingdom of safety and security and affection and compassion. It's how we leave our mark by leaving children behind us or a family behind us. So even if we have humble goals, we still have goals of building kingdoms. And oftentimes those kingdoms are our own. We're not building those for God's sake. We're building those for our own sake. Others of us are on the other end of the spectrum. I have a friend that I talk to often. He's a couple years older than me. He's like 45. And he talks about how driven he feels all the time. How even if he had the money to retire forever right now, he's like, I don't think I could just do nothing. I don't think I could just bounce from pleasure to pleasure. I have to build something. I have to wake up every day and spend time knowing that I'm building something that matters. He very much struggles with rest. He relentlessly pursues the building of his kingdom. And some of us have big lofty goals. We want to build the company. We want to build the ministry. We want to leave the legacy. We want to climb the ladder. We want to get to this position. We want to do this thing and make these impacts. Whether or not we build a kingdom operates irrespective of our ambition. Do you understand? No matter how ambitious you are or are not, you will spend your life building a kingdom. The question I want to put in front of you is, whose kingdom are you building? I would remind you of what Jesus says in Matthew. Do not put about it. Friendships rarely echo for eternity unless they're intentional. Family in and of itself doesn't echo for eternity. The company that you build doesn't echo for eternity unless you're using it for the kingdom of God. The wealth that you amass, the friends that you get, the power that you hold, the impact that you make doesn't echo for eternity unless it's for the sake of God and his kingdom. So God says, invest your life in things that will ripple throughout eternity. Don't invest your life in things that are buried with you. It's this hugely important principle. And it's important to me that you understand as I hope to compel you to consider what it looks like to build God's kingdom with your life. I don't want to talk about it in vague terms of building God's kingdom. I want us to understand exactly what it means to build it. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally, this isn't in your notes, but you can write it down if you want to. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. It's to actively and intentionally grow the breadth of God's kingdom and grow the depth of God's kingdom. When we grow the breadth of God's kingdom, that's evangelism. When we grow the depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, telling other people about Jesus, bringing them along with us. I tell you all the time, as much as I can, the only reason you are on the planet and not in heaven right now after you became a Christian is so that you can bring as many people with you on your way to God's kingdom as you possibly can as you live your life. So we're constantly looking for ways to expand the breadth and the reach of God's kingdom by sharing our faith. And in the South, this is really easy for us. You might think it's really challenging to share your faith in the South because it's saturated with the gospel. I actually think that makes it easier because I try to tell you, if you have friends or family members who live in the South and don't go to church, they don't claim a faith, I would be willing to bet you lunch that they have a good reason for that. It's not because they've never been invited. It's probably not because they don't have any experience with church. It's because whatever experience they do have with church wasn't good. Whatever experience they do have with pain and struggle has made them move away from the faith, not towards it. But if we went to your neighbors right now who are still at home, have no interest in going to church this morning, it wasn't even a thought for them, should we go? It's a Sunday for them. And you said, why isn't church a priority? They wouldn't be like, why is it what now? Why isn't what a priority? Why don't you know Jesus? Who? They know. They have answers. So in the South, if we want to be effective evangelists, our antenna are always up to have conversations with people about spirituality because here's what's really interesting in the Southern United States. Your explanation for why you're still in church. Your explanation for why you're still here. Your explanation for why you still claim a faith, why you've chosen to prioritize it, and it's important to you. And if we can have conversations not about, here's why you should be a Christian, here's why you should get back in church, but conversations about, here's why I still believe, here's what faith does for me, here's what I see and why I can't walk away. If we can have those conversations, we can start to open people's minds to a different church experience and a different experience of Jesus and their personal lives and maybe move them towards the kingdom of God and grow that kingdom in its breadth. And then as kingdom builders, we grow it in its depth. We grow the depth of the people who are Christians. We make disciples. At Grace, we call this being step-takers. Understanding that discipleship is nothing more than taking the next step of obedience that's been placed in front of you. And so we come alongside young mamas and we say, hey, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a mom. We come alongside young men and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a father. We come alongside young divorcees and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey as a single woman or a single man. We come alongside parents. We come alongside young believers. And we walk them through that area of life and we grow them in their breadth, in their depth. So when I say, what is it, when I talk about building a kingdom and using our life to build God's kingdom, that's what I'm talking about, is using our life to grow it in its breadth and in its depth. We should go through life with our antenna up at all times, looking for opportunities to do just that. And this idea of what it is to build God's kingdom and how devoted we should be to it is really what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is a progressive revelation of this truth. It's a progressive revelation of what it means to build God's kingdom. And really, what the reality of it is, that that's the only reason that we're here. And I'll tell you where this started to occur to me and change the paradigm in a way that I thought about my faith. I was 17 or 18 years old at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge, and the speaker was a guy that really impacted me named Greg Boone. I can't remember if it was my first or second summer there, but at one point he wrote, he drew a circle on a whiteboard, and he said, I want you to tell me the things in your life that matter to you. Tell me about the different parts of your life. What does your life consist of? And so we said family. He draws a family slice. And then we said sports, friends, faith, hobbies, college, education, whatever it was. And so we kind of made this pie chart of all the different areas of our life. And Greg says, it's interesting that you made this sliver of faith. That's your Christianity. That's the part of you that's devoted to God. And we're like, yes. And he goes, okay. God's not interested in your slice. He wants the whole dang pie. And as adults, we do this too. We offer God a slice and he wants the whole pie. I bet if I sat down with you, just like somebody could with me, with no context, and I said, hey, I got a thought exercise for you. Can you draw a circle on a piece of paper? And you did that. And I said, okay, can you just draw up a pie chart of your priorities in your life? And could you try to make the slices proportional to how much you actually feel they're important? You know, we draw a big family slice, right? Some of us would draw a big church slice, big career slice, hobbies, interests, curiosity, whatever else is in there. I'd be interested to know, and only you know this, I've no doubt that virtually everyone in here would have a faith slice. How big would that be? Would it be a sliver? Would it be a huge chunk? Regardless, God's not interested in either of those. He wants the whole pie. He wants all of you. Do you mean God intimately cares about how I conduct myself in business meetings? Yeah, I do. I do because you're his agent in those meetings and through you should spread the fragrance and the knowledge of God. We should be salt in people's saltless lives. We should be lights in darkness. Do you mean that God cares about how I behave in traffic? He actually does. That one stings. Do you mean God cares about how I father? About how much I participate in church? About how much of my finances I give? About how I behave with my friends? About what I watch on TV and whether or not that helps me run my race and build his kingdom? Do you mean to tell me that God cares about what books I read and which people I spend the most time around? Yes, he cares deeply about all of those things. He cares where you live. He cares who your neighbors are. He cares how you carry yourself. He cares about your reputation in your community. He cares about everything, not just your church attendance and not just how much you read his word and not just how much you pray, but he cares about how you treat the person when you're on vacation that you will never interact with again in your life. That interaction matters deeply to God because it is indicative of your character and whether or not your light is shining and the fragrance is spreading. Those things matter to God. That's why I say that this realization of what it is to be a kingdom builder is a progressive revelation throughout your whole life. When I understood the pie chart analogy when I was 18 years old, I thought I got it. Intellectually, I'm there. And every year that goes by, I realize that God is asking me for more, that I've been holding back from him, that I've been considering my piece of the pie. And let me show you how powerful it is when it finally clicks with us, that we are here to build God's kingdom and not our own. I want us to look at Peter, and it's actually Gibson that gave me this point. I thought it was a great one. Think about Peter in the Gospels, what we experience of him. Peter was one of these guys that he was ready, fire, aim, right? Just the first one to speak. My dad likes to say about me, my family calls me Nathan, and he likes to say about me, Nathan having nothing to say, thus said. That's what he says about me. All right. Zach knows what I'm talking about. Nathan having nothing to say, thus says, there are those of us who are just wired, ready, fire, aim. I got it. I'll go. And we see this in Peter, which is why I love him so much. He's the first one. Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is like, okay. Or Peter says, well, I'm walking on the water too. And he walks on the water for a little bit. And then he sinks. And everybody's like, oh, Peter doesn't have any faith. And it's like, you sissies are still in the boat. At least he got out, you know. Jesus says, Peter, I need to wash all of your feet. And Peter goes, you will never wash my feet. And he says, if I don't wash your feet, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, then don't stop at my feet. Go all the way to my head. He requests a sponge bath from Christ. That's the boldness of Peter. Jesus says, you will deny me. Peter says, I will die before I deny you. And then in his weakness, he denies him three times. Whenever Jesus would ask one of those really hard questions, who do you say that I am? And all the disciples would clam up and not make eye contact and please don't look at me. Peter was the first one to be like, you sissies, I got this. And then he'd answer. And sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but he was always the one willing to be out in front. He was always brash. He was always courageous. He was always the leader. And so we see flashes of this giftedness in Peter that's not directed in the right way just yet. And then after Jesus dies and comes back and finds a despondent Peter on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and restores him to ministry. Beautiful. He spends 40 days with the disciples encouraging them. And then he leaves. And he says, I'm going to go to heaven. And I want you to go to the ends of the earth and I want you to baptize them and make disciples. I want you to go. He didn't use this language, but it's our language this morning. I want you, Peter, to go and your job is to grow my kingdom through this thing we call the church in breadth and in depth. Go evangelize to the whole world and go make disciples of them. Grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. And then he sits in the upper room for 40 days waiting for the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, he realizes what his job is. They go out on the porch. They preach. 3,000 people become Christians that day. And then we get this wonderful picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. And day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved. So now this movement is off. Now the kingdom has exploded. And the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel at the time, take notice of this. They're like, we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And so they bring in Peter and John, and they put them on trial. Defend yourself. Two chapters later, they bring in Stephen to defend himself, and he becomes the first Christian martyr, and he's stoned to death. Eighty days prior, Jesus had to defend himself on the same charges, and they crucified him. So make no mistake about it. In this defense for what they are doing, their lives are at stake. They've just healed someone, and the authority of Christ, they are preaching the gospel of Christ, and now they're being put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin, and I want you to see their amazing response. Also, if you're looking at the clock, I'm going long. Suck it up. Acts chapter 4. You're going to see verse 9, and I'm going to start in verse 8. name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He says, it's on you. You want to know whose name it's in? It's in the name of Christ, that guy that you murdered. That's what we're doing this in. Incredibly courageous, speaking truth to power, completely vulnerable to the death penalty. They do not care. They're stepping. He is Peter. He's a leader. He is brash, ready, fire, aim. But now he has purpose and he's speaking with incredible courage. Verse 11, Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When they, the Sanhedrin and the people around them, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. When they saw the courage and the eloquence of Peter that day, they knew we can't touch these guys or we're going to have a riot on our hands. So we've got to step away and try to play this a little bit differently. With his life on the line, Peter boldly proclaims the gospel of Christ and speaks truth to power. And what we see is these flashes of giftedness in the gospels where we get a glimpse into the character of Peter. Now he has a place to put it. Now he has traction in his life. Now he has understanding and context for, oh, that's what these gifts are for. And now he can use them courageously and fearlessly and correctly with efficacy to do his job and grow the kingdom in breadth and in depth. So here's what we see from the example of Peter. And here's what I want you to feel in your life. With the realization of purpose comes the application of our gifts. Each of you, each of you are gifted in some way. I know this to be true because the Bible says it over and over again. Paul talks about in Corinthians that the church is the body of Christ, and everybody is a part of that body, and everybody has a part to play. We're told in Ephesians, I remind you all the time that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. You have a good work to walk in. We're told in Ephesians chapter four that we have the gifts of Christ, of pastor, apostle, shepherd, evangelist, or teacher. Every one of us is one of those five things. We have those gifts. And when we can match those gifts with purpose, we light the world on fire. When we align God's divine purpose for our life with the gifts that God has given us in our life. And we have the narrative traction in our life of a purpose that is larger than ourselves to build God's kingdom. And we look at our gifts and what he's given us and suddenly we have an alignment of purpose and giftedness and we understand for the first time why God made me this way and how we are to use those gifts to build his kingdom. We light the world on fire. That's when magic happens. That's when we add day by day to those who are being saved. That's when you get up in the morning excited about what God has for you. Can I just say to you that if you have noticed in your life that you've been spending your days bouncing from distraction to distraction and from pleasure to pleasure and you're walking listlessly through your days and you're not super motivated for what you're doing, can I just suggest to you that maybe it's because you're living your life, building your own kingdom and you you realize it stinks, and that what you need to realize is that God designed you to build his kingdom, and he's gifted you to do that. And if you can figure out what that means and how your gifts can align with purpose, you will never wake up again wondering how you should spend your day. You will know because you will be directed because when our purpose is revealed, we have an application for a giftedness. So here's my prayer to you. Here's my prayer for you and the prayer that I want you to pray. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. And here's what I really like about this being kind of the apex trait of grace. I'm going to say this and then I'll wrap up. As I was considering what kind of church do we want Grace to be, where do we want to push people, what's our heart, how do we want to grow, what's our focus as a church? You know good and well some churches answer that question and they say missions. We're a missions church. That's what we're going to do. If you're involved with this church, we're going to move your heart towards missions to give and to serve in that way. Some churches say next generation. We're going to focus on the next generation. We're going to invest in our children and in our students. And if you're a part of the church, we're going to move you in that way. Some churches say foster care and adoption. We're going to push everybody in that way. Some churches choose local impact and local ministry. We want to make a big impact in our community. And different churches choose different paths. And I have no critique for any of those paths. but as I thought about this, I didn't want to limit your vision for building God's kingdom to whatever my passion of the day was or whichever direction the wind was blowing in the elder board. We didn't want to limit what people should do with the giftedness that God has given them. If this means you need to leave and start your own church because you've got that fire in you, go and do it. We love you. We support you. If this means you need to move and start a ministry somewhere, go and do it. We support you. But if we can be your home base as you go out into the community and in the world and build God's kingdom, we want to continue to foster that within you and build a church of fierce builders of the kingdom of God. And that can look different ways for different people. For my wonderful father-in-law, they got a lake house. And I remember when they bought this lake house, they were like, we're going to use it to serve the kingdom. And I was like, I bet you are. Sure you are. What, are you going to pray on the boat? But every weekend, while his daughter was in college, 10 or more kids would come and they'd spend the whole weekend being fed and pulled around on the boat by, they called him Professor Benson. He was not a professor, but they were in college, so fit. And they came every weekend. And when those kids graduated, he got invited to weddings. And when they had their first baby, he got texted pictures. And when I had the chance to speak at his funeral, there was a row of about 20 of them that had traveled from all over the country to come pay their respect to John. He used that lake house to build God's kingdom. I know a man who's been successful in business. And he's taken that success and he uses that company to support people who spent their professional years in ministry and now don't have the means to take care of themselves in retirement. They're on the payroll even though they don't do anything because he has a heart for them and how they spent their life. He uses different people in his company to do the finances for nonprofits for free and they give away large portions of their profit, more than 10% to other ministries and he uses his business acumen to sit on the board of nonprofits and help them become effective in their ministries. He has a vision for what it is to use his giftedness to build God's kingdom, not his own. Or maybe, maybe what God has for us to do right now is to build up those children, is to patiently, daily, with consistency and godliness and grace, build the character of our children so that they might enter into the world with a larger vision for what this life can be and simply what they want to do with it. And maybe we can build the kingdom like my mom did. I don't know what it looks like for you to build God's kingdom. But I do know that it's how you should spend the rest of your life. I don't care if you're 85 or 15. Let's pray that we would be a church full of passionate kingdom builders and just see how God lights the world on fire around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for imbuing us with purpose. Thank you for giving us something to live for that's bigger than ourselves. God, I pray that we would each have a passionate vision of what it is to be used by you, no matter how big or how small that vision might be. Lord, show us how we can use the gifts that you've given us to have a metamorphosis like Peter, where we see these flashes of our giftedness and how you've created us. But God, then we get some traction with some purpose, and our gifts align with that. Let us experience what it is to wake up every day excited to be used by you. And God, where we are building our own kingdoms, we repent and we apologize. And we ask you to help us, reorient us towards your kingdom. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning and Happy New Year. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your New Year. For those for whom this represents a New Year's resolution to come to church with more consistency, I will try my best to not make you regret that while I'm preaching this morning. I've also, I feel like I should just address this, I've been told this morning that I look like I'm going on a ski trip, that I look snuggly, that I look like an author. And then Keith back there in the hat, he's wearing a hat in church. He's sacrilegious. He told me that the white balance was off and asked me if I could change my sweater. So this is, I'm going back to the quarter zips next week, but start off the year with a sweater. Here we are. Speaking of starting off the year, I wanted, I thought a lot in the fall about how to start 2024. What was the best way for us as a church to launch into a new year? And the passage that came to mind is maybe my favorite passage in the Bible. And I know that if you've been coming to Grace for any amount of time, you know that my favorites mean nothing. Because I play it pretty fast and loose with favorite. But this one is so favorite that when we moved into our house, we moved into a new house in July of 22. And I first time in my life, I had a committed space for my own office at home. The first thing I did is reach out to Jen, my wife, her cousin, who is a wedding calligrapher, or I guess just calligrapher in general. I got her to write this out for me. We framed it, and it's in my office. It's that favorite. It's a prayer that we find in the book of Ephesians. So if you have a Bible with you, I would love for you to open that up, turn to Ephesians chapter 3. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, asked me if I could start to preach. Well, he said, can we buy new ESV Bibles for the church? Because you always preach from the ESV and it's confusing because you read from your Bible and it doesn't match anything anywhere. And I said, how about instead I'll just use my old NIV Bible and I'll preach from that. So you should be able to read along with me this year, which is a welcome change, I'm sure. So turn your Bible to Ephesians chapter three. What you'll find in verses 14 through 19 is a prayer. This is, this prayer has shaped almost everything about the way, and I'm tempted to say the way that I do ministry, but that's not really it. It's really the way I live life, the way I think about others, the way I pray for others. This prayer is what I pray over every new baby that's born to friends or to people at church. This is what I pray over people who are getting married, high school graduates, college graduates. This is what I pray over my children. It's what I pray over the church. It's what I pray over you when you're sick. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of plenty. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of need. This color is how I pray for everyone in my life. And so I wanted to start the year off by going through this prayer with you. So for the next four weeks, all the Sundays in January, we're just going to stay right here in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. It gives us a lot of time to pull it apart and look at it and understand it. Now one of the things that I think is really interesting about this prayer is you can find a prayer pretty similar to this in a lot of Paul's letters. This prayer is not dissimilar from what he prays for the rest of the churches. Now for those of you who don't know the Bible well enough to know Paul's letters, that's what I'm referring to, a significant part of the New Testament, two-thirds of it, is letters from Paul to churches. Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians. Those are letters to churches that Paul started on his missionary journeys, and then he writes a letter back to them for whatever reason, to admonish them, to encourage them, to convict them, to whatever, different purposes for different letters. And so in the middle of his letter to the church in Ephesus, he says, he prays this prayer. And what captures me, well there's a lot that captures me about the prayer, but one of the things I notice first when I read this prayer is the opening line. We're not going to read it just yet. But the opening line, we do read it, you'll notice. He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father from whom every family on heaven and on earth is named. So what he's saying in that first sentence is this. For this reason, I bow my knees. This is why I pray for you when I pray for you, which I do. This is what I pray. And if this is what Paul prays for all of the churches that he started, and if this prayer shows up in other letters, then isn't it worth examining the prayer and praying it over people in our lives? We're actually making this the prayer for grace in 2024. I believe there are some magnets involved. Are there magnets involved? Are we doing those? Yeah, yeah, we're going to do some magnets. In the next week or two, we'll have magnets with the verse printed on it so you can put it on your refrigerator, wherever you want to, so you can see it. And we would invite you to, along with us, make this your prayer for you and your family and the people you love and for grace in 2024. But when you think about what the prayer is, one of the things that stands out to me is what Paul does not pray for. I think almost as powerful as what he does pray for are the things that he leaves out. And this is what shapes the way I pray for people a lot. I want you to think with me, and I mean this. Do this exercise with me. Put yourself in Paul's shoes. The church in Ephesus is a church you started. You know the people there. You care about them. You spent time with them. You write them in other letters that you want to go there. But there's a wide door open for a great work where you are now. You can't go there now, but you long to be with them. And then you're writing them a letter. And you say, hey, when I pray for you, this is what I pray. What would you pray for them? We would probably pray for safety, right? Because persecution was rampant in the ancient world. So we'd pray for safety. We would probably pray for circumstances. I hope you heal up. I hope this works out. I hope God shores up your family. We'd pray for different situations going on in there. I think we would probably, if we're the leader of the church, pray for success. May God add to your numbers day by day, those who are being saved, that kind of prayer that we see in Acts. I think that we would pray for those things. And when we pray for people we know, what do we pray for them? Don't we pray those things for safety and for circumstances and for success for them? So it's interesting to me that Paul does not pray for safety, circumstances, or success in this prayer. You will not see those things in this prayer. And it stands out to me because I don't know if I have the right to call myself a history nerd, but I read a lot of it, and I listen to history podcasts, so do what you want with that. Thanks, I'm a nerd, Jeff says. But the ancient world knew what suffering was in a way that is totally anathema to us. Birth rates, infant mortality rates, most children, I mean a good number of children just dying in infancy or as really, really young kids. The average age is significantly down, suffering rampant across the board. And yet Paul does not pray for safety or for circumstances or for health. He's a church planter. He's ambitious, uniquely ambitious in the scope of human history. He wants this church in Ephesus to succeed. I know he does. I know he wants it to grow, but he does not pray for that. Look, look at what Paul prays for. And I think you'll understand why we're going to spend four weeks in it. I'm going to's the whole prayer. This morning, we're going to narrow down our focus to the first thing that he prays for. So there's a bit of an introduction. He says, this is when I pray for you, this is why I pray. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from every family on heaven and on earth is named. And then the first thing that he prays is that according to the riches of his glory, that you would be strengthened with power through the spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. The first thing that Paul prays for is salvation. The first thing that he prays for, for his church, is that they would be what we would call saved. That they would know Jesus. And it's interesting to me theologically, it's not much of a point, but I thought it was worth pointing out, the threefold involvement in the salvation process of salvation, what happens in salvation and how the Trinity, the God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, the Godhead are all three involved in the salvation process. If you're a note taker, this is down in your notes, but I've moved it up to this point in the sermon because I felt like it fit better here. But just notice in the salvation process that salvation is the result of the Father's riches, the Spirit's power, and the indwelling of Christ. We see all three parts of the Godhead involved in the salvation process according to the riches of His glory, God the Father. That you'd be given power through the Spirit. That you'd be indwelled with Christ the Son. So it's interesting to me that the Trinity shows up in the salvation process. And it's interesting to me that the first thing that Paul prays for is that they, church in Ephesus, you, global church, would be saved. Now, we're going to talk about why I believe it's so important that this is the first thing he prays for. But before we do that, I want to stop and I want us to understand what it is to be saved. Because I've been in church world literally my whole life. And I've been in ministry world for over 20 years, which is crazy to think about. And I've had enough conversations with enough people who I know are good church Bible-believing people who in that conversation betrayed to me a lack of understanding around salvation and what it is. So while I know that it could seem rather elementary to start the year with these two fundamental questions, how do I get saved and what happens when I am saved? I also know that if I were to talk to all of you and ask you those questions, that the answers would probably not be clear and concise and unilateral. So I think it's worth defining those things here. So what does someone have to do to be saved? And when I say saved, what I mean is to exist in right relationship with God. And actually, we're going to define this in a little bit, what happens when we are saved. So I'll leave it for that. But what does someone have to do to be saved? Well, Paul answers this in the book of Romans. Romans is the most thick theological, densely theological book in the Bible where he goes to great lengths to explain what salvation is. For the first eight chapters of Romans, he is building a systematic argument, an understanding of what it means to be saved. So if it takes Paul eight whole chapters to help a church arrive at a fluency with salvation, then certainly we can say what I'm going to give you this morning is the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more questions around salvation than I'm going to answer today. And if you have those questions, I would highly encourage you, talk to your small group leader. Talk to a friend who knows scripture. Come talk to me. Talk to someone you trust. Ask those questions. These are good questions to ask. But if we look at Romans chapter 10, verses 9 through 10, we can let Paul tell us what we have to do to be saved. Look at this with me. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. So, what do we need to do to be saved? We are saved when we confess and believe. That's what it is. We are saved. We become a Christian when we confess with our mouth and we believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. This is a more concise way of saying what I say often. Often, you can probably complete these sentences, I hope that you can by now, but I say often that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. A shorter way to say that is Jesus is Lord. Just within that is all that context. So we are saved. We are a child of God when we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. It's that simple. It's also worth pointing out, because of conversations I've had, what doesn't save us. Because I've been around church people long enough to know that we're not always trusting in the right thing to save us. Some of us put our faith in things that are ancillary, auxiliary to the salvation process. I know if you grew up in my tradition, it was really, really important that you nailed the prayer. You had to get the prayer just right. Anybody grow up praying the prayers? Yeah. And then you look at that as my salvation moment. This is when I asked Jesus into my heart. And then I'm saved. And then if you have a background like me, you're in church all the time. And so multiple times, I prayed that prayer for the first time at four and a half. I was at Sunday school. They told me about hell. That place seemed pretty bad. I was like, what do I have to do? You got to pray this prayer. I'm like, I'll pray it. I'm in. Seems easy. And then I told my parents about it. And my dad, who graduated from a Bible college, quizzed me. I passed the test. We went out for Butterfinger Blizzard. I was way more excited about the blizzard than I was that I was an adopted son of the king of the universe. So it's actually useful to point out that our understanding of salvation changes over our lifetime. What salvation was really clicked with me when I was 17. And I have a fresh and new depth of understanding of what it means to be a child of God every year that I walk with him. I think that's why Paul tells us in Philippians that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. When you're walking with God, your understanding of what it means to be his child and a citizen of heaven evolves and grows along with your faith. But I can remember, subsequent to praying that prayer when I was four, I'd be in other gatherings and there'd be a speaker, a youth event or a kids event or whatever. And at the end, he would do this thing. It was always a he in those days. He would do this thing and he would say, everybody bow your heads. Every head bowed, every eye closed. And then he'd say, if you don't know Jesus, would you just slip up your hand? I heard somebody over here say slip up your hand. We know slip up your hand. We know that. I have PTSD from slip up your hand. And then you're down and then the speaker would be like, I see that hand. Bless you back there. I see you. Do all that stuff. And who knows if hands are really going up or not. Some guys, I know for a fact, some guys fake it. Nobody's raising their hand. They just do it anyways. But you can't look, because if you look to know nobody's raising their hand, then it's like double whammy. You just sinned too, so you've got just trust the guy. Slip up your hand, and then he says, repeat after. If you just raise your hand, repeat after me. And so you repeat this prayer. And I can remember sitting there, and I would hear elements of that prayer that I didn't pray in my prayer. And I'm like, oh no. I'm damned. Like literally. This is a problem. So then I would pray that prayer just to make sure I was good. I've prayed the salvation prayer a bunch of times. I've gotten all the elements. Now here's the funny thing. The power of what saves me is in my desire to get the prayer right. It's confessing with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in my heart ardently, oh no, if he's not really my Lord, I need to say the prayer right. The belief and the confession is what God is working in to save my soul. I believe, I really do, my daughter Lily is almost eight. She's confessed with her mouth that Jesus is Lord. She believes in her heart, I know that she does, that Jesus is Lord. We've never sat down with her and prayed a prayer. I'm sure we will at some point. And that to her can be the marker of her salvation. That's fine. But Lily's as saved now as she can be because she's confessed and believed based on that passage in Romans. I'll tell you what else doesn't save you. And I don't say this lightly because I know that we have a lot of different traditions in here. And it's one of the things I love about our church, but baptism does not save you. It is not something that saves you is described as salvific. Baptism is not salvific. If,, and I say this very gently, if you are one who is sprinkled as a child, or you had your child sprinkled or baptized, and you're trusting that as what has saved them, I don't think you'll find that in Scripture. I don't think that's what we can cling to. We believe that baptism is actually, we teach that baptism is actually for people who have articulated a faith, who have articulated a confession and a belief, and that we baptize by immersion. I would stop here and say, if baptism is something that the Holy Spirit's been gnawing at you about, and you're hearing this at the beginning of the year right now, and you're going, oh shoot, he's talking to me. I am. I am talking to you. You should do it. Let's talk. But baptism doesn't save us. Baptism is a public profession of a private prayer. It simply declares that we're a child of God. Another thing that doesn't save us, and I bring this up specifically because I've been in conversations where parents have referred to this. And forgive me if I'm wrong on the wording. I did not grow up in a Presbyterian tradition or a tradition with this, but I believe somewhere around the age of 13, you take a confirmation class. Is that right, Lane? You nodded your head. Okay, good. You go through confirmation. And I've talked with parents before who are saying, how can my kids act like this? They went through confirmation. I know they're saved. And I had to say, to be saved, you confess with your mouth and you believe with your heart and isn't it possible as a 13 year old kid to be in a group of your peers going through class with the teacher that you respect and saying the things back to them that you're supposed to say and signing the papers that you're supposed to sign and being paraded up on stage like you're supposed to be paraded without ever actually believing what you're being taught. Doing it because this is what your peers are doing, this is what the teachers expect, this is what your parents expect. So that's not something I would cling to as evidence of salvation. We are saved by confessing and believing. That's what saves us. Now, what does it mean to be saved? When I say this word saved in right relationship with God, becoming a Christian, a believer, all the words, what do we mean? Well, Jesus tells us what he means in John chapter 5, verse 24. Look with me. These are the words of Christ. He tells us what it means to be saved. Very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life. When we are saved, Jesus himself tells us we will not be judged and we will cross from death to life. What it means to be saved, the simple way to think about it is being saved means I am a citizen of heaven. That's what it means. Simple way to say it. And it's such an important concept. That's why I chose it, that we're a citizen of heaven. Once we are saved, we don't belong here anymore. Earth is not our home. We are aliens and sojourners in a foreign land. And one day, God will take us home. But right now, we are aliens here. And our job as aliens and sojourners is to take as many people as we can on our way home as humanly possible. That's what we're here for. But it means that this place isn't our place and it's a really important concept, but I'm going to get a chance to preach about this concept in the middle of March, so I'm not going to belabor it here. But that's what it means to be saved, that we are no longer judged. We are no longer judged for our sins. Scripture teaches us that when God looks at us, once we have confessed and believed, once we have become a Christian, that when God looks at us, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That when he looks at us, he does not see our unrighteous deeds. He sees us covered in the sacrificial righteousness of Christ. The way it's phrased in Isaiah, and we're going to be in Isaiah after Easter. We're going to do a series called The Treasury of Isaiah, and I get to preach out of Isaiah 1, verses 10 through 18, and surprise, surprise, one of my favorite passages. The way it's phrased there is God says, though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. So when we are saved, we are no longer judged. We are no longer declared guilty for the things that we've done. And listen, this is, I know, I would say heady, but it's not, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. This is esoteric. God does not exist in time. He exists outside of time. We think. Who knows? Because I don't even think anyone understands that sentence. But because that's true when we become Christians, when he brings us into the fold, he forgives us of our sins past, present, and future. He forgives you of all the dumb stuff he knows you're going to do 10 years from now. We act like it's just from this point back, and it's all points. He covers over you with his righteousness and does not judge you. And then it says we pass from death to life. Death, whenever we see it in scripture, is always descriptive of an eternity absent of God. Just being dead, being cut off from God. So we pass from death to life. This is the punishment and the curse in the Garden of Eden. In the first couple chapters of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 3, we see the fall of man. And because Adam and Eve chose to sin, God says, you will now experience death. You will now be cut off. I think of it this way. I think of a tree and our sin, we're a branch on the tree, and our sin cuts us off of the tree and we fall to the floor helpless and essentially lifeless. Because we might not be dead yet, but we're going to die pretty quick. And then when we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we confess and we believe God and His goodness picks that branch up off the ground, grafts it back onto the tree, connects us to our source of life. We pass from death to life. That's what it means to be saved. We are now citizens of heaven, children of the King of the universe. So, if you didn't know that, now you do. If you did know that, then you just got to check the boxes. I'm good. Okay, I understood. Either way, that's a good outcome. Now, where I want to press us as a church in 2024 is thinking through the reality of where Paul chooses to put this prayer. This portion, this particular petition within the prayer. It's the very first thing that he prays. He prays for other things. He prays that we would be along with all of the saints. He prays for community. We're going to spend a week on that. He prays that we would know the surpass, that we would feel the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. We're going to talk about that. He prays that we would be filled with the fullness of God. We're going to talk about that. But before he can pray for those things, he has to pray for this thing. He prays for their salvation. I pray that you would know Jesus. It's the first thing that he prayed. It's the most important thing that he prayed. And it's interesting to me that he prayed it to a church, to a church full of people who very presumptively know Christ already. You don't just casually go to a Christian church in ancient Ephesus. It's not what the cool kids were doing. You don't just wander in there to try to make a sale. Like you go because you mean it and yet he prays for their salvation. I am deeply convicted that salvation was Paul's first priority and prayer for all he encountered. Salvation, that they would simply know God, that they would know Jesus, that he would dwell in their hearts through faith, was his first priority and prayer for every person that he encountered in his life. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Why would I pray anything else for you if I'm not praying that you know Jesus? Nothing in your whole life matters if you don't know Jesus, and everything after that matters in a completely different way once you do know Jesus. So why would I ever pray anything for you except that you would know Christ? And I said, this prayer shapes the way I pray for people. It shapes it in this way. Now when I pray for people, and some of you probably have heard me pray this, whether it's success or difficulty, I pray that all the events and circumstances in that situation would conspire to bring you closer to God, would conspire to bring you to a depth of Christ that's more full than you have now, that everything in your life would be, would conspire to bring you closer to Jesus. That's how this prayer color is my prayers. And I think it's incredibly important that Paul's first priority in prayer for every person that he meets is that they would simply know Jesus. Convicted of this, after I wrote the sermon this week, I emailed the elders. Every week, I come up with a prayer schedule for the elders. A little while ago, last year, I think sometime, we agreed. It's the dumbest agreement ever, because it's right there in Scripture, that one of the purposes of elders is to serve the church through prayer. So we said, how can we better do this? And we decided that every week I would make a schedule Monday through Sunday of here's what we should all be praying for today. Here's the one thing to include in our prayers as we pray for grace this week. And I write those on Mondays. And so when I finished writing the sermon this week, I wrote to the elders and, and it was the, you elders don't know, sometimes I sit there and stare at my screen for like 30 minutes. There's a huge hassle, but they're important to do. I did this in five minutes. And I don't remember the exact order, but it was Monday. Pray for your children that they would know Jesus. Just pray for your children that they know Christ. If you're sure that they already know Christ, pray that they would know him more deeply. Tuesday, pray for your small group, by name if you can. Pray that everyone in your small group would know Christ. If they already know him, pray that they would know him more deeply. Wednesday, pray for your service teams, the people that you serve with, including other elders, by name if you can, that they would know Jesus, that those who know Jesus would know him more deeply. And then it was community and neighbors. And then it was extended family. And then it was the people of grace, as many people as you can by name. And then the staff on Tuesday came in here and we went through the church. And one of the things I like to do sometimes, I don't do it as much as I need to, is I just sit in seats and I pray for the people who come to mind. Because you guys are creatures of habit, although the Morgans, you all are messing me up today. You guys are creatures of habit. You sit in the right seats. And I sit in your seats and I pray for you. And I go over there and I pray for you. And we pray that you would know Jesus. That's the prayer. Now here's the conviction. If that's Paul's first prayer and priority for everyone that he meets, shouldn't that be ours too? Shouldn't our first prayer and priority for every person we encounter be that they would know Jesus? What else are we praying for them if we don't do that? And then I started to think about this. What would happen if I shifted my perspective to Paul's perspective, and every person I encountered, the first and primary focus I had for them was I hope you know Jesus. How would that change my countenance? How would that change my life? How would that change my day to day? How would that change how I parent my children as they interact with others? How would that change my level of frustration in traffic? Think about that. If your first prayer and priority for everyone that you met, I think it's we did that, that what we would find is that we would begin to see people as objects of God's affection and not obstacles to our progress. We would begin to see people as objects worthy of God's affection, worthy of that reckless love that chases people down that we just sang about. And we would quit seeing them as obstacles to our progress. Now, I wrote this point specifically for me. So if it's helpful to you too, great. But I don't do so good with that sometimes. I was going to tell you guys a story about an interaction I had over the Christmas break, but the sermon's gone long enough, and I don't really have time to, and I don't really need to give you all the details. Just if I give you the premise, you'll fill in the blanks from there, I promise. I went to an AT&T store over the break. That's fun. I didn't say anything. Like if you just looked at the script, if it was a court transaction, and you just saw the words that I used, you wouldn't think I was being a jerk and that I had totally lost my patience. But if you hear them in a certain tone with a certain look on my face, you would understand that I was less than kind. And as I thought about this, I just deeply regret that interaction. And interactions like that that happened in my life. Where this person that I'm seeing is not an object of the Father's affection. This person that I'm seeing is an obstacle in the way of what I need to do. They're an annoyance. They're an obligation. Whatever word you want to fit in there. And so here's my encouragement to you. Make that your goal in 2024. That everyone you encounter, you would first think of as an object of the Father's affection. That your first priority for them would be that they would come to know Jesus. Pray that for your children. If they know him, pray they would know him more. Pray that for your coworkers. Pray that for your neighbors. And consider what would happen in your life, how your year would look different than 2023. If every person you encountered, your prayer was, God, I hope they know you. And if there's a way to move them towards that right now, I pray that you would use me to do that. How would that change your year? How would that begin to change your heart for others? So that's the challenge to you in 2024. As we make this our prayer for our families and our church and ourselves, we'll talk about the rest of what it means. But as we think about others and as we encounter others, let's let Paul's priorities be our priorities and make our first prayer and only priority for them be that they would know Jesus. As I finish, I'm going to pray. But before I do that, I'm going to leave some space for you to pray as well. I would encourage you right now to pray for the people that God's been bringing to your mind. Pray for the people in your life who might not know Jesus, that they would come to know Jesus. Pray with boldness and with faith. I love that we opened up the service with the song, There's Nothing That Our God Can't Do. Because some of us need to be reminded of that if we're going to continue to pray for that person to know Jesus. I have people in my life that I go through, I go through droughts of praying for them. Because sometimes I just don't think it's possible. But that's a faithless thought. Take a minute. Pray for the people in your life who don't know Jesus that they would know Jesus. If you're a parent, pray at first for your children. And just go out from there. And after a minute or two, I'll pray to close us up and Kyle's going to come up and we're going to have communion together. Heavenly Father, we just want to know you. Lord, would you give us your heart for those who don't know you? Would you give us just a portion of the desire that you have for us that we might feel that desire for you? God, for all the names that just got lifted up to you, we pray with faith and hope that they would come to know you. Lord, if there's a way to use us to bring others into a saving faith in you, I pray that we would open ourselves up to that. That we would be courageous, sensitive, bold, and caring. And we would share you with others. God, if you have an opportunity to use grace to bring people closer to you, we pray that you would do it. We offer you this space in our lives and ask that you use us in your plan to bring people into a saving faith with you. God, we thank you that you make it possible for us to know you. And we pray that you would give us the heart that you have to reach the people who don't. In Jesus' name, amen.