Sermons tagged with Kindness

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. One of the things I... Welcome and all the things. Thanks for coming online, whatever. One of the things I really like about getting to be the pastor at Grace, one of the pastors at Grace, is just how familial we are. We just feel like a family to me. I don't know how we feel to you, but that's how I feel. And one of the things that reinforced that this morning is we moved, some of y'all will notice that we moved the offering around. So we did the offering a little bit different and we tried to pass it. As we're doing it, two of my friends who I don't want to impugn, so I'll just call them Carter and Liz, looked at me. I turned around. They looked at me, and they're like, this is weird. Why are we doing this? And I had to go around and talk to them. Jen goes, where are you going? I said, just give me a minute. And I go around, and I'm like, listen, one of the things that Gibby and I have noticed about the service is that at the end of the service, once I'm done saying what I'm going to say, and then we sing, when someone comes back up here and goes, y'all sit down for just a minute, the whole room goes, oh, Jesus. Nobody wants to sit down for just a minute. We're done. We're ready to go. So we're trying to figure it out. And so I said, just give us a couple of weeks. Like I'm explaining to them in real time why we're doing this. And once I explained it, they were like, okay, that makes sense. We'll give it a couple of weeks and we'll, we'll let you know. So I look forward to the review, you two anonymous women over there. But that is what, one of the things I love about Grace. Last week, we launched into our series called A Letter to Rome, Painting a Picture. And I told you guys last week, and I mean this, and this has come up in very fun conversation too. There's different people that have different feelings about West Wing, some positive, some negative. But I told you guys last week that this was going to kind of be a West Wing series, meaning episode two is really not going to make as much sense to you as episode one if you haven't seen episode one. So my encouragement remains, and I never do this because I'm certainly not going to tout the values of my own sermons. I'm not going to do that. I'm never going to say, hey, you need to listen to last week. That was great. Like I won't, I've never done that. I won't do that. That feels gross. But what I will say is you do need to listen to last week just so you can keep up with this week if it matters to you. So I hope that you'll carry along. Last week in Romans 1, we kind of established those two things. First, this is going to be a different series where it's going to build week to week. Second, more importantly, the theme of Romans 1, what Paul was driving at, we capture at the end of the chapter. And I'm actually just, I'm just going to read it to you by way of reminder. This is how he ends the chapter because he, he greets them. And then he says, and this is where he spent a lot of time last week. God has revealed himself in nature. So no man is without excuse. God's God's revealed himself in such a way that we can all respond to him. Everybody who's ever lived, even someone who's born in a country where they never hear the name of Jesus before living and dying, even they have been revealed. God has revealed himself to them and they are held responsible for their response to that revelation. In the conclusion of Romans 1, he says this, and this is a tough passage, but this is where he lands the plane, and this is where we ended last week, so it's where I pick up this week. He says in verse 28, furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, this is the people to whom God has revealed himself. So God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do what ought not be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents, Davis. They have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy, although they know God's righteous decrees that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these very things, but they also approve of those who practice them. So this is a condemnation of society, essentially saying, and those are harsh words, but essentially saying, we are depraved. We are our own lords. We do what we think we should do. And what I said last week is this was true in 65 AD, around which this letter was written. And it is true now. This remains true of us 2,000 years later. That when left to our own devices, we will rebel from God and reject Him. Now, here's what's important. The Jewish mind responds to this with their heritage. So here's what to know about the letters in the New Testament. To whom are they written? We were talking about this in my Bible study on Tuesday morning, which if you're a girl, you can't come. If you're a dude, you can come. If you're a girl, you could come. It would just be weird. Okay. But 6.30 Tuesday morning, we meet right here. And it's my favorite hour of the week. Besides every minute that I get to spend with Jim. Besides that, that's my favorite hour of the week. And we were talking about Thessalonians, and someone said, to whom is this written? Is this written to Jews or Gentiles? It seems it's written to Gentiles. And something that the New Testament letters have in common, so there's the Pauline epistles, Paul's letters, and the general epistles, the general letters that are not written by Paul, but they're still written to people, they're still written to churches. All of them have in common this fact that was true in the ancient world. Most of the churches, Rome, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Colossae, all of them were founded by Jewish people who, because of the diaspora, they found common community. But then they began to add Gentiles to their church. And so when a letter is written, almost always, and I can't think of any exceptions, it's written first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. It's written first to the Jew, and this is really important to understand. It's written first to the Jew and then to the Gentile, but this brings up one of the fundamental tensions in the New Testament. You cannot understand your Bible without understanding this tension. The fundamental tension of the New Testament is for the Jewish believer to say, okay, we accept Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise to our father Abraham. We don't know all the ramifications of that, but we're open to learning them. I mean, place yourself in 40 AD when there's not 2,000 years of liturgy and history and theology, and you're trying to figure this faith out. What we don't think of enough, I think, as Christians is this is not a new religion. This is a continuation. Where you and I sit is a continuation and a confluence and a completion of what began as the Jewish faith. Now, I would not refer to the faith that Abraham had as Jewish. I would refer to it as faith. So do we have faith. It's the same. And if we read Hebrews, we find that to be absolutely true. And as we read Romans, we will find that to be true as well. But here's what we need to understand. We think of, I believe, as Christians, and Americans probably, we think of the Jews as another religion. They're another faith. The Jews are Mormon, They're Buddhist. They're Hindu. They're Muslim. We're closely tied, but they're different. No, I don't want to get into delineating the details of that, but here's what I want us to understand. What we would call the Christian faith is simply a continuation and completion of that faith that began. And in that faith, here's what we need to understand. In that faith, they had laws. They had traditions. They had things that they did all the time. They had ways that they grew up. They had gender roles. They had responsibilities. They tithed. They had festivals every year. One of the worst series I've ever done at Grace was when I made us go meticulously, you remember, through the festivals of the Jewish calendar. I made us do that one September. If you weren't here then, count your blessings, okay? Because I made us do that every Sunday. What a mistake that was. And at the time I was like, oh, this is so great. Anyways, I'm not going to get into it, but I regret it. But I made us do it. Kristen, what's the score? Overtime? Okay, overtime. Hey, no one else needs to say anything. Y'all shouldn't be checking your phone. It's her responsibility. We delegated this to her. Everybody else, you pay attention. Liz, that's twice. Gosh, I've totally, what was I talking about, Aaron? Juice? Yeah, okay. I got it. Thanks. Would y'all be quiet? I'm trying to start back. Gratia, we're too familial now, okay? Everyone needs to calm down. We need to take this more seriously. No, but here's my point, is they had all of their traditions, and those traditions weren't based on their preferences. They were based on what they believed to be law, what they believed God was preaching to them, what they believed God told them to do. So they're living out their traditions wasn't a matter of this is just how we do it in our family or how we do it in our country or how we do it in our culture. This is what God demands of us. So when they would have these festivals, they did it out of a sense of duty and ought and righteousness. When they had house rules, when they had gender roles, they didn't do it out of a sense of preference. They did it out of a sense of duty and ought and righteousness. And it's really difficult for us to think about this tension because what they were tasked with, and I don't think we can respect this enough, what they were tasked with as Jews was, hey, this whole new influx of people is going to become a part of your faith and you need to figure out how to integrate them. That's a huge tension in the New Testament. But that was what they were facing. There's going to be a whole influx of people into your heritage and your faith and you need to figure out how to integrate them. And what we find a lot in Paul's letters is him addressing this tension where the Jewish people, the Jewish congregation, rightly so, not to their fault, just it makes sense, are going, what do they need to do? What should we require of the Gentiles? They need to be circumcised. That at the the very least, needs to happen. That, which is, if we made that the measure of conversion now, we'd have a lot fewer converts, I think. But that's what they said then. They need to be circumcised. They need to follow our rules. They need to do what we do. And I bring up circumcision because that's what the Jews clung to as proof that they were reconciled to God, which is a fundamental idea in Romans chapter 2. Because the Jewish mind says, yes, everything that you said about humankind in Romans chapter 1 is true. All of that stuff, that hard group of verses that I read, that they have no love, they have no mercy, they slander and all the things that's accusatory of humankind. The Jewish mind goes, yeah, but I'm saved. That would be our words. Yeah, but I'm circumcised. Yeah, but I'm Jewish. Yeah, but I have my heritage. And so what we need to understand is the Jews believed they were reconciled by their heritage. And I'm intentionally using that word reconciled because in Christendom and in Christianity, we tend to use the word saved. I'm saved. Saved to what, from what? I don't think that's the most helpful word. I think the most helpful word is reconciled. Because of my sin, because of my rebellion, I have created a chasm between God and I. And now, if I want to spend eternity in his presence, I have to find out how to reconcile myself to him, how to fix that gap, how to close it, how to make things okay. And God in his goodness, and this is what we'll find in the rest of Romans, said, you can't reconcile yourself. So I'm going to send my son to reconcile you for you. But the Jewish mind says, well, because I'm circumcised, which is to them a sign that you are committed to following the law of God. Which basically says, well, because I'm born Jewish and because I follow the rules, I'm in. That's what's reconciling me to God. And the point of Romans chapter 2 is to tell the Jewish people, no, you're not. It is not circumcision that reconciles you. It's actually this in Romans 2 verse 12. This, I think, in my opinion, although it seems obscure, would be what I would look at as the summary verse of the idea that Paul is trying to communicate in Romans chapter 2, which is this. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. Now, I know that feels obscure, but here's the point. The Jewish mind says, because I follow the law, I'm good. I'm reconciled. Everything that God said, everything that Paul said about the condition of humanity doesn't apply to me because I'm reconciled to God because I follow the law. And Paul says, no, you're not. The Gentiles can be held accountable for the law, too. They respond to it in their heart. They follow it just like you do. You just have the blessing of greater knowledge of it, but it's not what saves you. It's not what reconciles you. It's not what brings you back to God. And the point of chapter 2 is to help that Jewish mind reconcile itself with the fact that their heritage does not redeem them. It is their faith. And that's what we have to learn from it too. So let's backtrack a little bit and apply that to our thinking. So the first thing I would do as I'm preaching through, and this is one of the things I'm trying to do in this series, is just do justice to the chapter. One of my favorite verses in this book is this here, and I'll get to it. So he's just, we've just read, remember with me, if you will, the finishing verses of chapter one that I read at the beginning that accuse us greatly of being, theologians would say, totally depraved. Here's what he follows with as he begins chapter two, and we land on a verse that I'm about to use, okay? Thanks. Shut up, you're a hypocrite too. That's what he's saying. Hey, pipe down. You're a hypocrite too. You do these things too. So maybe take it easy. That's what he's saying in these first three verses. And then he follows it with this, and this is the one I love. Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Here's why I like that verse. We have this, I think, sometimes picture of God that he sits in heaven and he judges us. And we disappoint him. And he's angry with us. And if we were, sometimes I think about, if I were to see God face to face right now, what would his countenance towards me be? And most often I answer that question with disappointment. Because if you were my God and you watched how I served you, wouldn't you be disappointed in me too? So I just assume that he's disappointed. I don't know what you think God's countenance is towards you. But I think most of us think it's probably negative. He's angry. He's disappointed. He's wrathful. But what's true is that that's not true. He loves us. He loves you. He loves you in this moment as much as is possible for anyone to ever be loved. No matter what you've done, no matter what the state of your repentance is, no matter what you brought in here, God loves you fiercely and absolutely. And so this verse reminds us of that because despite that love, all of us have some repenting to do. Don't we? All of us have something in our lives we need to fix. We need to apologize for. We need to own. We need to be better. We need to turn. Remember, repentance isn't just agreeing. Confession is agreeing with God about our sin. Repentance is to turn and walk away from it, to turn the other direction. All of us have some repenting to do, especially Charlie Healy. I can see you right now. All of us have, which is, you're a Panthers fan. All of us have some repenting to do. But I think that sometimes when we think about repentance, we believe that we need to respond to this God that's angry with us and coalesce to him. And that's really not the way that God has postured himself. We are told it's your kindness that leads us to repentance. And this verse, I told Jen right before I got on stage, I said, hey, I'm going to talk about you a little bit. And she goes, oh gosh, what? And I told her and she was like, okay. Arguing with Jen is like kicking a puppy. You can, don't grow too, I don't kick puppies, Elaine. I'm stubborn. I don't know if that's easy for you to believe, but I am. I'm hard-headed. I like to, I actually, I'm one of these weird people. I was talking with my friend Emil about this this week. I'm one of these odd people that I like conflict. One of the reasons I watch, I love West Wing is because they yell at each other the whole time. And I think to myself, I wish I could work in an environment like that where I didn't have to try to be so nice all the time. I wish I could just give it full throttle. I like conflict. When I come at you, I want you to come back at me. And here's why God blessed me with my wife, because she will never do that. If I go at her, she's like, you're right. I'm sorry. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how this is supposed to go. So then what ends up happening when we have disagreements, which are scant, they never happen. And they're very surfacy and they don't matter a lot when they do. But when we have disagreements, also I'm kidding. When we have disagreements, it's her kindness that brings me to repentance. It's the fact that if I just say my piece, she goes, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And then I'm the one talking more going, no, no, no, that doesn't make sense. I'm actually sorry for this and this and this and this. And then I start to own all of the things that I should own. Then I start to take responsibility for my actions. And it's not because she told me to. It's not because she convinced me to. It's not because she got mad at me and argued with me. It's because she was kind and gracious and good. And in the face of that kindness and that goodness and that grace, my instinct is to go, okay, I'm sorry. Here's what I should do. This is how God's kindness leads us to repentance. I've said before, you will win every argument you ever get into with God. If you want to argue with God, you'll win. He will not insist upon you. You just don't want to win those arguments. You're wrong. He'll be gracious with you, and His kindness will lead you to your own repentance. Does that make sense? It's not God being hard on us that leads us to repent and follow him. It's his kindness and his disposition towards us and his love for us that makes us go, okay, okay, okay, I'm actually sorry. I'll do this different. I'll do this better. So I love that verse because we are reminded that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Now I told you the Romans 2.12, that is, I think, the clarifying verse where it talks about the Jewish mind and what they have to do. But here's why I bring that up and I think it's important for us, is I think it's important for the American church to think about what do we believe reconciles us to God? What are we clinging to? This is actually the big question from Romans chapter two is what are you clinging to? What are you clinging for your reconciliation? As we think about this confrontation that Paul has with the Jewish people, and he says, hey, we're totally depraved. Everyone's sinful. And the Jewish mind goes, well, not me, because I'm a Jew. I follow the law. They cling to their heritage to reconcile them and solve this problem. I wonder about you, American church, when you hear that group of verses at the end of chapter one that talks about the state of humanity, what happens in your mind to excuse yourself from that? What happens in your mind to go, yeah, that's Paul talking about other people, not me. What are you clinging to? Because I heard a pastor named Alistair Begg, who has a Scottish accent, so everything he says sounds smarter and it's not fair, Say one time, if you were to show up at heaven and they were to ask you, why should we let you in? If your answer begins with me or I, then you don't understand. Because let me tell you what you should be leaning on for your reconciliation to God. This. Nothing you've done. It's not a prayer that you prayed when you were six. It's not getting sprinkled or dumped. It's not singing the songs. It's not coming to church. It's not reading your Bible and praying every day. All those things are good. But do you know what puts you in right standing before God? What happened here? And that's it. The conclusion of the story with Alistair Begg, and I'll do it in greater justice later, is he pretends that he's a person going to heaven. And they said, why should we let you in? And he says, I don't know. He just said that I could come. I didn't do anything. He just said I could be here. So I think it's important to stop and understand that the Jewish people looked at their heritage. The American church, we look at our rule following. We look at a prayer that we prayed. We look at things that we say or actions that we do or we lean on ourselves in different ways. But it's important to remember that, no, no, no, just like the Jews, the Jewish people in Rome, sometimes we can lean on things that are not actually reconciling us. And what reconciles us to God is the cross. Here's my last thought today. And then I'll wrap up because it's in chapter two, and I think it's important. At the end of chapter two, there's this statement, and I think it's a profound statement. I'm going to start reading in verse 21 because he's talking to the Jewish people. He says this, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law as it is written? This is the point. God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. This is a hard truth. And here's where it hits home for us. I'm going to do a sermon about this either the week after Easter or I'm going to do a four-part series in September about this point because I think it's important for us. And before I do it, Kristen, we just won. USA. Great. Perfect timing. Thank you, Kristen. Please put away your phone. That statement there, and this is just something for us to think about as church members, as church people. God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, Paul says. Now, here's where that touches me. The American church, the public opinion of the American church is at an all-time low. People are leaving the church in droves. Kids are growing up in the church and not coming back. We, as a whole scale institution, are failing. And the church is seen as an agent of judgment, of wrath, of harm, not healing and not love. Now, I'm not going to tell you how I think the American church should position itself within our current culture because I think that's tricky. I might tell you later, but not today. But what I will point out is this statement, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, speaks to us. Jesus's name is resented amongst the unchurched because of us. Our tendency is to look at people who don't go to church, to look at people who don't have faith, and to blame them and to say, it's your fault. You don't want a Lord. You're not humble enough. You won't follow the rules. You can't get in line. And we kind of blame them for their lack of faith. And what this verse says and what it says to us is, no, no, no. It's our fault. It's the church's fault. And here's why I'm going to linger here for an entire Sunday or a series. Because I think, church, we need to own that. I think we need to own that fault. It is because of the church that Jesus' name is resented amongst the unchurched. It's not their fault, it's ours. So what do we do about it? Here's what I think we can do. I believe this with all my heart. It is what I would admit to you is the primary reason I continue to pastor at Grace. And don't go make more money and have better vacations and a nice mini van. Because I believe that the American church has gotten it wrong. But I also believe that with the people we have here, with the staff we have, excluding me, with the leadership we have, excluding me. We can get it right. And I think that we have an opportunity in this little corner of the kingdom to which God has entrusted us to restore people's faith in Jesus and restore people's faith in church. And I want to do that together. And we do that together by loving people well. And there's so much more to say about that. But I'll leave it there. I think we have a chance at grace to restore people's hope in what church can be and to do things the right way and for it to not be true of us that the Gentiles blaspheme God's name because of us. I think we can lead ourselves in that way. And I hope that we'll be on board with that moving forward. I'm going to talk more about this in the future. So as I finish, let me land the plane on Romans 2, what Paul is getting at, which is we're evil and we're sinful. We need to be reconciled with God. On what are you trusting for your reconciliation? Let me pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word. Thank you for Romans and what it is. God, we pray that we would be led to repentance by your kindness, that we would trust in that and that we would see that. God, we pray that the Gentiles, that the people who don't know you, that the unchurched would not blaspheme you because of us, that they would not resent the name of your son because of us, but rather they would be drawn to you because of how we love and how we obey and how we repent that your kindness leads us to. Let us be a reflection of your love onto this world and let grace be a church that restores people's belief in what this can be. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for joining us in that way. We are beginning our new series, or we're continuing in our new series, called You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is to take the wisdom of Proverbs, proverbial wisdom, written by King Solomon, who the Bible claims is the wisest man who ever lived, and to look at some of his wisdom and say here at the top of the year, if we confront ourselves with it, if we listen to it, I bet, I bet that by the end of the year, you'll finish 2026 being glad that you listened to the wisdom of Solomon here at the top of the year. You guys will have to forgive me. We've got a small contingent of Bills fans in the church, and they're all sitting in the front row with, I even forget the name of those pants, but there's a particular, what's the name of those kinds of pants, do you know? Zubas, yes, that look like zebra stripes, and then Susie's got on the best fan shoes I've ever seen in my life, so I just need to say that out loud before I can continue as if there's nothing happening right in front of me. But we're looking at this proverbial wisdom, and one of the reasons I wanted to do it, and one of the reasons I wanted to spend a month looking at the wisdom of Proverbs is because one of the best things I've ever done is to take very seriously reading the book of Proverbs. You've heard me say, hopefully multiple times, that the greatest habit anyone in their life can develop is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. And I still believe that to be true. And there was a season where for three years, every day, I read a Proverb dated as just read a chapter. It's a great place to start. And if you want to read your Bible and you don't know where to start, you don't know how, that's where I would encourage you to begin. If you are someone who reads your Bible, I will tell you that most days for three years, I read whatever proverb was commensurate with that date, that day, and then read whatever else from the Bible I wanted to read that day. And those were some of the richest three years of my life. I immensely enjoyed it and never got tired of reading those Proverbs. So that's a good place to start. And if you hear nothing else from me today of any value, but you leave here and you go read Proverbs every day for the next year, I promise you, you'll be glad you did. This morning, we're going to look, did you like that, Tom? This morning, we're going to look at a proverb about generosity. And I said this in the Gracevine this week. I send it out. And if you're here and you don't get the Gracevine, you don't know what that is, and you would like to receive it, just please fill out a connection card or email me, and we'll get you on that distribution list. But I said in the Grace Find this week that we were going to be talking about a proverb on generosity. And those of you who are my church friends and church people, you know that generosity is pastor code for give us some money. Generosity is code for I'm going to preach a sermon compelling you to give to the church because we need to get some stuff done. And I want to ally that fear this week. Maybe that's why it seems a little bit more thin this week than last week is because I sent that email out. Those of you who have been here for a long time can attest to this. I've never preached a sermon trying to get you to give to grace, nor do I think that the New Testament teaches that you need to give 10% to your local church. I don't even think the New Testament teaches you need to give 10%. I think it just is a good marker based on something that happened in Genesis with Melchizedek and Abraham that we'll talk about later. But I don't even think the New Testament teaches you that. So you'll never hear me preach a sermon trying to compel you to give to grace. So that's not what we're doing this morning. But what you will hear me do, hopefully, repeatedly, is preach sermons on generosity. And the sermon on generosity would make particular sense this morning as it relates to the strategies and desires of grace, because you guys are well aware, we just had a big push towards this building campaign, and we're're hitting go and we're going to try to be in there by the end of next year. So that's particularly relevant to our church. But that's not what I'm preaching about this morning. I can tell you that next week one of our elders, David McWilliams, who's faithfully operating the camera back there, is going to give us an update. We had end of the year giving. We have some very good, exciting news to share. He's going to give us an update. We just want another week to get all of our numbers together so that what we present to you will be the most accurate thing possible. We don't want to talk in what ifs and hypotheticals. We want to talk in precision. So David's going to do that next week. By the way, David has been serving with Jim Adams for a year now as elders, and we still have yet to bring them up here and pray over them because I'm not good at planning things like that. Also, just while we're here, Wes and Doug served for six years, and I was supposed to bring them up here and pray for them too. I've not done that yet either. So Wes, David, Doug, Jim, sorry. But as we think about generosity this morning, I think this proverb allows us to frame it up in a very robust, encompassing way so we can think about the idea of generosity from a more holistic view. So let's look at Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, which simply says this, a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. I don't think that we think about generosity the way that Solomon frames it up here. First of all, he says, a generous person prospers. And we should be careful there because we're tempted to kind of fall into a health and wealth gospel that says, the more that I give, the more that will be given back to me monetarily. The more money I give away, the more God will bless my bank account. And that's really terrible teaching, and it ends up making poor people poorer. So that's not what we want to do. So we have to understand what prosper is. And we have to open ourselves up to maybe it means more than just prospering financially. And one of the ways that we prosper is what follows. He who refreshes people will be refreshed. The people who refresh others will be refreshed themselves. I think that opens us up to what prosperity there actually is. But I like this verse because it doesn't tell us how to be generous. It just tells us to be generous. And that the more you give to other people, the more you refresh others, the more you restore the souls of others, the more you look out for others, the more you care for others, the more your soul will be refreshed. And I think that's a really helpful and valuable way to think about generosity. And the truth of it is, God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. All the way back at the beginning of the Bible, beginning in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where the laws are meted out for the ancient Israelites, for the ancient Hebrew people. God is very diligent and fastidious about making sure that his children are generous people. He says, care for the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners, which means care for those who can't care for themselves. Care for the widows because they have no way to make money and no one's paying for them. They need your help. Care for the orphans because they have no way to take care of themselves. Take care of them. Take care of the sojourners, the aliens, the people who are foreign, who are coming to your country from other places. We should always have a heart for them and their plight. So take care of them. And God gets so specific as to give this law in multiple places in the books of Moses. When you harvest your fields, leave the corners there, healthy, ready to be picked. For who? For the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners. Leave that there so that they can wean from your crop. That ethic, that ethos is there from God at the very beginning of the Bible. And then we see again, Abraham meets the king of Salem, a mysterious figure, the most fascinating figure in the Bible to me, Melchizedek. And he, upon meeting him, gives Melchizedek 10% of everything that he has. And this 10% law becomes called the tithe, and it gets written into Jewish law, Hebrew law, which we inherit in the New Testament. And it was so extensive that they gave, those who were being as righteous as possible, would give 10% of everything that they owned. They would literally empty the pantry and give 10% of the cream of mushroom soup can that they had and give 10% of the spices. They would give 10% of everything. That's how important it was to God to write it into law to do in that way that his people would be generous. Then we get into the New Testament and we see Jesus teach generosity over and over and over again. And listen, almost every time it's taught, it's taught to be generous in order to care for the have-nots. It's almost always taught as don't tithe to be obedient, don't tithe to be blessed, but give what you have to give to take care of the people who don't have something to give. This is the story of the widow's mite, where the rich man gives a bunch and the widow gives all she has, and it's two pennies. And Jesus says she just gave more than he did to the kingdom of God. We cannot argue with the idea that our God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. With that in mind, I would like for us to consider how we can be generous. We're going to swallow the frog and do the obvious one first. We can be generous with our finances. We can be generous with our finances. This is the obvious one, and this is where our brain goes when we think about generosity. And so I'd like to talk about this, but then spend the rest of our time on other ways to be generous. But I was listening to a book recently, and some of you guys like to judge people for listening and not reading, because you're stuck up. And it was by an author named Scott Galloway, who is, it's difficult to define what he does. He sits on boards, he runs companies, he's a professor of economics at NYU, and he's someone that I find interesting and thoughtful. And he wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man, and that's something I've thought about a lot is I've got a son named John who's four and a half. And I don't know why the half matters. He's four. I'm a grown up. And then I have a daughter named Lily who's going to turn 10 here in a week. And I think a lot about what is it that I want to teach to John that I don't want to teach to Lily? What is it that Jen, my wife, should teach to Lily that she doesn't teach to John? And I don't have a good answer for that. And I would invite this, if any of you have answers for that, I want that discourse. Particularly if you're a little bit longer in the tooth than me. Then I really want to hear that. If you're shorter in the tooth, maybe just relax. But he wrote a book, Thoughts on Being a Man, and I would, the only criticism I have, I'm not recommending it to you. There's cuss words, so as a pastor, I cannot recommend it. But the only critique I have is I really think it would better be titled Thoughts on Being a Human. Because the things that he was espousing in there didn't feel to me like things that only men should think about. I think women should think about these things too. And Scott is a devout atheist. He has respect for people of faith, but he's not a person of faith himself, and he's open about that. But in his book, and he's become, by any stretch of the world's measure, very successful, all right? He's in his mid-50s, really successful dude, flying on private jets when he goes places, that kind of thing, all right? But here's what he said, and this is what I thought was interesting that I wanted to share with you. He said when he started his career, it was all about accruing for himself. It was all about what he wanted to get. It was all about getting rich and getting more for himself and just build, build, build, build, build. But that one day, once he felt like he had enough, there was this seismic shift in his mindset. And he became a lot more interested in being a generous person than being an accumulator. He realized it made him feel good. This is wild. It made him feel good to buy dinner. In his words, it made him feel like more of a man. In my words, I would say it made you feel like more of a grown-up. But the way that he phrased it was, it made me feel like more of a man to buy dinner for my friends, to take my friends on trips that I could afford and let them come. It made me feel like more of a man to give things away. And again, I'm not trying to be over-masculine here. I think it really makes us feel like more of a responsible human. But he said that there was this shift, and after that shift that he made this decision, that he made it his goal to give away more money every year than he spent. Not more money than he made, but give away more money than he spent on himself. And he said, in doing this, it makes me feel better about myself and about who I am. Makes me feel like a better human. This, to me, and if Scott were here, he might push back on this, but this, to me, is an atheist nodding towards the way his creator inclined him to be. What he was saying in his book was, when I refresh others, I am refreshed. And I realized it made me feel better to give away my resources than it did to accrue them for myself and my own selfish ends. And my challenge or my thought to the church this morning, because this is a room of largely church people, is if an atheist can stumble upon the simple joy of generosity and find in his own experience that he is refreshed by refreshing others, then can't we as Christians learn from that lesson and be people who seek to be generous? I told you the story a few weeks ago of the former student that I have, a kid named Alex. He's not a kid anymore. He's in his 30s. He graduated in 2010, and he and I haven't had a ton of contact since then, but I've always thought very highly of him and been glad that he's been in my life and that I had the opportunity to be in his. And he had a tough story and ended up not going to college. He had to watch his brothers when he was 19 years old. But he found a way and he became a general contractor. And some of you know the story, but just by way of refreshing, he reached out to me a month or two ago, and he just said, hey, I'm making good money now. That's not what he said, but that's pretty much what he said. I'm making good money now. I want to be generous. I want to give. I want to honor God the way that he's blessed me. I want to bless others. What can I do? And he, to answer that question, drove. He had a job in Charlotte. He lives in Atlanta. So he drove the day before the extra two and a half, three hours from Charlotte to Raleigh, met me, took me to Sullivan's where I got a bone-in filet, which is really great. And then we met in my office and I said, hey man, here's six nonprofits that I know of whose founders I know very well, who I trust and love. Let me just tell you what they do and you tell me where, and then you just do whatever you want. I don't need to know, but then you can kind of figure out where your heart's led, which ones of these capture you, yeah? And that conversation led to him having breakfast the next day with the founder of one of the non-profits and then giving that founder the largest single donation they've had in the history of that non-profit. That's cool, isn't it? Now listen, Alex also told me in that conversation, in our discourse about wanting to be generous, that out of this desire to simply be generous, he had a job in downtown Atlanta. They were building a building or they were refurbishing one or whatever. There was a job with a fence and the things and all the stuff. And he would go there every day. And he said on his way there, he would go to the ATM and get out cash. And keep it in his truck. Because there was homeless people surrounding this job site. And he would make sure to go around and give money to every homeless person that was there. Because he felt like he had the opportunity to do that and he wanted to do it. Now here's where our brain goes. Okay? And here's where mine went. Dude, that's not wise. There's a better way. I love your heart. There's a better way to give money than to do that. And that's why he and I were having the conversation. Let's think about a wise way to do it so we can make sure that that money's going to God's kingdom. We can make sure that's an effective expenditure. But here's why I tell you this story this morning. It's to say that what I truly believe, and this is just my opinion, you may disagree. What I truly believe is the spirit of generosity that led him to give in both situations, whether it's a large donation to a responsible nonprofit or smaller multiple donations that we really don't have any control over, in God's eyes are the same. Because it's not about what we give. And I don't even think, and I'm careful when I say this, because I do think we need to give to God's kingdom. But it's not about what we give, and I'm not always convinced it's about where we give. It's about the fact that we just give. So we should be generous financially, whatever that looks like for us. We should also, I believe, be generous with our time. This is not a way we think about generosity, but it is a way we think about our days. And the story that I will share about being generous with our time is actually critical of me, which is what I would prefer. I'd much prefer a story where I look bad than to tell you a story where I'm the hero. So I'll tell you a story where I look bad. In November, we went home for Thanksgiving, and I needed to preach that upcoming Sunday. My dad is a CPA. He has his own firm, and he was going into the office on Tuesday morning, and I said, hey, dad, can I come into the office with you? Excuse me. I said, can I come into the office with you on Tuesday? I need to write a sermon. I've got a couple things to do, and I'd like to get that done and be done with it so I can just focus on family this week. He said, sure. So we rode to the office together. And on the way to the office, I'm thinking about, and I think some of us can relate, I've got a lot of work to do. I have a very important task to write a sermon for 145 people to listen to. This is the most important thing happening in the whole world. Thank you for the laughter over there. That was what was intended. But that's where my head's at. I have to get this done. I have to do this. And there was some other things I needed to do. So I was really focused and I was in what we call in my family task mode. Like I'm not interacting, engaging. I'm just trying to get stuff done. And so we get to the office and we're walking in and dad stops. There's a car pulling in and he stops and he says, oh, that's so-and-so. And he kind of steps back. Like he's going to wait on so-and-so to get out of her car and come see us. And this is where, if you'd like to be disappointed in me as your pastor, this is a great place to start. I looked at dad and I said, what difference does it make? And he went, okay. And we went inside. Because my thought was, dad, this is just practical brain, okay, I'm sorry. Practical brain. I'm never going to talk to this lady again in my life. I don't know who she is. She only knows who I am because I'm your son. I don't want to talk to her. I have a job to do. I need to get done quick because my wife has the kids with her mother-in-law out on the town. And she'd really like me there as a buffer, frankly. She'd like me to be there. I need to go. So I need to get this done as soon as I can. I need to get in the car. I need to drive to Monroe and go to some stupid store I don't care about so that I can hang out with my family. That's what I need to do. That's the pressure that I feel. So when dad says that so-and-so, I think, who cares? What's it matter? And so he's like, okay. So we go inside. My sister works for dad and she had brought us Chick-fil-A biscuits that morning, which are the worst of all the biscuits. And they really are. They're the worst. And she has the Chick-fil-A biscuits, but I am grateful it's free biscuit, fine. And I said, Dad, where can I work? What conference room or cubicle are you going to tuck me into? And he says, well, you know, you can, one of those down there. He goes, but don't you want to eat first? And I said, again, practical brain. No, Dad, I'm visiting you for three days, all right? I don't need to have breakfast right now. I'm going to go eat the biscuit while I write the sermon and get my important work done. And so I said, no, Dad, I'd really just like to get to work. He's like, okay. So I go get to work, and I write the sermon. I text Jen. I'm done. Where are you guys at? I go to the thing, and we do the things. And then, this is why I'm telling you the story, that evening, Dad snaps at me about something that was pretty innocuous. And those of you who, I have a good relationship with my parents, but Dad and I can get on each other's nerves. And those of you, Kristen's nodding her head as she sits next to her dad. All right, perfect. Let's just unpack this right now, Sartoriuses. If you have grown kids, you know you can get on their nerves. If you still are fortunate enough to have your parents, they know how to get on your nerves, you know how to get on them. We got on each other's nerves. And I thought it was silly. And I finally, I didn't snap, but I just kind of said, I don't know what you want me to do. You know, we were talking about whatever. And I just, like, I needed to go. So I stepped away. And I came back after a calming down period of 72 hours. And it was like 15 minutes later, I said, hey, Dad, I'm sorry. That's not how I want to handle that, but here's what's upsetting me. And he said, I understand. And we started talking. And here's what I learned, and this is why I'm sharing this story. He said, son, essentially, you matter a lot to me. I talk to you a lot. I talk about you a lot to my employees. And it would have meant a lot to me for you to have taken the time to have met them and to be gracious with them. But you were too self-important and you couldn't. And that's why I'm upset. And I went. What a lesson. What a lesson. I don't like saying this, particularly on a permanent record. But he was right, and I was wrong. I was so focused on my tasks and what I needed to get done that I couldn't see the value in investing my time in people. And so I missed a chance. How much better would my afternoon have gone if I would have simply been generous with my time and honored my dad? How much more refreshed could I have been by taking the time to meet the different people that he wanted me to meet. How arrogant of me to think that I have nothing to benefit from small talking and exchanging pleasantries and shaking hands and learning names. What, honestly, what a jerk. And so it was a lesson. Be generous with your time. How many of us have opportunities throughout the week when someone imposes on our time and we have a task or we have a thing that we want to do, but this coworker has texted us, this coworker has popped in, this person has emailed us, this person has called us, this friend needs us. It might be dinner time, but they don't normally call at this time, so what are they calling about? How often do we have opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss for whatever reason? Maybe your reason isn't task-oriented self-importance like me, but maybe it's something else, but how often do we have the opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss because we don't think of those times as opportunities for generosity. We just think about them as impositions on our schedule and on our tasks. I'm reminded as I think of this, every time I read through the Gospels, I am amazed at Jesus' generosity with His time. Those of you who have read through the Gospels, can you recall the amounts of times that Jesus finishes an arduous day or week of ministry? Does the Sermon on the Mount, heals people, speaks to people, casts out demons, teaches, combats with the rabbis, and then once that's done, it says Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray. He went off to be by himself and to rest and recruit. And here's what stuns me is how many times in the gospels it says after finishing a day like that or an event like that, Jesus goes off to pray by himself and on his way to do that, someone says, Rabbi, can I talk to you? Will you talk to my mom? Will you come meet my son? They need you. And Jesus always, sure, what do you need? Yes, I would love to. Yes, let me talk to you. Yes, let me pray to you. Jesus is the greatest example of someone who is generous with his time. And I think, I suspect, that we can probably all be more generous with ours. The last idea about generosity I want us to consider is that we can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our disposition towards others, with our assessment towards them, with the benefit of the doubt we are willing to give them. I had a friend in college named Paul Honeycutt. Paul Honeycutt and I, we played on the soccer team together and we did the landscape crew together. We were in charge of keeping the grounds of Toccoa Falls College pristine and we did great. It was a fun job. I got to do the zero turn mowers and the weed eaters every day and I loved it. And Honeycutt was this really interesting guy because Honeycutt was cool. Everybody liked Honeycutt. Everybody did. He had all the friends in the world. And at this stage in life, try to remember, you know, I've been in high school and now college and cool people are cool. Cool people, they make friends easily. They make friends well. And they tend to be a little bit exclusionary in the way they move through the world. If you're not as cool as them, they're not going to give you their time. They're not going to be as nice to you. It can get to be exclusive, right? And so that was my experience of cool people. And Paul was cool. Everybody liked Paul. But Paul was unique in that he was kind to everyone. We ran in the same circle, and I watched some people try to get into the circle, and other guys in the circle would kind of hold them in arm's length. I don't know if you're going to cut the mustard. I don't know if I like the cut of your jib. What a great phrase that is. But I don't know. So they kind of hold them away. But Paul was always the first person to welcome them in and to make them feel like a part of things and to be a good host and to be a generous person with his spirit. And I remember asking him one time, this is now 25 years ago, I think, and I still remember the conversation. I asked him something to the effect of, Paul, you're so nice to everybody all the time. How are you this nice to everyone? And Paul said this simple phrase to me, and I'll never forget it. He said, Nate, if they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. Isn't that great? If they're cool to Jesus, thanks Jeff. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. If Jesus likes them, I do too. And here's the problem for us Christians. Jesus likes everybody. How inconvenient is that? I don't know. I've thought about this over the years and I'm not going to make any declarative or definitive statements this morning. I really don't know how much space there is for us to choose to not like somebody. I don't know how much space there is for that. I don't know how much space there is for us to just hold a grudge against somebody. I don't know how much space there is to think the worst of somebody and write them off. Now listen, I want to be very careful. I'm not asking us to trust everyone and to make ourselves vulnerable to everyone and to return to painful relationships when they've burned us in the past and it's hurt so much. I'm not asking you to be unwise. Scripture says that we should be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as vipers, and I think that that absolutely applies. But what I am saying is, I'm not sure how much space we have to just choose to not like someone and write them off. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. And unfortunately, Jesus likes everybody. So I think maybe you don't have something to learn from my buddy Honeycutt, but I still do. And here's where I would say this too, and I say this carefully. Our country is very divided right now. We know that. By simply saying that statement, everybody in this room just tensed up about 25%. Here's my estimation of part of that division. Is that we are not generous in spirit towards the people who don't vote like us. And what I've noticed is our tendency is to think and assume the worst of them. But what if we would be more generous in spirit and assume the best of them? Not just politically. People who think differently than us. People who don't share the values that we do. People who don't root for the bills. What if we started to view generosity as being a way to assume the best of others, to believe the best of others, and to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever we could? Let me tell you what would happen. Not just on a church level, but on a personal level. It is refreshing to refresh others. This series is called You'll Be Glad You Did. If you will listen to the wisdom that Solomon wrote down, you'll be glad you did. This week, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of people we are in regards to generosity. And my main point is, how refreshing would it be to spend this year being more generous with your resources, with your time, with your spirit, with your demeanor towards other people. And here's what I would challenge you with. If you think about these things, and there's other ways to be generous as well, but if you'll just think about these things. How can I this year be generous with my finances? How can I this year be generous with my time? How can I this year be generous with my spirit towards others? I highly doubt you'll finish the year and think, I wish I'd have kept more of it for myself. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this church body, for this family. Thank you for the love that we share and the community that we have. God, all of us in this room have been given resources. From your fullness, we have received grace upon grace in different ways. And I pray, God, that you would increase our heart and increase our desire to be people who are characterized by generosity. May we be people who are happy to give, who are happy to refresh others, and in so doing find that you refresh us as we do. Give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear opportunities for generosity. And give us the willingness to step into those. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors and I get to preach the sermons. And so I'm grateful that you're here and I'm grateful that you've made grace a part of your morning if you're watching online. Thank you for doing that as well. But I will say up front that I'm going to be a little bit more brief than normal because I have a high degree of respect for the fact that many of you are here this morning to see your grandchild, and that's done, and now you're just thinking about lunch, all right? So I try to pride myself in reading the room, so loud and clear, all right? But we do find ourselves in a series, here we go, a wassailing, where we're focused on Christmas carols and looking at where they come from in Scripture and seeking through that understanding to imbue them with a greater meaning so that as we sing them as a congregation and as we sing them in our cars and listen to them, I've shared with you that Lily and I have a Christmas playlist that we listen to on the way to school in the mornings beginning November 1st. And so as we hear them and as we sing them and as we celebrate them, if we focus on them this Christmas season, maybe they can be imbued with greater meaning for us. And so that's what we're doing is we're looking at different Christmas songs and understanding them from a biblical perspective or what the thrust of them really is. The song that we're looking at this morning, and Jen and I, I want to personally apologize to you, Jen. Jen's my wife. She's sitting right there. We have laughed in our house, and I don't know if y'all have heard this phrase, but we hate it when someone says, and if you've said this, we don't hate you. We just think this phrase is ridiculous. This thing is giving this thing vibes. This is giving this vibes, right? We've heard this phrase. The song this morning gives buying presents for your parents vibes, okay? And I'm sorry to say that, but there's not a better way to structure it. And here's what I'm talking about, and you guys are probably familiar with this. Every Christmas, you need to buy your parents something, right? Like that's the nice thing to do. And it's always difficult to buy presents for your parents because they're richer than you. Mostly. I saw a clip of Dwayne the Rock Johnson and the interviewer asked him, you just bought a house for your mom. And Kevin Hart was next to him and he said, yeah, about time, a billion dollars later, he bought a house for his mom. But most of us in the room are not positioned to buy houses for our parents. And so what's probably true of you, though I don't know, but what's probably true of the majority of us is that when it comes time to buy gifts for our parents, if they want it, they would have it. And if they can't afford it, neither can you. Maybe my dad wants a nice new car. Well, that's not coming from me. I'm not putting the bow on the Lexus. Also, before I just keep going, I have to say this. I have to, because he deserves some credit. Cason Smith, Carter's son, who takes after his mom and his dad is not in the room. He's the worst. Y'all couldn't see him because he's a fifth grader and he's one of the taller ones. So he was back here. But when they started practicing, Cason moved away from everybody else because he needed room to explore the space and to dance and to perform. And if you could peek through the heads, and you didn't know to look for it, no, you couldn't know to look for it, but if you could peek through the heads, you would have seen him back here just getting after it. And if you missed it, I'm so sorry. And because he was going at it so hard, I just wanted to acknowledge him that Kaysen's the best every year when we do this. All right, what was I talking about? Yeah, buying gifts for your parents is hard. I think over the years, the two best things I've ever gotten from my parents is my mom, all she wants, every now and again, they will facilitate a vacation for our whole family. My family will go. My sister's family will go. Everyone will go on a vacation to the beach on a cruise or whatever it is. And the only thing she wants as a thank you for this, and this is the gift that you give to her, is to participate in family pictures. And my whole job, which I fail at, is to have a good attitude during pictures. Because pictures are the worst. But the best thing I can do for my mom is just not be a jerk about it and take the pictures and smile. And we went on a cruise in August that they facilitated and they wanted to do the family pictures. And it was time for Nate and Jen's pictures. And the photographer was like, do this pose, do this pose, and like look at each other longingly in this way. Laugh and giggle. And it was a degree of physical affection that Jen and I have not shown in public for 15 years. And I finally went, that's enough. We're squared away. Thanks. We're all good here. And he goes, I'm sorry. And I go, yeah, you are sorry. We're done. You've got enough. We're not going to buy any of those anyways. And then the best thing I've ever gotten from my dad, and I don't know how many of you remember this, but if you grew up in evangelical church, particularly Baptist church, in the 80s or the 90s, just raise your hand if you know what special music is. Do you know what special music is? Yes. There's a few hands raised. All right. Here's what special music is. It's not the way we usually use the word special. All right. It's different. Here's what it is. In the 80s and 90s, there were Christian songs that were not, they weren't praise hymns or choruses that you sang in the church. They were just songs that you listened to, like on the radio or on a cassette tape. And the really popular ones would have a cassette tape with a side A and a side B. And side A was the song, Ray Bolt's Watch the Lamb. If you don't know that one, can't recommend it highly enough. That's the best. Ray Bolts, Watch the Lamb. And then you'd flip it to side B, and it was just the instruments and no vocals. And so what they would do in church is after normal worship, after the choir sang, then one select person from the congregation who was gifted above and beyond everyone else in the voice department would get up, kind of like Jordan, would get up and sing to the track. So they'd play the track, they'd turn on the music, and then that person would sing. And when I was growing up, my dad was the special music guy. There's other people that dabbled around in special music in like May and June. But dad got Christmas and Easter. All right, he was a big deal. And I used to sit in the third row and mouth every word for him in case he forgot because I loved it so much. And so one year I made, and I don't know how many years ago this was, but it was long enough ago that I burned a CD. Remember that? And I made him Dale's greatest hits. And I gave him that so that he could listen to it and replay the glory days in the car because nobody cares about him anymore. He doesn't do anything special. But it's hard to get gifts for our parents because more often than not, they're taken care of, and we don't really know how we can celebrate them in such a way that's going to be impactful. The song that we're looking at this morning is a song called Little Drummer Boy, and when I say that, you probably have the same reaction that Aaron had when I told him a few years ago I wanted to do Little Drummer Boy. And his response to me was, I don't know how to get a room full of adults to sing the words parumpapumpum in a worshipful way. So maybe let's not. But in his first year here, Gibby did not know me well enough and was not yet secure enough in his job to tell me no. And I took advantage of this. And coming into the Christmas service, I said, hey man, I really think we need to do Little Drummer Boy. And he gave me the pushback of, I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know how to worshipfully sing the words parumpapumpum. Like, I don't know if I can do that. And I said, well, I really need you to do that. And here's the funny thing, If you remember last week's sermon, and most of you don't because your grandkid wasn't singing last week. Last week, I said I asked him to do the third verse of a song and that I kind of like, hey, dude, we need to do this and that I never, ever do that. And now here I am two weeks in a row telling you stories about times I told Gibby he had to sing a song. But I think these are the only two. I really do think so. We'll see, he just said, for those of you in the back. And so he did it. But in planning to do the song, it was very important to him, and I think that this is actually a wonderful quality to have in our worship pastor, and it's one of the reasons why I think he does such a good job. It was really important to him that he wanted this to be worshipful for the congregation. He wanted to try to connect it, not just be performative, but can we sing this together and be worshipful together? And so he was trying to connect those dots so that he could make it impactful and help us step into it. And as he was trying to do that, I believe it was his wife Tamara that pointed out to him, Aaron, you're the drummer boy. And he paused, and he communicated this to me the next day, and he communicated it to the church through tears tears and I've always found it very moving. Because here's why. Psalm 50 tells us this is God speaking I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. So we serve a God who needs nothing from us. All the animals in the forest are his. All the cattle on the hills are his. What are we going to give him that he needs? What are we going to give him that flatters him? What are we going to give him that worships him? And as we enter into the Christmas season and we do all the things and we seek at Christmas to honor our God and to worship our Jesus and to adequately celebrate the birth of Christ, what do we bring to God? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh? I seriously doubt. I have no idea what heaven's like, but I don't think that there's a frankincense shortage for Jesus. I think he's got plenty if that's what he needs. He's not looking around for myrrh, trying to find a good deal on it. Like, what do we bring Jesus to adequately celebrate him? If he has everything that he needs already, what could he possibly want from us? And I think that the point that Tamara made about Gibby being the drummer boy is a profound one. And I think it's true for everyone. So just so we know, let me tell you what the lyrics are in case you've forgotten. I'm going to leave out the parumpapumpums. All right, let's just assume there's a lot of those. And I'll read the normal words. It says, little baby, rumpumpumpum, I'm a poor boy too. I have no gift to bring that's fit to give a king. Shall I play for you on my drum? Mary nodded. Go ahead. The ox and lamb kept time, which I find dubious, because they are the least rhythmic of the farm animals, and we all know it. I played my drum for him. I love this. I played my best for him. Then he smiled at me, me and my drum. Now here's what's great, okay? And this is why I'm getting emotional over Little Drummer Boy lyrics. All right, hopefully you'll be there with me in a minute and not think I'm a crazy person. Here's the point. Gibby has nothing to offer his Savior in gratitude for what Jesus has done for him. He has nothing that Jesus needs. He's just got his drum. He has been gifted, though it is hard for me to say, with some talent. He could, I think, play any instrument up here that we needed him to. When he sings, he manages to remain on key from what I can tell. He has been given a gift. And what his wife was telling him was, use that gift to glorify your God, the one who gave it to you. And use that gift for what it was intended, which is to usher everyone else in the congregation into worship. Go play your drum. Go do your thing. Go do what God created you to do and use the talents with which he imbued you to point people towards me. Go play your drum. I remember years ago, I took over as a student pastor at a church. And the youth group was large enough that they were able to furnish their own youth band. And there was a girl who was, I think, a junior at the time, maybe a senior, named Kelsey. And Kelsey was this 4'11", tops, tiny, tiny girl, and just very shy. And at the time, I had this tradition when my mama was alive called Mama Mondays. And every other Monday, I'd go to Mama's house at 1030 in the morning because I was a youth pastor. I didn't have anything else to do. And we would have coffee together. And I would just listen to stories. And Mama was a small, diminutive woman like Kelsey was, and she was very shy, and she felt very outshone by the other people around her, and so I began to draw these parallels between the two, and that developed within me a real affinity for Kelsey, and I wanted to look out for her. And Kelsey sang in the band. And I wish, I wish like heck, because she's a children's pastor in Florida now, and I wish like heck I could get her here for one week and just let you all hear her sing because she's incredible. You would never expect this voice to come out of this person. But when she would sing, she was timid. And I remember going to her and pulling her aside and saying, hey, Kelsey, God gave you a voice. He gave you a gift. And when you use it, Holly, when you use it, and for the purpose for which it was given to you and you invite people into praise with your boldness in how you use your voice, you're doing exactly what God intended with that gift. And because of that and because I watched her, not because of what I said, but just gradual comfort in the environment, I couldn't make it through a worship set without tearing up because I was so moved by Kelsey using her gift for her God to usher people towards him. She was playing her drum. And now here's the thing. You all have a drum. You all have something to play. For most of you, it would be great if you were not up here singing. We don't want that, and that's not what I'm preaching towards. We're pretty happy with our current arrangement, but you have a drum. I was reminded of this verse in Isaiah 51 that's quoted in 1 Peter, brought up later. But it says this, And when Peter extrapolates in in this in 1 Peter, he talks about Abraham and the great things that Abraham did. And you don't have to be very versed in Christianity and biblical knowledge to understand that Abraham sits on the Mount Rushmore of Christian figures. He sits on the Mount Rushmore of God followers. And what he did was amazing. And it echoes and tumbles down through the millennia. Abraham was impressive. He did amazing things. But Peter quotes Isaiah and tells you, do you know the quarry from which you are cut and the rock from which you are hewn? You're made of the same material. You have the same gifts. You have the same input from God. He's bestowed similar blessings upon you. And what I want you to hear this morning as we think about the song Little Drummer Boy and the stupid words, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, that are actually pretty fun to sing. If you're not a stick in the mud, they're actually great. Is you've been given a drum too. Here I play for you. I played my best for you. And he smiled at me. You have a drum too. Maybe your drum is kindness. Maybe your drum is compassion. A few years ago, some friends of mine heard about a man that was disabled and shut in in essentially public housing, for lack of a better term. And he was a mess and his apartment was a mess. And upon hearing of his predicament, they went over on a Saturday and spent eight hours cleaning up what was unpleasant. That's compassion. They were playing their drum. I saw a picture, came across on a social media feed, of a mug that said, it's actually pretty funny, it said, help, I've become very important at my job and it's ruining my life. We have some people here who have influence in their space, who are leaders in their company. God's given you a drum to influence those people towards Christ. Play it. Use your influence. Show people what a Christ follower looks like and point people towards him. We have teachers in the room. You have a drum to play in front of those kids every day. We have people in this room who are incredible at gathering folks, at getting people together, drawing together community. And that's not a talent that everyone has. Chris is terrible at that. That's not a talent that we all get. But maybe it's yours, and maybe you do draw people together well. That's your drum. Play your drum. Maybe you're a good listener. Maybe you're a good friend. Maybe you're good at business. Maybe you're good at garnering influence. Maybe you can sing. Maybe you can teach. I'll tell you, it's a bummer to be given the drum of teaching because you have to do it every week. It's kind of a hassle. But maybe that's your drum. I don't know what it is, but here's what I know for sure. You have one. And if you want to honor your Jesus at Christmas or any time, play it. Play your best for him, And he will smile at you. Play your drum. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the kids that played their drums. For the way that they honored you. Thank you for a worship team that plays theirs. Thank you for a church that wants to go and play for you as well. Father, we pray that we would honor you in this season and in these weeks and that we wouldn't lose sight of what we're celebrating. God, if we don't know what we're good at, maybe we're simply good at humility and help us play that one well too. But I pray that we would all go and play our best for you and that you would smile at us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Erin, and I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here. And thank you for being here this morning, whether you're joining us online or whether you're here in person. We are just grateful that you chose to carve a little bit of your Sunday out to spend it with us. This morning, we are actually continuing in our series, as Mikey kind of reminded us, in Gentle and Lowly, where we've actually been looking at the character of Christ. We've looked at his compassion. We've looked at his humanity. We've looked at him as our gentle priest. And last week, we looked how he is our intercessor, as well as our advocate before the Father. And this week, we're going to jump ahead. We're now in chapter 18, and today we're actually looking at his yearning bowels. That one took a minute to sink in, didn't it? For those of you all that giggled and or wanted to laugh but chose not to, may that middle school boy that lives inside of you remain there forever because they bring such joy and interest to life. And for those of you that the yearning bowels may have brought up unfortunate thoughts of explosive bowels, I apologize on that front as well. And I hope that in this morning I can erase those visions from your head. And you can't blame me for today's topic. Nate holds that one firmly on his shoulders because he's the one that picked up the book and went through chapter by chapter and decided what he felt is what Grace needed to hear. So he's the one that chose that y'all needed to hear about yearning bowels today. But in actuality, if you dig into the chapter, what the chapter is about is about God's yearning love for us, about his tender and his compassionate heart that reaches in and grabs us in the depths of our sin and wants to pull us out. And as I read this and I continue to read over this, I have to admit, and I stand before you very transparent as one of the pastors and say, I struggle with this. And I struggle with what this says. I know it to be theologically the truth but I have moments when I look at it and say hmm there's a God that loves me down to the depths of his being to his core. He loves me that much and I struggle with And I ask sometimes, how is that truly possible? For those of you that know me, this next statement will not come as a shock, but I am a people pleaser by nature. And for as long as I can remember, I've sought the approval of others. It's just who I am. It is part of my wiring, I truly believe. If you go into all the personality tests and you look at all the things, like I'm a helper. I don't know all the numbers and letters. I just don't. But that's just who I am. That's how I'm wired. I also think environmentally there was an impact. My dad was in food retail. We moved a ton when I was a kid. I was in four different elementary schools before I hit fifth grade. So I spent a lot of time trying to fit in, trying to find new friends, trying not to be labeled as, you know, the new girl. That's not something I wanted to carry. I just wanted to fit in and be part of a group or like just a little cluster. The other thing is, is that I didn't in those elementary years have a foundation in God's love for me. I grew up with parents who were believers, but we were also a family that were Christers. For those of you that don't understand that terminology, we went to church on Christmas and Easter. That was my exposure to the church. Good or bad, again, that's just what it was. I also had a brother who played travel hockey, so we were always on the road. These were choices that my parents made, and I don't hold any of it against them by any means, but I think it helped to form who I am and how I continue to do. Because from childhood and even into adulthood, my world's been marked by a lot of striving. This striving to be accepted, this striving to prove myself, to somehow earn a place. And then after I became a Christian, that striving also fell into, I think, and shaped how I viewed God. I knew that I loved him. I knew I believed in who he is and who he says he was. I knew that what scripture said about him was 100% true, but I still doubted sometimes that he could love me the way that he said he did in scripture. Because y'all, I knew I'm messy, I'm stinky, I carry lots of baggage. I carry lots of shame, lots of regret for my past. And so for me to think about that kind of love hitting home for me is hard sometimes to wrap my head around. And so as I was continuing to prepare, Nate and I have met a few times. And again, this might be shocking to you all. He came to me a couple times and said, you have too many words. You need to parse it down just a little bit. But he challenged me to find one thing, just one thing that out of this chapter and out of what I've studied, that I would hope that you guys would walk away with. And so, Nate, I apologize ahead of time because in looking for my one thing, I may have veered off course from what we had talked about originally. So this is what we've got, though. But he challenged me to think about one thing for you all to walk out of here with today as we talk about God's love for us. And the thing that hit me somewhere in all of this was from John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. And what that says is, a new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Y'all, when I read that, when I went back to it and I read over it and I read over it again, and it hit me right in the face. How is it that we can love others if we don't believe that he loves us? He states in that commandment, he wants us to love others like he's loved us. But if I doubt or if I don't believe in the love that he's given me, how then in turn can I give that love out to others? And I think that's why our world today is starving. It's starving for the kind of love that Jesus offers to us. This love that's real. It's not a political correctness or tolerance. It's not a kind of love that is social niceties, but it's the kind of love that is rooted in stays, forgives, it heals. So when he says for us to love others the way he's loved us, he's not asking us to try to do better. I think what he's doing is he's inviting us to be transformed. Transformed by the love that he has for us first. Because see, we can't love others like Jesus until we trust that we're loved by Jesus. This is it. If you hear nothing else I say today, this is it. That we ourselves can't love like he asks us to love others until we trust that we're truly loved by him. And this love that he has for us and is asking us to give out to others, it's not a cautious love. It's not a distant love. But it's a love that is actually drawn into our need and our messy. Which that's the part that I think for a lot of us is scary, right? So when we're at those places down deep, and this is where I said before, I have messy, I have lots of background baggage, right? But that's the place that Jesus wants to meet us and dig in, in that place of sin and love us all the more. So in those places where we feel the most unworthy or the most unlovable, the most ashamed, he wants to meet us there. We have to learn how to wrap our heads around that. And I think that there's a lot of us in this room that may be like, yeah, well, he extends that to others around us. I've seen it. I've seen it. I've seen that love extended to other people, but he's not going to give that to me because, you know, not after what I've done, not after the fact that I have yelled at my children for the 10,000th time, not after I have attempted and yet failed one more time to quit alcohol or drugs or pornography. Or after I have had the abuse that I have in my past. He can't love me there. He can't. And so instead of resting in his love, what we do when we put up that wall that says he can't get into those down, dark, dirty places with us is we start striving to earn love in other places. We have somehow to prove to others around us that we're lovable, that we're worthy of the love that he has or that somebody else has. I'm lovable. If I just keep doing, if I keep striving, if I keep somehow, somebody's going to think that I'm worthy. But when we doubt, when we doubt, when we strive, it doesn't do us any good. And in actuality, it makes us poor lovers of the people around us. He calls us to love others the way that he's loved us. But if we're striving to get that love from other people and from other places, then we are in a place where we have no capacity to give love if we're always striving to try to grab it from something. And when we doubt that we're loved, we tend to withhold our love from those around us. Because you know what? It took me an awful lot to feel this little bit of love that I've got right now. I'm not ready to give that up. And so we hold on and we're not doing a good job in loving other people. And so when you look at how Christ loved, we go back to where he was when he gave this commandment. He's in the upper room. It's the night before he's to go to the cross. The night before he makes the sacrifice of his life where he takes on your sin, my sin, your neighbor's sin, past, present, and future. So that we can have a relationship with him and that we can in turn be with him forever. So it's the night before he's getting ready to do that for us. He's sitting in a room with his 12 best friends and he knows already that Judas is about to betray him. He knows that Peter will deny him and he knows that by the time that the sun rises, all of the disciples will have scattered. He knows that. And yet he makes a very conscious choice to kneel down and to wash their feet. Y'all, if that was me and my humanness, that would not have been my response. Think about it. I might've been angry. I could have been, you know, or like, like, just not going to talk about this. You're going to be hateful, ugly people to me here in about 12 hours. I'm done with you. But that's not how he chooses to respond. He chooses with love and action. He chooses to serve when it is the least deserved. And he chooses to move towards those who are failing him. He knows it. And that's what he does for us too, right? He moves towards us in those places where he knows we're going to fail him, where we're not doing what we feel or what we should be doing. And then he continues on and he says to them, as I have loved you, so you must love one another. So he's just knelt down. He's just given them that love that they didn't deserve, that love that met them in this place of complete and total failure. And he says, have to receive it before you can give it because love starts with receiving before it becomes doing. We get that backward all the time in our humanness. We get that backward all the time. When we're not anchored in his love for us, all we end up doing is making ourselves exhausted making ourselves defensive and disappointed I said before that I am a people pleaser and one of the things that people pleasers do so beautifully is they put others before themselves quite often to your detriment. Many of you guys know that my parents passed away within 17 months of each other, and sandwiched in between there, there was lots of running back and forth to Pinehurst, lots of hospital visits, lots of taking on responsibility and helping my dad and aunt. There was a whole litany of things that I could add in there. In there also, I was trying to be a good wife. I was trying to be a good mom. I was trying to be a good pastor here at Grace. And I can stand before you and tell you I failed miserably at all of that during that period of time. It wasn't pretty. I was short with my family. I know I let people here down. I let my coworkers down. It wasn't pretty. And I know it. And I was constantly running. I had my kids later admit to me that there were things that they didn't tell me during that time because they didn't want to add anything else to my plate. And as a mama, for those of the other mamas in the room, you know that just breaks your heart to think that they just can't come to you. I just was not a good human at that moment or during this time. And I can also admit to the fact that I would get phone calls periodically from my dad after my mom had passed. And I remember seeing his name pop up on the screen and literally just staring at the phone and in moments dreading answering it. I love my dad to my core, but I knew to answer it there would be questions and he was very needy at those moments and I didn't have anything left to give. I was done. I was exhausted. I did answer it, by the way. But still, in that moment, there was always that thought and that hesitation as I looked at the screen because I was like, oh, no. And the thing is, I neglected myself, and I realize now that we can't, you can't pour out what you haven't first received. I was working from an empty cup, a very empty shell, because I was running myself absolutely ragged. And this goes back to the fact that we can't love like Jesus if we don't trust that we're loved by Jesus. If I'm not filled up by Jesus because I trust that he loves me, I am not loving others well. And I think that there's a lot of us in the world like this today. And I think that this emptiness or this constant striving and this constant motion trying to earn something, trying to pour ourselves out from empty cups is why the world can feel like it does sometimes, where we're living in this place where we're quick to divide and quick to assume things and slow to forgive. And we see that often sliding into the church as well because the church is made up of a lot of humans, right? And it slides into the church as well. You don't need me to tell you that. You all have seen it at some point in time. All you have to do is look online. And it makes you sad. And I think back to what Jesus said about his disciples loving others. And I wonder to us too, if we classify our followers, ourselves as followers of Jesus, what would it be like if the people of Jesus were known not for being right or righteous or all the things you could add there, but for being rooted. Being so secure in his love that we freely give out our love to others. That we are so rooted in his love that we no longer compete, but we serve, that we're so rooted in his love that we no longer compare ourselves to others, but we celebrate each other, and that somehow when we're so rooted that we no longer condemn, but we just choose to forgive and to offer grace. Because I think then the world will start to take notice. And the world's going to recognize us as Jesus followers by our love for one another. Our love, this love that is so rooted deep inside of us, is meant to be living evidence of who he is. It's meant to be that living evidence to the rest of the world that he is real and he is love. Not our striving love, not our performing love. That's not the kind of love that we need here. What we need here is that secure love, the love that is flowing from a heart that is rooted and anchored in grace. And I know some of you all are now looking at me going, okay, that sounds really good. And you've not met my mother-in-law or my father-in-law or whoever it may be, my coworker, my brother, my sister, whoever it may be that says, and you're going, but loving like Jesus is going to be really hard in those circumstances. Yeah, it is because we're human and we run out of patience and we run out of kindness and we run out of, in a lot of cases, just run out of ourselves. But I go back to that commandment that he gave us. And I don't think he gave it to us to be impossible. I think he gave it to us as a reminder and an invitation to draw us back to him and to remind us that that same love that he gives and that same love that saved us is now going to be the love that empowers us to love others. And that that love and that grace that he met us with in the middle of our messy, stinky mess is now going to be the love and grace that helps us to meet others in their mess. It's an invitation and a reminder that even with those that are super hard to love, we can't work it up sometimes. We can't just walk into the situation going, I'm going to love them better today. I am. I'm going to love them better today. It doesn't always work that way because our ability to love doesn't come from some sort of willpower. I truly believe that it comes from being willing to be loved. I had the opportunity last week to hang out with some sorority sisters. We did this the year before. It's just a sweet time. We get to reconnect. This year, my old roommate got to join us, and I was so excited. I had not seen her in probably seven or eight years. And Shelly and I got to actually room together again on this trip, and we spent many nights just chatting and talking and catching up. And I asked her about her sister and how things were going. Shelly had a sister who about 15 years ago had a brain tumor, multiple surgeries, etc. Left her sister with basically some traumatic brain injury. She had short-term memory issues. Long-term memory was very much intact. Her physical ability is very much intact. So she could live somewhat independently. It was always nice just to have some people around to check on her. And about seven years ago, she moved up to be close to Shelly and her family. Lived a couple houses away, so very involved in her life, constantly looking after, checking in on her, and all the things. In 2022, her sister caught COVID, and because of her compromised health, landed her in the hospital for a great deal of time. It accelerated some of her decline. And because of that, she ended up in a rehab facility. And Shelly's comment in all of this to me was, I don't understand why it's her and it's not me. There was a lot of guilt in that respect. And, you know, we talked about it, and she's a believer as well. And I'm like, I don't have an answer for you on that one. There isn't an answer for why it's her and not you. And then she went on to say that one of the things recently that Amy has started to do is that every time they go to visit, Amy just looks at her and says, God has been so good to me. And it's at every visit. And Shelly looked at me and she said, I don't know how she can say that. After 15 years and all she's gone through and all the struggles and all the things, I don't know sometimes how she can say that. But this time I knew I could look at Shelly right in the face and go, I know exactly why she says that. Because of you. You are her personal representative of God's love. You who shows up and loves on her unconditionally. You who takes her out. You who does all the things for her and with her. To her, you represent God's love. So when she says, God has been so good to me, she can say it because of the way that you love her. And I hope, Grace, that we can be that to other people as well. Nate often states that we can't be the big C church, but we can be Grace. And we as individual people can impact, we can work on ourselves, we can impact our families, we can also then impact this body and the communities around us. And so when you think about Shelly and you think about her willingness to love so unconditionally the way she did. I think about us and myself. This is me talking to myself too. But what would it be like if we chose to believe the best about one another because we know that that's what love does? What would it be like if we showed up for people who were hurting? Even when we didn't want to because their hurting is hard. But we did it because we know that that's what Jesus would do. What would it look like if we were forgiving before it's earned? Because we know that that's what grace would do. And what would it be like if we had all the patience with those that are just new or learning? Because again, we know what grace and love would do. Because I think every act of love then becomes this small reflection of the greater love that we've received. Because we can only do that, however, when we're sure of his love for us. And when we're secure in his love, we stop striving to earn it and we start living to spread it. And so today, I don't believe in my being that this is an invitation for us to walk out these doors and try to love better. I don't think that that's what this is. I think what this is is an invitation to us to let ourselves be loved deeper. To receive his love for us. All that Aaron and the team sang about. How much he loves us. That's what we have to receive first. And when we truly trust that we're loved by him. Freely, fully, without any condition. That will be the moment that we will turn and love others like he loves us. So we can't love others like Jesus until we trust that we're loved by Jesus. And so what is it, Grace, that you guys can do this week as you walk out these doors to root yourself deeper in the love that he has for you today? And will y'all pray with me? Thank you. Thank you, Lord, that you love us. Thank you, Lord, that you give so freely of your love. We just ask that we are willing to receive that, that we put down ourselves, that we quit striving to earn our love from someplace else and quit striving to earn your love. But somehow, by staying rooted in you, that we learn how very deeply you love us. That down deep in our core and our soul, that you love us that down deep in our core and our soul that you love us that much and by doing so challenging us to then take that love and spread it to those around us thank you Lord for your love thank for your son. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

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