Sermons tagged with Mercy

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

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

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

Yo, it's not September yet. What are you all doing here? We're supposed to have more space than this in the middle of August. It's good to see everybody. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is inconvenient. But just a couple of things behind the scenes I feel like I need to tell you. Rob, our bass player, walked by me and he said, go get him, pal. And I said, well, that's very nice. And then I was setting up up here and our worship leader, Aaron, tapped me on the shoulder, which is not typical. Normally he doesn't speak to me because my mental fragility is such that I can't handle it before a sermon. But he tapped me on the shoulder and I leaned back and he said, hey, just do good. And I, thanks buddy. Thanks for that. So we will do our best. This morning we are continuing in our series on the life of Moses. Last week, I kind of paused in the narrative because it had brought us to this place where the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai, and I felt like it was really important for us to also pause. There's this word in Psalms that we learn, this Hebrew word called shalom, and shalom just means kind of a holy pause. And I felt like it was important last week to just kind of take a shalom and pause on this part of the narrative that causes us to fear God, which is a good thing. And we focus on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. But the reason that the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai was to give the law to his people. So what happens is the presence of God, and this is in Exodus chapter 19, and I'll just tell you this up front, okay? I want you to understand this, and I want to acknowledge this for you. I'm not going to read verses this week. This is, I hate to say this, this is just here for show this week. I'm not going to open it and read to you, all right? And I feel badly about that. But I'm resting in the fact that what I'm talking to you about is in Exodus 19. And I'm resting in the fact that I'm going to refer to passages in Romans and Galatians and Acts and John and Matthew so that we are. This is going to be a biblical sermon, but I just, there was nothing that I found in my preparation that zeroed in on what I wanted to say enough that I felt like it was worth sharing. So we will be in scripture this week, but I'm not going to open it. And I know that I'm not doing that, but hopefully we'll get to the end of the sermon and you'll think, yeah, that counts as a sermon. That's the goal. But this week it's Exodus 19. And in Exodus 19, we get the law. And when I say the law, we often think of the Ten Commandments. And if you're to open your Bible and read it, I think a lot of us understand what was happening when Moses received the Ten Commandments. But we tend to think, I believe, that Moses got these two tablets of stone and God etched onto them the Ten Commandments and he walked down the mountain with those tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. And that is true. But what we might not pick up from the story, at least I didn't for decades of being a believer, is that all the other laws were etched on those tablets too. There's 630 something laws in Old Testament law, in the Old Testament for the Hebrew person. And so when God gave the law, it wasn't just 10 commandments. It was 10 commandments and the other 6 hundred and twenty. OK, that's what was on the tablets. And so when Moses comes back down the mountain, he has the law in his hands and he's sharing it with the Hebrew people. And here's what I think is really interesting about this point in history. And I'm going to take some liberties here. But I wonder, why did God give the law to his people at this time? And I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But let me kind of help you with that process. When God created Adam and Eve, he made one law. He said, do whatever you want. Don't eat from the fruit of that tree. That's the only rule. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. Don't eat of the fruit of that tree. That was it. That was the only law. And then they broke it because they wanted to be like God. They forgot to fear the Lord. God could have at that point said, okay, you screwed up. Now there's sin. Now the fall has happened. Let me give you the rules. Let me tell you what you need to do to be right with me. You messed up. Let me give you the rules. He didn't do that. Have you ever noticed that? He didn't do that. He just said, now you're going to have to work for your food. Life's going to be a little bit more difficult. Things between you and I will never be the same. But he didn't give him the rules. Then, a little while later, he hit reset on the entire earth by flooding it. And he allowed Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives to be the new Adam and Eve that repopulated the earth. And the reason that he did it is because he looked across the earth and he said, this is evil and no one follows me. And I'm, I'm, I'm saddened that I've created this. And so he hit the reset button. When he hit the reset button, did he then give Noah the rules? No. He could have. He didn't. He could have said, listen, I gave you guys a chance. You messed it up. So moving forward, here are the rules for following me. He didn't do that. Then there was the Tower of Babel. After he dispersed the nations and gave them different languages, could he have also given them the rules? Yes, he could have. Did he? No. Then, a while later, I know that this is hard for you guys because you haven't thought about this before, but I've thought about this for years. Then a while later, he calls Abraham from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, the Sumerian dynasty. And he says, hey, Abraham, I know this is going to sound weird. I want you to pick up everything that you own and I want you to move and I'm going to show you where you're going to move as you get there. It would be like you selling your house, packing a U-Haul, and just driving in the general direction of Utah, trusting God to show you where to go. That's what he did for Abraham. And when he did that, and when in Genesis 12, he made his promises to Abraham, I'm going to bless you with people and with blessing, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This is God we know now in retrospect, founding the nation of Israel. It's the very foundation of this people that God has chosen to love and center out amongst all of humankind. He starts it with Abraham. And he could have, at that point, said, by the way, Abraham, here are the rules. But he didn't. He could have said with his son Isaac, here are the rules. He could have said with his grandson Jacob, who was then later named Israel, by the way, as the father of this nation, I am founding on your faith. Here are the rules. And he never did it. He never did it. He waited for some reason until Moses was leading his people through the desert to finally give them the rules. So I think it's a really interesting question to wonder, God, why did you wait that long? Why now? Why here? And all I can say about that is this. In the past, I have paused a sermon and I've moved over here. And I've said, some of you will remember, Jeffy does, I heard him laugh. Some of you will remember, this is my reckless speculation box. When I'm here, I'm speaking to you from what I believe to be the authority of Scripture. And I would I would tell you candidly, it's my best understanding of what Scripture is. It's not the authority of Nate or the authority of God. It's just when I read it, this is how I understand it. And I'm sharing that with you. OK, but when I step over here. I'm reckless, man. They're like, this is just what I think. This is just what I suppose. This is not here. Here, I feel like I have some authority. Here, I'm just being an honest adult with you and saying this is what I think, but I can't back this up with paperwork. Do we understand the difference? Here, when I answer the question, why does God wait so long to give the law? What I actually believe in my core is that he gave it begrudgingly. I do not think he wanted to. And I think we have an example of this when he gives Moses divorce laws. And he says, I don't really want to give you divorce laws because I don't want this to be a part of your life. But practically speaking, I see the necessity of it. So here are some ramifications and some parameters for that practice. I believe that God gave the law begrudgingly. And here's why I believe this. And this is where I'll step back here. Because I do think that there's some scriptural authority for this. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him and obey him. Why didn't he give Adam the law? Because he didn't want to. Because all he asked of Adam is just obey me. Just trust me. Just let me be the creator and you be the creation. Just obey me. Just trust me. Why didn't he give Noah the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Scholars believe Job predates Noah and all the others as well. Why didn't he give Job the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Why didn't he give it to Moses? Why didn't he give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob? Because I believe with all my heart that all God has ever wanted from us is to just trust him and obey him. But for some reason, the Hebrew people found that to be difficult. And for some reason, we found it to be difficult. And two separate times, God allowed the human experiment to exist with this impetus of trusting and obeying him. And it ended in the flood and it ended in the Tower of Babel. And then it came to his Hebrew people and he said, in my opinion, fine, here. Here's the law. And the law says, you want a path to my approval? Here it is. That's what the law says. When Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 19 and he's got the tablets there, what God is saying is, do you want a path to salvation? To heaven? To eternity? To right standing before me? Is that what you want? Here. This is it. Follow the law. Go ahead. You want to know what the rules are? Here are the rules. And he gives them 630 rules. This is the path to be right with me. I've asked you over and over and over again, and here's what's so important, I think, for us. We feel this pull in our own lives, right? Just trust me. Just obey me. You don't have to all the way understand me. Just trust. We feel that pull, right? But God says, okay, you want law. This is the path. I've asked you to trust me. You've decided not to do that. You need to know the rules. Here are the rules. Here's the thing about the rules. And here's the thing about the law. And this is why I would be honest with you and tell you that this morning's sermon was really difficult to write because I've often said that the most difficult thing in preparing a sermon is deciding what not to say. And this morning, there's so much to say about the law and its import and how much it matters across the span of Scripture. I do not think you can overstate the importance of the law and its impact on the rest of faith and on what it was to be a New Testament Christian and even on how we understand our faith. If you want to be a Christian at all, with any knowledge of the Bible, with any knowledge of how your faith works, you've got to understand the importance of the law. I actually think it works this way. This is going to sound ludicrous. I believe in my email to the staff when I sent them my notes. I said, these seem unhinged, but just go with me. And even as I ran through them this morning, Zach, who's doing our slides, said, you're going to have to explain this one a little bit. And I said, yeah, I know. Okay, but here you go. The law equals Luke Skywalker's genealogy. Deal with it. I'm not even going to explain that. I'm just going to go on to the next point. No, here's the thing, and I've thought this a long time, and this is probably an outdated analogy, but I hope that it can hold up. I grew up, I was born in 1981. That makes some of you feel very young and others feel very old. I don't care. I was born in 1981. I was actually talking to a friend of mine this week. This is Jermaine to nothing, but I was talking to a friend of mine this week that I worked for when I was 19 and I think he was 22 and we were doing the same ministry together. And we both kind of had this realization at the same time, like we're the old dogs now, like we're both in our mid forties. We've been doing this for 25 years. We can't, we're not, we're not young anymore, which means frankly, I should be better at this than I am, but you know, here we are. I've thought for a long time, when I was growing up, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars hit me just in the exact right spot. He was a hero growing up. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia, they shaped my childhood. And if you don't know who they are and you don't understand this, I'm sorry for you. Do some work because it's worth it. In Star Wars, there's three movies. There's the first one, which is just called Star Wars. There's other movies that they've made since then with like J.J. Abrams. Who cares? Jar Jar Binks, get out of here. Nobody cares about those. Thank you, Jeff. The good ones. We're getting really close to an amen. I feel one coming. Maybe this service. Maybe so. That's right. I've never gotten an amen in the history of preaching at Grace, but if I denounce Jar Jar Binks and get one, that would be actually super funny. Sorry, I'm down the road really far on this Star Wars thing. There's three movies. It's Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi, right? And at the end of Empire Strikes Back, at the very end of the movie, Luke Skywalker is like hanging off of this Death Star thing and he's having a confrontation with Darth Vader. And Darth Vader says the most famous line in movies, which is actually misquoted and not famous. We all quote it as, Luke, I am your father. That is not the line. The line is, no, I am your father. And if you have not watched Star Wars and the first two and a half hours of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says, no, I am your father, it doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, it means everything. And so I've often thought that trying to understand our faith by beginning in the New Testament and not understanding the Old Testament and the law is like trying to appreciate the impact of the greatest line in cinematic history without having watched the first two movies. Do you understand your Bible? The first two thirds of it are the Old Testament. When we start in the New Testament and our understanding of faith, we cheapen and shortchange our ability to understand that faith. And that an understanding of the import of the law is fundamental to it. Do you understand that the book of Galatians, the whole book, is about how to reconcile the law? And that if you don't understand what the law is, you can't possibly understand the book of Galatians? Do you understand that literally half of the book of Acts is an exercise in the New Testament church trying to figure out how to wrestle the law to the ground and what to expect of the Gentile converts into their Jewish faith. Do you understand that you can't understand Romans oratory and revolutionary the ministry of Jesus was if you do not understand the law? And so this morning, as we arrive at Exodus 19, and I think about myself as your pastor, and I have a responsibility to make sure we understand the import of the law. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. Because it's a big deal. It's important in how we understand scripture. And here's the greatest trick of the law. This one's pretty good. And this is another one that you're going to be like, dude, what are you doing? But just hear me out. The law sees dead people. A lot of you, I know, like to fill out your notes before I do the blanks. And I've decided a long time ago, I don't care. I'm not going to try to trick you. I'm not really thinking about that. I don't think anybody had this. I think I got you on this one. The law sees dead people. In 1999, here's another. At least it's not the 80s. I moved 20 years forward. In 1999, there was this movie. Gosh, I forget the name of it now. I even looked it up this morning, so I wouldn't. What was it? Sixth Sense. Thank you. Guy I don't know on the first row helping me out on his very first visit. Thank you very much, buddy. That's great. Come back any time. Sixth Sense. It had Bruce Willis. And there was this kid who plays the main character. And Sixth Sense stands out, and we all know it. We know what it is. Because it's like the greatest switcheroo in cinematic history. It's really amazing that at the beginning of the movie, they tell you that Bruce Willis is dead. And you are watching it in real time and you're like, no, he's not. He seems to be talking. He's fine. And you don't process it. And then at the end of the movie, so they've done this whole movie. And the kid who I think is Haley Jo Osmond, I think that's who plays him, thank you, I knew Liz Roberg would know that, that's why I looked over there, says that iconic line, I see dead people. And you realize, the last two hours of my life, I've misunderstood what was going on. And you realize Bruce Willis really did die at the beginning of the movie. And he's been playing a ghost this whole time. And when you watch Sixth Sense, I'm sorry a little bit if this is a spoiler alert. It's also been 25 years, so you make your choices. But when you watch that movie fresh and you realize at the end what you've actually been watching for two hours, it's kind of this moment where you go, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit. That's what the law is. Because when God gave the law to his people, it was, if you want to be right with me, here's what you have to do. If you want a path to heaven. Here's the path. And so we took it for millennia to be the path. And the Hebrew people organized a religion around it. Saying we're going to be the best followers of this law that has ever been. And we're going to help everyone. When you break the law, here's what you do to restore yourself. And then you return yourself to trying to follow the law. Here's what we do. And they built a whole faith around that premise. If you want to be right with me, here's how you be right with me. And then Jesus comes along and he does the greatest switcheroo in history. And he shows us that the law sees dead people. And Jesus comes along and he says this about the law. You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery. But I say to you that if you have looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you are guilty of that sin. And let's be very clear about this. I'm not making a joke right now. That makes every man in this room an adulterer. Okay? That's the law. Yeah, have you passed the test of not having actual intercourse with another person's wife? Great. But let me redefine this in such a way that you really understand the heart of the law. If you've left it after someone else, you're guilty. Whoa. That's a different standard. Jesus said, you've heard it said that you shouldn't kill someone else. You shouldn't murder. But I say to you that if you have hate in your heart for a brother, you are guilty of that sin. Which makes a portion of this room murderers. And so he comes and he doesn't. And I want to be very clear about this. Jesus does not redefine the law. He simply correctly defines it. And he shows us in his definition our inability to follow it. And what we find in Jesus's discussion of the law is that the whole law, and we find this in Galatians and we find this in Romans and we find this in Acts and we find this in Corinthians. This is everywhere, replete throughout the New Testament, that the entire point of the law is to show you that you can't follow it. That's the whole point. You think it's to show you how to be right before God, and really the point of it is to show you your inadequacy before God and your need for that. That's the law. The law sees dead people. It's not here to make a pathway for you to get right with God. The law exists so that you will know that you are incapable of following that pathway and will claim your need for Jesus who came and lived a perfect life and followed that law perfectly for you and died a perfect death to make a bridge to a God that you would never have access to if he did not come and perfectly fulfill that law for you. That's the point of the law. Jesus fulfilled the law and earned God's approval for you. The point of the law, friends, is to remind us of our need for Jesus. The point of God's standards is to show us that we can't meet them. The point of the cross is to remind us of the necessity of it. So when we arrive at this text in Exodus chapter 19, and we see the law brought down the mountain by Moses. And we understand it as a momentous occasion in the history of the Hebrew people and even in our faith. And we see that law as God providing a pathway to approval from him. Please understand that it is momentous. It does echo throughout the millennia. It is incredibly important. But it's incredibly important because its intent has always been to show you that you can't keep it. Its intent has always been to show you your inadequacy and your reliance on the perfect life and death of Jesus. And that the entire point of the law throughout all of history is to orient your gaze towards the cross and not towards yourself and your ability to obey rules. It's to surrender before God and say, I am not capable of that. I need this. That's the whole point. So please, church, when we think about the law, let's see it for what it is. Let's appreciate its import. But let us always, always allow it to direct our gaze towards the necessity of the cross and grow our spirit of gratitude for it. Yes? Let's pray. Father, you're good to us. We are so very sorry for inadequately following you. We're sorry for the ways that we let ourselves down as we think we're letting you down. We're so grateful for the grace that you show us in those moments. God, I pray that we would see this momentous occasion in Exodus as one that echoes throughout the centuries, but as one that is intended to point us towards you and towards your grace and towards your goodness and towards your mercy and towards your sacrifice. May the law forever point us towards the cross. May the law forever make us grateful of our Savior. And may the law forever make us grateful of what you did to make a path to be with you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for your presence there and here. It is with some excitement that I get back into the pulpit this weekend. The elders several years ago made a decision that I would get a stay from preaching in the month of July, and our staff carries the torch. And I don't know about you guys, but I thought Aaron and Aaron and Kyle each preached the best sermon I've ever heard them preach, and I thought that they carried the torch well in July. So I'm very grateful to have such a deep bench here at the church that can serve us in those weeks. And then Doug Bergeson preached last week, and he did fine. But I'm very grateful that we have those voices in our church, and I'm very grateful for when we get to hear from other voices. I'm also grateful that I get to continue on this morning in our series in the life of Moses. We took a brief break last week for Ministry Partner Sunday, but this week we're jumping back into Moses and we're going to carry Moses through the end of the month into Labor Day weekend. And then the second weekend in September, we're going to begin a new series called Gentle and Lowly. I will tell you more about that. There's going to be a book. We're all going to read it together. If you'd like to, I think it's really going to bring us together as a church. I'm very excited for that series. But before that, we have this, where we are continuing to look at the life of Moses and how God used him to lead his people out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land and establish this new nation. As we look at the portion of the story on which I want to focus this morning, I want us to attempt to shed a mindset and adopt a new one that may be best illustrated by my daughter this past week. This last week, I had an opportunity to go on a cruise. My parents are cruise people. They like cruises. Some people are cruise people. You're weird. Some people are not cruise people, okay? But we went on a cruise, and as part of this cruise, it was a really wonderful experience. My sister and her three girls and her husband came along as well. It was one big family, and it was a really, really great experience. The last full day we were there, we docked at Royal Caribbean's private island called Coco Cay. Perfect day at Coco Cay. Except it rained the whole time. So our joke was, it's a pretty okay day at Coco Cay. Coco Cay is home to, there's this Daredevil's Tower. And off this tower in the middle of the island spit five different water slides. The apex is Daredevil's Peak, which is the tallest water slide in North America. And Lily did it. My nine-year-old daughter chose it, and she did it, and I was so proud of her. There is nothing that that has to do anything at all with my sermon. I'm just proud of Lily for choosing to do Daredevil's Peak because I did it and I was, you know, you cross your feet and your arms like this and I'm like wiping off my eyes because I'm trying to save my contacts so I don't have to walk around in a fog for the rest of the day. And I'm giggling to myself thinking, and I said out loud, holy crap, this is fast. Holy crap, this is fast. But she did it. Great. Here's why I bring that up. Because on your way up the stairs, there's different slides that you can do. And the very lowest is like some sort of racers. The idea is that you start each one at the same time and you see who gets to the bottom first, which spoiler alert, it's whoever's fattest. That's who gets to the bottom first. That's how that works. I won a lot of races this week. And there's like this burgundy-ish slide that's enclosed, and then there's a yellow slide that's open, and you kind of like slosh on the sides of it. And as we were going up the stairs, Lily said, Daddy, we're going to do this later, but don't do the yellow slide. And I said, why, baby? And she goes, because I think I saw on YouTube that people fly out of it. They just fly like right off the sides and they just, just careen into Daredevil's Peak, right? And this was a legitimate concern of hers, that Daddy, please don't do this slide because you might fly out of it and die. There's, there's legitimate danger at the top of the slide. And I just remember thinking, sweetie, you don't know how liability works. There is no one on the planet that is more incented to make sure that no one flies off this slide than Royal Caribbean. They're insured for this. That's not going to happen. You could find someone who weighs 450 pounds, put them in a speed suit, grease them up, and they're still not flying out of that slide. Okay? No one's flying out of that slide, but I thought what a quaint, wonderful thing it is to be nine and to believe that you are in such peril at the top of this slide that you may not make it to the bottom. When's the last time you had that kind of wonder and naivety in your life? When it was a possibility to do a water slide and it end fatally. Of course we're not scared of that. Of course I know that I'm not going to fly out of it. Of course I know it's perfectly safe. Of course I was never scared at any point to do any of these slides because they're insured by American companies, which means you're not going to die on them. But Lily didn't know that. She still has this nine-year-old sense of wonder where danger is possible on water slides. And there is something about life that chips away at our wonder, isn't there? There's about life we're becoming an adult means that we don't awe at things anymore it means that we don't wonder at things anymore it means that we instantly explain things away and if we can't instantly explain it away we know that there is a way to explain it away. We just need to acquaint ourselves with it. And it makes me sad that I can't stand at the top of a water slide with a sense of trepidation in my heart. I was trepidatious about keeping my breakfast down before I did Daredevil's Peak. It turns a lot, and I thought I might get sick. But at no point was I scared for my life. At no point did I think something catastrophic was going to happen, but what must it be like to be nine again and to be fully convinced that Dad shouldn't do the yellow slide because it may not be safe. Grownups, we've lost that sense of wonder. We've lost our ability to marvel. And we very readily explain things away. But I bring that up and I acquaint us with that mindset of the wondrous child because I believe that the passage that we are going to read today stirs up within us that wonder if we will let it. As I read through Exodus, getting ready for this series, and I arrived at this passage, I'm going to be in Exodus chapter 19, verses 16 through the end of the chapter, through 25. And I read this passage. It kind of had this profound impact on me. On the trip, like you do, I read a book. When you go on vacation, you read a book. And so I was reading a book, and this book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, is particularly profound. And there was one chapter where it ended with this old man knowing that his children were tricking him into retirement and that he was going to go into retirement and die, and he was content with this choice. And he asked his eldest child to keep his knowledge of that away from his other kids. Let them go on thinking they're tricking me. And the way that it was written was so profound that it felt like I would cheapen the book and the thought if I simply turned the page and continued to read. So after I read that portion of the book, I read it again, and then I shut the book, and I put it on the nightstand, and I turned off the light, and I just ruminated in it. Because there are some portions of some stories that get cheapened when you continue on without reflecting on them. And I think this morning, in Exodus chapter 19, we arrive at one of those moments. That if we just continue to charge ahead, reading the life of Moses, we miss the profundity that is bound within these words. If we do not reflect on it. Further, not only do I want us to reflect on it this morning, but I want us to do our very best to reflect on it with the wonder of a naive nine-year-old. I want us to do our best to marvel at these words, to put ourselves in this situation, and to allow the words to sweep us up and to respect what is happening in this portion of the story. God is about to give the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew people. And next week we will look at the law and the commandments and we will talk about why they're so important and so meaningful and how they are the fulcrum on which a huge portion of the Bible rests in teeters. We'll look at that next week. And it would be tempting to get to this part of the story, get to Mount Sinai in the presence of God and just move right into the law because that's the headliner from this part of the book. That's the headliner from this part of the story. But I don't just want to rush headlong into the law and miss how profound the precursor is to that deliverance of the law. The Hebrew people have been wandering through the desert by this point for some time. Months, years, decades. And they come to this mountain called Mount Sinai. And clouds and smoke come to rest over the mountain. And God tells Moses to tell the people this is now a holy place. Do not let anyone touch the mountain. If anyone touches the mountain, they are to be stoned or run through with arrows. This is holy ground. Can you imagine being an ancient Hebrew person, having escaped from Egypt, watched God part the waters and then collapse them in on the Egyptian army and the top 600 chariot drivers in their country. Demolish the army and make you safe. And every day you wake up and you pick up manna on the ground and you feed your family and God provides for you every day. Can you imagine what it would be like? And then, and you're led by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And then one day you're in front of this mountain and cloud and smoke comes to rest on the mountain and you are told this is holy ground. You cannot touch it. And you're not American. You don't understand science. You don't have all the learning that you have. You cannot explain this away. The only thing to explain it away is this is miraculous and that is from God. And you marvel at it and you awe at it because you have not, your wonder has not been chipped away at by your education and by your experience. And then on the third day, this is what transpires. And this is where I think it's worth taking a holy pause to reflect on what's happening in the narrative. I'm going to read you more verses than I normally do. I simply think that they're all important. And so read said to the Lord, The people cannot come up from Mount Sinai because you warned us yourself. Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, Go down and bring Aaron up with you, but the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them. So Moses went down to the people and told them. I know that this may seem obscure to point out on a Sunday morning, but to me it's not obscure at all. To me, it's halting. It's poignant. It's important. God brings his very presence down to the top of the mountain. He has not brought his presence anywhere since the Garden of Eden. But he brings it down here now. And for three days before he brought his presence, there was smoke and fire and clouds covering this holy ground. And then he descends onto it himself and he calls to Moses, come and speak to me. And before he gives Moses the law, which is the reason that he came, he just simply says to Moses, go and tell them, don't come here. This is holy. This is sacred. And I know that it's so hard for us to do, and our American 21st century minds that are so smart, and so educated, and so smug. But can we not envision what it must have been like to marvel at this mountain where it says smoke is lifting from it like a furnace because the presence of God is on it? And there is this man that we revere and he is leading us named Moses. And he's called to the top of it. And he comes down with a message for us. Our imaginations are too atrophied to appreciate this. This point would be better made in the second and third grade room than it is here. Because we're too smart for this. We're too developed for this. We've lost our sense of wonder. We know water slides are safe. And so we read passages like this, and I'm afraid that we miss it. And we go, what's the point? This is the point. Do you see how awful and terrifying God is? Do you see how big He is? Do you see how marvelous He is? Do you see how awesome, in the very sense of the word, that He is. Do you see how awesome in the very sense of the word that he is? And so I think if we just read this and we go, yeah, yeah, get to the commandments, we cheapen the narrative and we miss what's happening here. Because what's happening here reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs, Proverbs chapter nine, verse 10, where it simply says at the beginning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This passage personifies, exemplifies, illustrates that point better than any other passage I know outside of the book of Revelation, where it just grabs you and it shakes you and it makes you pay attention to who our God is and how big he is. How fearful must we have been if we were there? If we can imagine what it must have been like to be in the desert and to watch this mountain shake violently and to see smoke rising off of it and to know that our God that we worship, that we just sang to, is present there. How much would that stir us? And how much fear would we have of who that awesome God is and what he must be capable of? It is something that we have lost in 21st century church. But to me, it illustrates and personifies that passage in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And many of us have probably heard that passage before, have heard that idiom before. Even if we didn't know it was from Proverbs, we've heard that phrase, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And what we tend to do is we try to defang it by making fear mean reverence and awe. It doesn't really mean afraid. It means that we just revere God. And I want to be very clear about this this morning. No, no, no. Fear means being afraid. When we were doing the water slides, back to this well, when we were doing the water slides, about halfway up the tower, there was these slides called dueling demons. And at the top of them, there was a capsule. It was clear plastic and it would open hydraulically. And you would step into the capsule and it it would close, and there's water running down your back, and your feet are crossed, and your hands are here. And at some point or another, the sadistic slide worker is going to press the button, and the bottom's going to drop out. Okay? That was the ride. And it was super fun. I was laughing the whole time. It was great. Lily said she wanted to do it. She had said she wasn't going to do it. But she said she wanted to try dueling demons with her cousin Charlotte. And I was like, great, babe. And so we get up there. We wait in line. And it's her turn. And she goes, and I want to watch her in the capsule. And the thing opens like a coffin, you know. And then, and she took one step into it and paused and like looked around. And I was getting ready. I knew she was going to turn and look at me. And I was getting ready to like, babe, you got it. You can do this. You're all right. You know, like I was going to talk her into it. But when she turned and looked at me, the color had left her face. And she just went. And I just, all toughness left. Baby, come here. Come here. You don't have to do it. Walk down by yourself in shame, but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do this. I'm still going to do it. I'll see you at the bottom. I'm not going to miss my opportunity to duel the demon. But when I saw her, I knew she was afraid. She was scared. There's no talking her into this. Fear of the Lord means being afraid. We don't soft pedal it with reverence first. We are actually afraid of him and what he can do. We actually tremble at his might. I don't know if you read it, if you caught it in the narrative, but it's said that the whole camp trembled. The tough, grizzled old men. The women who have seen everything and endured more. The whole camp tremb idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, let us not soft pedal it first into reverence. Let us understand first that it is an actual sense of fear where the color leaves our face and we understand what it is that our God is capable of. And we don't talk about this a lot, particularly not in American churches, but he can smite us. He can put his thumb on us and end it. You know your mom used to say, I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it? God actually means it. We should be fearful of God. That's where our relationship with him should start. And when we skip that step, I think we shortchange ourselves. I actually have thought about it this way for years. And I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, but for me, the way that our progressive understanding of who God is isn't very dissimilar from my progressive understanding of who my father is. I was born in the 80s, and when you're born in the 80s, your parents hit you. They spanked you, okay? That's what you got. I got spanked when I was growing up. We don't do it now. If we do it now, we don't talk about it. But I will say that there are times when my children act in such a way, and I think this is why we invented spanking. You have no fear, and you need a knot jerked in your tail. My dad didn't just spank me. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was when I was eight years old, my mom broke the wooden spoon on me and I laughed at her. It was belt after that, from then on out. And if I had anything in my life to do over again, I would strongly consider going back to eight years old and crying and pretending like that hurt. Because the belt was the worst. Not only did we get spanked with the belt, but my dad had a couple of moves perfected that I can't even do to this day. I called it the no-look slap and grab, but when we were in the car, I'd be in the back seat, and if me and my sister got sideways, dad could, without looking, without breaking eye contact with the road, reach back and slap. He had some sort of radar to know where my left thigh was. He could reach back and slap it and grab it and squeeze it. So now I'm dealing with the sting of hitting my leg. And then he squeezes it and he has these fulcrum grips on my leg. I'm in incredible pain. I have no idea what words he's saying or what words I'm using. I'm just trying to get this done with, right? And then he had this other move where he would grab my arm and twist it and just kind of jam my shoulder into itself and walk me across a room. And I'm going like this. It was easier to be a parent in the 80s, I think. But when I was little, I was scared of my dad. For better or worse, maybe I need to work this out in therapy. For better or worse, I was scared of him. I didn't get sideways because I didn't want to get hurt. I watched my mouth because I didn't want the no-look slapping grab. I didn't want to get spanked. I was scared, and so that kept me in line. But eventually, somewhere in middle school, I realized, defects is a thing. He's not going to hurt me that bad. He really is not going to do anything. Or I can report him. I got a leg up. But by that time in my life, I just wanted to make him proud of me. I didn't obey him because I was scared of getting the belt. I obeyed him because I wanted to make him proud. And then at some point in my life, I realized that he was proud of me, that he was proud to call me his son. And my mom was proud to call me her son. And then the knowledge of their pride in me made me love them all the more. And so fear begat reverence, begat a desire to make them proud. The fact that I knew that they were proud of me begat this deep love for them, that they loved and accepted me for who I was no matter what and it was unconditional and I don't think it works very differently with our Heavenly Father but we can't just jump straight to love we have to experience fear and from that fear a desire to make our Heavenly Father proud and from that desire realize that he is proud of us that that He does love us as much as He ever will. And then from that comes this unconditional, reciprocal, grateful love from us towards our Heavenly Father. But it has to start with fear. That's why it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that that gets a bad rap, this idea of fearing our God. Why would our God want us to be afraid of him? Why would he ask that of us? Because in the 21st century church, in American church, we skip fear and we go straight to the cross. We skip fear and we go right to Christmas and right to Easter. I am forgiven because he was forsaken. I'm accepted. He was condemned. And we get to move right to God. We get to move right into God's presence. We never experience the fear of him. It's like growing up with your grandfather when all he ever wants to do is spoil you. But you forget that your dad has to discipline you. We forget that. And we skip straight to love. And we forget to fear our God. We forget scenes like this in Exodus 19 where we should be awestruck by him and wonder and marvel at his largesse and at his might and at his wrath and at his vengeance and at his anger. Those don't make us comfortable, so we move on from them. But I believe that we cheapen our relationship with our Father God when we are not aware of them. So why does God insist that fear is the beginning of wisdom? And how can that be a good thing? A few points to this end. First of all, fear appreciates grace and mercy. Fear helps us appreciate grace and mercy. Here's what I mean. Back to the well of the cruise this week by way of illustration. This was a, my parents were saying, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our family. My parents are big cruisers. They like to do it, and so they wanted to bring Amy and I, Amy's my sister, and our families along. And so we did the whole thing. And it was really nice, and Dad did it right. And we got to stay in a suite. And that's pretty, I'm not trying to brag, I'm just telling you that we stayed in a suite. It is pretty awesome. There was a curtain dividing our king-size bed from the height of bed, so that was fancy. And we had our own balcony and a chair that you could read on and watch the ocean, which was really, really cool. We had, there was a private suite lounge that your key card got you access to, and from 4.30 to 8, there's free Cokes, so it was awesome. We would go there every day and get Cokes before dinner because at dinner, if you wanted a Coke, they would upcharge you like $5.50 or something. So we'd go get a free Coke and then take that to dinner. But it was like a really nice experience. And at one point, we had told each of Jen and I each did a cruise when we were teenagers with our families. And at one point Lily said, uh, mommy and daddy, when you did cruises before, did you stay in rooms like this? And it was like, no, no, we stayed in an interior room that was tiny. It was like a cave and it was damp. And you had to shuffle sideways to get into bed because there's no space. And you slept sweaty against your sibling. That's what you did. All right. That was traveling when we were growing up. Because when we were growing up, we didn't have grandparents that had been moderately successful. So mom and dad had to foot the bill for vacations. Jen, growing up, went to vacation in Seaside Beach every year before Seaside Beach was bougie and awesome, back when it was just run down like all the beaches in North Carolina. I hate North Carolina beaches. And your barbecue sauce. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, I know. They got a house that was a few blocks off of the beach that somehow or another through the Southern Baptist Church relationship network, Jen's dad found this older lady, and he would come down. He was pretty handy. And in exchange for doing a certain amount of projects, his family could stay in the basement a few blocks off of the beach. So she grew up vacationing by trading handiwork for a location that was a bike ride away from the beach. And Lily's staying in a suite with free Cokes in the afternoon and a private dining room going, isn't this how everyone travels? And it's like, no, no, this is not how, this is not how rectors travel. Somebody gave us a courtside seats one time to an NC state game. And we were sitting, Lily and I were on the floor sitting behind the television announcer booth and they were turning around and interacting with her during the commercial breaks. And at one point in the game, I grabbed her and I said, Lily, do you see up there in the shadows the seats against the wall that are really high up and you can barely see? And she goes, yes. And I said, those are rector seats. Okay? These are not. Do not get used to this. But it was just funny to me, Daddy, did you stay in rooms like this when you were a kid? No. No, I didn't have rich grandparents. I stayed with the poor. I stayed in poor people rooms. And we went on one. And it was a treat. But she doesn't understand that. And that's something to work out. Something that Jen and I have to navigate. But to her, what we just did is normal. That's what we're used to. But because I stayed in the dank cabin cave when I was a kid, I can have a deeper appreciation for the sweet. Because it was like Lord of the Flies and I had to fight for one glass of water amongst a bunch of overweight people trying to get to the same trough when I was 16. I can appreciate access to water all I want on a ship. She can't appreciate that. She doesn't have that perspective. And my point is, New Testament Christians are a lot more like her than they are like the Old Testament Christians. New Testament Christians don't know what it is to fear God because we meet Jesus right away. We meet someone who describes himself as gentle and lowly. We don't know what it is to suffer. We don't know what it is to be fearful of God. We've never sat at the base of the mountain and watched it violently shake while we tremble with our friends at the might of our God because we go straight to the cross. We go straight to Christmas and we go straight to Easter and we see Jesus meek and mild. We are the rich billionaire trust fund babies of history born into this soft world where we never have to fear God. And so we read passages like this and they're foreign to us because that's not our God because our God comes meek and mild and, and he loves me, and he died for me, and he accepts me, and I call him Abba Father, and he calls me up into his lap. We forget the awful God that comes before that. We forget the fear-inspiring God that comes before that, and we end up acting like spoiled brats towards our God because we forget to fear him. So fear appreciates grace and mercy. When I have grappled with the reality that not only do I deserve a punishment for my sin and for my disloyalty to God, but that he is also highly capable of meeting that out and has chosen not to, and instead has chosen to show me grace and mercy in the form of his son and watched him die for my betrayal to him. It is only then when we swim in those waters and acquaint ourselves with that reality that we can properly appreciate grace and mercy. But we're so quick to jump to grace and mercy. And we figuratively ask our parents, has it always been like this? Did you travel like this when you were a kid? Because we're spoiled. And so I think that fear is good because it refocuses us on our gratitude for grace and mercy. And it shows us how important those things are. Fear is good because fear reminds us of our place. It reminds us of our place. When we say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we say this is actually a good thing. Why? Because it reminds us of our place. Jen pointed this out to me this week. Do you understand that the original sin in the Garden of Eden was essentially choosing to not be afraid of God anymore? It was losing this fear of God. The story goes that the serpent whispered into the ear of Eve. There was one tree. There was only one rule. God said, do whatever you want. Just don't eat fruit off of this one tree. And the serpent appears to Eve and speaks into her ear and says, do you know that God actually doesn't want you to eat of that tree? Because if you do, you'll know the difference between good and evil and you'll be like him. He's just trying to hold you down. He doesn't want you to be like he is and So what happened in the language of what we're talking about this morning is he whispered in Eve's ear You don't have to be afraid of him You can do what you want You don't have to fear God you are like him and so the original sin Was have to fear God. You are like him. And so the original sin was refusing to fear God at the beginning of wisdom. Do you see that? And I love the way that the Bible starts out, and this is why I say that fear helps us keep our place. The very first sentence of the Bible, do you know what it is? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I'm firmly convinced that it does not begin that way just because that's where the story starts. I'm firmly convinced that the Bible begins that way because it sets up from the very first sentence, the essential relationship in all creation. I am the creator, you are the created. All sin in our life is when we do this and we put ourselves on level with our creator. Anytime we sin, anytime we do anything that displeases God, all we've done is we've said, yeah, you're the creator, but I think I'm equal to you. So I'm not going to follow your rules. I'm going to follow mine. Everything in life that is messed up begins with a fundamental disjointment of this relationship where he says he is the creator and we are the creation and we go, nope, I'm not scared of you. This was the original sin of Eve. When the serpent whispered in her ear, you don't have to be afraid of him anymore. You are like him. And so she lost the fear of the Lord. So the fear of God keeps us in our place. It reminds us that he is all-powerful creator, and we are subservient creation. When Job got upset with God in that book, and he confronts him in Job 38, God's response is, hey Job, you forgot your place. So when we have fear of God, when we read Exodus 19 and we allow that to take us back to our nine-year-old selves and tremble at the might of our God, it also reminds us to keep our place. Last good thing I'll say about fear and why God insists on it is that fear makes knowledge a privilege. It makes knowledge of God a privilege. We presume that we should know who God is. We presume that we have a right to him. We presume that he should share himself with us. But that is not the case. Do you understand the miracle of the condescension of God? Do you understand what that is? Here is a figure that for the first time in history, since the garden of Eden descends onto a mountain, it burns with smoke. It shakes violently. It makes everyone around him tremble. And thousands of years later, he condescends by sending his son and our frail form to be with us, to sit in the muck and the mire. The miracle of God's condescension to us, to be one of us, to live as us, to be tempted as us, to love as us, and then to die as us for us. We start with Christmas and we start with Easter, so we take it for granted. But put yourself in the shoes of the people surrounding that mountain and imagine that thousands of years later, this being that's shaking the foundations of the earth and is causing fear and everyone that I know is going to send his son in human form to live the life of a pauper, to love me perfectly, to die perfectly, and to pave a way for me to get to know that cloud, Testament Christian mindset that grew up thinking that they always vacation in suites. That grows up thinking that God could never possibly be upset with me. He loves me. I'm forgiven. I'm concerned for the spoiled Christians that don't take time to understand what it means to fear their God and how mighty and awesome he is. I'm concerned for the church as life chips away at our wonder and we're no longer scared of water slides because we can explain it all away. And I just thought it was worth it this morning to try my best. And I don't mean this in any disrespectful way. But to try my best to grab your face and make you look at the might and the wonder and the awe of your God. For once, before we skip to Easter and we skip to Christmas. Look how wonderful and terrifying and miraculous he is. And let's be grateful that he uses that for us, not against us. That he chooses to love us. That he chooses to save us, that he chooses to condescend to be a part of us. We cannot read Exodus and see God descend on Mount Sinai and not pause and acknowledge that we are spoiled spiritual brats that do not often enough reflect on the awe-inspiring wonder, might, and wrath of God. And so this morning, let us do that. And may we always see ourselves at the foot of the mountain. And in so doing, come to appreciate all the things we love about our Heavenly Father all the more. Because I think so often we skip to the things we love about our God and we forget this foundation of fear that is the very beginning of wisdom that deepens our appreciation for him. So may we this morning together sit at the base of the mountain and tremble. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for what you chose to do with the Israelites in descending upon Mount Sinai. God, I'm not sure why you chose to reveal yourself in that way. I'm not even sure we've handled it the way it needs to be handled this morning, but I know, God, it gives me pause. I know, Father, it makes me wonder at you. And I hope that just a little bit of that wonder was communicated. And I hope that we are moved by it. I hope that we will not be so inoculated by your love that we forget your wrath. God, give us a deep appreciation for that so that we may approach you with more gratitude. So that we might marvel at the fact that you love us, that you know us, that you care about us, and that you're proud of us. God, help us more and more to see ourselves at the foot of that mountain, marveling at who and what you are. In Jesus' name, amen.