Sermons tagged with PromisedLand

Good morning. Welcome to Grace. It's a good thing we turned out all the lights so you couldn't see that transition up here. You had no clue I was on the stage until the lights came back on. Just believe that. It's fine. Hey, if you are new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I get to serve as one of the pastors out here, and honestly, I'm so blessed to serve as one of the pastors out here. If you're watching at home, online, thank you for tuning in. So glad that you all decided to join us today. As Sarah said a little bit earlier, at the beginning of the summer, we jumped into a series called Moses. And essentially all we're doing is we're going through the book of Exodus and we're looking at the journey of Moses and the Israelites as God rescued them from slavery to the Egyptians and is leading them towards the promised land. And so we're just, we're taking some of the stories, honestly, most of it's a lot chapter by chapter, and we're seeing exactly what we can learn from this. And I'm very excited to be sharing with you today. Nate, thank you so much for allowing me to teach. He didn't take the day off. He is still here. You don't recognize him because you see more of his face than usual. I don't know if I like it, but it's there. I'm just kidding. You look lovely, man. Keep it going. But hey, so I want to jump in today. I want to start off with, honestly, just a little bit of vulnerability. I want to put myself out there against my better judgment, mostly because of you, if I'm being honest, Chris. But I'm going to be vulnerable, throw myself out there, okay? I'm not a big fan of spiders actually I don't like spiders at all I believe that in the creation God allowed Satan to create two things one was spiders the other was Walmart like both of those things just avoid with everything you can and actually like I used to be a lot worse than I am now I used to be terrified of spiders to the point that I could even kill him I you where it started. I was sub-10 years old and my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to watch Arachnophobia. So if you need some good parenting advice, just let your kids watch a horror movie and just see how it scars them for the rest of their life. And then it got to the point where I couldn't even kill them because I remember I was at work one time and there was a big fat spider crawling across the ground so I stepped on it. I didn't realize that it was a pregnant spider. And so, yeah, yeah, you've experienced it before. They don't just die. Thousands of little spiders are like, this ain't for me. I don't like it. I don't like it. So Tamara then became the resident spider killer in our home. I can remember. Don't judge me. It's justified, but I can remember one time driving down the road. We were in Georgia at this point in time. We had somewhere to go. I don't quite remember what we had to do or what we were headed to, but I know a spider crawled across the dashboard. And what popped in my head was one of two things are going to happen. I'm going to wreck and kill us both, or the spider is going to crawl across the vent. It's going to blow in my face and eat me alive. So both of those things are very realistic. Both of them could have happened. So I knew it had to die, so I did the thing you have to do. I pulled over on the side of the road, got out of the car, and I said, Tamara, I'm not getting back in the car until you kill the spider. She's like, no, we're going to be late. You've got to get in the car. I hear what you're saying. I just don't see me doing that. I need you to kill the spider. And then she's like, fine, okay. So we had to wait for it to reemerge from the blower that's going to blow in my face and all that stuff. So she grabbed a paper towel, killed the spider. She's like, okay, fine, it's dead. Let's go. I was like, well, I hear you. But I kind of need evidence. I need you to show me the spider is dead. Because you may not have squished it hard enough. Maybe it's still running around. We need to see evidence. Then I need you to dangle it out the window so it's no longer in the car. Just in case it decides to resurrect and come to attack us then because you made it mad for trying to kill it. Because if that doesn't happen, we're staying where we are. We're not going to go anywhere else. Like you can drive. Just come back and pick me up after you kill the spider. Right? Like I think we've all had those moments before where we face something that's deeply uncomfortable. And it's like, yeah, I don't see me doing that. This isn't for me. Right? But if you've been following Jesus for very long, isn't it true? And wouldn't you say that you have those encounters a little bit more often? Like we all have next steps. One of our traits, you can read it on the lobby in the back, is that we are step takers. Every person in here has a next step in front of them. God has moving you to something. God is asking you to do something, whether it's something he wants to do in you or something he wants to do through you. And doesn't it seem like we often come to this place where God asks us to do something, and it's like, well, God, I hear you. I don't see me doing that. I don't see me taking the step that you're asking me to take. Like there's just too much uncertainty on the other side of that. I don't quite know how this is all going to play out. I need a little bit of evidence. The problem that we kind of run into when it comes to these being step takers is that we oftentimes confuse or we oftentimes mistake comfort for confirmation. I'm not talking about comfort like the AC seats, right? Like those should should be. Instead of EV vehicles like where your car shuts off automatically at the red light. That needs to be. The AC ventilated seats needs to be the thing that they mandate for all cars from this point forward. Because they're lovely. That's comfortable. But that's not the comfort I'm talking about. The comfort that I'm talking about is comfort in your security. Hey, God. I want to take this step, but you've got to give me a little bit more evidence that I'm going to be okay when I do. Hey, God, I hear you that you want me to go in this direction. You want me to do this thing, but honestly, I'm just not sure that's for me. I don't think I have the skill set for that. You've got the wrong guy. You've got the wrong person. You're barking up the wrong tree, God. listen, I want to go and I want to do the thing that you're asking me to do, but the thing that you're asking me to do, I just don't see it happen because I'm uncomfortable with this. God, I want to know it's you asking me to move in this direction, but I just, we chase this feeling of comfort and we let that be our confirmation that we need to step in a particular direction, that we need to do the thing that God is asking us to do, or even if it is God asking us to do it. We oftentimes let comfort be our confirmation, and the scary thing about chasing comfort is not necessarily what it leads you to. Although we've all probably experienced moments of pursuing comfort that have led us to doing things that haven't been good for our life. But the scary part about this is what it keeps you from. Like, do you know, listen for a second. Like, do you know you were created with a purpose, regardless where you are in your faith journey, regardless if you believe or not believe. I understand that. But you were created, you were specifically wired, because God wants to do something through you that would blow your mind. Like, I love how Paul says it in Ephesians. He says, hey, God is working in you to do something through you to impact the world around you that would absolutely stun you. You have no clue what's on the other side of that step. You have no clue what's on the other side of stepping in and leaning into that discomfort to experience God in ways you haven't experienced him before. And here's what's sad about it. Like, I've experienced this, right? What's sad and scary about these moments is you want to take the step. Like, I don't know what it is for you. Maybe it's initiating reconciliation with a relationship, a spouse or a friend or a child or a relative or something like that. Maybe it's taking a step in your job, maybe to leave a job, maybe to start a new job. Maybe it's to do something in ministry. Maybe it's to get involved with one of our mission teams. Maybe it's to go to Mexico, whatever it may be for you, I have no clue. But on the other side of that decision is this, God, I need a little bit more evidence that things are going to work out the way that I'm hoping they're going to work out. So how do you do it? How do you step in? How do you lean in to the discomfort? How do we keep that from preventing us from fulfilling and walking into the person and the life that God has created us to live? That's what we're going to talk about today. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Exodus 17. That's where we're going to be camped out. I'm going to jump over to James at one point, but we'll come right back to Exodus. If you don't have your Bibles, we're going to put it on this fancy digital Bible in the sky, but let's jump in. The Israelites, like I said, we started from where Moses was confirmed as leader. God kind of called him, and he goes, and they rescued the Israelites. We are less than six weeks away from the Red Sea, where the Egyptian army was chasing them. They got pinned up against the Red Sea. The Red Sea split. They walked through. And it's even less time than that from what Nate talked about last week with the manna and the quail. Well, God just made bread appear from nowhere to excess. So they take the next step in the journey. And this is where we are in 17.1. The whole Israelite community set out from the desert of sin. Just a quick aside. That's not sin. Oftentimes when we read scripture like this, we try to make it say something that it doesn't say. It's not talking about, hey, oh, look, they're leaving sin. That's not it. It's a place, the desert of sin. And it says, traveling from place to place, as the Lord commanded, they camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. Moses replied, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test? But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and our livestock die of thirst? Then Moses cried out to the Lord. I love this. I love this prayer. Moses cried out to the Lord. What am I to do with these people? Look at these people you gave me. What am I supposed to do with them? He said that Moses cried to the Lord. What am I supposed to do with these people? By the way, when our staff gathers, like this is our prayer oftentimes. What are we supposed to do with their heathens? Again, talking about you, Chris. But what are we supposed to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me. I don't know what the Hebrew word is for, hey, Moses, you about to catch these hands? But I'm sure he heard it quite a bit in that manner. Like they were fed up. Like they were done. And what's incredible about this, the journey that they had experienced and they reached their breaking point. Like the word quarreled. Some of your versions, depending on what you read, it may say complain. But this is another level. Like they had reached another level of discomfort. They had stepped into a situation like, you know, we can't do this anymore. The word, this is the first time that it's been used because they were checked out. They had experienced a fatigue and a failure of their faith just because they were tired. And Moses even responded in a different way. Like when they came to him, Moses was now fearing for his life. He's like, no, no, no, this is out of hand, God. I understand you're leading us somewhere. I understand you're taking us on a journey, but I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation right now, Lord. These people are about to kill me. Everyone was checked. They had gotten to this place. If you had been here for many of the sermons throughout this series, you'd begin to notice this pattern emerge. They take a step, they're obedient, they encounter a challenge. They take a step, they're obedient, they encounter an impossible situation. They take a step, they're obedient, they're going where God is asking them to go. And now, there's no hope. The word test that is used. It was interesting to me because you see places throughout Scripture where it says, hey, test the Lord, right? Like we're invited to test God's will, to see, hey, is this really, you see Gideon do that? Gideon tells him, hey, I want you to go to the heroes. Okay, make the fleece wet. Like he's just asking, God, I want to make sure this is you telling me, but that's not what's happening right now with the Israelites. The Israelites aren't testing God's will. They're questioning his character. They believe one of two things to be true. They say, God, you brought us here and you abandoned us. And or you brought us here to kill us, you and Moses. And they were done. I've done everything you've asked me to do. I've taken the steps you've asked me to take. I've done the ridiculous things that you've asked me to do. And yeah, we've had some great experiences, God. But look, I did it and now I'm here. This is what happens when what you experience doesn't match what you expect. And now it's very easy for us to look at this and kind of throw rocks at them, right? Like, man, you guys, how could you possibly question? Like, you were just fed. You had more manna than you could possibly ask for. Like, you saw the seas split and then swallow the Egyptian army. Like, you saw the Nile turn to blood. You saw all of the places. Like, how could you possibly doubt that God is here with you, that God is working with you, that God is willing to take care of you. They had reached their breaking point, and they began to crave the comforts of familiarity. And this isn't just a Christian thing. Like psychologists and mental health professionals tell us that the majority of people choose to stay in the familiar versus venturing into the unknown. Even if the familiar is unhealthy, even if the familiar is a place they know they don't need to be, even if what's on the other side of the step is something that they crave, they choose to stay in what they know because of the uncertainty, because of the risk of what could be. And this is what was going on with the Israelites. They began to crave. Like, listen, listen, I know life with Pharaoh was hard. I know we were slaves. I know that things weren't good. But you know what? We didn't have to wonder when we were going to eat or what we were going to eat. We didn't have to worry what we were going to drink. We didn't have to worry where we were going to sleep. Like, I missed the comfort of just knowing. So God, like all of their confirmation that God was with them, that God is faithful, that God is good, completely went out the window because their comfort was rattled. Some of you know some of my story. I grew up in the church. My father was a pastor, and I remember one season in particular. It just got really bad. I remember going to church one Sunday morning, and when my father got up to start preaching, every single thing that he would say, from the hello, so glad you guys are here, you heard this echo from the crowd, and there was a guy who began just mocking him. Every single thing that he said, he would begin mocking. My dad knew something was about to go off. Not yet. It's a little bit early. Sorry. That's on me. But hey, way to pay attention. But he began mocking. I was going to let you come. I just didn't want you to stand up there for 30 minutes. Sorry. All right, let's start over. I've got to go back to the beginning. Hey, guys, welcome to Grace. I'm so glad that you're here. No, I'm kidding. But I remember when that started to happen. My dad knew something was about to go on. And so he asked me to stand up, and we just lived right down the road. He said, hey, son, I want you to go home. I was maybe 12, 13 years old. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to church today. This is great. But he sent me home, and what I found out later on is that the guy and his family were upset with my father because he was going to allow someone to become a member of the church who had been divorced and remarried. They didn't think that was okay. And so him and his family were pretty prominent in that church, and on that day when my dad asked me to leave, they ended up gathering around him like a schoolyard bully threatening to fight him. And what my family did in that point, maybe within a month, two months, I didn't sign up for this. God, this isn't what you told me I should expect. I don't want to do this anymore. Have you ever been there? The church has done a pretty horrible job, if we can be honest, about talking about the grittiness and the challenge and difficulty of faith. And because of that, the expectation of ease has crept its way into Christianity. God, it's not supposed to be this hard. God, I understand that you're good. I understand that you're faithful, but this? I didn't sign up for this. I don't want anything to do with it. There's a book called The Nuns. It's not talking about the little Catholic black hat ladies. It's talking about a group of people who sociologists and researchers studied for a little bit. On the census, it's the people who mark non-affiliated when it comes to like the religion portion. Hey, are you affiliated with the? No, no affiliation. So they're calling them the nuns. And what they found is there's this age range between about 30 to 50 to 55 years old who are marking not affiliated, want nothing to do with church, have no desire to go. It's just not a part of their life. But that wasn't always the case. They actually grew up, a large portion of the people grew up in the church. And they were painted this picture of what it means to follow Jesus. That when they began living their life, when they stepped into the real world, when they started experiencing the challenges, it wasn't what they were told. And they were told when they were a kid, hey, listen, just give your life to Jesus. Everything's going to be great. You'll get the promotion. You'll have money issues. Your spouse is going to be great. Your kids are going to stop throwing shoes at each other on the way to church. All you got to do is just follow Jesus and everything changes. You'll have the house, you'll have the yard, all the dreams that you want. It's right there for you. But when they experience something different, say, God, this isn't what I expected. I'm a little uncomfortable being here and I just don't, I don't think this is for me. Because clearly I'm either believing wrong or it's just not real. Like I'm not sure about this whole faith thing anymore. The only problem with that, man, you don't see that anywhere in the Bible. Anywhere throughout scripture, you don't see this promise of perfection or this promise of a great, easy life. You actually see the opposite. You see Jesus tell his disciples, hey, listen, the things that you're seeing me do, man, the things you're seeing me experience, it's going to be harder for you. You see John the Baptist, who was the, he ushered in Jesus, like he was the one who was the first one. This, this is the guy, this is the guy that the Old Testament promised, who's going to fix all the stuff, this is the guy, and he ends up in jail, he's like, well, this isn't what I expected, and he asked some of his disciples to go and just check, hey, make sure he's really the guy, because this is supposed to be different, like I'm not supposed to be dealing with the thing that I'm dealing with right now. Is he really the guy? Like, have you ever been there? I love what James teaches us. Jesus' brother writes a letter to the Israelites. And in James 1, it says this. It says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. What? James, I don't think you know how trials work, my man. Like that experience of joy, no, no, no, no, no. Because in your trial, when your faith is tested, it produces perseverance. There's purpose in that difficulty. There's purpose. And don't lean away. Don't let the discomfort, don't let the uncertainty push you away from what's on the other side of leaning in to the uncomfortable step, of leaning in to the place that God asks you to go. Because when you do that, when perseverance finishes its work, it does so that your faith may be mature and your faith may be complete. James says, listen, you're going to face moments that you didn't expect. You don't have to let discomfort push you away from what's on the other side because those moments are necessary in your faith journey. What James is teaching us in this moment is that it's impossible. It's not possible to grow your faith beyond your certainty. That's the next slide. I'll move through those verses, Laura. You can jump ahead. It's not possible to grow your faith beyond your certainty. When you shape your life and surround your day-to-day, when you're living in a moment where you don't have any questions, where you don't have any worries, where you don't have any doubts, where you don't have any fears, where you have no reason to call on God and lean and depend on God and who he is and his provision, no faith is necessary. We have to exercise our faith in order to see it grow. And what James is saying, don't run from these moments. Don't run from these places. Because if you lean in, like the step that God has asked you, if you just lean into that, just take the step, what you will see is you will see God show up. You will see God be faithful. You will see God in ways you never expected and you have never experienced before. And the result of that is a greater dependency, is a stronger faith, is a deeper faith, is a more unshakable faith. And James says, just, you can, you can just lean in, like lean into those moments. Now it's really important that you hear this. So, how does Nate do it whenever he says, is it do like this, and then I think he goes down like this? Like, it's really important that you hear this, right? I love you, man. But no, it's very important that you hear this. Because it's easy to confuse. Every bad thing that's happening in your life isn't a result of God leading you to that place. It's important to remember that we live in a broken world where sin exists, evil is present, and sometimes the pain, the challenge, the discomfort that you're feeling is a result of someone else's sin against you. But the beautiful part about what James is saying, the context in which James is writing this letter, he's writing it to Israelites who are being persecuted for their faith. They're being persecuted. Someone else is evil. What James is telling us in this moment is God's goodness and God's plans aren't only possible when he orchestrates it. God doesn't have to lead you to the place of discomfort for him to do something incredible. God is able to work and move and do in all things, in all situations. He's not limited to his own plans. And James says, so regardless what it is, regardless what season you're facing, you can lean in. And for our context, what we're talking about today, the step that's ahead of you, James says you can lean in. Because what's on the other side of that? It may take a while. But what's on the other side of that is a deeper dependency. And you have never been so secure in the steps that you're going to take than when you have a deep dependency on who God is and his provision for you. If faith is a gift from God, seizes of doubt and uncertainty are the box in which they're wrapped in. You don't have to run away from it. But how do you do it? I think God understands the human struggle. Like I said, you don't see throughout the Bible anywhere where it says, hey, listen, get it together. It's easier than this. Just believe. Which is why I think God didn't respond to the Israelites in this moment with rebuke. He didn't slap them across the head. He actually, Moses, he says, what am I supposed to do with these people? In 17, verse 7, it says this. I'm sorry, verse 5. So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massa and Meribah. Because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord, saying, is the Lord among us or not? I do think it's interesting that the remedy that God offered to Moses to move forward was another ridiculous task. Hey, grab the staff and go hit that rock and water's going to come out of it. God, that's not what rocks do. I don't think you understand that, but he did it. He took these steps, he struck the rock, and God provided for their needs. Just like us on this side of the story looking in, like, yeah, yeah, we knew that was going to happen. We know how the story goes. But it just serves as a reminder for us that, like, God's not calling you to a place where he's going to watch you fail. There's not a timeline on that. Like, the step he's asking you to take, like, it's as good as what you believe it could be, why he's leading you to that place. But I love that it's just not, like I said, you don't see throughout the scripture. I'm not convinced that, I'm not convinced that God asks us to have blind faith. Like I don't see Jesus just getting so mad because the disciples that are following him just don't believe. What I see him rebuke and correct is, hey, do you still not believe? Like, do you still not trust that I am right here with you after all that you've seen? And I think that's why God instructed Moses to grab the staff. The staff has made a lot of appearances throughout the journey so far, throughout the book of Exodus. And actually, it's going to be here for the remainder of the Old Testament, because it was put in the Ark of the Covenant, along with a couple of other things, with the manna from last week's message, and then the stone tablets, which are coming up in a couple weeks from the Ten Commandments. But also you had the staff that was in there. The staff represented more than just a wooden stick. It represented more than just stability. It was a representation of God's faithfulness in the past. The staff was what God used to convince Moses the direction he needed to go, that he was the one that he was going to be leading. The staff is what God used to convince Pharaoh that God was legit. And you better listen, man. Let his people go, right? The staff is what God used to turn the blood, the Nile River into blood. The staff is what God used to show, hey, listen, watch my faithfulness. The Red Sea splits and you find your escape. The staff is what God used throughout so much of their story. The staff represented. Do you remember? Do you remember what I did? Do you remember that previous step that you stepped into that you were uncertain about? And do you remember my faithfulness? So after my family and I walked away from the church, I had no thought of God. It wasn't a consideration at all. And I don't know any other way to say that. I just lived my life. There was never anything that made me think, I need to do something different here. Until I was about 19 years old, I had a car accident that should have killed me. And it was a miraculous moment that I didn't. But God reintroduced himself to my life. And I remember in my faith journey, I got to this point. I was like, okay, God, listen, I just want to serve you. I just want to do something. I want to go to the place that you're asking me to go. I hope it's music. I was a mediocre at best musician. Maybe still am. Don't laugh at that. But I was a mediocre at best musician. I hope it's music, God. But I'll legitimately do whatever you want me to do. I'll legitimately, I'll clean the toilet. I just want to serve you, Lord. And I remember I called some friends and I had them pray for me. Hey, listen, I'm searching for what God wants me to do, and I just need to know what direction to go. I need to know what step to take in my life. And I remember at this point in time, I was a night owner at a hotel. I was an assistant basketball coach for a high school, and I was going to school full time. I legitimately got maybe four hours of sleep a day during basketball season. It was even less than that with practices and all that. And the four hours, four to five hours, it was just so intermittent. But I remember after talking to a friend in Florida, man, there was like a two-week stretch where I legitimately could sleep no more than about an hour a day. Because have you ever had something on your mind so much that it keeps you awake? Like that's a real thing. And there was something, every time I laid my head down to go to sleep, there was a musical riff, there was a guitar, a chord progression. There was, that I had, it was just so eating away at me that I had to get up and go play the guitar. There was some lyrics that I was writing down or something was just something with music. It was so heavy on my mind that it legitimately kept me awake at night. And I remember getting out of the shower one day to get ready to go to the hotel for work, and I saw my phone had a missed call, and it was a voicemail. It was actually the guy that prayed with me in Florida. And I remember the moment, I had no clue what his voicemail said, but I remember the moment that I heard his voice. I remembered one of the lines from the prayer two weeks ago. And he said, hey God, put it on Aaron's mind. So much. What do you want him to do if he loses sleep at night? And I, man, oh, this is it. Like, this is evidence. Like, now I know where to go. I know what to do. I know God is with me. I know God has called me. I know God has chosen me to be a part of something. Like, I'm just so excited. And so I started that journey. And in the journey of being a pastor, in the journey of leading worship, I can't tell you how many times insecurity sets in. It says, you're not the guy. You're not the one. You're not good enough for this. Who are you that people are going to follow you or listen to you? And I'm not saying this because I need accolades or I need you to give me kudos. That's not the point. But what I have in my life, the gift by the grace of God, has given me a staff that I can cling to when my faith begins to slip. So, let me ask you a question. What's the step God keeps putting in front of you? What's the thing he's asking you to do for your marriage, for your family, for your ministry, for your life? What is the step that has caused you to pump the brakes? Because it's a little uncertain. Second question. What's your staff? And don't answer that too quickly. Spend some time thinking, where have you experienced the greatness and goodness of God in a way that it cannot be taken away from you? Where have you experienced the greatness and goodness of God that you can cling to it and let it be a motivator? No, no, no, no, no. I can lean in. I can go and I can do the things that God is asking me to do, not because of me, because I serve a faithful God. He will not leave me. Just step. Take your staff and go. Let's say a prayer. God, thank you so much. God, I thank you for man, I'm just struck by by your grace and your willingness and your desire to use us in ways that we could never imagine. God, I'm so grateful that for each and every person in here, regardless where they are in their faith journey, or if they're not stepping into faith, or they don't really know if they believe, God, I thank you that you thought of them, and you have a plan for them. And I just ask, God, that you would, just by the graciousness and the gentleness of your Holy Spirit, you would come alongside of us, God, and you would remind us that you would do for us what you did for Moses in this moment when he was terrified, when he had no clue what to do, when he thought he was about to die. You reminded him, hey, you remember the thing? You're not asking us to believe blindly, but you're asking us to cling to the faithfulness we've experienced, God, and we can all, all go back to the cross. In the text that Paul tells us, that if God is for us, who can be against us? And the evidence of this is the cross of Christ, that you, God, wouldn't even spare your own son for our lives. Thank you for that, God. We ask for clarity. We ask for wisdom. We ask for hope. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor, one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us this morning. If you're joining us online, we're so glad you're doing that, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. And I'm excited for this morning. And I know this section of the church here, that your general mentality is, yeah, the good part's over, so let's go, buddy. I'll try, okay? I'll try. I've got a lot to cover. I've got to see how adroitly I can move through all of the points and the stories in Moses' life, but we're going to drive to one large point today that I want us to see. This is the first Sunday in our summer-long series on the life of Moses. I think, what's it called? The Life and Journey of Moses. Wonderful. I tell the graphics department, which is Aaron and Carly, that this is what I'm going to preach about, and then they come up with the titles. So I never know what the series is called. We're going to spend 14 weeks in the life of Moses. And the reason we're going to do this is last year, I sat down with the staff and I wrote out all the books of the Bible and all the major characters of the Bible. And then we looked at the last five years worth of series and said, what are the gaps? What are the things that we haven't spent time on that we need to spend time on? And one of the most glaring ones was the life of Moses. And because of how impactful it is and how important it is in scripture. So this morning, rather than settling in on any particular instance in the life of Moses, I want to look at a bunch of them because I believe that they elicit a question. And just for the record, just so we know, Owen won the baptism contest. He did. He nailed it. That was great. I want us to move, we're going to do an overview of the life of Moses, move through and just kind of hit on different instances because Moses' life, more than any other life in the Bible, in my belief, more than any other account in the Bible, elicits a question more than any other story, more than any other person, more than any other life. You could say that Joseph is close, Moses' predecessor. You could say that David is close, but I don't think there's any other life in the Bible that elicits this question this much and kind of defines the story of Moses, which is simply this. God, what are you doing? God, what are you doing? What's going on right now? As we go through the life of Moses, you'll see this pop up again and again. God, I don't understand what you're doing right now. And in this way, I believe we can all relate to Moses because we have all at times asked that question, God, what are you doing? What's going on? I don't understand. When something's going wrong with our children and we don't know how to fix it, God, what are you doing? When someone gets sick and they aren't healed and we love them so much and they're so young, God, what are you doing? When there's big instances that happen, the big calamitous things that happen over and over again, it seems in the news, when wars happen, we say, God, this is not how I would do this. Like, God, what are you doing? When we're trying really hard to be parents and have a baby and we can't, God, what are you doing? And then when you miscarry a baby, God, what are you doing? And so I think many of us, if not all of us, have had a moment and probably a lot more than that in our life where we ask the fundamental question of the life of Moses, God, what are you doing? So what I want to do this morning is show you what I'm talking about. Show you these different instances where Moses or the nation or the people around Moses couldn't help but throw up their hands and say, God, why is this happening? What are you doing? What is going on? And we start it right out of the gate. If you have notes, you just have a list of scriptures on that note. So you can kind of see where I'm going to go. There's not a lot of blanks to fill in this morning, but you'll have the references and you can scratch the instances next to them if you want to, because I'm going to go through these and then I'm going to show you kind of what I believe is the point of all of these things. But right out of the gate, we see this verse, these verses in Exodus chapter 2, verses 3 and 4. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. So here's the context of this mama putting a baby in a basket and floating that basket down the river. The Hebrew people, the descendants of Abraham, somewhere between, scholars think it's somewhere between 200 and 400 years earlier, settled into Egypt. Because Joseph, one of the sons of Israel, Jacob, who was to become Israel, Abraham's grandson, ended up moving down to Egypt. It's a whole big thing, but he got in a position of big power. And because of his power and because of famine in the land, his family, his brothers, who would become the 12 tribes of Israel, moved down there too and settled in the land of Goshen, which is part of the land of Egypt. Then you fast forward. You turn the page from Genesis, which tells that story, among some others, but spends most of his time there. You turn the page from Genesis, and you get to Exodus. And in Exodus, what's going on is those Israelites have been there for generations. And the pharaohs that were favorable to them have gone, and there's new pharaohs. And now they're so numerous that the pharaoh at the time is worried that they would become so strong that they would be able to overtake the Egyptians and escape, and they wouldn't have their workforce anymore. So he tells the midwives, the Egyptian nurses that help with deliveries, if a woman has a girl, let the girl live. If the woman has a boy, take the boy's life to cut the male population of the Hebrew people. Well, Moses' mom was able to have him before the midwives got there. And so she was then hiding him, loving him, weaning him, caring for him. And eventually he started making too much noise as kids are wont to do. It did not take my kids three months to make too much noise, I'll tell you that. Eventually he started making too much noise and she realizes they're gonna find out about him and to come take him from me, and they're going to kill him. So the only thing she could do to save his life is put that baby in a basket and float that basket down the river. Just as an aside, I've preached a whole sermon about this on Mother's Day because I think that's what parenthood is. At the end of the day, you put your child in the basket, and you float it down the river, and you trust it to God, right? So she does that. And I can't help but think and be rather certain that during that season and during that time, with this is the kind of the real picture of it, not the personification of it, but a microcosm of it is, God, what are you doing right now? Why are you letting them kill our sons? God, why do I have to float my son down a river? So even Moses's life before he's even cognitive of what's happening around him starts with this question, God, what are you doing? Then we fast forward and we go to Exodus 2, 23 and 25. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. Preceding this verse, in the second half of chapter 2, is the account of the time that Moses came out of, I assume, the palace and was moving through the city, and he saw two Egyptian guards beating some Hebrew people. And he was inflamed with anger, and he went to protect them, and he ended up murdering these two guards. And this was seen by other people. And they reported him to the Egyptian guards. So now there's a price on his head and they're trying to actively arrest and kill Moses. So Moses has to flee. And he ends up fleeing to a place called Midian which was far enough away for him to not have to worry about the law anymore trying to get him. And he falls in with a guy named Jethro who has seven daughters. He marries one of the daughters, Zipporah, and he becomes a shepherd for 40 years. He's in the desert. Far away from the life that he had built and from the people that he knew. He had to flee. And at the end of this fleeing, the people cry out to God, what are you doing? What's going on with this slavery? And I can't help but wonder, this is speculation, you go here with me if you want to, but I can't help but wonder if they thought we had one voice in the palace that could advocate for us that Pharaoh might be sympathetic towards, and now he's just made a mistake and he's gone out into the wilderness. God, what are we doing? Who's going to save us? This is too much. This is too oppressive. And it says God heard their groanings and remembered his covenant with Abraham. Then very quickly in the narrative, we move to the next big scene in Moses's life, which is Moses and the burning bush. That's in Exodus three and four, two of, I think the best chapters in the Old Testament. And I'm not going to belabor this story because we're going to spend the next two weeks in that story. But Moses is in the desert. He's a shepherd. He's tending to his sheep. And he looks over and there's a bush that's on fire and it's not diminishing. And so he wanders over to check it out and the fire says to him, you're on holy ground, take off your shoes. And he's like, oh, this is God. And God says to him, I want you to go to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the known universe, and tell him to let his free workforce go. That's what he says. I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. And so they have a back and forth. And we're going to get into this back and forth next week with Moses' five excuses that I think are pretty great. But the one that I think is most interesting and kind of most indicative of his struggle is in chapter 4, verse 10, where it says, Moses said to the Lord, pardon your servant, Lord.. And Moses says, but why me? I'm not eloquent. I never have been. I'm not silver-tongued. And beyond that, I just spent 40 years talking to sheep in the desert every day. And when he says I'm slow of speech and tongue, there are some Hebrew scholars that believe that that is indicative of a speech impediment, that he could have possibly had a stutter or something that would cause him to speak slowly and unevenly. He was not the man to go have political negotiations with the most powerful leader on the planet. So he says, why me, God? I'm slow of speech and of tongue. And God's response, if you read on, is, I will be adequate for you. I don't need you to be adequate. I will be adequate for you, so go. But it's like, then the question, and in the five excuses, God, what are you doing? You've got the wrong guy. Who's sending me? Well, I am sending you. Who should I say sent me? And God says, I'm not going to tell you my name. Why? What are you doing? He says, no one's going to trust me. And he said, I'll make them. Why? What are you doing? Every excuse is, God, what are you doing? But he goes faithfully, and he goes to Pharaoh, and he says, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, no chance. And then we have the famous ten plagues, right? The frogs and the locusts and the blood and the boils and all the things. We have the famous 10 plagues. And now we don't know how long of a period of time the plagues cover. Was there one a day for 10 days? Was there one a week for 10 weeks? It could have been months or maybe even years. There's not a lot of information to tell us what the span of time was during the plagues. But you've got to think that by the time they got to the 10th one, the growing question in everyone's brain was, God, what are you doing? These plagues ain't working, man. Pharaoh's not budging. God, what are you doing? And then the last one is, hey, I'm going to send the angel of death over the camp. And everyone who doesn't do a certain thing is going to lose their firstborn son. We see this in chapter 11, verse 1. Now the Lord said to Moses, I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here. One is, hey, the plagues aren't really working. So like what's going on, God? What's happening right now? And then the other one is, hey, what I want you to do for this particular plague to save your firstborn son is I wanted you to take the blood of a lamb, of a splatless lamb, and I want you to paint it on the doorposts of your house. And when the angel of death sees that perfect blood on the doorposts of your house, he will pass over, which is where we get the holiday Passover, he will pass over your house and move on to the next one. And I can't help but think that as Phil Leverett as the dad is out there the afternoon before Passover with the fresh blood from the lamb that he probably borrowed from Cam, that he's taking the blood of the lamb and putting it on his doorpost and saying, God, what are we doing? This doesn't make any sense. But okay, if this is what I have to do. The angel of death comes. There was great weeping and wailing in Egypt that night. The cry was great. And sure enough, Pharaoh drives them out. Says, okay, get out of here. You're a curse on our nation. Get lost. And here's a funny little detail from this story that I don't know if I'll be able to point out again. But all the housekeepers, all the women in Israel who were housekeepers of the rich Egyptian social class or whatever, they knew that they were going to be leaving the next day. So on their last day at work, they pilfered the Egyptians. And the Bible says, and so they plundered them. They took all their gold and all their silver. They just grabbed it all, put it in their dresses, and went home. And so they had some extra nickels on the trip to Israel. And I think that's funny. So they leave. They're driven out. They're in the desert. They've made their escape. And then they get pinned up against the banks of the Red Sea. And they cry out again. As Pharaoh approaches in chapter 14, verse 10, as Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, was it because there was no graves? I love this sarcasm. Was it because there was no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? So they're on the banks of the Red Sea. They have a choice to drown or to be slaughtered by Pharaoh's encroaching army. And they're bearing down on them. And they cry out and they look at Moses and they say, what are you doing? God, what are you doing? Did you bring us here because there's not enough graves in Egypt. Is that why you did this? Is that why you did all the plagues and all the things so that you could bring us here to die? What in the world, God, this doesn't make any sense. God, what are you doing? And then we know that God parts the Red Sea. They run through and the army is crushed, but they don't know that. So they're saying, what's going on? They're groaning. Why did you bring us here to die? It doesn't make any sense. But they get through. And they go. And then they're in the desert. And as they're in the desert, they're hungry. Because there's not much to eat. And there are, scholars will tell you that there were probably between 200,000 and 500,000 people moving through the desert. That's a logistic nightmare to feed. And so they're hungry. And they're calling out to God. And I can just imagine being a father watching my children be hungry every day, not sure if I was going to be able to get them food. And watching my wife sacrifice her food for them. I can only imagine how angry I would be. And how sad I would be. And how my sentiment would be, God, what are you doing? Why did you bring us out into the desert to starve? And so they cried out to God. And they complained to Moses and Aaron, and this in the cloud. The Lord said to Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them at twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I and the Lord your God. This is the genesis of manna, something that we probably have heard of before. And he says, tonight I'm going to let you eat quail. It's going to be a feast. But here's the deal. Don't get any more than you can eat. It's like when you take your kid to a buffet. Only get what you know you can eat. And their eyes get real big and you've got to try to figure it out. Only get what you know you can eat. Thank you for laughing at that joke. And then he said, the next morning there's going to be bread. But same rules apply. Don't store it. Don't be greedy. Only get what you need for that day. And so the next morning they wake up and there's these white flakes on the ground and they're like, what in the world is this? And they call it, and that's what manna means. What is it? And Moses says, that's the bread that the Lord has provided. God, what are you doing? We're hungry and we're starving. And why is it this weird bread that we can only take just enough of for the day? What's the harm in stockpiling bread? This doesn't make any sense, God. Why? What are you doing? Then they near the end of their journey in the desert. They're on the banks of the Jordan River. They're looking across the Jordan River at the promised land where Abraham lived and where Israel and his sons migrated from down into Egypt. And now, hundreds of years later, they've returned to claim their promised land. This is the land of milk and honey. The problem is there are now other peoples and tribes that occupy that land. And so Moses and Aaron collected 12 spies and sent them across the Jordan River. And they said, go scout the place out. Let's go figure out what we're dealing with and figure out how to conquer this territory because they knew they were going to have to conquer it. They couldn't just go to them and be like, hey, listen, there's been a big mistake. This is actually ours. So that's not going to work. So they're going to have to war over it. So they send the spies, and then the spies come back with this report in Numbers chapter 13, verses 26 through 29. They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the desert of Paran. There they reported to them and the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account. We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here's its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in Negev, the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan. I just want to say, I dare any of you guys to read those words out loud like that. I had to practice this morning. Thank you, Lord. One of the things that's interesting there is if you read below in the text, the sons of Anak were known to be descendants of giants. And so they were much larger men than the Hebrew people were. And so they come back and they go, yeah, that's the land of milk and honey. Here's the fruit. It's pretty amazing. God was right. He did a good job picking a good plot of land. The problem is there's powerful armies and powerful fortified cities and we can't go. God, what are you doing? Why did you bring us here to a promised land that we're supposed to take over that we've been journeying through the desert waiting on for 40 years now. And we can't even occupy the land because we don't have the strength to do it. God, what are you doing? Now, here's what I want to do. I'm going to go back through them very quickly. All of those instances where they said, God, what are you doing? And I'm going to tell you based on scripture, what God was doing. I'm going to tell you what I think he was up to, because I want us to see a much larger point. You go back to the very first instance of his mom floating that basket down the river. God, what are you doing? Well, I'll tell you what he's doing. He knows that Moses is going to be the first leader of his people that has to install civics and laws and leadership and war and generalizing and trade and negotiations. And there is nobody in the Hebrew community that has ever had any experience at that at all. So what does he do? He takes the future leader and he plants him right in the middle of the palace of the most powerful person in the world and gives him access to the greatest education in the world and gives him access to all the kinds of conversations that country leadership is going to require of him that he would have never had access to if he had stayed amongst the Hebrew people. So he was, God sent him to the palace, I believe with my whole heart, to be trained in a unique way that nobody else could. Then after he gets trained, okay, I'm ready, he murders two people and he gets sent out to the desert. And he stays in the desert for 40 years. God, what are you doing? You trained me up. I have to have a larger purpose than this. Moses doesn't know what he's been trained for yet, but I'm sure that he had an idea of his life that wasn't to flee everything that I know and the opulence of the palace and all the conveniences of life that I experience as this privileged kind of Egyptian Hebrew person. God, why am I here? Well, Moses had to be humbled. This happens over and over again in scripture. God calls Paul. Paul goes to the wilderness for seven years. God calls David to be king. David's on the run for 20 years being humbled. He calls Joseph to be the leader under the Egyptian people. Joseph is a prisoner for 20 years. It happens over and over and over again. And all of those times are instances of God humbling and shaping the character of the person that he intends to use, shaving off the rough edges. Clearly Moses was a hothead. He murdered two dudes. Clearly he didn't have the patience and the grace and the diplomacy to be a leader of a nation. And so God sent him to the desert to be molded and shaped and humbled. Then he calls Moses. And Moses says, you got the wrong guy. What are you doing? I stutter. And God says, hey, listen, you need to learn to depend on my adequacy, not your inadequacy. You're right. You are inadequate for the task. You are not the obvious choice. But I'm choosing you because, and you need to know right now, there's going to be a lot more instances where you're going to be inadequate for the task. And you're going to have to trust on my adequacy. He's teaching Moses to trust him. Then he goes to Pharaoh. And he says, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, no. And then they have the plaguesagues and we go, what is going on with this? God, they're not working. And the last one works. And it's, they had to be saying, God, why this plague? This is pretty rough. This is pretty brutal. And why are you having me paint the blood of a lamb on a doorpost? I'll tell you why. Because if you were to go home right now and you were to take, let's just say Bayer, not like blood and, or DuPont, whatever your choice is, I don't care. And you took that and you were just painting a strip of it on the doorpost. You'd put it in the middle and you'd put it on the sides at about shoulder height. That's the perfect blood of a lamb in the shape of a cross. And by that blood, I will protect your firstborn son. Because God knows 4,000 years later, his firstborn son is going to hang on the cross and shed the blood of a perfect lamb. And by that blood, our firstborn sons are saved and all people are saved for all of time. It's a picture of what God is going to do there. He frees the people. They're at the banks of the Red Sea. God, what are you doing? Did you bring us out here to die? Are there not enough graves in Egypt? He parks the Red Sea. He runs them through it. He knew that Pharaoh and his anger and his frustration and his haste would trudge through the middle of the Red Sea too. And then he collapses the waters on the most powerful army in the world, ending the existential threat to his people. And they get through and they're hungry. Why did you bring us here if you're not going to feed us? So he says, I'm going to give you bread, but you can only take enough for each day. You can't be greedy with it. Why? Because Jesus is the bread of life. And 4,000 years later, he's going to come and live a perfect life and die a perfect death. And he's going to be sufficient for us. He's going to be all we need. We will never hunger or thirst again. Manna is a picture of Jesus and an assurance of God's provision for his people. And that's what he wants us to learn from it. Finally, they're at the banks of the Jordan River. They're about to approach the promised land. And they check it out. They can't do it. Ten of the spies said, no go. But Joshua and Caleb were men of faith. And they said, if this is where God wants us to go, we can. And they led the armies through Canaan under the power of God, conquering their way all the way through what we know of as Israel. And they settled in the promised land. And it's a picture of our promised land where we will ultimately go after our life's journey. And it is impossible for us to get there on their own, but through the power and the provision of God, he's made a way for all of us to enter that promised land. Do you understand that every instance in the life of Moses and what happens with the Hebrew people is an opportunity for God to show his sovereignty and his goodness. Here's what I want you to see from that. This one thing, this one assurance that I want us to keep locked in as we go through this series. God knew what he was doing then and he knows what he's doing now. God knew in every instance when they said, God, what are you doing? God knew. He rarely explained himself, but God knew. And he knew then what he was going to do, and he knows now what he's going to do. He knew their story when they didn't. And they said, God, why are you writing it this way? And he just thought, one day you'll see. You all have things in your life where you go, God, what are you doing? Why is this happening? And let me just tell you, God knows now why it's happening. And you might know later. But God knows now. We don't know. These wonderful kids that we baptize and these great families, we don't know where they're going to go. But God does. So there's going to be hardships in their life, and they're going to cause us to cry as parents and grandparents. And we're going to go, God, what are you doing? He knows now what he's doing. He knows then and he knows right now. So my hope as we go through this life of Moses, which puts on marvelous display the assuring and comforting sovereignty of God. My hope is that as we go through it, we'll see over and over again that God knew what was going on. God knew what he needed, and he's not just thinking generationally, he's thinking millennially. I don't know what's happening in your life. I don't know what stories he will write with you, but God does, and the story of Moses helps us to see that we can trust him. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your sovereignty. Thank you for our ability to rest in it if we would so choose. Thank you for the way that you weave the story of Moses and the Israelites and how you looked after them as a heavenly father in a way that you look after us. God, for those of us who are in the middle of a situation where we don't know what you're doing, would you remind us that you do and that we can trust you? God, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for these amazing baptisms and the pictures that they are and the families that they represent and the prayers that culminate in them. We pray over those children that you would write an incredible story with them. And we are so grateful that you already know what it is. In Jesus' name, amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this incredibly gross, hot Sunday. I heard somebody say it's like walking around in warm soup outside. I think that's pretty appropriate. I think we're going to take out the lounge areas next week and make more space for y'all. So we're getting the message. You're coming back to church, so this is great. These lounge areas are penalties for not coming in the summertime, so now we'll get back to normal. We've been moving through a series called 27 that we're going to do this summer and next summer where we're doing an overview of the 27 books in the New Testament to kind of give you an idea of where we're going for the rest of this summer and where we're going to pick up next summer. For the rest of the summer, I'm just going to go through the general epistles, the general letters that are largely in the back half or entirely in the back half of the New Testament. We're going to do Hebrews this morning. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, did a phenomenal job covering James for us in July. So if you want to catch that one, you can go back and take a look at it. And then we're going to do 1 and 2 Peter together, 1, 2, 3 John together. Because I don't want to do three sermons out of 1, 2, 3 John that all say like, hey, if you love God, obey him. That's the message of 1, 2, 3 John. And then we're going to do Jude Labor Day Sunday. We decided that we would save the most overlooked book of the Bible for the most overlooked Sunday of the calendar. So that's going to be very appropriate when we do Jude and you guys watch online while Aaron and I work. But this morning we're going to focus on Hebrews. And deciding how to approach Hebrews and how to give you guys an overview of Hebrews was a little tricky because Hebrews is such an incredible book with so many good things and so many good themes. The overriding theme of Hebrews is to exalt Christ. The overriding point of Hebrews is to hold Christ up as superior to everything, the only thing worthy of our devotion and our affection, the only thing worthy of our lives. That's what the book of Hebrews does, and it focuses us on Christ, which is appropriate because we preached Acts last week. Well, I preached. You guys listened and did a great job at listening. I preached Acts last week, and we talked about how it's the Holy Spirit's job to focus us on Jesus, past, present, and future. And so once again, we're just going to enter into this theme in the text where the whole goal of it is to focus us on Christ. And so my prayer for us is that that's what this will do for us this morning. In an effort to exalt Christ, the author of Hebrews, who we're not sure who it is, the author of Hebrews starts out his book this way. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he had spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right some of the most sweeping prose about our Savior that we'll find in the Bible. The only other place that compares is probably found in Colossians, which Aaron covered. Aaron, our worship pastor, covered last month as well. So from the very beginning, he exalts Jesus. He is the image of God. He is the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe with his majesty, the sweeping picture of Christ. And then the author goes on to kind of build this case for the superiority of Christ. And the book is called Hebrews because it's written to the Jewish diaspora all throughout Asia Minor. As here, I know that you have a Jewish background. Let me help you understand your new faith by helping you understand your new savior. And he goes to great lengths to explain to them why Jesus is superior. And he does this through four major comparisons. He compares Jesus to Moses. He compares Jesus to the angels. He says Jesus is superior to the high priests. And he says that Jesus is a superior sacrifice. And he goes through and he tells them why Jesus is superior to those things. Now, to the Jewish mind in the first century A.D., all of those comparisons would carry a great deal of heft. They would matter. The Jewish mind would immediately know what that meant, would immediately be taken aback by the boldness of the author of Hebrews, and feel the weight of the comparison that they were being asked to make. But for us in the 21st century in America, those things don't resonate with us like they did with the first century Hebrew mind. We know, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in two decades, you probably already know that we're of the opinion that Jesus is a bigger deal than Moses. Like, we got that one down. You know that already. You know that we think that Jesus is superior to angels. No one's getting confused and worshiping angels. Aaron's never gotten a request for a praise song for angels. Like, we've never gotten a Gabriel praise song request. So we know that. Nobody has any misgivings about me being superior to Jesus. We know Jesus is the superior priest. We know he's the superior priest to everyone that's ever lived. And that's a really hard concept for us to hold on to, I think, when we see it in Hebrews that he's the great high priest. That's a difficult one for us because most of us in this room have never really even had a priest. Most of us in this room have had pastors. And pastors are different than priests, take on a different role than priests, have historically been viewed differently than priests. So that's a tough one for us. And then the sacrifice, none of us in this room have ever performed a sacrifice. If you have, I'd love to talk with you about what led you to do that in your life. I'd like to hear that story. I don't know if I want to commit to a full lunch because you're crazy, but maybe just out there, you just tell me about that time with the goat, okay? But these things are difficult for us to relate to. They don't hit us the same way. So a lot of my thoughts and energy this week went into helping us understand why these are such weighty comparisons, why they are so persuasive, and most importantly, why they're still important to us today in 21st century America so that the book and the message of Hebrews can be just as impactful for us as it was for first century Jews. So I think, as we think about the overview of Hebrews, the most interesting question is, why did those comparisons matter to me today? Why are they important to me today? So we're going to look at them and we're going to ask, why does it matter that Jesus is superior to these things? So the first one that we see, I'm doing kind of a combo platter and you'll see why, but Jesus is superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message is greater than theirs. In your notes, I can't remember if I put it there or not, but there should, it'd be helpful to write above these three points and be bracketed by the text. Jesus is superior because, superior to blank because. So that's, that's the question that we're answering. He's superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message are greater than theirs. Okay. Here's why I kind of combined those two. We probably all know, the Jewish mind certainly knew, that God's law came from Moses. God brought the law down off of Mount Sinai and presented it to the people. Now we often think that just the Ten Commandments were written on those tablets, but those tablets were covered front and back. So we don't know what all was on there, but most certainly more laws. And if you read through the books of Moses, the first five in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll get somewhere around 620 some odd laws depending on which rabbi or scholar you're talking to. And so those were the laws of Moses. And those were the laws around which their religion was framed. Those are the laws around which their culture was built, around which their entire life was formed by following those laws well. And Hebrews is earth shattering to them because it says, hey, Jesus's law is superior to Moses's law. You can cast Moses's law aside. It doesn't mean there's not some good ideas in there. The one about like not committing adultery, we should probably carry that principle forward. But those laws are done. It's now Jesus's new law that he gives us in John. Jesus tells us that in these two things are summed up all of the law and the prophets. Everything that Moses or the prophets ever wrote or writings that's ascribed to them can be summed up in loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that early in his ministry. But then at the end of his ministry, he's sitting around with the disciples and he says, this new command I give you, there's this new thing I want you to do. I'm going to add to the, I'm going to sweep away those commands. I'm going to give you this new command. Follow this. I want you to love your neighbor. I want you to love others as I have loved you. It's this new command that Jesus gives. And so that command is superior to all of the commands that came from Moses in the Old Testament. It's also superior to all the commands that come after that. His message is superior. This is what it means with the angels really quickly. According to Jewish tradition, it was the angels that took the tablets from God and delivered them to Moses as God's holy and anointed messengers. So what we're seeing in these two comparisons is Jesus' message is greater than any message that's come before or will come since, and his law is the greatest law, superior to all other laws, and it's the only one worth following. This is incredibly important for us because we live in a culture and we are people who are incredibly vulnerable to the insidious slide towards legalism. We are incredibly vulnerable to reducing our faith to a list of do's and don'ts. Okay, I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself. Like, I get that. But is it a sin if I do blank? I hate that question. Is it a sin if I do this? Is it a sin if I watch this? Is it a sin if I go there? Is it a sin if I have this? That's an immature question. It's almost irrelevant. Is it a sin? And we even do it in the early stages of our faith. Am I in or am I out? When I die, am I going to burn forever or dance in the streets? Which one is it? I just want to make sure I'm praying the right prayer so I don't burn forever. That seems like a bummer. So I'm going to believe in this. Am I in or am I out? Is there an unforgivable sin? Is there something that if I do it, I'm going to lose my salvation and then I'm out? And we try to make it about the rules. We enter into Christianity kind of asking the leader, like whoever's in charge here, can I just have my personnel handbook? I just need to know when my vacation days are. I need to know how many Sundays I can miss in a year and still be like, good. You know? I don't want to have to feel that out. We want our policy handbook. And when we make that our faith, we pervert it and distort it into things that it ought not be and was never intended to be. When we try to make the Bible basic instructions before leaving earth, have you heard that? If you haven't heard it, sorry, because it's stupid. And I just told you it, now you know. We try to make it God's handbook for life. There's a rule for everything, we just got to find it. And when you do that, the people who know the rules the best and appear to follow them the best are the spiritually mature ones. Meanwhile, the people over there who don't follow what we think are the rules super well are actually getting busy loving other people as Christ loved them. But we don't value them because we value the rules. So it's important to let Hebrews remind us that Jesus' law is superior to the laws that we add to his law. Because we love to say yes and. We love to turn Christianity into an improv class. Yes, that's true, and this. Yes, to be a believer, what does God ask of you? That you would love other people as Jesus loved you. Yes. And also you shouldn't watch shows that are rated MA on Netflix. You should not do that. Yes. And you should love other people as Jesus loved you. And you shouldn't say cuss words. Because we got together in a room at some point, and we decided that these words that are spelled this way are bad. And you can't say them. And they're very offensive. And they offend the very heart of God. Jesus didn't make that law. We do yes and, and we start to build other rules that are requisite for our faith. And at the end of that is legalism. And some of y'all grew up in legalism. I know my parents grew up in legalism. My mom went to a church outside of Atlanta where you couldn't, if you're a girl, you were not allowed to wear skirts above the knees. They all had to be to the knees or below. And if they weren't, you're a sinner. You couldn't go, you weren't even allowed to go to the movie theater. If you're going to see a Disney movie, you cannot, you cannot go to the theater. You were not, your family was not allowed to own a deck of cards because with those cards, you might gamble and offend the sensibilities of God. And what happens when we do that is people like my mom who grow up in that, when they grew up in that, in their adolescence, they're riddled with all this guilt of things that they're supposed to do and shame for not being able to do them. And that shame isn't coming from Jesus because you've offended his law. That shame is coming from rickety old deacons because you offended their sensibilities. And it's not right. We should always choose love over law because that's what Jesus asked us to do. And here's what can happen when we do that. At the last church I worked at, there was a policy, and some of you are familiar with policies like these. They're particularly prominent in the South. There was a policy that you could not consume alcohol in public. You had to privately foster your own alcoholism. You couldn't consume it in public. You can have it in your house. You can have it with trusted friends. But you can't consume it in public and you can't be seen purchasing it by someone from the church. It's absurd policy. Be all in or all out. Just say don't drink it. That's way less hypocritical than drive to DeKalb County to get it and then drive back. So one day, I'm cutting my grass. I'm relatively new to the neighborhood. And when I finish up, my neighbor, Luis, comes out. He says, hey man, hot day. I said, yeah, it's hot. He goes, you want to have a beer with me? Now that's against the rules. I'm not allowed to have a beer with Luis because I don't want to, I'm not going to get into it. According to the rules, this is bad. But he's my neighbor and we know what do you want to have a beer with me means. He's showing me hospitality. He wants to talk to me. He wants to get to know me and I need to love him. And it's not very loving of me to be like, I'll be right back. I'm going to go get my water. That's just not what you do. So I said, sure. I had a beer, an illicit, an illicit beer. God, I'm still sorry. And we talked and we became buddies. And Luis had a stepson and two sons that lived with him as well, him and his wife as well. Gabriel, Yoel, and Yariel. And over the course of the next six years, I got to be their pastor. And I got to baptize all four of those guys in the church. Now, if I had said no that day, could that still have happened? Sure. But, I chose love over law, and God used it. We should be people who choose love over law, understanding that Jesus' law is the superior law. And just in case you think I'm letting people off the hook to do whatever you want under Jesus' law, as long as you're loving others, it is absolutely impossible to love others as Jesus loved us without being fueled and imbued by the love of the Holy Spirit. We cannot love others as Jesus loved us if we do not know Jesus and love him well. That the two things that sum up the law and the prophets, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen, love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as Jesus did if you do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. It takes care of everything. And suddenly there's times when you shouldn't watch that, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't have that, or you shouldn't shouldn't go there or you should do this or you should do that, but not because it offends some law or sensibility that we've added to over the years, but because to do that or to not do that is the most loving action to take. That's why it's important for us to still acknowledge that Jesus's law is the superior law and that Jesus is a superior messenger and the angels. Now your notes are out of order. The next one we're going to do is priest and then sacrifice. So I'm sorry about that. But it's important to us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priests because Nate is broken. It's important for us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priest because I am broken. When we were running through the slides before the service started, we got to this one, and the band and the tech team laughed at me. They're like, Nate, you think we don't know that? We haven't pieced that one together. And I said, well, my mom's coming. So this one's for her. Sorry, mom, this is news to you. I know that you don't need me to tell you that I'm broken and that I'm a human. And that I'm going to teach you the wrong stuff sometimes. The way I think about faith and the Bible and God and Scripture and all the things evolves. It changes. There's things I taught when I was 30 that I'm so embarrassed about now. And there's things I'm saying to you right now that when I'm 52, I'm going to be like, oh, what a moron. I just know that's true. I'm broken. And even though you guys know that, and you guys know not to put pastors on pedestals, and you would probably all say that you have a pretty healthy idea about that, and I consider it part of my personal ministry to you to act in such a way where it's very easy for you to not put me on a pedestal. That's my ministerial gift to you guys. You would probably all say that you know better than that. But we still get the jokes. Those still happen. I had a friend, a good buddy, still a friend of mine named Heath Hollinsworth. Heath had three brothers. He still has three brothers. Jim was the oldest and Jim was an associate pastor at the church that Heath and I both worked at. So we all worked together. And then Ryan and Hunter worked construction. So they're a little bit less important in the kingdom of God than me and Heath and Jim. Which is the, that's the point I'm making. And whenever they would be around their dad for a meal and it came time to pray for the meal, Heath was in charge of the service. He was program director. It was a big church. So he had positions like program director. Here, Aaron does that. But whenever it came time to pray for a meal, their dad really didn't like praying in public, so he would always get one of the boys to do it, and he'd kind of look them over, and he'd be like, Jim, why don't you lead us today? You're the closest to the Lord. You have the most direct line. And Heath would be like, I work at a church too, and I'm sure it flew all over Ryan and Hunter. But he would joke about it. It didn't really make him mad. He just thought it was the stupidest thing because Jim was ordained and Heath wasn't. His dad thought he had a more direct line to the Lord. And as stupid as that sounds, you guys say that to me. I know we don't really believe it, but we keep saying it. When I golf with y'all and I hit one in the woods, which is rare, but when I hit one in the woods and it comes bouncing out just miraculously, just a squirrel throws it and it just lands in the middle of the fairway, somebody is going to say, got that pastor bounce, somebody's going to say it. We make the jokes and we think the things, and I can tell you from personal experience, we exonerate pastors too much. We honor pastors too much. We think too much of them. We have too great an expectation for them. I am not to be exonerated. My job in God's kingdom is not more important than your job. My gifting is not more valuable than your gifting. And listen, your character is not less important than my character. A lot of us have more expectations for me and what my character should be than for ourselves. And that makes no sense because you're a royal priesthood too. If it's okay for you and not okay for me, then you either need to raise your standards for yourself or lower them for me. Probably raise. And I don't mean to hit that too hard, but the church has a long history of making the people who stand here way more important than they actually are. And we've got to knock that off. While I'm here, and just kind of kicking you guys in the gut, let me kick you in the teeth. The other thing I was thinking about with priests and why this is important is the historic role of the priest. Do you realize that for a vast majority of Christian history, from the first century A.D. to now, for the vast majority of that, Christendom did exist under a priesthood. And that those priests were the sole arbiters of the truth of God in the lives of their people. Do you understand that? The people, for much of history, were largely illiterate. The vast majority of people were illiterate for much of church history. And before the printing press, a Bible was so expensive that it took the whole town to raise money to get one, and then they'd put it up on the lectern in the church or in the pulpit, and they would literally chain it so that nobody could steal the Bible because it was that valuable, and it's the only one that existed in the town, and because everyone's largely illiterate, the only person who can read it is the pastor. Do you understand how easy it is to manipulate when that is true? Do you understand how vulnerable that populace was to the malice that might be in their pastor? Do you understand how limiting it is for your faith if there's only one person who can explain to you who's reading scripture on your behalf and then telling you what it says and then telling you what you should do about that? That's how we got indulgences and we paid for St. Peter's Basilica because they manipulated the masses in that way. Because I'm the only one in the room who can read this and I get to tell you what it means. That's incredibly harmful. And now, we live in a time when Bibles are ubiquitous everywhere. You all probably have multiple Bibles in your home. You probably have more Bibles than you do people. If you'd like to add to your collection, take one of ours. You can download it on your phone. You can look it up on the World Wide Web. You have universal access to the scriptures of God. And yet, I see so many of you, so many Christians, walking through life, functioning as scriptural illiterates, trusting your pastor to spoon feed you truth twice a month for 30 minutes. And that's all you know of this. People have fought and people have died and people have lived to make this available to you. And yet as Christians, many of us live our lives as functional illiterates who still rely on our pastor or spiritual leader to spoon feed us the truth twice a month? How can we be Christians and be so disinterested in what God tells us? How can we call ourselves passionate followers of Christ and yet not read about him? How can we have access to this special revelation of God and the inspired and authoritative words within it that tell us not basic instructions for life but about our wild and wonderful and mysterious father? They tell us all about that and we have access to it all the time. We can read it whenever we want. We can do all the research we want. We can even, you can download professors walking you through this as you explore it on your own. And yet we function as illiterates still acting like the only source of truth is our pastor for whatever sermon they want to give that day. Jesus is your pastor. He's your source of truth. And he made sure that this got left for you so that you could learn about him. I'm here to augment the work that you're doing. I can't do the work for your whole life. Neither can your small group leader. It's important to know that Jesus is our high priest because we have the freedom to go to him and to pray to him whenever we want. We don't need a go-between. We don't need someone else to spoon-feed us truth. He makes it available to us here. Now, let's end on a higher note than that. It's important for us to know that Jesus was the superior sacrifice because he was enough. It's important for us to know that Jesus was a superior sacrifice because he was. This is important to mention. Because the old sacrificial system, you had to perform a sacrifice, and then you were good until you messed up again, and then you had to go back and you had to sacrifice. Like I wonder about the people who like went to the temple for a certain festival and they performed all their sacrifices and they're good. They're good before God. If they die, they're fine. And then they like take a wrong turn or there's traffic getting out of Jerusalem and they say things they shouldn't say. Like, I guess we got to go back to the temple and do this again. But Jesus is a superior sacrifice because we need one for all time. That's it. We're done. We don't have to go back and keep making sacrifices. And yet, we do the yes and thing again where we go, yeah, Jesus died for me and he made me right before God, but now that I'm a Christian, I keep messing up, so I need to do more and I need to better, and I need to perform my own personal sacrifices to get myself back in good graces with God. And we make Jesus' sacrifice not enough. Yeah, that was good then, but I know better now, and I need to keep working harder and keep being hard on myself and keep making my own sacrifices to then get back into the good graces of God so that he will love me more and approve of me more. And we live our lives, I do this too, as if Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough. And now God in his goodness and glory and perfection requires me, Nate, to make greater sacrifices to supplement the insufficient sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I think that we would do well to wake up every morning and remind ourselves, even if we have to say it out loud, what Jesus has done for me is enough. God loves me as much as he possibly can and ever will. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me less. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me more. And there's nothing I can do today to make myself more right before God. Jesus was enough. He did that for me. And then walk in the goodness and freedom of God. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Walk in that fullness. Walk in that grace. Walk in that gratitude by allowing the sacrifice of Jesus to be enough. That's why Hebrews can still, that's how Hebrews can still resonate with us today. By acknowledging that Jesus is superior to the law and the message of old, that he's the superior priest that gives us unfettered access to him, and we ought to passionately pursue that, and that he is the greatest sacrifice because he's enough for us once and for all. We don't have to keep supplementing that with our insufficiency. And to do all of this, as we're reminded of all of this, and we start with the sweeping prose about Christ, and then we see the comparisons, he starts to close his book by drawing this conclusion, and I think it's a great place for us to stop and put our focus on today as we prepare our hearts for communion after the sermon. But he starts to summarize his book and to wrap up by telling us to do this. I preach about this lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, my Bible says, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In light of all that we learned, in light of who Jesus is, the image of God, the very imprint of His nature, and in light of the ways that Jesus is superior and serves us and sacrifices for us and is our high priest, in light of the law that is to love Jesus with all our heart, in light of the law that is to love other people as Jesus loved us and then so in turn love Christ and be fueled by that love, in light of all these things, what are we to do? What are the rules that we're supposed to follow? How are we supposed to live this Christian life? Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Run your race. Go out there and run hard. Pursue Jesus with everything you've got. Go love other people with your whole heart. And to do it well, you've got to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we don't do that by white-knuckling it. We don't do that by trying to be our own sacrifice. We don't do that by supplementing the work of Christ in our life. No, we do it by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If we'll do that, we will follow God's laws. We will pursue Jesus hard. We will love others well, and we will have run a good race. That's the point of Hebrews. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are, for how you've loved us. Thank you for your son. Father, I pray that it would be critically important to us to acknowledge the superiority of Christ. That it would be critically important to us to pursue Him, to love Him, to know Him. Father, if we are not in Your Word, if we're not pursuing You on our own, would you light a fire in us to do that? If we've spent too many years not knowing your Bible well, would you let this be the year that fixes it? If we've spent too many years adding to your law, would this be the year that we let that go? If we've spent too many years supplementing your sacrifice, would this be the year that we finally accept yours? And God, as we go from here, would you help us run our race? It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..