Sermons tagged with Prophecy

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

You don't even like the pack. What are you talking about? Of course, you're the most obnoxious in the room when your team's not even NC State. For those that don't understand what's happening right now, maybe you're new to the church and this doesn't make any sense to you. I'm a Georgia Tech fan. I grew up in Atlanta. Thank you. Yeah, good. My lone friends in the room. And listen, I will be the first to admit that over the years, I've been the pastor for eight years. I've given a lot of crud to the pack. I've made a lot of jokes. And even my Georgia Tech friends was like, you should open up with a joke at NC State's expense. I'm not even going to repeat the joke because I don't want to make it because it's dishonorable. I lost a bet with John Massey. John, raise your hand. He's the hero of the church. Yeah, there we go. He was going to have to usher in my Georgia Tech sweater this morning, except we lost. And so now I'm preaching in this. And I want you to know that more neutral things were offered to me. And I said, no, I want maximum red. I want a big logo. It needs to be as obnoxious as possible. I want to pay my bets. But that's what I'm doing. Here's the funny part about the bet. My wife wasn't here this morning when I got the options. I was brought some options, and I wanted to choose the most obnoxious. And so I grabbed Michelle, who's doing our announcements this morning morning and is just overall an untrustworthy person and I And I called her out to the lobby and I said before the service started and I said Michelle you need to be my wife this morning Jen's not here. She can't tell me do I look too fat in this and she said you look great and I told Jen I think she was lying to me and she's furthering my humiliation and having to wear this. But to my NC State friends, great game, wonderful atmosphere. We went to the game last night, and congratulations. That was a good win for you guys. This morning, we will continue with Daniel. I feel like stopping to pray, because now we're just like friends at a brewery talking about a football game. So let's do that. Let me just stop to pray to reset our mindset and then we'll dive into Daniel. Let's do that. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for friends and for fun and for football and for sports and all the things that unite us together. But God, we acknowledge that nothing unites us more than you. And so we pray that we would be united in you and in your presence this morning as we enter into the story of your servant, Daniel. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, I think I can start to preach now. Now, the book of Daniel is one, and I had shared this with you guys several months ago, that one of the things we did, we meet as a staff and we plan our series together and we just kind of go, where do we need to take the church? And I kind of went back through the last five years of what we've covered as a church and noted the areas of the Bible that we had never touched before, the really significant areas of the Bible that we had never touched. And maybe you could even construe that we were negligent in not touching those. And so we just wanted to include those as we moved forward. And one of the places that we hadn't touched since I started here was the book, excuse me, of Daniel. And Daniel is a really impactful, prophetical book in the Old Testament. Now, here's the thing with Daniel. I'm not going to tell you that I'm preaching through the book of Daniel because I'm not. Because Daniel's 12 chapters long. And I see some of you nodding your heads. You know the book of Daniel. The first six chapters of the book of Daniel are what we refer to as narrative. It's a story. This is just a recounting of the events that happened. The last six chapters of Daniel are prophecy. They're eschatological prophecy, which means in reference to the end times. And just between you, me, and the gate post, they're crazy. They're really hard to understand. So here's what I'm going to do is just not talk about them. We'll just let them be confusing together. And if anybody has questions, we can talk about those questions together. But what we wanted to do is focus on the narrative portion of Daniel and ask, what can we learn from Daniel's experience in Babylon? And this is an interesting series because we're going to do this one week in Daniel here and talk about Daniel and his diet in chapter one. And then next week we have a morning of worship that I'm very excited about. I love a morning of worship. And then we'll pick it up with Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who you know is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And then we'll look at Daniel and the lion's den. But we've not done those stories together as a church. And I think that we need to. And then after that, we're going to start our Christmas series, the name of which I do not know yet, but I do know what we'll be covering, which is kind of the songs that we sing. And we'll be looking at Christmas carols and what they actually mean and where they come from some scripture. So I'm very excited about that. So that's where we're going for the rest of the year. This morning, we arrive at Daniel. And so let me give you some context for what's happening at this moment in history, not just for Daniel, but for the nation of Israel. And then we'll look at some passages in Daniel to orient us in the story. Big, big overview. The nation of Israel is brought by Moses and then by Joshua conquering the land of Canaan and they claim it. Then they establish a nation. And after they establish a nation, it's ruled by Joshua and then some judges. And eventually Israel cries out for a king. And God says, I don't want to give you a king. And they said, well, we're going to be a middle school girl, and we're going to hold our breath until our face turns blue, and we're going to demand a king. And then God was like, okay, I'm going to give you one, but you're not going to want it. And then Saul was the first king. And then David, who we know, we know his story, David and Goliath, we know David, was the second king. And then the third king was Solomon. Solomon was the son of David, and he was the wisest man that ever lived. But after Solomon, his two sons, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, took over the kingdom, and there was a civil war and a split. And then from then, the nation of Israel existed as kind of this third world country that never gained international prominence and always struggled financially and spiritually and militaristically and all the ways. Militarily, that's probably the word that we want there. And all the ways, right? And then, eventually, the dominant powerhouse of the time takes over. And so Persia, Babylon, comes and conquers Israel. And when they conquer Israel, one of the things they do is they take the best and the brightest. They take the Ivy League students and they bring them back to, and the NC State students, and they bring them back to Babylon, and they begin to train them for service in the court. And part of the deal for that training is we have developed, Babylon, this is their perspective, we've developed a diet that is going to make you maximally healthy and helpful within the court, and we need you to adopt this diet. The problem with the diet was it went against the dietary restrictions of the Jewish heritage and of the Jewish faith. There were things that Daniel and his friends, Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah, were asked to consume that went against their conscience and their faith. And so they found themselves at this crossroads where they're essentially slaves and they're being asked to consume a diet that goes against their morals. So what do we do? And that's where we pick up the story. I'm going to read you a lot of verses this morning, but I want you not to hear a summary from me. I want you to hear exactly what's happening in the text, and then we will talk about it together. If you have a Bible, while I take a sip of this water, open it to Daniel chapter 1, and we're going to start in verse 8 and go through 15. If you don't have a Bible, it's in the seat back in front of you. Starting in verse eight, here's Daniel's response to the diet he was prescribed. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now, God had caused the official to show favor and compassion on Daniel, but the official told Daniel, I'm afraid of my lord, the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other men your age the king would then have my head excuse me because of you daniel then said the guard whom the chief official has appointed over daniel hananiah mishael and azariah please test your servants for 10 days give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the Okay, so this is the story of Daniel in Babylon. And we'll pick it up in verse 18 in just a few minutes. But in a brief interlude as we learn the story, and just so we recap that together, because sometimes when people just read passages to us, we kind of lose track. He's been put in this class of young men, my best guess is early to mid-20s to serve in the court in Babylon. And the king, Nebuchadnezzar, has left it to his officials to determine the best diet for these men to serve him well. And they've prescribed that to Daniel. And Daniel has said, please, can we not eat of that diet? Can we eat just vegetables and water? And give us 10 days. And in 10 days, you just tell us how healthy we look. Tell us what our skin looks like. Tell us how vibrant we seem. Tell us about our energy level and our sleep patterns. You watch us and you tell us how healthy we seem. And if we seem healthier, then let us just continue to consume this diet. If we don't, then we'll adopt yours, but just give us a chance. That's the premise of what's happening. Yeah, we understand that. Okay. So then here's after the chief official agrees to that, which was by the way, um, kind of him to do. Because he wasn't like, I could get fined or I could get detention. It was, if this doesn't work, the king will have my head. So it was high stakes. This is the favor that Daniel had built up by being a good guy. But he granted it nonetheless. And this is the story of Daniel entering Babylon is they said here's our standards of diet we would like you to adopt them and Daniel said can you please allow us to maintain our own and the results of that was they were healthier and King Nebuchadnezzar didn't find anyone else that could measure up to their excellence or their health. So the question is, as we read that as a church in 2025, what do we learn from that? And here's where I'll be honest with you in the challenge of the sermon this morning. This sermon, whether you realize it or not, maybe this is new information to you, but some of you, I suspect, already know where we're going with the content, which is Daniel and Babylon were surrounded in an atmosphere with different standards. We have to choose God's standards. What do we do? That's the sermon, and's what you preach. And oftentimes when I encounter passages and I find the cliche or the trodden path on which to go to preach it to you, I try to deviate and choose a new path out of respect for what you've experienced as listeners and churches before. But this morning and for this week, I found it important to just go ahead and tread the trotting. Go ahead and walk the path that has been cut for us because I think it's important and I think it matters. And so what I would have you understand this morning is, like Daniel, we are living in Babylon. Here's what I want you to understand. Daniel was a citizen of Israel. He was a Jewish man. He had Jewish parents. His lineage went back through the decades, maybe the centuries of Israel. And when he was taken to Babylon, he finds himself in a foreign land to which he does not belong, whose customs he does not know, whose rules he does not adhere to. He's an alien, a sojourner, and he doesn't belong there. And here's one of the things that I believe that Christians don't think about enough. I've made this point in previous sermons for previous reasons. But as Christians, we are aliens. We are sojourners. We are not citizens of the United States of America. We are not inhabitants here. We are citizens of heaven. Whether or not you understand this fully, when you decide to become a Christian, which is to faithfully acknowledge that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and is going to do what he says he's going to do, then you transfer your citizenship from whatever country you were born in into the nation of heaven. And so if you're here this morning and you're a believer, you would call yourself a Christ follower, then what I would say to you is you may by happenstance be a resident of North Carolina. You may by happenstance be a citizen of the United States. You may even be one of those super cool people who are always a little bit pretentious about it that have dual citizenship and you have a British passport. Good for you. But ultimately, when you become a Christian, your citizenship transfers to heaven. You're a citizen of heaven and an alien and sojourner here. And so like Daniel, we are not residents of Babylon. And here's why this matters. Because what we see in the story of Daniel is that the Babylonians had standards that they had established, that they believed in, that they espoused, that they thought were good. And they took those standards and they said, Daniel, Mishael, Hananiah, Azariah, now that you're here, live according to these standards. And Daniel said with all courage, I'm not a citizen of this place. I'm a citizen of Israel. In our vernacular, I'm a citizen of heaven. Those standards are not my standards. And here's the courageous part. Will you give me 10 days to live according to my standards? And if they don't work out better than your standards, I'll adopt yours. But can I live according to mine? And so the very easy lesson here, as we look at the story of Daniel is, if it's true that we live in Babylon, but we are not citizens here, what standards of Babylon that everyone else is adopting, are we tempted to adopt? To fit in, to get along, to go along, to not ruffle feathers. I mean, one easy standard is in Raleigh, I should become an NC State fan. I will not. I will be a Georgia Tech fan. And I don't even like being a Georgia Tech fan. It stinks. I'll tell you that for free. But all kidding aside, our communities, our culture impresses standards upon us from Babylon that are not the standards of heaven, our citizenship. Our culture impresses standards upon us about what's okay to consume, what's okay to watch, what's okay to joke about, what's okay to say, what's okay to participate in. Those standards are presented to us externally from the outside in. And then we're challenged as citizens of heaven to just go ahead and go along to get along, get along to go along, to adopt those standards. But they're different than the standards of heaven. Our culture has different standards for us and for themselves. And I say themselves intentionally to make it separate from our culture as a church. We are not citizens of Babylon. We're citizens of heaven. But what I want you to understand this morning is that Babylon has some standards that we don't have. And let me also say this transparently and honestly to you. This is a hard sermon for me to write. Because I never, ever want to preach in such a way that I am convicting you and asking you to get on my level. It is always, here's my conviction as I interact with this text. If you want to enter into this conviction with me, go ahead. And so I'll be the first to admit to you. I don't get it right all the time with adopting the standards of heaven versus the standards of Babylon. Sometimes the jokes or the language that I'm willing to use on a Wednesday are not exactly what heaven would choose. And I've adopted the standards of Babylon. Sometimes in what I consume is not the standard of heaven, it's the standard of Babylon. And so I stand before you honestly and hopefully humbly saying, if you feel like you haven't mastered this, neither have I. But I've always said to you, let's not soft pedal what the text teaches us. Let's bravely encounter it together and allow conviction where it's deserved. And so what I would tell you this week is, for me, and I know some of you pretty well, so I know you're in this boat too, buddy. For you, maybe we don't do the best job of parsing out the standards of heaven and the standards of Babylon and making the choice of Daniel and choosing the standards of heaven. And so this mourning is intended to be a compulsion towards holiness, towards choosing to be like God. Holiness is defined as other, different, outside of. God is described as holy, holy, holy, because he is other, he is different, he is outside of, he is different than us. And so as citizens of heaven, we are called to be different too. And there are myriad texts I could pull from the New Testament to illustrate this for us. But the one I would highlight for you this morning is 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 1, where it says, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and soul, perfecting holiness out of reverence to God. We are called to be holy. We are called to live according to the standards of heaven, not according to the standards of Babylon. And that's what I want us to see this morning, is we are not called to live to the standards of everyone around us all the time. We're called to live to the standards of heaven. And here's a short aside I would say. And I've debated about this because this is a little bit more in your face than I typically like to be. So I'm going to say it over here. I don't know if you remember, but I've set this up in previous sermons as my reckless speculation box where I'm allowed to just say things off the cuff here and you can't get mad at me. Over there is where I'm actually preaching and you can get mad at me for those things, but here you can't get mad, okay? We agree? Great. Here's what I've learned in life. Here's one of the things I've seen. And I don't mean it to be critical. I've just seen it. You take it for what it's worth. The older you get, the more your life contracts. The older you get, typically happens, what I've seen, maybe I'm wrong, but what I've seen is your circle around you gets smaller. And due to that, your circle around you tends to agree with you about everything. And then all of a sudden, you've reached whatever age old is to you, whether it's 45 or 95, and everyone around you agrees with everything you think too, and then you all look at each other and you go, we've nailed it, and everyone else is dumb. When we do that, and we don't take in new information, and we don't learn new things, and we don't have other standards, we adopt the standards of everyone around us and we become subject to Babylon. Okay. Here's the thing about the standards of Babylon that's really, really tricky. On the surface, on the surface, their food is better. On the surface, what Daniel was being offered was meat and probably potatoes and some sort of curry. I don't know. It was Persia. There was something over there that was better than what we have here. It was awesome. And wine. That's what he was being offered. And he said, no thanks. I'd like green beans, Brussels sprouts, and water, please. He said, I don't want any of that. I want just vegetables. And so on the surface, the diet of Babylon is more attractive. And this is something I personally struggle with mightily. Part of my job, and Jen actually makes fun of me for this. Part of my job is to go to lunch with people. I don't even care what we talk about. Let's just go to lunch. You say whatever you need to say, I'm going to enjoy this nice meal. Part of my job is to go to lunch. And I go to lunch once or twice a week. And when I go to lunch, I love food. I love food. I love it. Last week, I scheduled a dinner with somebody at Coquette. Coquette? Coquette? I don't know. Coquette. All right, great. Brasserie. And do you know what I did? Like right away, like as soon as it was scheduled and I got some free time, I got on my phone, I Googled the menu, and I decided what I was going to get. I got the scallions. They were terrible. Don't get the scallions. Scallops. I didn't just get a plate of scallions. That's a great point, Linda. Also, I would just say, objectively, if there is an option for just scallions, don't get those. Not so great. But I like to look forward to the food that I eat. And when I go to a restaurant to meet somebody, I want to get the French dip. If you go to Winston's, they've got an incredible French dip. It's really good. And the fries are good. And you get a side of horseradish because you don't care about your heart or living past 60 and you dip your fries in the horseradish and it's great. But the wise thing to do is to get the blackened chicken salad, which is also very good, but it's still salad. Like it's still what rabbits eat. And I don't want that. I want the French dip. I want the steak frites, right? I want the buffalo chicken wrap with the homemade fries and the blue cheese. That's what I want. And so that is more appealing. But here's what I know. And let me make this point in my notes before I say this next thing, because I think it ties in. Just for the record, God's standards bring us true freedom. God's standards bring us true freedom. So I want to talk to that for a minute. God's standards bring us true freedom. Here's what I know. And I know this experientially. You may not know this and I'm not applying this to anyone, but here's my experience. Is when I, for three months, eat what's most appealing in the moment. I have the French dip or I have the steak frites or I have the buffalo wrap or whatever it is in the moment lunch is better also I need a nap that afternoon and in the future my blood pressure is higher and my heart rate is higher and my health is lower and my energy rate is less and my sleep is worse and my indigestion is more when I make the decision to have the most attractive thing in the moment. And what I also know from the rare times that I've been able to do it is when I make the wise choice about what I'm going to consume, that my energy level is higher, my mental acuity is better, my energy is higher, I feel more capable and healthier. And even, if I can just be honest with you, my skin looks a little better. I don't know who cares about that at all. I just know it's true. So here's my point. Babylon has more attractive options in the moment. But if we choose the wise thing, we're going to be healthier in the long run. If we compromise our morals in the short term, and we consume the show that we really want to watch, or we engage in the conversation that's easiest to engage in, or I would say this too, we engage in political discourse the way that the world does in the moment, it satisfies us in the short term. But I could give you example after example of ways to compromise our heavenly values for the sake of Babylonian values, where in the moment, it's more attractive to indulge in this behavior because it's less attractive to stick to heavenly values. But in the long term, what I want you to see is you will be healthier long term to adhere to heavenly values than you will to Babylonian values. And I don't think that there's much difference in this story about the long-term health of Daniel physically than there is about taking it and applying it to the long-term health of us spiritually. If you want to be healthy spiritually, if you want to be free spiritually, eat the moral salad now so you can have the energy and the health and the longevity later. That's, I think, what we learned from this. And here's the thing, and this is what I said I was going to speak to, God's standards bring us true freedom. I think that we think that if I live according to the standards of heaven and not according to the standards of Babylon, that I'm limiting myself. I can't indulge in that pleasure. I can't experience that thing. I can't do that thing that everybody else around me, all my coworkers, everyone else in my life, they get to do it. Why can't I do it? I should be allowed to do that thing too. And so we think that following heavenly standards limits us and limits our freedom. And so we try to be good soldiers and sign up for that and go, yeah, God, I'm going to live it myself and live a worse, less enjoyable life now because it's the right thing to do and I'm just going to sacrifice for it. And what's actually true is when I spend six months eating French dips, I feel like crud after that. And I don't have the energy. And I don't exercise. And I don't have the joy and the vibrancy of life. And I don't feel as up for wrestling with John, my son. And I don't feel as eager to lay in bed with Lily, putting my nine-year-old daughter down and listening to her talk about her day and the one time during the day where she's willing to share. Because I'm too tired. When I choose unhealth, I'm not as willing to take the phone call from someone at Grace who's going through something. I'm not as willing to make the phone call to someone who's going through something. And so what I find in my life, and you decide if this is true for you, is that when I make short-term decisions to live my life according to the standards of Babylon, rather than according to the standards of heaven, that in the long term I experience less freedom than I would have if I would have chosen heaven in the first place. Does that make sense? And so this story from Daniel that seems simple and innocuous, I believe actually has a lot to teach us. And it's simply this. You're not citizens of here. You're not citizens of the United States. You're not residents of North Carolina. You're citizens of heaven if you're a Christian. And we have different standards for health than our community does. And we think erroneously that choosing those standards offers us less freedom. And what we learn experientially and from the story in Daniel is that the greatest freedom is found under the standards of heaven and pursuing holiness. And that's what your heavenly Father wants for you. So let's pursue those. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for your servant Daniel and everything he means to us and what we can learn from him. Father, I know that there are ways and places in which most of us or all of us choose the standards of the place where we find ourselves versus heaven. And so I pray that we would be people who choose the standard of heaven and we would reject the standards of Babylon. Let us be healthier for it, physically, spiritually, mentally. Let us be better servants and followers as a result of those choices and give us the courage and the foresight to be people who choose your home, our home, over this temporary one. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and if I hadn't got a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that. Thanks for coming on Time Change Sunday. I know that we're all, our wagons are dragging a little bit, but that's all right. Before I just launch into the sermon, I do have a bit of a retraction to print. Last week, I maliciously and falsely accused my wife, Jen, of smoking a cigar in college. We did not agree on the story, and that afternoon, she texted her friend Carla, her roommate, and I know Carla very well, and she asked her to confirm her side of the story, and Carla said, no, I was there. You pretended and gave it to me, and I'm the one that smoked it. It was a black and mild. It was disgusting. So I was wrong. Jen, as usual, was right. She's at home now with a sick kid. So anyways, if you see her, let her know that her character has been restored. One thing that is true that Jen and I do, and I bet that you've had the same conversation with your spouse if you have one of those or you're a good friend or something like that but I don't know about y'all but for us every time the a Powerball lottery gets up but like a ridiculous amount like 330 million dollars or something like that like so much it gets so big that your mom starts buying lottery tickets just in case it's God's will that she have that money to use it for his kingdom. You know, that's how we Christians justify the lottery ticket purchases. But every time we see that, when we'll see the billboard or mention it or something like that, then what conversation do we immediately have? Right, nodding heads. What would we do if we won the money, right? So then we get to have that fun conversation, and it goes, by now we've had it enough times that it goes in some very predictable ways. Out of the gates, you know, you have to sweep aside, get rid of the practicalities. Like, don't tell me how you're going to invest it. That's boring. Don't be a nerd. Like, what's the fun stuff you're going to do? What are the extravagances that you're going to allow yourself? And it always starts small with us because we're trying to be humble because we're trying to be humble people. We're not going to be ostentatious. But the one extravagance I always lead with, this one's consistent for me, is a private chef. I want a private chef to just live at my house and make me food all the time. That's what I would like. Jen will eventually admit that she wants to get a condo in Manhattan. And those are our extravagances. And then I'll be like, and maybe, you know, I mean, the car's got a lot of miles on it. So maybe I need a new car. Maybe you need a top of the line Honda Odyssey. You know. You guys know that's what I want. Maybe for travel, we should just buy into a private jet, like a share, not our own, but maybe we'll just share. We try to stay humble, and then as we have the conversation, it just gets more and more absurd until we're the Kardashians, so then you just laugh and whatever. But those are, that's fun to do. That's a fun game to play. What would life be like if? And then you imagine this life that maybe you would have one day, and I don't know what you guys would do if you hit it big, but it's fun to play that game of imagining what life could be like if. But one of the things that we all do, even if you're not ridiculous like Jen and I and daydream about what it would be like to win the Powerball, what I am convinced of is that every person in this room, every person who can hear my voice, does have plans and hopes and dreams for their life that are real, that are substantive, that actually matter to you because they're actually attainable. This is so ubiquitous in our culture that we have a name for it. It's the American dream. People move to this country in pursuit of what you have access to because we live in a place where we are allowed to dream our own dreams, we are allowed to make our own plans, and we are allowed to begin to pursue those. And so everybody here has hopes and plans and dreams for their life. And those are less funny. Because I'm probably never going to have a private chef. Probably not. I might be able to hire one for ad night to make me stay. I'm probably not going to ever have a private chef. I'm not going to mourn that. We'll probably never have a condo in Manhattan. I'm not going to mourn the loss of that potential condo, but I do have hopes and dreams in my life that if they don't come to fruition, I will mourn that. If I don't get to do Lily's wedding, that's going to make me sad. If I don't get to meet my grandchildren, that's going to make me sad. If I'm not still married to Jen in 30 years, that's going to make me sad. So we all have hopes and dreams that we marshal our resources around, that we pursue with our life, that we intend to execute. And some of us are less detailed than others. Like I've got a good friend in Chicago, and they were as meticulous as when they were first married before they had kids, they moved to Chicago and she had an opportunity to get her master's at Northwestern, get her MBA there, which is an expensive prospect. And they basically said, hey, if we do this, and we're going to borrow that money, then we are committed to both of us having full-time jobs and using our resources to pay for a nanny. That's just how our family is going to be. And they said okay, and they executed that plan and they've done that. And now they have three kids and a two bedroom condo in Chicago off of Lake Michigan. And their plan now is in 2026 or maybe 2027, they're going to move to the Atlanta suburbs to be closer to his family, to be closer to his mom. So they've got their plans mapped out like that. And maybe that's how you do your plans, and maybe it's not. But you all have them. You all have, if you have kids, you have hopes and dreams for your kids. It could be as minuscule as the kind of job you want them to have. It could be as broad as the kind of person that you want them to be. If you're married, you have hopes and dreams for that. If you have a career, you have hopes and dreams for that. But we all do this. As soon as we kind of come online somewhere in adolescence and realize that one day our life is going to be our own, we begin to imagine how we want to build it. Nobody in this space doesn't have plans and hopes and dreams for themselves, however broad or humble they might be. And I bring this up because the passage that we're looking at today in Mark chapter 8, if you have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter 8 verses 34 through 37 is where we're going to be focused. As we continue to move through Mark, we arrive this morning at one of the most challenging teachings in scripture. It's this incredibly high bar of demand that Jesus sets on our life. And it is one that we may not even be familiar with. It's one that I am certain that we don't consider enough, that we don't come back to enough, that we haven't wrestled with enough. It is one of the most impossibly high bars that Jesus sets in his ministry. And what we see in that bar is this, is that God has a dream for you, and it's better than yours. You have hopes and dreams for your life. You have things that you want to see come to fruition. Maybe you want to have a long marriage. Maybe you want to have a good career. Maybe you want to be a generous person. Maybe you want to be a good friend and a good member of the community. Maybe you want to see your kids flourish. These are all good things. Very few of you, if any, have terrible dreams for your life where you want to go do evil things. I'd like to be like Vladimir Putin. I don't think anybody's doing that. We all have good things that we want to see come to fruition. But here's what I'm telling you, and here's what I want you to begin to think about this morning. God has different plans for you, and they're better than yours. All right? With that preamble, let's look at, bless you, let's look at what Jesus has to say as he's teaching the crowds and the disciples, and let's look at what this high bar is for us. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Here's what Jesus says. He gathers the crowd around him. He gathers the disciples around him. And he says, if anybody wants to be my disciple, they must take up their cross and follow me. Now there's a lot about that statement that we need to understand. As kind of an aside to the flow of the sermon to where I want to go, I do want to stop here. And I want to look at that word that Jesus chose to use. Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up their cross and follow me. Whoever wants to be my disciple must do what I'm about to ask you to do. And one of the things that we've done in Christianity, in Christian culture and church world, is we've taken the terms Christian and disciple and we've made them mean two different things. We've said that a Christian is someone who's got their foot in the door. A Christian is someone who's going to go to heaven. They are saved. They are in right standing before God. They believe God is their father and Jesus is their savior. The way we talk about what it means to become a Christian at grace is to simply believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And once we believe those things, we are ushered into the kingdom of God as a Christian. And then at some point in our life, if we want to begin to take our faith very seriously, then we can become a black belt Christian, which is a disciple. Yeah? Like, Christianity is like discipleship light. We've separated those words. We've made them two different things. I'm a Christian. Are you a disciple of Christ? I don't know. That's pretty serious. Let's not get crazy. And listen, you know I'm right about that. And here's the thing. That is not how Jesus defined those terms. Jesus never used the word Christian. They were known as the followers of the way for years after his life. We made up Christian. Jesus called them disciples. And that's what he told the disciples to do. The end of his life, the great commission, go into all the world and make disciples. Right. Not Christians. Not converts. We think Christians are converts and disciples are people who take it seriously and try to make more converts. And to Jesus, he says, no. You are all the way in being a disciple of mine, following me, becoming more like me in character, doing the work that I do, becoming a kingdom builder, building the gospel, reaching people with the gospel. You are all the way in, or you're not following me. But we've made it possible to be a Christian who's not a disciple. And I just want to point out this morning, it's not the point of the sermon, but I just wanted to stop here and point out, that's not how Jesus defined it. So if in our heads we separate those terms, then we don't understand them the way that Jesus does. And we should have to decide if we think we're right or he's right. But he says, if you want to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me. Meaning, you must take up your life, you must take up your sacrifice, you must take everything that you have and walk it to Calvary with me. And sacrifice your life with me for the sake of the gospel. The way we say it here is you must become a kingdom builder. Quit trying to build your own kingdom. Start getting on board with building God's kingdom by growing it in breadth and depth. He says, if you want to be my disciple, it's not about getting in the door and becoming a convert. It's about taking up your cross, taking up your life, taking up everything you thought you wanted, laying it down at the altar and following me and letting me do with your life what I would like to do with it. And he says it. It's very clear. It's explicit in the text. For the sake of the gospel. And he even uses the term, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save it. Jim Elliott, famous missionary, I believe in the 40s and the 50s and the 1900s, died trying to reach some Ecuadorian tribal people who were cannibals. And he said, prior to that trip in his writings, that he is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. It is absolutely in keeping with this teaching of Christ. If you call yourself my disciple, here's the tax. You give up your life. You give up, listen to me, you give up your hopes and your dreams and your plans. You give up the career you thought you wanted. You give up the goals for your children that you created. You give up who you thought you were going to be. You give up your finances and your time and your treasure. And you set those aside. And you go, Jesus, what would you have me do with these things? Are these the things that you want in my life? Or do you want now to choose a different life for me? But that's why I say that this is an incredibly high bar. Because he says, listen, if you want in, if you want in, let me tell you what the tax is. Let me tell you what it's going to cost you. It's so funny. When I was growing up, I used to hear this phrase all the time. Salvation's a free gift. Can't be earned, can't be deserved. And I'd always go like, yeah, but it does cost you something. Jesus tells you. It costs you your life. That American dream that you have, you've got to give that up. That's what Jesus is demanding. In fact, what we see from this text is Jesus insists that we trust his dream more than our own. Jesus in this text insists, you've got to trust my hopes and dreams and plans for your life more than you trust your own. That's the tax. You've got to give up your own. You've got to let me replace my vision for you for your vision for you, and you've got to go. And you've got to get to work sharing the gospel for the sake of the gospel. That's what he asks us to do. And this is a remarkably high bar, particularly for those of us who come into faith as adults, or even for those of us who begin to take our faith seriously as adults, because the toothpaste is out of the tube. We're already down the road. We got a mortgage. We got things that we're responsible for. We already have our life ordered, and so it's a really difficult thing to hand our life plans over to Jesus and go, if you want to change them, if you want me to do something else, if you want us to go somewhere else, to live somewhere else, if you want to change the way I raise my kids and what our values are, if you want to change the way I'm married, whatever you want to do, do it. I trust you. And in a sense, give up our plans for our future. That's a really tough ask. I sat with someone this week, a dear friend who in the last several years, her marriage has just become really, really bad. Just really awful and hard. And it's to a point now where it's very clear that the best thing for her and for her children are to not be in the house with him. Because that's not a good environment. And that's a really tough decision to make. And as I sat with her this week, she said, you know what? I'm not even really sad about him. I fell out of love with him years ago. But I'm grieving the life I thought I was going to have. And finally admitting that I'm not going to have it. She sat in the playroom and watched her children divide up the stuffed animals, deciding which ones were going to mommy's house and which ones were going to daddy's house. That was not her plan. That was not what she wanted to experience. When she walked down that aisle, her hopes and dreams and plans for her life were to be with him for the rest of their life, to see their grandkids and go on trips with them together. That was their hopes and dreams. And so now she's in the middle of mourning what she thought she was going to have. And so it's, I'm acknowledging, it's a big ask, midstream in life, to hand over everything that you had planned for yourself to Jesus. And so you do with this what you want. And if that causes you to mourn something you thought you wanted or you thought you needed or you had marshaled your resources around pursuing, then so be it. But Jesus says, go ahead and mourn. Get it over with. Because we've got work to do. And it's here that I want to say this. As we listen as adults and we try to process this and think through it and how to integrate it into our lives, what do we do with it if we want to apply the truth? As I mentioned a little bit ago, the reality of it is that the older you are, the more challenging this instruction becomes. Until you retire, then it's like, whatever you want, Jesus, I've got all the freedom. At least that's how I assume retirement is. I don't know. But the further down the road you are, the harder this gets to be obedient to. You know, I think about Zach and Haley over here. I just did their wedding in the fall. They don't look at them. They don't know anything about anything. They don't know nothing. But they're also at the cusp of life and can respond to this in a way that has more freedom than the way that others of us can respond to it. So we acknowledge that. Here's what else that implies because we have a lot of parents in the room who are still raising children. You can get ahead of this. You can get ahead of them creating their own hopes and dreams for themselves. You can start to raise them, reminding them all the time, God has plans for you. God made you on purpose. God's gifted you to do things in his kingdom. And it's my sacred duty as your parent to guide you to those. I remind you guys all the time of the verse in Ephesians, Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. My most sacred duty, I believe, as a father, is to tell Lily and to tell John as often as they will listen, you are Christ's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that you might walk in them. My sacred duty is to help you see those good works and walk in them. It sounds counterintuitive, especially for Americans. I don't want John and Lily to create their own dreams for their lives. I want their biggest dream for their life to be to walk with God. Hold me close and teach me to abide. We just sang it. I want their biggest goal for their life to be to abide in Christ. And that one day, when they get to heaven, to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. That's what I want for them. I'm really not very interested in them creating their own dreams. Because God has bigger ones for them that are better than theirs. And this makes sense, doesn't it? So I'll get there in a second. But to the parents, you raising your kids, you have a chance to get ahead of it now and to help them become young adults who know my life is not my own and God has plans for it and his plans are better than my plans so I'm going to follow them anyways. We can get ahead of this, guys, for the rest of us, as we try to integrate these things into our life. The problem is, that's exactly what we tend to do, isn't it? That's exactly what we tend to do. This isn't revolutionary information. It might be packaged in a way that we haven't thought about in a while, but it's not revolutionary information that Jesus asked for our life and wants us to live our life according to his plans. But when we hear that, trying to be good Christians who we don't yet know if we're disciples, we try to integrate Jesus' plans into the nooks and crannies of our plans, right? We try to take the life that we're already living and the path that we already chose. And then we try to work Jesus into those things so that being obedient to his word and choosing his dreams over ours doesn't cause very much pain. So we don't have to mourn a possible future. So we don't have to change a lot of things. So we don't get too uncomfortable. We just do a tiny little course correction and we feel better about ourselves because now we're giving Jesus this part of our life when that's not what he asks for. Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Follow me. If you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. If you don't, you will lose it. And here's the thing that I was thinking about as I was thinking through this. As we think about the idea of choosing our plans for our life or choosing Jesus' plans for our life. Your plans, I know this is a little whatever. So go with me or don't. But my hunch is your plans are just an amalgamation of who you were in childhood and who your parents were and who your friends were when you were in high school and college and you were developing your values. Your plans are just a hodgepodge of stuff that you receive from the people around you. If you had good parents, you wanted to be like them. If you had bad parents, you didn't want to be like them. And so that's at the correction of your life. If you had good friends in high school and college that had decent values, they pointed you in one direction. If you had bad friends, they pointed you in another direction. Very few of you ever sat down with a legal pad and research and wrote out a plan for your life in a thoughtful, meaningful way. Your plans are an accident, man. That's my point. Whatever you think you chose you wanted to intend, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. You stumbled into it by accident of birth and culture. But we cling so tightly to the plans and the dreams that we have for our life that were made by flawed, finite brains. When what Jesus is offering to us are plans that were made by a perfect, divine brain that sees everything all at once. And yet we still stubbornly and ignorantly choose our own. C.S. Lewis once said that the kingdom of God is like you're a child in your backyard. He said making mud pies, which I guess is what you did for fun in like the 1910s, is you're like, mom, I'm going to go play with mud. Okay, be safe. He said it's like being offered to go on a one-year holiday, on a one-year vacation around the world to see all the greatest sights in the world, and instead we choose to sit in the backyard and play with mud. Here's the thing about these plans that Jesus has for you, about his desire for you to spend your life building his kingdom, not your own. And here's why it's okay for him to ask him to give up everything you thought you wanted for what he wants, because they're better than yours. And Jesus is not a tyrant. He's not a dictator. He's not interested in making your life worse at all. In fact, we have verse after verse in Scripture that assures us that Jesus actually wants us to have a good life. One of my favorite verses that's in my office, I use it a lot, it brings me comfort a lot, is John 10.10. The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come, Christ says. I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus wants you to, literally, he wants you to have the best life possible. Now here's the deal. He probably doesn't define best life like you currently do, but his definition is better than yours. A couple more, and then I'm going to make a point and we'll wrap up. David writes in two different places in Psalms. In one place he writes, better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. And then in Psalm 1611 he says, at your right hand, God, there are pleasures forevermore. In your presence there is fullness of joy. Does this sound like a God who's interested in making you miserable? Does this sound like a God that doesn't have better plans for you than you do? Your plans are an accident. His are intentional and divine. Lastly, in Scripture, I often point out to you the Ephesians prayer, Ephesians 3, 14 through 19. We did a whole series on it last January. I pointed it out at the onset of this year. It's my prayer for grace and my prayer for you. And the heart of the prayer is that everything that happens in your life would conspire to bring you closer to God. That's the prayer. But I always stop when we go through it at 19 because you have to stop somewhere. But if you keep reading and you get to 20 and 21, you see one of the most amazing, encouraging little passages in scripture. It says this, it says, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. He finishes up that segment of the letter by offering the prayer to God, by him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. I know it's a high bar for Jesus to set, to say, I want all of your hopes and dreams. I want all of your plans. I want you to sit down and prayerfully consider with your career if that's what I want you to be doing. Prayerfully consider with your finances, is that really how I want you to invest in those? Is that really the future that I have dictated to you, or is that what you want? Jesus asked that we sit down and we think through these very difficult things that the answers could potentially make us deeply uncomfortable. But here's what we know. He's going to hand you better plans. He's going to hand you better dreams. And here's what I know experientially. I would never ever pretend to be someone who's always living life according to Jesus' plan. I would never ever pretend to do that. And you may be thinking, you're a pastor. You've committed your life to Jesus' plan. Not really. I became a pastor because I wanted people to respect me and think I was cool. That's why I became a pastor. Just full disclosure, that came out in counseling like six years ago. I know that that's true. God has sanctified those motives. Now I don't care what you think. That's not true either. But God has sanctified those motives and helped me not do this for myself and for the sake of others. So I know what it is to not live according to God's plan. I know it very well. But I've been blessed in my life that there have been pockets where I did accept his plan over mine and I did live his plan for me rather than my own plans and I can tell you without reservation or hesitation or exception when I am living my life according to God's plan my life life is richer, fuller, better, more lovely, more wonderful, more alive. Without exception, my friendships get deeper. Without exception, my marriage is better. Without exception, I find it easier to get up and I'm more motivated to do the things that God has put in front of me that day. Without exception, I hold my children tighter. Without exception, I cry more happy tears and experience a fullness of life that never comes when I live by my plans. And I don't want to paint a falsely rosy picture here. You can live according to God's plans and experience pain. You can mess up and pursue your own plans that weren't God's plans, and as a result, you're in a ditch somewhere. As a result, your life got sidelined. As a result, you were in the middle of great pain and hardship. But make no mistake about it, that's probably not because you were ardently following God's plan for your life. It's probably because you're following your own and he's trying to get your attention. But those of you who have lived your life according to God's plans for even a season cannot deny that that season in your life was one of the best ones. And that those seasons are some of the best ones. And there will be pain in the midst of living according to God's plan. We do not judge the raindrops of tragedy because we're believers. But, on balance, if you invest your life following God's plan for you rather than your own, if you take up your cross and follow Jesus and give up your life for the sake of the kingdom, I promise you, you will live a better life if you do it. I promise you it will be more rich and more full and more lovely. I promise you it will be immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine for yourself. I promise you. So as we finish this simple thought, and then I'll pray. Jesus is asking for your life. Do you trust him with it? Do you trust him with it? Let's pray. Father, you are lovely and good and wonderful and we are grateful. God, it is a scary thing to hand our hopes and dreams over to anyone else outside of our control. But Father, I pray that we would trust you with ours. Help us trust you with our children, with our careers, with our financial goals, with our friendships, with all the things we want to accomplish, all the things we want to acquire, and all the things we want to accumulate, God. I pray that we would trust you with those things. Give us the strength and the courage to ask hard questions and to receive hard answers and replace our cruddy hopes and dreams with your incredible ones and help us be people who live our lives for you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, Grace, well, good afternoon and Merry Christmas. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year, particularly at Grace. I love seeing old and new faces. I love seeing, looking out and seeing families sitting together, three generations sometimes. What a blessing that is. I'm sentimental and hokey, and I think that that's really, really wonderful. So if you get to be here with your family, I'm so happy for you. And I also wanted to express a sincere thank you and my gratitude for choosing to spend your Christmas with grace. I hope that you're blessed by what we're doing and singing and talking about. In this sermon this afternoon, I'm supposed to finish up with our series called Foretold, where we've been going through some prophecies in the Old Testament, seeing their fulfillment in Christ in the New Testament, and kind of reflecting on that impact for Christmas. And as I was writing this week's sermon for the Christmas Eve service, I hated it. I just didn't like it at all. I didn't know why I chose it. I mean, I knew why I chose it. It was Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus' light shines brightly at Christmas. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't make it work. And so finally, I just decided to scrap it and take a minute, the platform that I'm afforded as the pastor, to just tell you what's on my heart at Christmas. What do I want to say to Grace that, it came to me very quickly what I wanted to talk about with you guys. Because I don't know about you. I can speak for a few because I've confirmed this with some people around me. But this December has not felt very Christmassy. This is the least feeling Christmas I think that I've ever experienced. I've never been in a December that felt less like Christmas than this one. And that may resonate with you, it may not. But for me, I'm sitting here going, I can't believe it's Christmas Eve. We just finished up with Thanksgiving. We just got done with that. And now the decorations are up and we're doing all the things and you're rushing to all the meetings and all the plans and all the parties, but it doesn't feel very much like Christmas. And really, if I'm being honest, I just feel harried and hurried and exhausted. And increasingly, we do this to ourselves and our culture does this to us where December, as merry and jolly as it is, as happy as it is, as much of this as this feigned joy as we are supposed to experience at Christmas time and walk around with a dumb smile on our face saying Merry Christmas to everyone. Happy Holidays, this is the best time of year. That's not necessarily true. And increasingly, December becomes a remarkable source of stress, right? In our workplaces, we're trying to do what we've got to do to meet the year end. There's some things we've got to get out the door, there's some things we've got to ship, there's some deals we have to close, there's's some stuff that we got to get done. There's some emails that we have to get out. There's some reports that we have to file. There's so much to do at the end of the year, and we're working late nights. My wife has been working until midnight trying to get some deadlines done a lot of nights in the last couple of weeks. We turn in extra time. I've watched my staff turn in extra time in the months of December working weekends and stuff like that, and I know that you've done that as well. We have parties to get to. We have gifts to buy. We have gifts to wrap. We have things to host, which means houses to clean. We have meals to prepare and to deliver. We have children's recitals to attend. I have to go to John's preschool and watch him stand there still while the rest of the children sing and then pretend like I'm having a fun time. This is how I wanted to spend my Thursday. I'm glad I'm not working right now and getting actual things done. I like to go sit in a room where I can barely see my son. He doesn't do anything for 10 minutes, and then I have to go tell him he did a great job. That's fun. And we had to do three of those, plus a piano recital. But we all, we do it. And we just run through life harried and hurried. And I just thought, the rate at which we are going, we are about to careen into 2025. No more prepared for that and for that year than we are for this Christmas. And if we're being honest, at least for me, I don't think it was just December that has exhausted me. I know for many of us, 2024 has been a difficult year. For some of us, 2024 will forever mark a year of profound loss. And so as we approach this Christmas, that loss echoes and resonates with us. And we can't help but carry it into these places where we are supposed to be merry. In 2024, things, let's just say it out loud, life continues to get more expensive and wages do not continue to be commensurate with that expense. And many of us and many of our families feel that pressure. And that exerts a unique pressure on an individual and on a marriage and on a family, and that's hard. The political year, no matter where you sit, was hard. You have to watch your words. You can't say this thing to that person. You can't bring up this topic in these circles. You have to be very careful and very measured. There's just a low, lying, simmering tension in a lot of the circles in which we exist. It has stressed us out and it has taxed us. And for me, personally, I'm going into 2025 hoping it's just a lot better than 2024 because this wasn't my favorite year. We have private struggles. We have private stresses. I can see the strain of this year on the people who are closest to me. A lot of times when I think about a sermon, I think about what I imagine to be the average person of grace. And I try to aim at that person. And then people to the left and the right, inward and outward, further along, less farther along, have attended a long time, have attended less time, they can catch something as I talk to the mean. But as I wrote this, I thought about the people who are closest to me. So if you don't know me, I hope this helps you. I hope this resonates with you. And I'm not foolish enough to think that it will resonate with everyone. Some of you have had a wonderful December. You're like, no, dude, Christmas has been great. Some of you have had a wonderful 2024, and I'm so glad you have. But a lot of us have not. And a lot of us, if we're being honest, just kind of feel defeated and exhausted and tired. And it's weird to roll into Christmas feeling like that. Because of that, I think it will help us to reflect on the week after Christmas for the Holy Family. The Holy Family is how our Catholic brothers and sisters refer to the earthly family of Christ, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. And I want to turn our attention to thinking about what life must have been like for that week following Christmas. And I know it's probably not typical. I don't have the luxury of going to Christmas Eve services. I only attend the ones I'm paid to speak at. So I don't know what other guys and girls pick to talk about, but I'm guessing it's not typically the week after Christmas. So if you'll indulge me this, what do you think that week was like for them? They have this baby in a manger. Scripture doesn't tell us how long they tarried in Bethlehem. It doesn't tell us if they continued to participate in the high holidays in Jerusalem. It doesn't tell us how long they waited to go back to Nazareth. But my guess is that as soon as she was able to get on a donkey or get in a cart being pulled by a donkey, that Joseph loaded his young family up and got them back to the comforts of Nazareth and to home as quickly as he could. And when they got back to Nazareth, this is what is so amazing to me, I think. Their world became so very small. Their world becomes tiny. It's all about this baby. Joseph, I'm sure, had things to do. I'm sure he had cabinets to build and shelves to hang and closets to arrange. Actually, I hesitate to do this because it's nerdy, but it's important to get things right. Joseph probably won the carp carpenter, okay? Mason and carpenter are interchangeable in the original language. Nazareth is surrounded by stone quarries, not trees, so he probably was a mason, all right? I'm just saying. So he had bricks to build and walls to erect. But he put that on hold because all Joseph cared about that week after Christmas was caring for his wife and caring for this baby and sitting still together and beholding and reveling in the blessings of God. And everything else in the world faded and got very small and life got very still. And for Mary, who must have had all of these thoughts of preparing a house for a baby, when you had your first baby, remember, this is so funny, remember when you had your first baby, your mamas, and the most important thing, you go into this weird nesting thing, and the most important thing in the world is to get that nursery ready. And you just, you ride your husband like a rented mule to get that thing ready on time. And we put, we buy new Allen wrenches, we put together all the things, we paint the room, we hang the stuff, and it's ready. It's month five. It is ready. We're good to go. And then you have that baby and you don't use that stuff for four months. That baby sleeps in your room. You had plenty of time. I'm sure that Mary had all these thoughts about getting the house ready for this child. And she had a wedding to plan. She had things to do. But for that week, when she got home with that baby, all those things faded. And her life got very still and very small. And what I and to reflect on that first week after Christmas. Because I think for many of us, we need to, in this upcoming week, seek to emulate the Holy Family in our life. And seek to be still. And seek to be small. And seek to focus on the blessings of God. I think that most of you in here have been burning it at both ends. I think that most of you in here are tired. I think that most of you in here, if you had a way to hit pause and go to a hotel room and exist in 65 degrees and pitch black for 12 hours, you'd take it running, man. And you would sleep. The sleep of angels. And I wonder when the last time was that you allowed yourself to be still and focus on God's blessings. And I know that it might seem impossible to do this. But what did you do when you had your first baby? For some of you, it's been a lot of years. And those things are cloudy. I think God intentionally erases our memories so we don't warn the next generation about how miserable it is to have a kid. Because I always laugh at people who don't have children who say that they're tired. And I'm like, buddy, I used to think I knew what tired was, too. Bring home a newborn. You bring home the newborn exhausted, and then it hits you, oh, yeah, no one's coming. Like, I'm still not sleeping for three years, right? But when you have that baby, first one, second one, third one, doesn't your world get very still and very small? All the things at work, dad that you had to do and get done and mom that you had to do and get done, don't those things fade away? Aren't you for just this blink in time, just the snapshot, finally able to see things in a perspective that puts work where it actually belongs and stops it from being a five alarm fire in your head because you have more urgent matters at hand. Don't you, moms and dads, see that when you bring home that first baby all the social calendars all the obligations all the half twos and the ought tos all the appointments and all the meetings and all the deals and all the lunches you have this remarkable ability all of the sudden to see them for what they are and to set them aside and focus on what's important to you. We have the ability to make our lives still and small. And so this week coming up, I want to encourage you to make this verse your mantra. It's a very simple verse in Psalm 4610. I'm going to say it to you, and I'm positive that you can memorize it. And I want you to say it to yourself this week. Psalm 4610. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46, 10. Be still and know that I am God. I don't know what your plans are this week. I know that for us, we're going to get up tomorrow, we're going to have Christmas morning, and then we're going to load up with my mother-in-law and we're going to drive to Atlanta. And we're going to spend the week there. And that week is filled with different stressors and different appointments. We've got to get the kids loaded up. We've got to get them down there. We've got to go see mom and dad. We've got to do the thing. We've got to open the presents. I've got to look at Lily and make sure she's adequately grateful for the crap she doesn't need. And then we've got to do all the stuff, right? And I have to smile when I get the things. you got to do all that stuff. And then you got to go to the other family and I don't know what your family dynamics are. You got to watch your words so you don't offend anybody, so you don't give off the wrong kind of vibes or whatever it is. It carries stress. But when I feel myself get stressed this week, I'm going to slow down and I'm going to say in my head, be still and know that I am God. Calm down. I'm with you. Be still. When my head spins forward to the sermon in January, to the series coming up, to the things that we need to do, to what's waiting on me when I get home, I'm going to stop and tell myself, be still and know that I am God. Just for a week, be still. I don't know what your plans are. But my encouragement to you and what I want to say to you today, what I want to say to Grace and to the friends of Grace, is this week, as much as you can, in every moment that you can steal, be still, be small, and behold. Be still, be small, and behold. Let Christmas be a gift to you that re-centers you and refocuses you on Christ. Let Christmas be a pause button in your life. A divinely ordained break. Where you agree with God that this week we will be like the Holy Family. And I will be still. I will let things go. Let the dishes, listen to me, let the dishes pile up longer than you want and sit present with your families while you can. Let the email go. It'll be there in January. I know you think it's going to be the end of the world if you don't respond and that person's going to judge you. Who cares? We don't like them anyways. Let it go. Be still and allow God to speak into your life. Be small. And I mean this. When I say that Mary and Joseph's world got very small when they had Christ, what I meant is it's just them. It's just the family. It's just mom, dad, and son. And so this week, I want to encourage you, like the Holy Family, to be small. Keep your circle small. Focus on who you have around you. Be grateful for your family. Be grateful for your intimate friends. Be grateful for who you find yourself in circle with. And try to keep yourself from enlarging your world beyond these simple blessings of God. Try to keep yourself from enlarging your world to external concerns, to what's going on at work and what's going on socially and what's going on dramatically and what's going on in the rest of the areas of the world. And try the best you can, Grace, to let your world for just this week be small and focus on the blessings that you have around you. And as you're being still and being small, behold. Behold. Behold the blessings of God that sit in your life. Behold the beauty of children. Behold the beauty of a spouse. And listen, some of us have wonderful marriages. And when I say behold the beauty of your spouse, that's a simple thing for you to do. Some of you have really bad marriages. They're rough. And when I say behold the beauty of a spouse, you're like, I don't know. I don't think that's not for me this year. Behold the beauty that you're still together, that you're still fighting, that you still care about each other enough to keep working on this, and behold the beauty of the possibility that it could get better. But if we don't stop and pause, if we just keep running into 2025 like we handled 2024, if we go into it as harried and hurried and exhausted as we are, that will not get better. Sometimes things need a pause to heal. So behold the beauty of the presence of your spouse. At some point in the next day or two, I'd be willing to bet that you find yourself around a tree. When you're there, let me just put this thought in your head. When you're there, you're around your tree and people are opening gifts and you're doing the thing with family. Can you take some time to be still and to behold each person in that room? Can you take some time to express to God gratitude that they exist in your life for who they are and for what they represent? Can you stop and acknowledge God's incredible goodness in your life? If you're a grandparent and you're lucky enough to sit around the tree with grandbabies, can you just pause and don't worry if the temperature's right or if they liked your fruit salad. They didn't. Nobody does. Stop serving it, please. Stop worrying about if they liked your gift. It doesn't matter. It's going to get thrown away in a year or two. Stop worrying about all the things that distract us from the moment and just simply praise God that you have grandbabies and they're there with you. If you're lucky enough to sit around the tree with parents, even if the relationship is difficult, even if they're not who they used to be, will you please pause and behold that blessing from God and praise him for their presence in your life? If there is a seat around that tree that is empty this year and wasn't last year, or is empty now and that absence still resounds, and it causes you grief, can you behold that grief and be grateful for that empty seat? Because the more it hurts, the harder they left you, and the bigger blessing they were. Can we stop and be grateful for the years that God gave us with them? Mamas and daddies, can we be grateful for our kids? Grateful for our brothers and sisters and our friends and our family that are around. Pause around that tree and behold God's goodness in your life. And then this week, I don't know what the rest of your schedule is. I hope for most of you, it has wound down. There's nothing really important happening. If you're going to work, there are cursory hours that don't really matter anyways, and you're going to get it done. You're just going to coast through, and then you're going to go home. You're going to do about 10 full minutes of work a day, and then you're going to call it. I hope that's that's your work week if that's what you're doing I hope you're not frenzied and harried I hope that's not the case and I hope that this week you will steal all the moments you can to be still and be small and behold and just pause with your family and the people that you love. And reflect on God's goodness in your life. And allow that to rejuvenate you. And replenish you. And restore you. As we move into yet another year. And listen, I know that some of you may be thinking, if you have not checked out already, that, yeah, Nate, that sounds like a decent idea. I mean, I like the idea, like, pause, just take a beat and reflect on things. I've got things to do. I'm busy. I've got appointments to hit. I've got things to go to. I've got houses to clean. I have things to get accomplished. All right. If I can't convince you to take a time out, allow Christmas to do that for you, then let's see if Jesus can. In Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 25, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses this exact issue, and he says this. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? No. Just to help you out, no. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Let the words of Christ resonate with you today. Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has its own troubles. Each day has troubles of its own. Grace, I want to urge you as your pastor or pastor for the day. In the upcoming week, to be like the Holy Family. And at the end of what for many of us has been a difficult year, be still, be small, and behold the blessings of God in your life. And in that way, let him replenish and restore you for the upcoming year. Let Christmas be that gift to you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the gift of Christmas. We thank you for the time that it is and represents. We thank you for the family that we celebrate, that we spend time with. I pray for joy and laughter and hugs and tears. God, we pray for those who have lost. We pray that you would comfort them in what is a time full of mixed emotions. God, I know that there are people even now in our church who are suffering. I know that we have folks watching from the hospital right now and we pray for them and for Darlene. God, for a lot of us, this doesn't feel like Christmas yet, but we are trusting you and we are hoping in you. And Lord, I pray that we would find the strength and the wisdom at some point or another in the coming days to be like the family that you entrusted Jesus to. That we would be still and small and that we would behold you and your blessings. Help us to receive this gift. Jesus, we love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here this Sunday. I am acutely aware that for many of you, you were not here for this, you were here for that. And so we're so glad that you are here. And if you're a grandparent, thank you for trusting us with your babies and your grandbabies. It's an honor and a privilege to do that. I've been talking a lot about how our children's ministry is growing and burgeoning, and I thought it would be, we thought it would be really good to highlight that on a Sunday and for you guys to be able to see physically all that God is doing and bringing, and that was great. If you're wondering who the pastor's kid was in the first, in the preschool one, it was the boy in the white sweater and red pants that looked like he hated everything in the world. So he's got somebody leaned over to me here and said he's got a real future. Yeah, I think so. I think so. This morning we are in the third part of our series called Foretold, where we are looking at prophecies from the Old Testament, messianic prophecies. And a messianic prophecy is simply a prophecy that tells about the coming Christ, the coming Messiah, who we know of as Jesus. And so in the first week, we looked at Jeremiah 31, where it said this coming Messiah will bring a new covenant. And so we talked about what that new covenant was. Last week we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, the most famous Christmas prophecy that his name will be called, that he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And we talked about what those names mean. And it's right and good to focus on these prophecies about the coming Messiah at Christmastime because Christmas is when we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies. So this morning, we arrive at a prophecy in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and start trying to zero in on Zechariah. It's a tough one. It's a minor prophet towards the end of the Old Testament. If you need to use your table of contents for this, please do. I'd also like to just point out, because I can do this and they are friends, Tom and Linda Sartorius and their daughter Kristen thought that this week was Family Jammy Sunday. So make sure you say hey to them in the lobby. They are a delight this morning. I've been told to blame this on Kristen, but at this point it really doesn't matter. It's just fun all the way around. Steven and Maddie, they avoided it. They're another part of the family, son and daughter-in-law. but the rest of them look like suckers, and it's great. It's great. In Zechariah chapter 9, what we have is not a prophecy about the first arrival of Christ. It's a prophecy about the arrival of Christ as king, and it's a profoundly important one, and I think it's worth reflecting on this morning. So I'm going to read you the prophecy from Zechariah. We're going to talk about the context of that. And then we're going to look at its fulfillment in Matthew chapter 21. So read with me, if you will, Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the prophecy from Zechariah. And we're going to turn to Matthew 21, but if you're following along in your Bible, keep something noted in Zechariah because we're going to come back to verse 10, and I don't want you to have to find it again. But to understand what happens in Matthew 21 and the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to understand the context of what this one implies. In ancient times, and even in the times of Christ, really up until World War I, we figured out we should kind of knock this off. Kings went out and conquered. That's what they did. The only major nation that hasn't figured out that we should knock it off on trying to conquer other nations is Russia. They keep dabbling in it since World War I. But everyone else has figured out not to do that. But in this time, it was very regular for kings to go out and conquer. It's what they did. If you were a king, this is what you did. And we know this because when David sins with Bathsheba, that story begins in Samuel. It was spring at the time when kings went off to war. So this is what they did. And when a king would enter a city to assume control of that city, there was two ways that he entered. One was on a war horse, symbolizing that he had conquered the city. He was coming in as the conquering hero to his people and the conquering king to these people. That he had conquered this city. He would ride in on his war horse once everything, all the dust had settled from the battle. The other way for a king to enter a city that was less, less, uh, it didn't happen as often, but it did happen. And it did mean something was for a king to come in on a donkey. When a king would come into a city on a donkey, he was symbolizing peace. He was symbolizing. I did not have to conquer this city. This city willfully gave itself over to me. And because of that, I'm not coming in to kill. I'm not coming in to conquer. I'm not coming in to hurt or to subdue. I am coming into this city in peace and I intend to peacefully take over this city. And then the prophecy of Zechariah takes it a step further because not only is he entering as a peaceful King on a donkey, but on the cult, the foal of a donkey on a bay, on a little baby donkey to be humble, to communicate in every way. And it says humble and lowly to communicate in every way that Jesus doesn't come as a conquering King for the city. He comes as a king who's already conquered and is now entering into the city peacefully. So there's great, it's not just random that he's entering into a donkey and that this is how Zechariah prophesies that he's going to become the king of Jerusalem. Because to become a king of the city, you basically got to go take it over. And Zechariah says, no, he's not going to do it like that. Jerusalem is going to welcome him with open arms. He will enter on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, gentle, humble, and lowly. That's the context that we need to understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 21 when he fulfills it. So, if you don't mind, turn over to Matthew chapter 21. In the preceding verses, Matthew has said, I'm not going to read, there's a whole passage here, I'm just going to read a portion of it. I'm going to begin in verse 7 and go through 11. But in the preceding verses, Jesus has told the disciples on their way to Jerusalem, beginning the last week of his life, Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the story where we get Palm Sunday. He tells the disciples, I want you to go into town and I want you to get a donkey. I want you to get a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I'm going to ride that into Jerusalem. And then Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was said by the prophet Zechariah. And he quotes Zechariah. A wonderful aside about the gospel of Matthew is that the gospel of Matthew was written in the first century A.D. to convince skeptical Jewish people that Jesus was the actual Messiah that you learned about for all those generations. And so very often throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you'll see the narrative stop. There'll be a bracket in it, and it will say this is to fulfill the prophecy of, and then there's a bracket, and then it's the prophecy to show how Jesus really was the Messiah that the Old Testament talked about. So, for us New Testament believers, reading the book of Matthew is a great way to begin to tether the Old and New Testaments together to bring us to a greater depth of understanding. So, Jesus says, go get this. This is to go get this donkey. This is to fulfill this prophecy. And then this happens. Verse 7, they brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this? So Jesus shows up at Jerusalem. At this point in his ministry, he's been doing ministry for three years. He knows that when he goes into Jerusalem, he's going to stir up a hornet's nest of conflict that's going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. But he also knows that he's entering Jerusalem as a conquering king, as a king who has conquered. And so he enters in as king on a donkey. And I think about the crowds in this story because I think those are who we relate to the most. And I think in this story, there are really kind of three crowds that we see. The first crowd is the most obvious crowd is the crowd that welcomed him. The crowd that showed up, that heard about it. I don't know exactly how word spreads in Jerusalem in zero AD or whenever 33 AD, whenever this was. But it was word of mouth. It was people seeing, there was stirring up, there was a commotion and everybody just kind of goes to see what's going on. And these people were so excited at who Jesus is. They believe that he was the king that Zechariah had prophesied about. Now they believe, full disclosure, they believe that Jesus was showing up in Jerusalem to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to take over the kingdom of Israel, to make it independent and to make it an international superpower and rise it to prominence. That's what they're expecting Jesus to do. They don't yet know that that's far too small a goal for our Jesus and that he came to establish an eternal and universal kingdom that makes an international power like the Roman Empire at the time look like peanuts. He's not interested in that. But they came because they believed that Jesus was coming in to be the king. And so when the king arrives, they take off their cloaks, they throw it on the ground as a sign of respect and celebration and adoration and worship. And then they go and they cut off the palm leaves or the palm branches and they place those on the ground, a sign of respect and adoration and worship. And they sing to him, Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. They're praising him as he enters into the city. This crowd welcomes Jesus into their kingdom, welcomes Jesus into their life. And here's the implication here. And I'm going to talk more about this in a minute. Jesus came, he did not come to conquer, but he did come to rule. He did not come to take anything over, but his expectation is absolutely that he's going to be in charge. His expectation is absolutely that I'm going to reign and you are going to submit. And the people celebrating in this crowd, they know that. They're gleefully, gladly, and gratefully accepting the incoming king. Yes, we will serve you. Yes, we will submit to you. Yes, not only will we submit to your reign, but we desire your reign. That's why we're laying our cloaks down on the ground because we want to follow you and serve you and submit to you. That's the first crowd. We'll call them the Sunday crowd because that's Palm Sunday. Five days later, there's another crowd. We'll call them the Friday crowd. This is the crowd of people that gathered around the fortress that Pilate, the Roman governor, was in, who yelled at Pilate, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ. And Pilate says, I find no fault in the man. He's done nothing wrong. There's no reason to crucify him. He might be a little delusional, but he has done absolutely nothing worthy of capital punishment. And they said, the crowd said back, kill him, his blood be on our hands and on the hands of our children. And they were so adamantly against Jesus that they crucified him. That's the Friday crowd. No, we do not accept that king. No, we do not accept his rule. We will fight back with our lives to not have to accept that rule. As a matter of fact, let's kill him. Completely anti-Jesus. But I think that there's a third crowd that's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible explicitly. But if you'll allow me this license, I think we can all admit that they've existed in every generation. I'm going to call this the Wednesday crowd. This is the crowd that's apathetic towards the whole thing. This is the crowd of people that went, hey, on Sunday, they went, what's that commotion? And they went, this is Jesus. He's the coming king. And they're like, maybe for you. I've got things to do today. I have cabinets to make and bread to deliver. I got stuff to do. So not super interested. He can be your king, not going to be my king. I got to get along with my day. And didn't go over to the commotion and just kept going about their lives as if Jesus didn't exist. And then on Friday, the Wednesday crowd sees the Friday crowd getting all worked up and says, what are you doing? They're like, this Jesus is full of crud. We don't like him. We're going to kill him. He's like, all right, seems like a waste of time to me, but go ahead. I have things to do. I don't care that much. And I think we would tend, I think we would tend to say in the way we do our moral judgments that the Friday crowd, the anti-Jesus crowd, was worse than the Wednesday crowd. Obviously, Sunday crowd's the best crowd. We know that. But Friday crowd, worse than Wednesday crowd, because Friday crowd killed Jesus. Wednesday just decided they didn't care. But I heard someone really smart one time say that the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. Because in hatred and in love, there are a lot of the same emotions just poured out differently. But in apathy, there's none. And I would argue that the apathetic crowd is just as guilty of what happened on Friday as the Friday crowd. And that that may be the most dangerous one. So I think as we walk through those crowds, that there's one question that becomes really obvious for everyone, and hopefully you started asking yourself this question already. What crowd are you in? Which one is it? Are you in the Sunday crowd when Jesus shows up in your life? Are you in the Sunday crowd that lays down your cloak and gladly and gleefully and willingly accepts his rule in your life? Yes. Not only will I allow you to rule, I desire it. Come in. Are you the Friday crowd? And I doubt on a Sunday morning we have very many, if any, people at all who will admit to being in the Friday crowd and radically anti-Jesus. You're in church on Sunday. But because we've got a bunch of visitors here, maybe that is you. And if it is, thank you for coming and putting up with us. I will try to go faster. You're being very nice. But I bet there's some people in the Wednesday crowd. I bet there's some people who treat the arrival of Christ in their life with apathy. Like it doesn't have anything to do with us. And so as I ask, which crowd are you in? I think most Christian minds go to the idea of salvation. How did I respond to Jesus when he showed up in my life? I'm a Christian. I've accepted Christ as my savior. I've prayed to ask him into my heart. I am a believer. Whatever your nomenclature is, you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and believe that you are saved. I'm not here to negate that belief. But I think our Christian mind, when we ask, how do we receive Jesus when he shows up in our life? We go, well, I'm a Christian. So clearly Sunday crowd laid down my cloak. Come in. I'll gleefully follow you. I think that's where we go. But I would argue with you that Jesus doesn't just show up once in our life. That there's more to this question than simply, have you accepted Christ as your Savior or not? And I think to actually answer this question, what crowd are you in? That we first have to decide what it looks like when Jesus shows up in your life. So let's talk about that for a second. What does it look like when I say when Jesus shows up in your life, what do I mean? What does that look like? And I was trying to think through a succinct description of this to help us grab onto it. But the reality of it is that Jesus shows up in myriad ways. Yes, of course he shows up as our savior and he invites us to repent and to follow him. And the fundamental repentance of all Christianity is to repent of whoever you thought Jesus was before you believed in him as your savior. We, all of us in here have different ideas about Christ. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you, you also have an idea about Christ. He's somebody that somebody made up. He was a good teacher, but he's not a savior. He was a good man, but we're going overboard with the God thing. He existed, but he doesn't matter. You have an opinion about Jesus. And to become a Christian, the fundamental repentance is to say, I was wrong about what I thought about Christ, and I now agree with him about who he says he is, what he said he did, and what he said he's going to do. I now have aligned my thoughts and actions by agreeing with Jesus about who he says he is. That's what it is to become a Christian. So when we think about what crowd we're in, we've got to think about how he shows up. And I don't think he just shows up at that moment of salvation. I think that Jesus shows up every day, every hour, and sometimes moment to moment, depending on the circumstances. Jesus can show up. I thought about how does he show up? When does he arrive? When does he make himself known? He shows up in sermons. You've come to church this morning. I'm saying his name a lot. He's come up. He's shown up. He's here. How will you respond to what you hear today? Jesus is showing up. How will you respond to what you sing when you sing a worship song riding down the road? And it's about Christ. How will you respond to that? Jesus is showing up. You could be riding down the road innocuously listening to Christmas music, not expecting to have a Jesus moment. And all of a sudden, no holy night comes on. And if you're paying attention, the words are about Christ. And so Jesus has shown up. You can be in a conversation with a friend that you're just talking to about life. And then they'll start to reference scripture or point towards prayer or point towards something that God has been teaching them. Jesus is now showing up in this conversation. You can be doing something that you know you have no business doing. That you could be somewhere where you should never be. And there will be this prick of conviction, this realization in the moment, I don't need to be here. This isn't good. This isn't what's best for me. That's Jesus showing up through the Holy Spirit of conviction. He can show up in the midst of sin. He can show up on a billboard that you see that flashes a memory and makes you think of something. He can show up in a terrible circumstance where you've just received terrible news. Someone is very sick, someone is very hurt, something that's very sad has happened and the right friend or the right person puts their arm around you and shows up for you and is the presence of God in that moment for you, Jesus is showing up. And so when I tried to answer the question, what does it look like when Jesus shows up? I think the only real practical answer is Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Whenever you're willing to pay attention and acknowledge that he's trying to get your attention, that's when he shows up. Whenever you're willing to stop all the other things going on in your day and in your head and acknowledge that he's just arrived. And what does he want me to do with this? We don't have to ask if Jesus is going to show up in our life. We just have to pay attention and realize that he is. And because that's how Jesus shows up every hour of every day, inviting you into his presence and under his lordship, inviting you to allow him to be the Lord of that moment or that role or that conversation or that habit or that discipline or that decision. Because that's how Jesus shows up, I will ask you again. When Jesus shows up in your life, which crowd are you in? Because I think this is a daily decision, Christians. It's a daily decision to decide today, this morning, at work, with my children, with my spouse, with my friends, with my habits, with my disciplines, with what I consume. I am going to be a part of the Sunday crowd. I'm going to lay down my cloak and I'm going to gladly, gleefully, and gratefully usher Jesus into my life and receive him today. I'm going to willingly submit to his lordship and his rule today. When Jesus shows up in a conversation, do we allow the conversation to go there and engage or do we steer away because it makes us uncomfortable? When he comes up in a worship song, are we going to stop and welcome him in and praise him in our car or are we going to turn it down and focus on something else? When the conviction stirs and our hearts are pricked, are we going to respond to that by allowing Jesus to come into our life and become Lord over that and move away from that sin and repent of it in that moment? How do we respond to Jesus when he shows up in our life? Maybe, hopefully, we can all claim from time to time to be part of the Sunday crowd. I said earlier, I don't think in a church service on a Sunday morning there's going to be very many of us that are part of the Friday crowd. No, Jesus, get out of here. I'd rather kill you. No thanks. But I do think that there are plenty of us in this room who are regularly a part of that Wednesday crowd. I do think there are plenty of us in this room and on this stage, and I don't have any company up here, who regularly are part of the Wednesday crowd. When Jesus shows up in our life and says, are you going to give me lordship over that? We go, listen, you're my savior. Okay, I'd like to go to heaven, but I'd also like to do this thing. So not today. I've got bread to deliver. Not today. I've got things to do. Am I your savior? Yes, absolutely. Am I your king? No, I got the crown. And we respond to Jesus, not with acceptance, not with rejection, but with apathy, as if he doesn't show up. And when we do this, when we respond, when we join the Wednesday crowd at the arrival of Christ and we decide not to care, do you know what that stops us from doing? Noticing the other times that he's shown up. If I asked, hey, how does Jesus show up in your life? And you're like, I don't know. Is that because you've been a part of the Wednesday crowd for a while? Because when you get in the habit of going, yeah, Jesus, I'm not giving you that thing today. I'm not giving you that relationship today. I'm not accepting your lordship in that action or in that sin today. I'm going to do my own thing. It gets a lot easier to be a part of the Wednesday crowd the next day. It gets a lot easier to choose apathy the next day. And then eventually, I know this from experience, you choose to be apathetic enough days in a row, and you're going to say things like, you know what, you're not going to say it out loud. You're never going to admit this. But you're going to take on a mindset of, yeah, not this week. We don't have to do the daily check-ins. Not this week. Not this month. Not this season. And we become deeply apathetic Christians who are part of the Wednesday crowd, neither accepting nor rejecting Christ, just going about our lives as if he doesn't exist. And if it's true that hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy is, then there is no greater sin that we could commit and no greater offense that we could offer to our Savior Jesus, to our King who offers us His Lordship. There is no greater offense to Him than an apathetic response towards His arrival. And I think, if I'm being honest, I know that I could just stop the sermon right there and send us home, and we would have enough to think about. Because I think apathy might be the most pernicious and sinister sin in the American church now. Yeah, I'm good. I've accepted you as Savior. But I don't really want you to be king every day. And I don't want to feel bad like I've rejected you. So I'm just going to pretend like I don't notice. I'm going to go about my life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that tells us that not only is it wrong to choose apathy, but we literally can't. We cannot continue to choose to be apathetic Christians because those phrases are oxymoronic. They do not go together. They are impossible together. The Bible does not make space for apathetic Christians because make no mistake about it. When Jesus shows up, when he arrives, when he tells us, I stand at the door and knock. When we open the door and we let Jesus into our life, he fully, listen to me, he fully expects to take charge. Jesus' expectations when he shows up somewhere is, yeah, I'm going to show up on a donkey, but when you let me in, I'm the boss. I'm going to show up humble. But when you let me in, I'm the ruler. I'm in charge. You submit to me and you do what I say. And Jesus will settle for nothing less. This is why I said we're going to turn back to Zechariah chapter 9. After he says I'm going to show up humble and lowly, this is what he says after that in verse 10. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When Jesus shows up, he's not doing it to be your vice president. He's not doing it to only be your savior. He's doing it to be your king. Those words do not sound like the words of someone who intends to do nothing. I'm going to break the battle bows. I'm going to get rid of the chariots. I'm going to get rid of the war horses. And my empire will extend from end to end and from sea to sea. I'm going to be in charge. So here's the thing that I think is profoundly important for us to understand about the arrival of Christ in our life. Jesus insists on ruling, but refuses to conquer. He insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. Do you understand why that's so important? He will not force you into being a Christian. He will not force you into being a believer. He will not force you into submission. I think of the story of Joshua wrestling with Jesus, Jacob wrestling with Jesus. And it teaches us that if you want to wrestle with Jesus, you're going to win. If you want to defy his will, he's not going to force it on you. He will not conquer you. And I know this to be true because in the young zeal of my faith in my twenties, I prayed on multiple occasions. This is true. On multiple occasions, I got on my knees and I said, God, I want to be an automaton. I do not want my free will. It does not serve me. I have no use for it. I know that without it, I cannot offer you a greater love, but I no longer want my free will. It doesn't serve me. I just want to do whatever you want me to do every day. Please take it from me. And I can tell you at 43, he did not answer that prayer. I still very much have it. Much to my chagrin. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Jesus insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. He will not make you do it. He only comes into your life through invitation. He only comes into those moments when you let him. He does not force his way in. And what's even better about this, listen, when he comes to Israel and he takes over as king, it's not that he's never conquered anything. It's just he's already conquered what he wants to conquer. And now, listen, he wants to come into your life and share with you the spoils of his wars that he's already won. Do you understand? He doesn't want what you have. He wants to come into your life and give you the victories that he's already won. He wanted to come into Israel, not to conquer Jerusalem, but to offer them the kingdom that he won outside of Jerusalem. How profound is that? That when Jesus says, hey, would you invite me in? He's not trying to conquer you. Listen, he'll pursue you. We're told that Jesus leaves the 99 who have let him in and is pursuing the hundredth that won't. So even if you're here this morning and you would not call yourself a believer, I want you to know that Jesus is still with you and following you every minute of every day. And I hope and pray, if I'm speaking to you right now, that you feel him hot on your heels. You can turn around and let him in anytime you want. And when you do, he's not going to conquer you. He's going to offer you the spoils of the wars and the battles that he's already fought. I love this song, this old hymn called See the Conqueror. Nobody's heard of it. It's nerdy, but I really like it. And in that song, there's lyrics. It talks about see the conqueror mounted in triumph and how Jesus ushers into heaven. But it was like here, it says, he has vanquished sin and Satan. He by death has spoiled his foes. He's conquered sin and death for us. Oh, sin, where are your shackles? Oh, death, where is your sting? He's conquered death and disease for us already. He's conquered that sin for you already. He's conquered that anxiety already. He's conquered that relationship already. He's conquered that life issue already. He's conquered the temporary nature of life already. He's conquered the loss of people already. Do you understand? He's already conquered it and he's not looking to conquer you. He's looking to be invited into your life to rule as king and to offer you the spoils of the wars that he's already fought. That's what it means when he arrives in your life on a donkey. He just wants to offer you the victories that he's already won. So at Grace, we talk a lot about the fact that we are step-takers. To be a step-taker is to simply acknowledge that God has a step of obedience for everyone to take, and it's your job to figure out what's my step of obedience and how do I take it. And so this morning, I think we have in front of us an opportunity to be a step-taker. And I think it comes in this form. Let me ask it this way. What would it look like to hand over lordship in a place where Jesus is showing up? The idea of, for those of us who have grown apathetic, and we're not even really paying attention to when Jesus shows up, the idea of handing over every moment of every day to him is something that seems so far off that it's almost so impossible that maybe we won't even start the journey. But I think if we can just look at the journey as one step of obedience, just one thing, not all the things, just one thing. Where is Jesus showing up in your life where you can be a part of the Sunday crowd and usher him in and submit to his lordship and experience the spoils of the victory that he's already won over that thing? Is it in a relationship? A marriage that you haven't focused on in a while and you know you need to? Is it in the way you parent? Not that I know this from experience, but maybe as a parent you've fallen into parenting the children towards just not being annoying to you instead of towards Jesus himself and loving him? Is it in the way that you go about work forgetting that it's your ministry, not your profession? Is Jesus convicting you in the way that you talk to others, treat other people? Is he convicting you to worship more? Is he convicting you to acknowledge him? Is he inviting you into his presence in times when you're refusing it? In response to this sermon, if you'll intellectually acknowledge with me that Jesus is showing up in our lives daily, hourly, maybe even momentarily, then where is he pressing on you the most? At what door is he standing and knocking, saying, are you going to let me in now? I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band's going to come up and they're going to sing. And as they sing, they're going to offer you the opportunity to just continue to sit as they sing over us. I would invite you to use the next few minutes to spend time in prayer and go before God and say, Jesus, where are you pressing? Where are you showing up? Help me to see you and give me the strength to lay my cloak on the ground and invite you in as Lord and allow you to rule me there. Can we do that together? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the kiddos, the joy that they bring, the laughter that they cause, and the blessings that they represent. God, we pray that we would be good parents and grandparents to them. We pray that we would be good spiritual parents and grandparents to them. I pray that they would be good friends to one another. Jesus, we thank you for showing up on a donkey. We thank you that you don't conquer us. That for some reason, unique in world history and in the span of all religions, you simply wait for us to let you in. And you do not insist, and you do not force. So God, I pray this morning that we would let you in. And that when we did, we would know that you do that to rule us, not to partner with us. Not to simply usher us into heaven, but to share with us the spoils of the victories that you've already won. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for winning those victories and we thank you for being a good king that we can celebrate this Christmas. In Jesus' name, amen.