Sermons tagged with Prophet

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

All right, well, good morning, everybody. 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, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. I wanted to say a special thank you to, I think, the one person that was near this side of the room that clapped when someone said I was preaching. Thank you. all the way back to the beginning. This morning, we look at the Lord's commission of Isaiah to become a prophet. Isaiah, this prophet who, as we learned last week, his words and his ministry was one of the cornerstones of faith for generation upon generation of people. And so this morning we have the opportunity to look at his commission, look at his call into that ministry that was so beneficial for so many people. And so if you would like to read along with me, we're going to be in Isaiah 6. And before we get into it, one reason why I'm somewhat drawn to the story is not simply because, wow, what a beautiful thing to see a call of someone, but it's truly a narrative. It's a story. It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and it's a pretty unbelievable and pretty glorious story at that. And so what I would like for us to do, because we're going to read this together, what I would like for us to do, if you can commit to this, would you mind throwing on your imagination caps for me? Because as we read this, I think that this story possibly can take on a deeper meaning and maybe a more personal meaning if we allow ourselves to put ourselves within the shoes of Isaiah as he is being called into obedience. So do you mind doing that as we read through this? Can you at least do your very best this morning when it's cold and a little bit yucky outside to lean into imagination? All right, sweet, thanks. I see none of your heads nodding, so I imagine that's because your imagination caps are far too heavy for nods. So let's go ahead and jumpalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim. Now, pause real quick. Seraphim is a form of an angel. It is one of the angels of heaven and one of God's angels. So just a quick clarification there before we continue to roll. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their face, and with two, they covered their feet. And with two, they were flying, and they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. Now, to pause again, Isaiah has been invited into, this is a vision, but I think the experiences and the feelings are completely real. Isaiah has been invited into the throne room of God, into this room where the presence of God is overcoming and overwhelming the entire space. The same glory of God that these seraphim are singing fill the entire earth. He is experiencing that full weight of that glory inside of a room in the presence of God. So, And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord God Almighty. Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and he said, See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. I told you this was a pretty wild and glorious story, huh? He is able to be in the presence of God and experience the full and utter weight of his glory. He hears the voices of angels. He's overwhelmed and overcome by that glory, and he's redeemed in that glory. This is a big and a wild story that even as we try to put on our imagination hats, it's hard to imagine what anything like that would be. But if we take a closer look at what he's experiencing, I think it's a story that becomes a bit more familiar. Ultimately, he comes face to face with God's glory. He's face to face with the glory of God. And because of that, he feels the crushing weight of the sin that led him to fear the wrath that was before him. I cannot possibly be in the presence of this much glory, of this much perfection, because I'm unclean. I'm sinful. He was fully anticipating his life just being done and over, experiencing the full wrath of God. But instead, he was met with God's glory, God's mercy, and God's goodness. He's offered a forgiveness and he's offered redemption that he could have never earned. And he's offered now the ability to live in connection and the ability to abide with God. He experienced the gospel that all of us cling to in our own faith. The gospel that says that in light of the glory of God, our sin is too great to ever get to know him, to ever get to experience him, to ever get to experience anything outside of the wrath of God and eternal separation from him. But the Lord offers us forgiveness instead. Out of the goodness and the love of God, he offers us, he offered us Christ and his perfect death, life, and resurrection. And this is the same gospel that Nate talked about last week that Isaiah already foreshadowed. That through Isaiah's life as a prophet, he penned and spoke and told of this great king that was to come that we know to be Jesus. And as this king comes, he comes to save and to redeem. And so ultimately, Isaiah didn't simply foreshadow the gospel that our hope and salvation rests upon. He experienced the full glory of it. He experienced the full glory of God and was met with the mercy and goodness of God that allowed him to be in his presence and allowed him to know him and to abide in him. And so this is important. It is only after experiencing this redemption that the Lord turns and calls him into his ministry. And so, if you will, we're going to read back into verse 8. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am, send me. Notice there's an exclamation point there. So ultimately it's more of a like, who can I send? And Isaiah seemingly in his excitement says, here I am, send me, send me God, I'll do it. I'll do it. Hey, if I get to do it for you, I'm gonna do it. I'm in, let's do this thing. I imagine it kind of similar to like a football player, like at the end of like a big arousing halftime speech of like, you know, screaming like, the who can I send out there? That's going to give us two quarters. You know, that kind of thing that you either have experienced or watched in a movie. It's like, I got this coach. You know, and then you go out into the glory and the whatever. But with our imagination hats still on, I want you to take a second to imagine what Isaiah might have been thinking. Because we don't know. Ultimately, this story doesn't give us the thought process that Isaiah is going through. It doesn't tell us what he was anticipating. It doesn't tell us, hey, I bet God has blank for me. But if I'm thinking about it, then I'm, if I'm in Isaiah's shoes, I'm probably starting to compare this interaction and this experience maybe with Moses's, you know, Moses, he didn't get the throne room of God. He just got like a bush that was on fire. You know, like awesome. Moses, super happy for you that the Lord revealed himself through a bush that was on fire, which is cool, I bet, probably. But the Lord brought me into his throne room. And so if Moses got to free an entire people from slaves, from slavery, then I imagine that probably what the Lord has in store for me is just a little bit grander and just a little bit better. You know, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that looks like. Maybe it means bringing Israel to prominence, whatever it looks like. But I bet he's probably like, man, not only does he have something great for me, but man, because of how awesome I'm going to be at this, because I've said yes, because I've said, hey, send me God. I'm the one. I'm your guy. I bet I got some blessings coming. I bet he's going to bring, I bet he's going to reward me for this and it's going to be awesome. I can only say that because normally when I obey, that's kind of what I'm looking for. What good is going to come my way if I can say yes to God? But if any expectations of grandeur entered into his head, they were immediately put to rest because the Lord continues. The Lord does not simply say who, the story does not end with him saying yes, with him saying send me. The Lord then asks him what he wants him to do and what he wants his life to be about for the rest of his days. And so we're not going to read the rest of the passage, but I want to just give you a brief look inside what God calls Isaiah to do. Essentially this, tell the people of Israel, tell your people, the people that you live amongst, tell the people of Israel that they have strayed too far from me to save their land and that I will send them into exile and continue to bring this message to them until they have been scattered and the cities lie in ruin. My words through your prophecies will lay a seed for future generations, but this one is lost. That's not great. That's not quite freeing an entire nation from slavery. It's honestly kind of the reverse. It's kind of the opposite. It's, hey, your words are going to kind of send people back into the exile that I originally saved them from. Your role here is to bring terrible news to people who are uninterested in listening to you. And you're to do so until all of them have been scattered into exile and it is a direct quote, until the cities lie in ruin. Yikes. If it's Kyle in that situation, I might have responded with, oh, did I say here I am, send me? Because what I meant is, here's Nate right over here. You should send him. He's awesome. He's a great dude. Awesome beard. You'd love him, God. And here's him. Send him. He's awesome. He's a great dude. Awesome beard. You'd love him, God. And here's him. Send him. He's perfect for this. I'm not interested in that. Sounds terrible. It sounds awful. It's like, not only does it sound like I'm going to become unbelievably tired and weary as I try to say yes to this every day, but all of the people that I'm bringing this to are not even listening. I don't even get to see any fruit from my labor. I don't even get to see on the other side what the Lord is going to do as I say yes and as I obey what he is calling me to do. And look, we already talked about it. Isaiah's ministry was great. Isaiah's words and the prophecies of Isaiah were, like I said, the cornerstone of a faith of generations of people. Generations upon generations of people held to the promises that Isaiah brought to these people who would never hear him. And so we know that the Lord did unbelievable and great things through Isaiah, but here and now, the whole entirety of his calling was simply tell people of the destruction of Israel and any hope that you speak to is being saved for the generations to come, what he's telling them is, hey, look, you're not going to get to say anything of hope to these people. And all hope that it will ever come as a product of you obeying me is going to come in generations that you will not get to experience. So I'm asking you to live a life of obedience where you won't get to see or experience any or nearly any fruit or joy. And yet, Isaiah receives this seemingly joyless and seemingly fruitless call to abide, and he chooses to answer it faithfully. We know because there's not just six books in Isaiah that he didn't walk away. He didn't point to Nate and say, hey, he's your guy. Remember the beard thing that I said? He stepped up and he said yes. And so the question that I'm left asking when I read and I encounter this story is this. What compelled Isaiah to abide? What compelled him to say yes with seemingly little to no reward on the table? What sustained him to continue to say yes even as times got hard and he was overcome by weariness? When it was difficult, when it was frustrating, when he didn't see any joys or any fruit coming from his obedience, how was he sustained? How did he continue to abide? What compelled Isaiah to abide? The more I thought about this question, the more it brought up a different question for me that I think helped me to understand maybe why he was compelled. And that is to ask the question, what compels someone to be a parent? What compels someone to become a parent? And what compels someone to wake up every day and continue to walk into the obedience of being a parent? Because let's give this timeline. Right now, I'm getting to just walk through a lot of different things you know I work with kids and students so I get to experience parents of of those children I have I am a I am a person myself that has parents and so I get to see them continuing to be parents it's also a fun and joyful time as friends and family are having children or or are announcing I mean, we have like four or five babies coming in October. So like, it's been fresh on the brain. I promise you, I'm not like using this as like our like, hey, we have an announcement for you. I'm not doing any of that. But because in light of so many people becoming pregnant and so many people having children that are in and around our lives, I've just been thinking a lot about this and a lot about this question of what compels them to become parents. And then separately, what compels someone who is a parent to continue to walk in the obedience of being a parent. And so as a timeline, you've got, you find out, you and your husband, you and your wife, you find out we're pregnant. There's excitement, there's popping balloons that have a specific color in them, pink or blue, you know. Gender reveal parties is, you know. I saw no one seemingly understood that, and I was like, well, yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, you pop balloons? Yeah. Different than when I was younger. But your excitement and all of that, it instantly and immediately turns to kind of thinking and dreaming, all right, what's this going to be like? What's this kid going to be like? You're anticipating, man, I think these are probably universal, so I'll just give a couple. Probably going to be a huge Atlanta Hawks fan. And it doesn't matter how little Trey Young passes the ball, we're going to support him as long as he's there. Me and my son or my daughter that I'll have. You know, we're going to pull as hard as we can against Boston sports teams. We don't like them, and my kid's not going to like them, you know, because if the Lord gives me a child, that's what they're going to be like. They're going to love ping pong. We're going to both cry watching Bluey because of how moved we are by it. And the child's going to hopefully be as much like Ashlyn as they possibly can be. Because otherwise, uh-oh. But as silly as some of those are, like, in all seriousness, every parent-to-be, I know it. I've talked to you. I've heard your experiences. Every parent-to-be has anticipations and has expectations of what life is going to be and the joys and the blessings that are going to come on the other side of life with a child. But here's what else I've learned. It doesn't take very long of being a parent to realize that almost all of your expectations were wrong. A child's a lot different than you ever thought it would be. And if we're being honest, oftentimes it's a lot less full of blessing than it is just incredibly difficult and oftentimes incredibly thankless to be a parent. We anticipate the glory and the joys and many days we're met with something that's much less glorious and much less joyful. I see based on like the age of the parents there's like bigger nods and less big nods but we know this. We've experienced this. Even those who didn't have kids we we know how we were growing up. And we know that we sometimes were the reason why it was a lot more difficult for our parents than probably they anticipated. And yet, parents, as each day comes, they continue to serve and to love their kids. They continue to step into the obedience of their call to be a parent, even while knowing and being completely aware of the fact that it might be incredibly difficult and you might not experience a single reward for that day. And so I ask again, what compels you to be a parent? Clearly it's not the hope of what's to come and the joys that each day brings. Because if it were, on those difficult days, you would just throw in the towel and be like, well, this isn't what I was anticipating. And since the only reason I'm doing this, the only reason I'm compelled to do this is what it brings for me, I think I'm done. But you don't do that. Day in and day out, you love and you serve your child regardless of what comes of that day. The answer seems to be pretty universal. I'm sorry, I lost my place. Here we are. The answer seems to be universal. What seems to be the truth that I have continued to understand and I've continued to hear, regardless of the age of the parent or the stage of life they're in, is this. What compels you is your child. What compels you is your children. It's that first moment that you encountered them. That first moment in the hospital when you held that baby in your hands and you looked at him face to face and you experienced the depth of a love that you never knew was possible or could exist. And in that moment, you were just so overcome with that love and so unbelievably just mind-blown that you could ever have been a part of something so beautiful and so magnificent. A love that doesn't feel like you deserve it, but nonetheless a love that is wholly and completely yours. And as you gaze upon the face of that child for the first time in every time, all hopes of future glory, future blessings, future joys, all anticipations of what this kid is going to be like and what my life is going to be like while I have this kid, all of those things fade away because there is no hope of future joy that could ever compare to the joy that is in this love that I have for my child. And so regardless of how good or bad, how easy or how difficult, every day I am compelled to love and serve my child. Because I have been given a love by their existence that is different and deeper than any love I've ever experienced before or after. And that love is what compels you the first time, the 50th time, every time. And as you know, especially in the parents in the room, as you know and understand, yep, he's right. I know the exact depth of that love. I think if we turn that around, what we know and what we recognize and what we understand is that it's a similar experience to what Isaiah experienced. Because Isaiah experienced the fullness of God's love and the depth of God's goodness. The creator of the universe made a way for Isaiah to be in his glorious presence, free was the glory and the goodness of God that compelled Isaiah to abide. And not only that, it sustained him in his obedience in good times and in bad. The glory and goodness of God both compelled Isaiah to abide and sustained him in the obedience and good times and the bad. If I can borrow and switch up a quote that I read actually this morning on a t-shirt from Timothy Keller, Isaiah may not have seen the fruit of his obedience, but he saw God, and that was enough. And so, as we come to a close, my question for you is this. What compels you to abide? Like Isaiah, are you compelled by the goodness and the glory of God to continue to walk into obedience? Or are you compelled by the blessings and the joys that you hope come as a product of your obedience. Just as anyone who has been a parent for any length of time knows, you can't lean on anything except for the love of your child because there's too many tough and too many difficult days and there's not going to be enough rewards each day to sustain you. Anyone who has been a Christian or who has walked with Christ for any length of time knows, you can hope and you can anticipate and you can expect as much as you want. But almost never does life turn out the way that you anticipate. And unfortunately, maybe, at times, it's a lot less glorious. At times, in our obedience, we don't get to see their fruit. As we try to share Christ with a friend, they never want to come to our church. We don't get to walk them into the salvation that we were hoping would be our call. Sometimes the blessings we hope will come as a result of our obedience don't come. We don't get the job that we prayed for. Another month comes and we're not pregnant. Sometimes we still feel the weight of depression and anxiety. And if we are compelled only by the product of what God gives us, if we abide, then we'll simply find ourself wanting and weary and probably just compelled to walk away. But instead, if our affection is set upon the glory and the goodness of God, and our hope is rooted in our salvation in Christ, then like Isaiah, we can declare, here am I, send me in any circumstance. And when we do so, we enter into the will of God, his good, pleasing, and perfect will, and the eternal joy that he offers us freely. And so I just want to, I'd like to just close with a send off. Grace. Seek the glory of God and marvel at his love and the goodness of his salvation today, tomorrow, and every day you're given. Let's pray. God, nothing compares to the goodness and glory and love that you've given us. Lord, I just come to you now and say I'm sorry that I looked for more because there's none to be found. Lord, as I take steps of obedience, as I grow in faith, as all of us walk in our faith, allow us to rest our hope not in what you have in store for us, but the fact that you have forgiven and redeemed us and that we can have an eternal connection and relationship with you and compel us to abide. We love you. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. I can't remember the last time I got up here and thought, gosh, I'm not sure how to follow those excellent announcements. But well done, Haley. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to put her on staff. We will pay you $25 a week. As Haley mentioned, this is the second part of our series called The Treasury of Isaiah, where we're diving into the very rich Old Testament book of prophecy called Isaiah written by the prophet Isaiah. Last week, we started in Isaiah chapter one, and it really wasn't like an introductory sermon in the sense of acquainting you with the book of Isaiah. So that's what we're going to try to do this week. This week probably should have been week 1 of the series, but if I started Isaiah and didn't preach to you out of that passage last week, my little head was going to explode. So I had to do it. Last week I was preaching. This week I'm going to be teaching. It's going to be a little different because we want to do an overview of Isaiah. And I want to take some time on the front end this morning to make sure that you guys understand what a prophet is, the role of a prophet, how the books of the prophets fit into the Old Testament and the Bible narrative. So up front, we're going to spend probably eight or nine minutes just understanding what this is, and then we're going to get into the overall message of the book of Isaiah as it presents Christ to the people of Israel. So we'll kind of march down that path today. The first thing I wanted to talk about with kind of an overview of the idea of prophecy is the idea of a prophet. Because I think that many of us who are maybe haven't been exposed to a deeper study of them, just hear the word prophet or prophecy and just think about some guru making guesses about the future. Somebody's been given a vision and they're going to tell us what's going to happen in the future. This is what a prophet does. A prophet tells the future. It's kind of how we think about them. And a prophecy is something that tells the future. Prophesize what the future is going to be. And this is in part true, but a vast majority of the prophecy that we have in the Bible is not that. It's not projecting forward years and years and years. And the role of a prophet is not to tell the future. Somebody mentioned this to me years ago, I think in one of my seminary courses, and I found it to be a very helpful phrase and it's in your notes. Here's the role of a prophet. A prophet has an ear to God and a mouth to the people. A prophet listens to God and delivers that message to God's people. And sometimes that's a prophecy about what's going to happen in the distant future. And that's what we're going to look at today. Isaiah and his messianic prophecies, his prophecies about Jesus in the very far future, hundreds of years away. But 85%, if not more, of the prophecy that we have in the Bible is prophets warning the people of Israel, the children of God, what's going to happen if they don't get right. It's very rare that a prophet is called upon to give good news. It's kind of the cruddy part about being a prophet. Prophets are not gurus and seers that tell the future. Prophets are cantankerous, grumpy old men who tell it like it is and just don't mind telling the truth and not being liked for it. That's what a prophet is. And they have a very specific role in God's kingdom. And as a matter of fact, to show you how hard it is to be a prophet, particularly in the Old Testament, we can look at Jeremiah. Jeremiah is referred to as the weeping prophet. He wrote the book of Lamentations, the saddest book in the Bible. It's just all sad. It's all bad. There's one verse in there of hope. And we actually preached about that in Great is Thy Faithfulness in the songs we sing. The book of Lamentations is very sad. And Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because his entire life, God gave him a message and no one listened to him. People stopped showing up. They told him to shut up. We don't want to hear it. We're tired of it, Jeremiah. Jeremiah's like, if you don't get right, the path you're on is not good. It's going to lead to destruction. And nobody's listening to him. Nobody wants to hear him. Nobody believes him. And so not only does he spend his whole life ostracized and pushed to the fringes of society with no friends and nobody likes him, but also he has to watch this slowly sinking ship of Israel fade into oblivion. He knows destruction is coming and they will not listen to him to try to stop it. That's the life of Jeremiah. Because what prophets have to say is almost always negative, is almost always a warning. It's almost always God kind of grabbing Israel by the scruff of, by their collar and shaking them trying to get their attention. It's very much what it sounded like last week in the first group of verses that we read. That's typically what prophecy sounds like. Because those messages are so hard, for many believers, the books of prophecy are difficult and unapproachable. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, but I bet if we did, the percentage of people in this room who can honestly say you've read all of the books of prophecy in the Bible, all the major prophets and all the minor prophets, would be pretty slim. This represents, for many believers, kind of a gap in our biblical knowledge. So to that end, I just wanted to try to demystify it a little bit for us and make it more approachable and maybe encourage some of you to introduce this into your studies. But here's, there's 17 books of prophecy in the Old Testament. There's five major prophets and there's 12 minor prophets. Now, don't answer out loud, but in your head, what's the difference between a major prophet and a minor prophet? The length of the book. That's it. That's all it is. It's not import of message. It's not impact in the kingdom. It's just four dudes wrote five long books and 12 dudes wrote 12 short books. That's all it is. And we got real creative in how we titled that. now it's forevermore Major Prophets, Minor Prophets. The five major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The 12 minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Those are the 12 minor prophets. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, very much. There's actually, one of the reasons I did that is to be able to bring up, we're challenging the kids to learn all of the books of the Bible. And that's the trickiest section. Don't let anyone tell you different. That's the trickiest section. We're challenging them to learn all the books of the Bible. If they do, then they get to pie Miss Erin in the face. But some of them have mutinied and insist that it gets to be me. So that could be in our near future, and I would very, very happily smile under the shaving cream and take the pie to the face, because I think that's a wonderful reason to do it. So if you have kids, talk to them about that, and if they're up for it, get them to do it. It's a really, really good endeavor. I don't want all of them to pine me in the face, but, you know, we'll do what we have to for Jesus. But those are the major and the minor prophets. And here's how they fit into the Old Testament. I want you to understand this. I know that this is academic, but I want you to understand your Bibles as you approach them. Okay, so Genesis through Esther is really the narrative portion of the Old Testament that's telling the story of the nation of Israel from beginning to end the books of the law are a little bit different Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers in Deuteronomy the first five books those are a little bit different because there's they're not all narrative there's some details in there like the book of Leviticus that gives specifics about sacrifices and religious rites and things like that. And then Deuteronomy kind of repeats things. It means law repeated. So it's not all linear. But basically from Genesis to Esther is the linear story of the Old Testament, the story of the children of Israel. It reads like a novel. Every page you turn, you're progressing in the story. Then you get to the books of wisdom, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. The books of wisdom are exactly what they sound like. They're just wisdom books. They're nestled right there in the middle of the Bible, and they offer good wisdom. And you really don't need a lot of context to appreciate what's in those books. The context does help, particularly in the Psalms. Then after that, you move into the prophets, the major prophets and the minor prophets. And those, this group of prophets fits back over the narrative story and just offers different details of different portions of the story that's told in the Old Testament. And while we're here, 1 and 2 Chronicles is basically a retelling of 1 and 2 Kings from a different perspective. Now you know your Old Testament. For those of you who have never taken the dive into the minor prophets, and you want to, a few years ago, it's more than a few now, I realized that I had a shameful gap in my knowledge of Scripture and wanted to tackle the minor prophets. And I was able to find a great commentary by, I think, Dale Ironside, that it's a one-volume commentary for all of the minor prophets. So if that's something that, if you're a sicko and you want to dive into that, do it and email me and I'll get you the book or you can borrow mine. It's a great way to study the minor prophets. So that's what a prophet is, ear to God, mouth to the people. Those are the books of prophecy in the Old Testament. That's where they sit and how they relate to the rest of your Bible. Now what I want to do is look at the book of Isaiah and look at an overview of the messianic prophecy within the book of Isaiah. So we can ask the question, who is the Savior that Isaiah presents to God's people? And it's appropriate to do this with Isaiah because depending on who you ask or AKA what you Google, there is no book more quoted in the New Testament than the book of Isaiah. Some people say Psalms, some scholars say Isaiah, but it's up there in how often it's quoted. And there is no book of the, there's no prophetic book that's more quoted in the New Testament. And there's no books of prophecy that contain more messianic prophecies than Isaiah. So it's right and good as we camp out in the book of Isaiah to look at how he portrays our Savior. So he does this kind of in three different ways. Isaiah portrays Jesus as king, servant, and conqueror. And for my overachievers who like to take extra notes, he portrays him as a king in chapters 1 through 37, a servant in chapters 38 through 55, and a conqueror in chapters 56 through 66. So it kind of follows this flow. So what I want to do is look at some highlight passages within each of those groups of chapters to show how Isaiah portrays Jesus in this way, the words that he uses to do it to familiarize us with some of the prophecies. And then I want to ask, what's that role mean and how should we respond to it? So the first way that he does it, the first half, a little bit more than half of the book, is he portrays Jesus as a king. And maybe the most well-known passage that does this is in Isaiah 9, verses on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. So this is Jesus being portrayed as a king. He's going to sit on David's throne. He's going to rule forever. Wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. Isaiah is laying out for us that he is going to be the king of the universe. And it's difficult reading this when it's so very clear he is going to reign forever, how the Hebrew people, how the Israelites could have construed that to mean, oh, he's going to sit on David's throne and he's going to reign in Israel. It's going to be an earthly kingdom. But that's what they thought. But here, very clearly, he's coming to reestablish David's throne and to rule an eternal kingdom that will last forever. And this is a famous prophecy that we see a lot, like I said, particularly around Christmas time. I'm toying around with the idea. Jen mentioned it to me, and usually Jen's ideas are pretty good. Our Christmas series may be based entirely out of this passage where we look at a wonderful counselor. So we look at the adjective, and then we look at the title, and we talk about why those things are important. So it might be those four things, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. This might be our Christmas series, but in it and in the first 37 chapters, Jesus is portrayed as a king. And so it's worthwhile to ask, what does a king do? What's the role of a king? Well, a king historically rules and protects. That's what they do. If you've read your history books, if you like learning about that stuff like I do, what you find over and over and over again played out in all of mankind and all of history is that a king rules over people and promises to protect them. So in exchange for the king's protection, I offer my fealty. I will now serve you because you are the king. I will submit to you because you are the king. And you rule over me, so I accept that rule. And in my submission, in my servanthood, and in exchange, you protect me. And so this is what Jesus does as he sits on the throne. We allow him to be the Lord of our life. He rules over us and he protects us. Now we can't misconstrue that and make that let us think that he protects us from all bad things, from all hurt and all pain. We know experientially that's not true, but he does protect us from the schemes of the devil, and he does come to rescue us, and he is building an eternity for us in which we will be protected for the rest of time. So a king rules and protects, and in exchange, we offer our service and our servanthood. Now, here's's wonderful about our king is he's also servant. We see this in Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 is probably the most famous passage of prophecy in the Bible. I'm going to read verses 3 through 6. yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. In this middle section of the book, Isaiah prophesies about the coming Messiah, portraying him as a servant. This is the remarkable thing about Jesus. Because he is the Prince of Peace. He is the Lord of Lords. He is the King of Kings. He is Almighty God. And he does not have to humble himself to serve us and yet he does, yet he chooses to. We see him when he condescends and takes on human form. When he gives up his God form and he takes on our human flesh. And he comes down here and he literally washes our feet. In the series that we just got done with on the Upper Room Discourse called Final Thoughts, we talked one week about how he washed the feet of his betrayer so that he could go take his payment with clean toes. Jesus did this. He serves us in this way. And this is the role of what a servant does. And we think, why is it important to know that Jesus is a servant? Well, a servant loves and provides. A servant loves you and provides you, provides for you. If you're serving someone else, you're loving them in that moment and you're providing something for them in that moment that they need. And the remarkable thing about the servanthood of Christ is that he doesn't have to do it. You understand that? He doesn't owe you service. He condescends to serve you. And there's something powerful about that kind of service. I think service is most compelling when it is inverted. Service is most compelling when it is inverted. Service is most compelling when the person offering the servanthood has nothing compelling them to do that and nothing to gain from that servanthood. And the person receiving the service has no right to that service. And no one looking on would assume that they were going to get that service. And so we invert our roles. The best example I think I've ever seen of this is my late father-in-law, John Vinson. John was a remarkable man, and stories about him would leak out all the time, because you could never get him to tell you what he did and what was going on. But after, in retirement, they bought a house in a neighborhood called the Georgia Club outside of Athens, Georgia. And that club, he spent his career as a senior VP for Bell South and then AT&T. And so when he got done, they moved out to the Georgia Club. It's a gated community with a golf course and sidewalks, and it's a peaceful little place. And when you live in the Georgia Club, you don't have to cut your own grass. It's one of those places. HOAs are probably sky high, but a crew comes through and they buzz your Bermuda once a week, so you don't have to fool with it, right? So I would go over there from time to time. Sometimes we'd play around a golf with John. Sometimes I'm going over with Jen just to visit or whatever. And sometimes there'd be this white cooler on his front sidewalk. And we couldn't figure out, John, why is that cooler out there? And he'd go, I just left it. And we'd be like, do you want me to get it? No, it's fine. And you'd go out there and look in it. And there was Gatorade and water and fruit and snacks and ice and we couldn't get out of him what it was he wasn't a man of many words and he wasn't the kind of guy you wrestled to the ground to pin down stuff while you just let him be but we figured it out that that cooler miraculously appeared when it was the day for his yard to get mowed and what he was doing every week for the crew that was coming around is providing them with Gatorade and water and fruit and snacks. He wasn't telling anybody about them. He didn't have to do that at all. That's just how he wanted to serve those guys. We found out after his career that there was some parking attendants and security guards that AT&T had hired to monitor its executive parking garage. And John learned the names and birthdays of those guys and on their birthday would bring them a dozen donuts, tell them happy birthday and hand them a little card with a gift card in there. He didn't have to do that, but he did. Another time, he was getting his car worked on, and he was talking to this young mechanic. And the young mechanic was sharing with John excitedly that he had just saved up enough and ordered this dream motorcycle that he had always wanted. And John thought that was great. So the next day, John shows back up at the garage with two of the best motorcycle riding gloves he could find that he knew would match the motorcycle that the kid was getting because he had told him about it. The last one I'll tell you, I think I've shared this before. One year, Jen and I bought John a nice North Face fleece for Christmas. And when you're in your mid-20s and you're both working in ministry and you're poor, a $95 North Face fleece is a big deal. Like this is, we love you, right? So we, everybody else got like a $20 Christmas gift that year so we could give John the $100 fleece. So we give him the fleece. And over the course of the winter, we realized this fleece is really not making any appearances. We don't, did he hate it? Did he not like it? And finally, Jen was so hurt that he didn't like it. And we gave it to him and yada, yada, yada, that he admitted that he was driving down the road one day. And it was a particularly cold day. It was sub-free freezing. And he looked on the side of the road. There was one of those sign spinners and the sign spinner was just wearing a long sleeve t-shirt. And John thought he must be cold. So he pulls over, gets out of his car, takes off the fleece, hands it to him and said, you're going to need this a lot more than me. And gets back in his car and keeps driving down the road. Let me tell you something about that kind of humility and servanthood. Those small actions resound and ripple for eternity. I went to that man's funeral, and it was an outpouring of service like that. It was an outpouring of this inverted servanthood where he had spent a lifetime serving people he did not have to serve. Whenever I would go over to his house, he would have Andy Griffith on the TV 100% of the time. I don't know how he found that many episodes. And whenever I would go in, he would immediately change it to whatever sport was on. Even if I didn't want to watch that sport. He just knew I liked sports. So he would always change it. And I'd beg him not to do that, and he would insist on doing that. And when we had his funeral, the church was filled with hundreds of people that John had quietly and faithfully served for his whole life. So when we see the service of Jesus, the king who chooses to serve us, the correct response that we should have is to serve others as Jesus serves us. It's Isaiah's way of preaching Jesus's new command in the upper room discourse what's the new command that the disciples were given in John chapter 13 go and love others as I have loved you the Isaiah preaches that exact same message he just says it this way go and serve others as Jesus has served you go and offer Jesus type service to people who don't deserve your service. Go be a humble servant to everyone you meet. And let's be honest about this, Grace. In this room, we have an unusual concentration of people who have opportunities to invert that service and to serve people around you who probably don't think they deserve your service. To serve people around you that you have nothing to benefit from by serving them. When someone is on a lower echelon in life, experience, wealth, position within a company, whatever, and they serve someone higher, that's natural, that makes sense. But when someone higher serves someone lower, those kinds of acts push people towards Christ. Those kinds of acts change minds and change lives. And we have the opportunity to do that. So I'd love to challenge you through the book of Isaiah to think about the people in your life you might serve more. Or better. Or differently. Let's not look for the opportunities to be served. Let's be like our good and gracious king and look for opportunities to serve. And as we do that. As we serve like our king, we wait on our conqueror. This is how Isaiah finishes up his book in chapters 56 to 66. And we have two verses that I want to look at. The first is Isaiah 56 verse 1. This is what the Lord says, maintain justice and do what right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. So he's like, hang in there, keep doing justice, keep serving people, keep flipping things on its head, serve the oppressed, because my righteousness is coming. My salvation is coming. It will be revealed. There is something that's going to happen at the end of this. And then we get a little bit clearer picture over in 62 verses 11 and 12. The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth. Say to daughter Zion, see your savior comes. See his reward is with him and his recompense accompanies him. They will be called the holy people, the redeemer of the Lord, and you will be called sought after and the city no longer deserted. The end of Isaiah, Jesus is portrayed as a conqueror. My salvation is coming. My righteousness is coming. Recompense for evil is coming. And the city will be conquered, and it will not be called deserted. And see, here's why it's important to see Jesus through these lenses of Isaiah, particularly Jesus as conqueror. Because a conqueror presses forward and the scales of justice tilt in his favor. A conqueror presses forward and the scales of justice tilt in his favor. Now here's what I mean. A conqueror does not sit back. A conqueror does not establish defensive lines and erect bulwarks. That's not what a conqueror does. A conqueror doesn't think about defensive postures and keeping things out. No, a conqueror presses forward. A conqueror goes to get. A conqueror goes to claim. Jesus, we understand, is on the move. Jesus is pressing forward. And when people have conquered in history, you can look through history. When people conquer, they write the history books. The scales of justice tilt in their favor, rightly or wrongly. I'm not saying it's fair. I'm not saying it's right when one group of people moves in and takes over a continent and then they get to write the history books about it. I'm not saying everything that happened was good and right and fair, but the scales of justice tilt in their favor because they write the history books. So when Jesus conquers, when he moves forward, he will tilt the scales of justice in his favor. And this is great news for us because it will be right and good and it will be fair. And when Jesus conquers, the only people who suffer are the people who deserve it. The only people who suffer are the ones who have not submitted to him. That's it. And then the scales of justice are tilted in the direction in which they should be tilted. They're tilted towards right and good and true. They're tilted towards Revelation 21 where the former things have passed away. And what's interesting to me as I look at this overview of Isaiah and we see Jesus as a king and a servant and a conqueror, is it's so similar and follows thematically that same refrain I remind you guys of so often, that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. Which follows the pattern of Isaiah. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the king of the universe. He's divine. He's the king. Isaiah, Jesus is king. It's to believe that Jesus did what he said he did. He came as a servant and he suffered for us just as Isaiah said he would. And then he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come and conquer sin and death and shame for you. And he's going to claim you and take you back to the perfect future where he will protect you. It follows that refrain that I offer you guys of explaining salvation follows exactly the message of Isaiah. When things sync up like that, I just kind of think, God, you're pretty neat in the way that those things get drawn out. And so what we do in light of this, in light of this overarching picture of Jesus through the lens of Isaiah, and I wrote this down because I wanted to get it right. As we wait on our conqueror, we submit to our king by serving like our savior. As we sit in the here and now, we wait on our conqueror. He is going to come claim us. As we wait on him, we submit to our king. And we submit to our king by serving others like our savior served us. And in that service, we will build up this kingdom and draw more people to our Jesus. And I think that's what we can take away from the message of Jesus in the book of Isaiah. As we wait on our conqueror, we submit to our king by serving like our savior. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your prophets. Thank you for the men and women who have been submitted to lives of being ostracized, being ignored, being disliked, being relegated to the fringes because they had to say hard things on your behalf. Thank you for their courage and for their bravery and for their example and for leaving us a record of what they've said. God, I pray that we would continue to learn from your servant Isaiah, that what he says and what we discuss would push us closer to you. And God, I pray that you would give us eyes to see this week that we might serve other people as you've served us. Give us opportunities to serve people who don't expect our service, Lord, and in so doing, would they see a little bit of Jesus in us? And would we bring people into your kingdom as we go through our lives serving others as you served us? It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.