Sermons tagged with Sin

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

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

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Real quick, before I just dive in, I believe next week we're going to Mexico. Is this correct? Yeah? Raise your hand if you're going. Pipe down, Howard. All right. Good, good. We got a crew that goes. You need to cheer for something. It's not going to be UNC right now. I'll tell you that. Sorry. Sorry. That was not fair. That was uncalled for. I repent in dust and ashes, Howard. But this is something I failed to do. They're going. They've been going for years. It's a good core group of people every year. A couple new people go. But while they're here and while we can do it, let's just pause in the service and pray for them and their team as they prepare to go that God will do some incredible things in and through them as they go. So pray with me for our Mexico team, and then we will get started. Father, thank you for impressing upon the people of grace, the very heart of grace, your heart for others. Thank you for this Mexico trip. Thank you for what it means to us and the relationships that we've built there. Thank you for the people who are going for the first time and for the 20th time. I pray that your hand of protection would be on them. I pray that meaningful relationships would be developed and cultivated. I pray that your love would be felt both by the folks we're going to see, but also by the folks who are going, and that they would mutually minister to one another, and that it would be a good trip with great stories. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Speaking of praying for people as we dive into what I think is part five of our Gentle and Lowly series, something that happens almost every Sunday morning that most of you have no idea about is something that humbles me tremendously. Most every Sunday morning, there's a group of elders and resting elders. And resting elders is someone who served as an elder before, and they're not an elder now, they're a resting elder. They get together in my office at about 935, 940. Now, they didn't do it this morning, and all of you who normally do it are here, so I don't know what gifts. Maybe you just didn't care about this particular service. But almost every Sunday, not by my request, they get together in my office, and they pray for the church, and they pray for me. And being a pastor is a tremendously humbling experience in some ways because it is with great regularity that I look out on the faces that I see on Sundays or interact with you in the lobbies. The lobby, we don't have more than one. And just feel tremendously humbled that you guys choose grace, that you guys choose to listen to me. I don't take that for granted, and I don't take for granted the men and the women who gather in my office, each of whom I respect deeply, and they pray for me, and they pray for the church. And another thing that happens on Sunday morning that you probably don't know about is Aaron Gibson, Gibby, and I get here early. I get here usually beforehand, but we both get here early. And one of the things we do before we engage in our morning is we sit down in my office and we just say, what are you bringing in here this week? What do you got? What's going on in your life? What other things are you thinking about besides what job God has for you to do this morning of preaching or leading worship? Because I don't know if you know this about your pastors, but you guys have had the Sunday mornings where you're coming in here with your hair on fire. You and your spouse had a bad day yesterday. You're upset with each other. Things aren't good right now. Your kids are driving you nuts. I walked in the door this morning and there was a mom walking her children out to go next door. And I saw her and she's usually a pretty chipper person. And I said, hey, how you doing? And she goes, I'm here. It was one of those mornings. We've had those mornings where you're yelling at the kids, you're stressed out, work is hard, there's stresses in life that are impacting you, and you come in on two wheels and then you sit down and then you get a moment of quiet. Well, I have news for you. I don't know if you know this about your pastors, but we're people too. And we have mornings like that. We have Sundays like that. And I love knowing that my friend Aaron is going to pray for me and I can tell him anything that's going on in my life and, and he will pray for it. And I love him knowing that he can have whatever's going on in his life and I'm going to pray for him. And some days we'll look at each other and I'll go and one of us will go, I don't have it. And the other person will go, well, I'm feeling it. I got you. Let's go. And the spirit is great. He always shows up. He always gives us the strength when we don't have it. But I love knowing that I have him to intercess for me. And I love knowing that we have people who gather to pray for grace because it reminds me that it's not all on me. It's not all on me to preach a great sermon, to be a good leader, to do all the things. I have people who care about this place wrapped around me and gathered around us that are lifting us up too. And I know that many of you pray for me and for the service and for the church. I got a text this morning from my dad, hey, praying for you. And I can't tell you how much it lifts you up to know that you're being prayed for. And I say all that because you also have someone praying for you. We see this person in Hebrews 7, verse 25, where the author writes, Therefore he, being Jesus, is able to save completely, or to the uttermost, those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Hebrews tells us that Jesus still has a job. And his job is to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercede for you. And the way that the author of Gentle and Lowly explains this, I think, is a beautiful way to understand it. Jesus is quite literally praying for you at all times. We have this misnomer of an idea that Jesus did his work. He came and he lived a perfect life and he died a perfect death and he hung on the cross for you and for me. And now he's just sitting in heaven, biding his time until act two, when in Revelation 19, he comes crashing out of the clouds and is coming to wreck shop and make all the wrong things right and sad things untrue. It'll be the greatest day in history. We have this misnomer, I think, sometimes without really cognitively being aware of it, that Jesus did the work then, and he's going to do the work later, and right now he's just chilling out. Certainly not blessing Falcons football. I'll tell you that's what he's not doing. But he's just hanging out in heaven. Not true. Hebrews tells us. He's an intercessor for us. He's actively praying for you. And I don't know how to explain in his divinity, his ability to pray for you and to pray for me and to pray for him and to pray for her at the same time in the same way. But that's what Jesus does. He prays for you constantly. He intercedes for you constantly. He's lifting you up constantly. And Jesus' intercession reminds us that it isn't all on us. Knowing that Jesus is praying for you should remind you in the same way when I'm reminded people are praying for me that it's not all on me. Jesus is praying for you. It's not all on you. Your marriage is not all on you. Your job is not all on you. Your parenthood is not all on you. Your friendships, your stability, your health are not all on you. Your success or failure is not all on you. Your moral goodness, your sanctification process, becoming more like Christ in character, is not all on you. Your moral goodness, your sanctification process, becoming more like Christ in character, is not all on you because we have Jesus interceding for us on our behalf, literally praying to God for you. And time, if he's your constant intercessor, that Jesus prays for you when you don't have the strength or the inclination to pray for yourself? Last week, we talked about Jesus is gentle with sinners. He's gentle with those who sin ignorantly and he's gentle with those who sin on purpose, the wanderers. Do you know that in your season of wandering, and maybe you're in one right now, And maybe you haven't prayed for yourself in a long time. Maybe you haven't prayed for your kids in a long time. Maybe it's been a minute since you prayed for your spouse. Maybe you've been floating for a while, not really spiritually engaged. Or maybe I was talking to a friend this week who told me that he was just dry. I want to want Jesus. I just don't right now. And I don't know what to do. Maybe you're in a season of dryness. Maybe it's simply been a minute since you prayed for the people and the things in your life, including yourself. And maybe when I say that and you go, oh, shoot. Yeah. Maybe it hits you right between the eyes. Maybe you can relate to it in part. But I think our reaction to that, to our attention being arrested to that truth, man, it has been a minute since I prayed for my spouse. It has been a minute since I prayed for myself. It has been a minute since I prayed for my kids. Do you know who's never stopped praying for those things on your behalf? Jesus. Even in your wandering, even when you're far off, do you know who's praying on your behalf that you would come back to the Father? Jesus is. Do you know who is your strength when you don't have it? Who says your prayers when you don't say them? Jesus does. And his prayers, I'm so grateful for the prayers of the elders and the resting elders. And sometimes I sit in and I listen to them. And I love hearing people pray who've walked with God for a lifetime. I love hearing people who have a generation or two on me pray. I love to listen to that. Sometimes they invite me to pray. I'm like, I don't want to. I just really prefer to listen to y'all pray. I want to hear how you talk to God. And I covet those prayers because they pray better than me, right? But do you know how much better than them Jesus prays? And he's praying that for you, over you. And it brings us to this principle that I think is foundational to Christianity. It's a quote from the book. Dane puts it like this. It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity that we are declared right with God, not once we begin to get our act together, I'm going to read it again. We have this mindset sometimes about pursuing the Savior, about our spiritual health and journey, that we kind of need to get our act together before we can really go to the Father, before I can really go to small group, before I can really start to consistently go to church, before I can really engage in any sort of service. I really have to get my act together. I have to clean myself up before I can go to Jesus, because if I go like this, I'm not going to be good enough for him. So I have to make myself a little bit better so that I feel better about going to Jesus. It's this silly idea. We treat it. We treat sometimes going to Jesus like I do going to the doctor. Now, listen, I'm going to say some things here. And what I don't want is 30 moms momming me after the service about my need to go to the doctor. So please don't make me regret this. Okay. I'm 44. I'm, I'm getting old. And those of you who are older than me and you think, Oh, that's not old. I mean, what are you calling me? I'm not calling you anything. I'm just telling you I'm old. Okay. Matter of fact, this week, um, I met with our architect, which by the way, there's going to be an email coming out this week that's going to share about the progress that we're making towards getting this building built around the corner. I know that there hasn't been a lot of information coming out, but there has been a lot of work being done trying to get some certainty around what we can share. And so that's going to come out this week and then hopefully more news after that. But I saw our architect this week, and I hadn't seen him in about two years. And the first thing he said to me walking down the hall, I said, hey, Jim. And he goes, hey, you got a few more grays in that beard, don't you? Thanks, buddy. Good to see you. This dude's like 75, whatever. I just want to be like, Jim, you're just blanket old. Like, I'm getting there. You just, anyways. I'm getting old is my point. And I know that at 44, I need to go to the doctor. I didn't have, you're not going to believe this, some of you will. I did not have a primary care physician until I was 39 years old because I had to go for the gout, right? I had to go for that. But after I had Dr. Mann until I was 18 years old. And then after that, nothing. I went to urgent care like twice to get a Z-Pak for a cold. No doctors for me. I'm not doing annual checkups. I hate going to the doctor, but I'm getting old and I know that I need to go. But here's my thought and here's why I haven't gone. If I can just lose a little bit more weight and do a little bit more exercise, then I'm going to have a better blood pressure and all my levels are going to be good and I'm going to get a clean bill of health and that's what I want. So if I can just get myself ready a little bit, get my act together, then I can go to the doctor. I don't have anything to worry about right now. If I go to the doctor, he's just going to be like, you're fat and sedentary. And I'm going to be like, yeah, I know actually not anymore. Cause I've lost a lot of weight since last year, but that's why I didn't go last year. Cause I was trying to lose the weight. Now that I lost the weight, I should probably go. But he's, he, he's just going to say you're sedentary and out of shape. Like you need to do things. And I know that I need to do things. So my thought is, let me just do the things and then I'll get a good bill of health, right? And I think we treat Jesus like I treat the doctor. I just need to take care of some stuff and then I will go to him. Then I'll be ready. Then I'll be acceptable to him. Now here's the difference. I can actually get myself in better shape and get a better doctor's report when I go. That is possible. It is not possible to clean yourself up to make you adequate for Jesus to get a good bill of health from him. The only way to go to Jesus is to finally put down your sword and admit that you can't get yourself in good enough shape to go see him. We have to fall helplessly into his arms and say, Jesus, I know that I'm not enough. We sing that song. I'm broken, but I'm not forsaken. I am who you say I am. Jesus says we're a child of God. He says he loves us. He says, as Aaron pointed out, that he calls us and he purposes us and he knows who we are and he knows where our shortcomings are and he intercedes for those things. We are who he says we are. But we will never get ourselves there by trying, by white knuckling and being try-hards. We have to fall into the beautiful, glorious, comforting intercession of Christ. So, Christians, those of us that would seek to pursue righteousness need to know that our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus. Our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus. Our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus, of joining in with him in that intercessory prayer, of agreeing with him what he must be praying over us and over our families and over our children and over our careers and over our friendships and over our relationships and over our marriages. If we want our marriage to be better, it begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ. If we want to be better grandparents, if we want to be better parents, if we're realizing, oh my goodness, I haven't prayed for my kids in a long time. I haven't prayed for my spouse in a long time. Where do you think the impetus to pray for others comes from? It comes from a pursuit of Jesus so that he is filling you up so that your cup now spills out on those around you. I love that verse. I remind you of it often. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. It's like Jesus is so full of grace that it spills out of him and onto us. And if we are there for it, if we are there to receive it, if we will pursue him, if we will be in relationship with him, our cup will be filled to overflowing and we will pour that grace out ourselves on others. And so what I would say to you gently and a non-accusatory way, because it certainly applies to me too, if it's been a minute since you've prayed for yourself, since you've prayed for your children, since you've prayed for your spouse, since you've prayed for your friends, if it's been a minute since you intercessed on someone else's behalf, perhaps it's because you have not been pursuing Jesus consistently either, and so your cup is not full. If we want to be the kind of people who reflect Jesus's intercession for us and pray for others in our life that we love very much and pray for things that matter a lot to us. If we want to be people of prayer, the impetus to pray begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ. So if we're dry there in our prayer life, my suspicion is that we are dry here in our pursuit of Christ. And then maybe we're just trying to lower our blood pressure just a little bit more before we go to him. Our pursuit of righteousness, of all things good in life, begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ and leaning into his intercession. But this morning, I've coupled two things together because Jesus does not just intercede for us. First John chapter two, verse one tells us of another role of Christ that I think is all the more encouraging. John writes this, my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He says, I write this to you so that you don't sin. But if you do, we have in Jesus advocacy. If you do sin, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, not simply interceding for you, but he is advocating for you in the places where you do sin. And when I say he's advocating for you, there are times in my house when I have to advocate for John because Jen is just mean to him and I have to defend him. John is four and a half. He's four and a half, right? Sure. He's four. I don't know if we've gotten to half yet. Half years matter a lot under 10. But he's all boy, man. He just like, if he doesn't run around enough, he just kind of gets, like have you ever seen a dog get the zoomies and just buzz around a room? Which is another reason why they're dumb. John gets this energy coursing through his veins where he just has to scream. This is not something that we experience with Lily. Lily, when she was four, sit down and color for like an hour and let mommy and daddy talk. John, no chance. No chance. That kid is annoying. He is there all the time. And we love him. He's hilarious. But he just has this energy. And one of the things that he loves to do is show you how hard he hits. And he's been told, just hit daddy. You can hit daddy whenever you want. Do not hit your sister. Do not hit your mom. Just hit me, whatever you want. And so he'll come up, and I can see it in his face. I know that he's just about to get me. And he just, I kind of, you know, I kind of turn and just kind of let him get the leg and he just will roar and beat on my leg for like 30 seconds. Stick around. He'll probably do it after the service today when he sees me. But sometimes he and Lily get to horsing around and Lily's playing with them and they're having fun and they're laughing and giggling. then that just boy rage will come up and he'll just start wailing on her. And then she gets mad and she'll cry or she'll cry out and she'll play act like it hurt and then you have to put up with that and like whatever. Watch you stub your toe harder than that. But it's all a big deal. And before she can react, because he's about to get walloped, you know, he's about to get taken out. Before she can react, I'll have to jump in and I intercede for John. I advocate for him. And I say, Lily, he's four. He's not trying to hurt you. He's not trying to be mean. He's playing. This is how he plays. This is how boys play. So don't be mad at him. Be nice to him and just know that he doesn't understand what he's doing. And then I have to pull John aside and say, this is why we don't hit the girls. We hit daddy. When you feel that, you hit me. Okay, Daddy. And then he hits me. But I have to advocate for him. Hey, Lily, he doesn't know what he's doing. Let's calm down the anger. This is what Jesus does for us in our sin. And I think that that's remarkable because it is in our sin when he advocates. It is when we mess up that he somehow doubles down on this intercession and is in the ear of God saying, hey, I've covered him. I've covered her. They're good. They're righteous. They're lovely. They're your children. They don't know what they're doing. There's that famous advocacy when he's hanging on the cross, when he looks at the Roman soldiers and he says, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. This is a picture of the advocacy of Christ. And the thing that I love, and I would just make this point real quick. So the way that we think about it is intercession is proactive and advocacy is reactive. Intercession is proactive. It's always happening. He's always praying to the Father on your behalf. It's ongoing. Advocacy is reactive. Advocacy happens when you sin. It doesn't happen when you're healthy. It doesn't happen when you're righteous. It doesn't happen when you're walking the right path and you're doing the right things and your cup is overflowing and you're giving grace out to everybody around you and you're praying for everybody around you and you're following Jesus' intercessory model for the people in your life. That's not when he advocates. He advocates when you're low. He advocates when you mess up. The mornings that you wake up and you feel like a failure and you don't want to look anybody in the eye and you don't want to look in the mirror. Those are the mornings when Jesus is fighting for you the hardest. Those are the mornings when he advocates for you most. I write this so that you do not sin. But if you do, you have an advocate in Jesus. Someone who is in the ear of the Father advocating for you, Father, forgive them. They're your child. We love them. And I thought about this this week, too. And maybe some of you have gone there in your head. Why is it that I need an intercessor and an advocate between me and God the Father? Is God the Father so disposed towards wrath towards me that I need Jesus there to be running interference the way that I get in between Lily and John when John's taking things too far? Is God so predisposed towards justice and wrath and anger that he needs Jesus to talk him off the ledge when he watches us do the thing again? And this is where the Bible gets really tricky and understanding the person of God gets really tricky because it's difficult to understand. God can't fully explain himself to us. God can't fully explain himself to us any more than I can explain literature to John. I just got done. This is going to, I almost decided not to share this because it sounds like I'm bragging, but I just got done reading a book. Okay. Like a whole book. I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck. And I love reading the classics. I love reading books that have been in circulation for more than 50 years, because if they, if they are, there's a reason. And the thing I love reading books that have been in circulation for more than 50 years because if they are, there's a reason. And the thing I love about old literature, about books that are 50, 200 years old, whatever, is the incredible insights the authors have into the human psyche. The incredible things that they have to say in those books. The commentary on humanity that's so nuanced where it will sometimes articulate thoughts that I've been loosely aware of for a decade and then here in a paragraph it's lucid and detailed and cogent and helpful. And it articulates things in a way that I would have never done on my own. It teaches me. If you guys were to ask me what was East of Eden about, I could give you probably a longer answer than you actually wanted, so I would not advise that. But if John asked me what it was about, how much would I have to dumb down the plot? How much would I have to simplify it for him to get even an iota of an idea of what that 650-page book was about? That's been in circulation for 75 years. Right? John can no more understand literature. And trust me, my understanding of it is incredibly rudimentary. I regret that either I didn't take English literature in college or I didn't pay attention. I can't remember which one it was. But I've never sat in a classroom with a professor telling me how to plumb the depths of literature. How to really, what was happening in the author's life and what the point was and what the critics say and how deep you can go. I have a very rudimentary understanding of it. It's just kind of, I read it and what I think is what I think. How much less so can John understand literature at the age of four. The gap of understanding between me and my son is infinitesimally small compared to the gap of understanding between us and God. So sometimes God is left to explain himself to us Neanderthals, and he's limited by what he can do and say and express. And so the more I thought about this question and the way that God is choosing to express it through Scripture, depicting Jesus as an intercessor and an advocate, I do not believe the point of that is to remind us that God is predisposed towards wrath against us. I do not think that the point of it is to point towards the Father and his character at all. Rather, I think it's simply to get across to us the very heart of Jesus towards you and the heart of your Savior, of your gentle and lowly Savior on whom we are focusing this fall. his heart is predisposed towards love and grace and mercy, so much so that he never ceases to intercede for you and pray for you on your behalf, so much so that when you are at your lowest, he doubles down and advocates for you. I do not think that those two truths are placed in Scripture to depict to us what must be the character of the Father and leave us to determine that. I think they are left in Scripture so that we would know the heart of Jesus towards us. So, what do we do in light of his intercession and advocacy? We pursue Jesus. First and foremost. The beginning and end of our pursuit of righteousness is our pursuit of Jesus Christ. What do we do in light of this wonderful Savior whose job is not done, who still works every day praying at the right hand of the father for you and at your lowest advocates for you. What do we do in light of that? Well, first of all, we mimic it as his followers. So we intercede for others. And if we're not interceding for others, maybe we should start interceding for ourselves so that we might be filled up with grace and then begin to proactively pray for others out of the overflow of our hearts. We advocate for people. We see the best in them. We hope the best in them. And we speak the best of them. But we can never do any of that if we don't pursue Jesus. So what I want to leave you with this morning is, how can you leave here and pursue Christ? What can you do? What step can you take? I say often, I haven't said it often enough lately, that the single most important habit anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. So if it's been a minute since you had a quiet time, start tomorrow. If you don't know where to start, these are in the lobby of the information table. This is a daily devotional guide that I wrote up last year. It just gives you a practical approach. I want to have a quiet time. What do I do? If that's a question you have, pick this up. I wrote this to answer that question. It's not as long as East of Eden. You can get it done today. If you don't even know what version of the Bible you want to read, I get that question sometimes too. I wrote a translation guide so that you'll understand the options that are out there. I do not advocate for one over another. I just put in front of you, this is how you can understand translations. So maybe there's one out there that would work better for you. But those are out there. So the first thing if we're going to pursue Jesus is we read his word and we pray. In a minute, we're going to have a chance to sing again, right? Yeah. We're going to have a chance to sing again. Call out to Jesus. Praise him. Rest easy in his intercession. Be present with him in that moment. Engage in your small group. Engage in church. Come ready to hear from God. And here's a big one. Invest in spiritually nourishing friendships. Lean into the people in your life that encourage you spiritually. And maybe for some of us, take a step back from the people in our life that don't. Lean into the ones that refresh you and give you life and make you more desirous of Jesus when you're with them. I don't know what you can do to begin to pursue Jesus today. But as I'm praying, I hope that he'll put something on your heart and I hope that all of us will move with obedience towards him as we go from here. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful for the way that you've chosen to depict your son. We don't imagine, God, that you are angry with us, that you're disposed to wrath. But, God, we are grateful that your son prays for us, that he advocates for us. God, I know that there are those in this room that even right now need that intercession desperately and are reflectively grateful for what's already been taking place. As he pleads to you on our behalf. God, those of us who have been brought low by poor decisions we've made. God, thank you that your son advocates for us in those moments. That he doubles down on the intercession and he raises us up in front of you. Help us be people who mimic those things, who pray for the people around us and who think the best and speak the best of the people who even may have wronged us. And God, as we go from this place, we pray that you would develop in us a hunger and thirst for you and for yourself. So much so that we would overflow with your fullness of grace upon grace. In Jesus' name, amen.

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

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on Labor Day Sunday. Thank you for joining us. If you're watching online, must be nice. Maybe next year I can live stream from your place. But for those of us here, I hope we're having a good Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series in Moses that we've been going through all summer long. And so I believe that this is the 13th installment. It's 12th or 13th. So thank you for hanging in here with the life of Moses. And I hope that it's been rewarding for you and encouraging to you to go through that life and see how much we have to learn from this miraculous man and figure in the Bible. This morning, as I was trying to decide where are we going to land the plan on the series, where are we going to focus, I thought it most appropriate to focus on the death of Moses, because Moses has, I was going to say pretty unique death, but it is a unique death in Scripture and in history, I believe. And so I thought it would be appropriate to focus on that. Not only because that's where the story ends as we end our series, but I've always found the story of Moses' death to be one of the more puzzling stories in the Bible. It's one that it took years for me to wrap my head around and felt like I even understood God's actions in it. Because I think that there's some stories in the Bible where the actions of God perplex us a little bit. What we know about God, or more often than not presume about God, would lead us to believe that what he did is out of step with his character. It's out of step with who he says he is. We can't make sense of it. And because we can't make sense of it, we kind of think, well, maybe, maybe God got this one wrong. And I think that this is one of those instances. So before the death of Moses, Moses is punished. God tells him that because you did this thing, I'm going to punish you. And we see this punishment being levied in Deuteronomy chapter 32. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Deuteronomy. And I would tell you to go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 35, because we're going to cover almost that entire chapter before we're done here today. But in Deuteronomy chapter 32, we find this, and I'm going to read you a lot of verses, more didn't stumble over any of those names, so I am very happy. Second, more importantly, here's the context for what God has said. So, God says, you and Aaron sinned against me in a river, in a particular land a few years ago. Because you did that, you will not enter the promised land. And so here's the offense. You can find this offense in Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 through 13, if you're interested. The offense is they have been moving through the desert for, at this point, plus 30 years. 35 years, I don't know. They were in the desert for 40 total years, and this is towards the end of the journey. And the Hebrew people had this very familiar, consistent refrain and grumble, which was when things got hard, when food got scarce, when they couldn't find water, they would cry out and they would say, Moses, why did you bring us to the desert to die? We were better off as slaves in Egypt. We were better there. And they were upset that they had been freed from their oppressive masters to come and wander in freedom in the desert because now desert life is hard. And Moses, frankly, got tired of it, as anybody would, as any leader would, with people coming and complaining to you all the time about everything. And so he went to God. They came and grumbled to him. And so he went to God. He says, your people are thirsty. Can you provide water? And God says, yes, go to the rock in this river and speak to it or go to the rock in this place and speak to it and water will flow from it. And so Moses says, okay, got it. And he walks out and he gathers the people, the assembly around this rock and he chews them out and they deserve to be chewed out. You whiny little babies. God always provides. He's going to provide again. Here, look. And he hits the rock with his staff twice. Because the last time he brought water from a rock on behalf of God, that's how he did it. He hit the rock with his staff. But this time God told him to speak and he didn't. But in anger and frustration, he hit it twice and water flew forth from the rock and the people were satisfied. But God pulled him aside and Aaron after that. And he said, because of your impertinence, because of your sin against me, because you struck the rock and you did not speak to the rock as I instructed you, you stole some holiness from me. You impugned my holiness and my dignity. And because you did that, I will not allow you to reach the promised land. And just so we're clear on what kind of punishment that is for Moses, Moses is, according to Scripture, probably about 110 to 115 years old right now. He got called out of being a shepherd at the age of 80 and told to go lead God's people. He performed miracles. He led the plagues. He confronted the Pharaoh. God used him to destroy the Egyptian army. He performed miracles in the desert. He set up something to heal from snake bites that we didn't even get to in this series. He went on top of a mountain and met the very face of God, so much so that he shone for three days afterwards. He was the one charged with bringing the tablets down the mountain, with issuing the law to the people. The first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses forevermore. He had been a faithful servant and everything in him was journeying to the fulfillment of his life, which is going to be to enter the land that was promised to his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he was going to get to be the one that did it, and he was going to finally get to set feet on this land that he had never seen in his whole life, and it's what he lived for as he served God. One day, I will be on the promised land. And God says, because you hit that rock two times instead of speak to it, you can't do that, which feels unfair. Does it not? The punishment feels like it very much outweighs the crime. And I hate it when that happens. I feel bad for anyone when that happens. And when I was a senior in high school, it happened to me. I was in class one day, Jen, I'm very sorry for this story. I was in class one day, and I had a friend, she was sitting a couple desks over, and I just got a wild hair that it would be funny to write her a little note and see if I could make her laugh in this class where we had a really strict teacher and you weren't allowed to do that. So I was trying to mess with her. And so I wrote her a note and in the note, I proposed to her that maybe after school, we'll meet at my car and we'll engage in teenage activities. Not married people activities, okay? It wasn't crass. Teenage people activities. Now, important to the story is I went to a very strict Christian school. That was not a lot. And it worked. She laughed. And then we laughed about it later. Well, fast forward six weeks. Some stupid eighth grade kid finds the note and reads it and is so deeply concerned in their conscience about it that they hand it to a teacher. The teacher confronts me. and she says, I don't know what to do about this. This could get you in big trouble. And I said, I can't tell you what to do with it, but it was a joke. I won't do it anymore. And she's like, okay. The next day, I get called into my principal's office, which happens to be my soccer coach. And he calls me in, and he says, Nathan, because I was Nathan at the time. By the way, my name became Nate instead of Nathan when I began to work at Macaroni Grill at the age of 19, and I had to write it on the table, and it's just shorter to write Nate. That's the only story there is for that. So he says, Nathan, I saw this note. It's completely unacceptable. And listen to me. I wish I still had it. I would let any of you read it. And you would think, this is funny. You would not think a teenage person deserves to be punished for this. But he was like, I don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, well, what's the normal punishment? He says, well, I need to suspend you. And I was like, oh, that's a bigger deal than I thought. And at my school, if you got suspended, you couldn't participate in athletics for three weeks. Well, I was the captain of the soccer team, and we were about to enter into the state playoffs. We won the state championship last year. We were probably favored to win it this year. And I was Allstate, okay? I was good. But being Allstate in that league is like being the best toy on the island of misfit toys, okay? I was never good. Sometime post high school, thinking I was good at soccer, we played a team that gave away scholarships and they were actually good at soccer. And I was oh I'm not athletic so not bragging I'm just saying in the moment this is how this is how big it was for me this was my moment right and he suspended me and I didn't get to play in the playoffs my senior season and it always felt incredibly unfair and to me that's what this punishment feels like from God. And if you're watching closely, yes, I am comparing myself to Moses. That's what this punishment feels like from God. And in my case, in my case, one of the things that helps me reconcile that is first of all, it really wasn't my principal that suspended me. It was my dad. Because my principal called my dad and made me read the note to my dad. And then my dad said, what would you do if he wasn't on the soccer team? And my principal says, I'd suspend him. And my dad said, suspend him. And he kind of hung up the phone. But one of the things that helps me reconcile that is knowing that there's probably a dozen other things that I did that deserve suspension that I did not get caught for. So it kind of worked out in the wash. But for Moses, that's not the case. This is what is said about Moses. In Deuteronomy 35, these are the last words, these are the last verses of Deuteronomy. These are the last verses of the books of history. I believe every Christian or faithful person who's lived since then who looks at the story of Moses, if Moses were to make an appeal and say, God, can you let me off with a warning for the whole rock hitting thing? Can we maybe look over that one and still let me put my toes in the sand of the promised land? Can maybe we still do that? I think all of history would be like, God, he makes a good point. Like of all the people that God should let off the hook, why doesn't he let Moses off the hook? And you would think that maybe he said that early on. He said that at the river when it happened or at the rock when it happened. But then eventually over time, it would wear off and he'd be like, all right, Moses, you're fine. Like you've lived a good life. You can still enter into the promised land. Like you'd think he'd let him off the hook, but that's not what he does. Look at the beginning of 34. This is the tragic story of the enforcement of that penalty. Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land. Now these words you're about to hear and read are, these are the tribes of Israel. These are, this is the territories of the different tribes. This is like someone taking us up on a mountain, God taking us up on a mountain and saying, that's where North Carolina is going to be. and that's where Virginia is going to be, and that's where South Carolina is going to be, and that's where Tennessee is going to be. That's what that means. So he says this. The Lord showed him the whole land, from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Eph He said to I'm not going to let you in. And then he didn't. He took him up like he said he would. And he said, I wanted your eyes to see it. This is what it is. This is what I promised on oath to your forefathers. This is where you've been leading my people. And I know that you thought you were going to lead the procession in. But I'm only going to let your eyes see it. I'm not going to let your feet touch it. And so I've struggled with what to do with this story. Because it seems out of sync with the character of God. But I do think that here's one of the things that we can take from this story. And it's a very simple thing, but it's true, and it's not something we like to confront very often. But the reality is actions have consequences, both natural and punitive. The things that we do have consequences. Both natural and punitive. And so when we commit a sin, when we make a choice, those choices have consequences. And that doesn't go away because we're thousands of years removed from this. It didn't go away when God applied the law to his people and said, if you were guilty at one point, you were guilty of all, which Moses did. You're guilty at one point, so you are condemned. That was the deal. It's a picture of why we need salvation, because we are guilty in at least one point. And that's why we can't get into the promised land by ourselves, because we have sin in our past. But that sin and those actions have consequences. And we don't like to think about that, and we don't like to deal with that. And I think sometimes we have an attitude of, yes, I've done this, but God, if you would please expunge the consequences from my future, that would be great. But the truth is that our actions have consequences. And those consequences are both natural and punitive. And if you're a parent, you understand what that means. This makes sense to you intuitively. When you're a parent and you're guiding your children to become who they need to become, who God created them to be, you have to either allow consequences or you have to apply consequences. Sometimes you watch your children or your child doing something and you know they're cruising for a bruising, right? You know this is going to end poorly. But you think that the best way to love them as a parent is just to let it play out and let them learn from their own consequences. One of my favorite things about grace is that every Sunday, all the little kids are running around the room and I think it's great. And it brings life and vibrancy to the church. And I don't mind that they bang into the wall. And sometimes we'll somebody, we have a kid one time that just took a marker and ran down that whole wall. Just the whole, just, they just, we needed a racing stripe. Okay. Um, I don't mind that. And they knock over people's coffee. They bump into us out there. I don't care. I think it's, I think it's fun. And one day I was in here and my son, John is four. And he was over in this corner and I was standing up there next to the doors. And I looked over and he was running up to a child that was sizably larger than him. And John likes to hit right now. He just, and he hits like that. And so he ran up to this kid and just hit him in the back. And instead of running over and grabbing him and say, we don't hit, you know, I thought, let's just see how this plays out. And the kid turned around and was mad and hit John back and knocked him on his butt and made him cry. And John came running to me. Daddy, so-and-so hit me. I said, yeah, I saw. This should teach us not to hit people that are bigger than us. Don't do that. Don't do that, son. You see me? I've never picked a fight in my life. You know why? Because I don't like to cry in front of other people. And so I could have run up and I could have stopped and not let the other kid hit my son. But I thought the best thing to do was just to let the consequences play out. And so sometimes we watch our kid cruising for a bruising and when they fall on their rear end, we pick them up and we go, yeah, don't do that again. The reason you're in pain now is because your actions chose it. Our actions have consequences. Other times as parents, we need to make the consequences punitive, don't we? We need to punish, to teach a lesson so that they don't do that again, to help them remember that that's not the way they're supposed to act or behave or the attitude that they're supposed to have. In our house, screen time's a big deal. You bring up screen time and there's tears right away before you even say how much screen time is going to be lost. And some actions require a punitive consequence. When they get older, you take the car keys or whatever it is. But as parents, we understand these things. That when we're in charge of a child and we're in charge of raising them, it is absolutely irresponsible to try to raise them in an environment in which their actions do not have consequences. It is completely unhelpful for life. And in understanding this principle, we understand that this is what good parents do. And so the other thing is, this story reminds us that God is our father and we are his children. God is our father and we are his children. God is the father of Moses and of the Hebrew people. And when Moses, one of his sons, sinned, God had to apply a punitive consequence. It was not a natural consequence that Moses experienced. By all accounts, he could have gotten there and gone across the river. But God applied this punitive consequence for this action to correct it. And to set an example for the rest of his children that no one gets off the hook. God is a fair God. But because God is our Father, he must also, as he looks down on us as his children, apply to us both natural and punitive consequences. God cannot run over and protect us from the larger child when we choose to take an action that we shouldn't. He's not going to do that. He will allow us to experience natural consequences of our choices. If we choose, and I know this from experience and unanswered prayers, if we choose to eat like a garbage can and avoid exercise for a couple of decades, we're going to end up in poor health. And we can't just pray that God will make us magically healthy. These are consequences of our actions. If we volunteer for everything and we say yes for everything and we overextend and we can't say no to anyone and we end up stressed and exhausted, that's not God punishing you. That's the natural consequence of your actions and your choices. But sometimes we like to blame God for things that we brought on ourselves. I remember at my last church, this was easily over a decade ago, and my last church, it was a larger church, it was about 2,000 people, and I was on staff. I was a staff pastor. And if you called the church and you said, I need to talk to a pastor, they funneled that call to me, which makes total sense because I ooze tenderness. And so I took a call this one day. I don't know why y'all are laughing so hard at that. Jeepers. It's a little funny. I didn't know it was that funny. I take a call one day from this guy, and it's like early 30s. And he says, hey, I just need to talk with a pastor. I just got something going on in my life. I just can't make sense of it. I was like, all right, what's going on, man? And he says, well, because I got this girlfriend that I really love. I'm like, well, that's good. And he goes, yeah, but I've also got some problems with drug addiction, and I'm kind of in and out, and it's a real struggle for me. And a few months ago, she gave me an ultimatum. She was like, you know, clean up or I'm out of here. And he goes, and I just messed up a couple more times, and she left me. And I'm devastated. And this is the kicker. I just don't know why God would allow this to happen to me. What? And I was nice. I didn't just be like, you're dumb and hang on the phone. But I tried to say, like, our actions have consequences. But I think a lot of times in life, something difficult will happen to us. And sometimes we can throw ourselves a pity party and we can think, why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God make this happen to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? And if we look, it's like, well, you took some steps to lead to this consequence. God didn't allow that business deal to go bad. It was a bad business deal. God didn't allow you to lose your job. You just underperformed for a few months or years and your boss got sick of it. Like sometimes there's natural consequences in life. Other times God does bring, we see in scripture, punitive action into our lives to correct our behavior and direct us to the right place. We know this is true because not only do we see it in the life of Moses, but we also see it in the life of David. When David, the second king of Israel, you may have heard of him. He's a pretty big deal. He got towards the end of his life. And in 2 Samuel chapter 16 and 17, David has this conversation with God. And he says, he says, Father, I want to build your temple. You'll remember from the story of Moses that God instructed them to build a tabernacle, which was a fancy tent with a big square tent in the middle. And the Holy of Holies was half of that tent. And that was where the presence of God rested. And it was built to be nomadic, to be able to take it up, move it, and set it back up. That was the job of the Levites, setting up the tabernacle, taking down the tabernacle, moving the tabernacle, setting up the tabernacle. That's what the Levites did. And so when they finally got into Israel, into their promised land, into Jerusalem, and David's sitting on the throne. He says, Father, I want to build you a permanent home. And God says, David, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands. That's a punitive consequence. I can't tell you exactly what sins are involved in too much blood on your hands, but David did a lot of killing. And if you read between the lines, he did a lot of sinning. And so God said, no, you're not the one to do this. You haven't lived the life of the person that I want to allow to do this. So you can't do it. That's a punitive consequence. And we know it's punitive because before he died, he gathered all the materials, everything that was needed, all the cedars of Lebanon and all the rocks from the quarry were put on the job site so that when the next king became king, he could say go and he could have the honor of building the temple. So by all accounts, he could have built it by the end of his life. This was not a natural consequence of his actions. This was punitive by God. The biggest result or example we see in Scripture of someone suffering a punitive consequence is that. It's Jesus on the cross. He was being punished. He was being punished as a consequence of our actions, of your actions. That's a punishment that we deserve. That's a punitive consequence that should have been laid on us, death. But God chose instead to punish not his children, but his child. Do you see? So we know in scripture that God exacts punitive punishments for consequences of our actions. Now, I don't know how to tell you how to parse out what in your life is a punishment and what is a natural consequence. I really don't know how to tell you to do that. I thought about it this week and I'm like, I'm not even going there. I don't know how to tell you to do it. I just know that both are true. But that far more often than not, the hard things that we are experiencing are natural consequences of our actions. And so we see in the story that our actions have consequences. Our sin has consequences. And it makes me wonder, I wonder what our sin has prevented us from. I wonder what our sin has prevented us from experiencing or doing. In the example of Moses and David, Moses, God took an opportunity from him. You will not enter the promised land. David, God took an opportunity from him. You're not going to be the one that builds the temple. The opportunity, the thing that Jesus had to give up is staying in his perfect divine form forever. He had to take on human form. He had to condescend to become flesh. And so if that's what happens with sin in the Bible is opportunities are removed from us. God's going to use us in smaller ways or in different ways. I wonder what I've missed out on because of my sin. I wonder what opportunities I've squandered because of the way I've chosen to behave and exercise my faith for the last decade. I wonder if you think it might be possible that you've missed some opportunities in your life because of some actions that you've taken in the past. And I don't know that God is ever going to take any of us up on a mountain and go, do you see what you missed? But maybe it'll happen in heaven, I'm not sure. But it makes me wonder, the story makes me wonder, what opportunities am I missing out on because of the actions that I've taken in the past? But here's the thing I love about this story that dawned on me this week as I sat with it and for the past couple of weeks. This isn't just a story about punishment. This isn't just a story about consequences. This is also a story about comfort. Let me show you. In a second, we're going to look at verse 5 in Deuteronomy 34. You'll remember the first four verses are God taking him up and going, this is the land of Gad, and this is the land of Naphtali, and this is the land of Ephraim, and this is the land that I swore on oath to Abraham.? I'm going to let you see it with your eyes. You cannot touch it with your feet. But then he takes him. He's the only person I'm aware of that died in the presence of God. And he's the only person in scripture that's buried by God himself in a secret grave that no one has ever found. And so what we see is that we have this God of consequences, but we have a God of comfort. And so in this passage, what I see is God holding consequences necessarily in one hand, because if he doesn't, he's not a loving father. But in the other hand, he holds comfort. And as he's exacting consequences on Moses with one hand, he's immediately comforting him with the other. I think that's amazing. So because he loves us, he holds consequence in one hand and comfort in the other. This is true of the story of David too. This is true of the story of David. When he says, David, no, you cannot build my temple. There's too much blood on your hands. The immediate thing coming after that, in the passage, the immediate thing that God says is, but I will allow your son Solomon to build it. And my son, the Messiah, will sit on your throne for all of eternity. Consequence, you can't build the temple. Comfort, here's what I can promise you. That's the passage that becomes the Davidic covenant. Consequence in one hand, comfort in the other. Now here's what's really cool. I told you the example of Jesus being punished for us. Consequence in one hand. But Jesus, but that's our punishment. Those are our consequences that he's holding. But in Jesus, we also find our ultimate comfort, right? We also find our ultimate comfort in Christ because on the cross, death was defeated. I did a funeral the other day and I got to say, as you get to say at funerals of people who believe in Jesus, this is not goodbye. This is goodbye for now. There's hope here. We know where she is. We know she's looking down on us. We know she loves us and that she's seen the face of her Savior and that we should be jealous of her and where she is. So on the cross, death lost its sting and sin lost its chains. And so it is the source of the greatest comfort for anyone in the gospel. That because of our actions, we deserve profound consequences. And whether they seem disproportionate to us or not, Jesus paid for those. And in that payment, he also becomes our comfort. And so God doesn't have to say, this is going to happen, but this is going to happen. He says this is happening. This, to me, is what the story of the death of Moses is about. I've told you repeatedly, everything points to Jesus. And I believe that this story points to the gospel in multiple and profound ways. And I want us to remember as we go, whenever we are experiencing consequences, whenever we feel like life is hard, life is dark, like life is deep, in our darkest days where our sin is so great that we feel we can't move. And I've had those days when I was so wracked with guilt for my sin and my choices that I felt ashamed of who I was and I didn't want anyone to know and I didn't want to look anybody in the eye. When we have those days and we are experiencing the consequences of our actions, we can always, always, always look to the cross and be comforted that God still loves us, that he covered this too, and one day we will be in eternity with him. Whenever we experience consequences, we are also offered comfort. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a good father. It may be odd to pray and scary to say, but thank you for consequences. Thank you for the things that direct us. God, I pray that in our lives, when hard things are happening, that we wouldn't immediately blame them on you, but we would stop and assess ourselves and say, well, maybe this is my fault. God, if there are instances where we do think maybe we're being punished, God, I pray that we would trust you in that punishment and that we would remember in Hebrews that we're told that the Lord disciplines the ones he loves. We're so grateful that you're a good father. We're so grateful that every story can be woven in such a way that what we find is it's really pointing us towards your son and your love for us. Thank you for loving Moses the way you did, and thank you for loving us the way you do. In Jesus' name, amen.