Sermons tagged with Teaching

Well, good morning, Grace. I am Erin. I get the joy and privilege of being one of the pastors here, and I'm excited to be here this morning. And I'm very grateful that you all chose to join us this morning as well, whether it's here in person, whether you're joining us online, or maybe catching up later this week. Thanks for taking just a little bit of time out of your morning to come hang out with us. And before I jump in to where we're headed this morning, I felt like I needed to make a confession just to be completely transparent with y'all. And that is, is that as Nate mentioned up here, Exodus 18 is about leadership. And I don't feel at all qualified to stand up here and talk to y'all about leadership. None. Zero. And I know that is a fantastic way to earn your trust this morning. But yeah, so as I sat down and I started to read over this chapter, and you will see it later today, it's blaringly obvious that the chapter is very much about leadership. And I, in my stubborn existence, said, no, I'm not preaching on leadership. So let's see what else, Lord, that you can teach me that I could possibly bring on Sunday morning. And so I did, and I went through it, and I found a couple things. And then I had some conversations with some of my trusty advisors, namely Aaron, Nate, and my sweet husband, Harris. And all three of those conversations, each one of them said, sure, those are great things that you could talk about, but whatever you do, don't discount leadership as something that you may actually have something about which to say. And I was like, really? Because here now we stand in this place where, as Nate always says, if you start to hear things in stereo, you need to pay attention. And so, all right, Lord, let's do this. So I went back to Exodus 18 and I sat down with it and I read over it again and I'm like, okay, so how am I supposed to approach this? And so like, here we go. Like every modern day person does. I Googled Exodus 18 just to be curious, right? What do all these other people say about leadership? And so what hit me in this, this blaring, I don't know. It was just, it was so very obvious is all of these take charge individuals that had really, really strong opinions about what leadership looks like and I know that those of you all that know me would not exactly say that take charge type of leadership is how you would describe me I'm not Nate ish and so let me let me give you a kind of an example a little bit of an example about the difference between my leadership style, possibly, and Nate's leadership style. When Nate first got here, post-Summer Extreme, I had a meeting with the leadership team to kind of debrief all that we had been doing. And he was like, can I sit in? I'd really like to kind of just hear what you guys have to say. And I may have a question or two. Come on, we'd love to have you. And so he joins our meeting. And I promised you within about 10 minutes, he had taken over the whole meeting. He's standing at the whiteboard. He's got stuff happening. And I just kind of sat there and I let it all happen. But I also knew in my heart that that's not how it had to stay. So the minute the meeting ended and then the very, like the next day I walked in and mind you, remember we hadn't been working together, but a few months and I had to walk in and on his office door. And I'm like, can we have a conversation just, just briefly? And could I ask you to please, sir, never cut my feet out from underneath me in front of my team again? And he just looked at me. He's like, Aaron, I'm so sorry. And he was absolutely leveled in that moment. And he now, we laugh about it now, but he will also tell you that as a brand new senior pastor, that was an amazing lesson in leadership for him. And in turn, it was for me too, because I realized that like, I let him take over the meeting. I let him do it. But I also knew that I had to do something later to kind of figure all of this out and make it right somehow. So maybe now that you've seen the two different styles of leadership that we kind of have, maybe I should change my confession just a little bit. I am going to talk about leadership today and I don't feel qualified to talk to you all about the traditional type of leadership that we think of. One that is take charge, one that is bold, one that is pretty upfront and very directive. But I do feel like I have a different perspective on leadership. And it's a perspective that maybe somebody else in this room might find helpful. Because as you look at me, I'm one that people would look at and go, yeah, she's not exactly what I would call like a natural born leader. And I think that's how a lot of us think of ourselves also. And you know what? That's okay. And I think though Exodus 18 has lots to teach us as we slow down and as we actually look at it and as we peel it out. Because what we're going to see is there is a strategy for strong leadership, but it's a reflection of a servant-hearted posture. And so that's kind of where I landed for our day today is that leadership is not about position. It's not about a title that you hold. But it is all about your posture. And I'm hoping that as we end our day today, what we see is this beautiful picture of a leadership that God has outlined, one that starts low and raises us up. And so just to kind of, before we hit 18, a little background for you where we have been. We are in the middle of our summer series on the life of Moses. And in the journey of the Israelites, we're really only about two to three months out of their captivity from Egypt. I'm not 100% sure, but I felt like we should have been further along in this journey, seeing as we've been hanging, like it's been at least eight weeks, right? We should have been further along, but we're not. And last week, Kyle talked to you all about a battle with the Amalekites. So it was all this great excitement. And then next week, we're actually going to, or two weeks from now, when Nate gets back up, we're going to start to see Moses and God and the Mount Sinai and all that happens with the Ten Commandments. And it gets super exciting and adventurous again. But Exodus 18 is going to possibly feel a little underwhelming. And only because it's quiet. But the part in here that's so cool, as we peel back the layers to see, is that what's happening underneath the surface is God is taking and molding his chosen leader. And he's showing the Israelites as well what it is to be this strong, humble leader who is focused on his posture and not his position. And so if y'all want to follow along, I am going to read certain verses. I am not reading the whole passage. But we are in Exodus 18. We're going to start in very first verse where it says, Jethro was the priest of Midian and the father-in-law of Moses, and he heard of everything that God had done. And so here you have the father-in-law. He's in Midian. He's out here listening and hearing about everything that's been happening to the Israelite people with Moses in the lead. And I promise you what's going on in his head is he really and truly wants to hear it for himself. And he has a great excuse because he has Moses's wife and kids with him. Most likely they were sent there for safekeeping during all the things that have been happening in Egypt, et cetera. And so Jethro's like, you know what? I'm going to take them home and I'm going to get to hear firsthand about everything that's happening because he was just super curious. And so that's what he does is he packs up everybody. He heads that way and he sends ahead a message to Moses that he's coming and he's bringing his wife and his kids and they're coming for a visit. And in verse 7, you see Moses. It states, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and he bowed down and he kissed him. And they greeted each other and they went into the tent. So remember who Moses is at this moment. Moses has just led a nation out of slavery. Moses has just stood toe to toe with Pharaoh. Moses has gotten to partake in the parting of a sea. You could say that like he's got miracles and momentum on his side at this moment. But when Jethro shows up, he doesn't walk out of his tent in some sort of like kingly robes. He doesn't walk out or have somebody else go out to meet his father-in-law. No, no, no, no. Moses walks out and what does he do? Moses bows and Moses honors. And I bet that's exactly how all of y'all greet your in-laws, right? Just saying. I wish it was, but moving on. So he bows and he honors his father-in-law. And then they go inside this tent and he tells them of all of the things that have happened over the last two to three months. All of the journeys, all of the hardships, all of the things. But then he keeps pointing back to all that God has done and how faithful God has been in the moments and how totally great God has been and that he's shown up exactly when they needed him to. And in turn, you see how Jethro responds to these stories from Moses. Because all of a sudden, you see Jethro rejoicing, you see Jethro worshiping, and you see Jethro offering sacrifice to Moses' God. And it's all because in here somewhere, Moses hasn't asked him to do this, but Moses' testimony has inspired him to do this. The person of Moses and all that he just went through, et cetera, has inspired Jethro's response. That is posture. There's a beautiful example of Jesus and his modeling of posture as well. If you go to John 13, you see Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. It's the last supper. It's that moment before he knows he's headed to the cross. They're having dinner together. Jesus has all the power. Jesus has all the authority. And you could even say, like Moses, he has the miracles and the momentum, right? He has all of those things. He could have demanded something from his disciples. But instead, he stands up. He takes off his tunic. He wraps a towel around his waist. He kneels down and he washes the feet of his disciples. And then he says to them, I have set an example for you that you should do as I have done for you. This is what leadership looks like. This is what leadership, especially in the kingdom of God, looks like. It's not about where you sit at the table, but it is about how you serve at it. Your posture is about your heart's orientation. And that's what God, you know, God is always so focused on our heart. That's where our posture is. It's our orientation toward God and toward our people. It's humility, it's consistency, and it's how we serve both in the seen and in the unseen. And I know right now there are plenty of you in this room that are looking at me and going, I am not a leader. This sermon doesn't apply to me at all. And I'm going to call you out on that. Because here's the thing. If you have kids in your home, you're a leader. If you have kids and they're adults, you're still a leader. If you serve anywhere in your community, you're a leader. You serve at your kids' schools, you are a leader. You serve in grace, any one of our number of positions, you are a leader. And for those in here that are in high school or middle school, you are leaders as well. You play on sports teams or you are dancers or whatever it may be. You are leaders. People are watching. They're looking to see what it is that you're doing. And I will also put one out there and I'm going to put an asterisk by it, and I'll clarify it later. But if you stand and sitting here today or other, if you profess to be a Christ follower, you are a leader. So hold on to that thought. We're going to come back to that one. So let's keep reading. So you've had Moses and Jethro. They've had this meeting. They've now had dinner. And the next morning, Moses gets up. Then verse 13, it states that he took his seat to serve as judge for the people. And they stood around him from morning until evening. So he's dusted himself off. Hey, great. I'm so glad you came to visit, but I got work to do. Because, you know, Moses loves his people. And so Moses is the, and remember I said the Ten Commandments haven't happened yet. And so Moses is the one that right now knows all the things. He knows all of God's rules. He knows all of God's decrees. They have this one-on-one communication happening. The people don't. They're relying on Moses. And so every bit of little squabble or problem that they have, they're taking it to Moses to solve. It is ancient Israel's version of Judge Judy. Can you imagine spending all day hearing all of these people come to you and just gripe about their problems? And so it's got to be exhausting. I know if I was Moses, I would tune out somewhere in like hour two and be like, yeah, and say, okay, and move on. But so Moses's heart though, y'all, he loves his people. He wants to make sure that they have what they need. And he doesn't know any other way to do this at this moment, right? This is what I'm supposed to be doing. And so he's doing that. And Jethro, his father-in-law kind of is standing outside this tent watching all of this happen. And finally, Jethro, his father-in-law, kind of is standing outside this tent watching all of this happen. And finally, Jethro, in verse 17, it states that Jethro basically looks at Moses and he says, hey, what you're doing is not good. Now, he's not attacking Moses' motives here. He knows Moses' heart is in the right place. And he knows why he's doing what he's doing. But he's like, you can't sustain this. You can't keep doing this day in and day out all by yourself. You're going to collapse at some point in time. And so he says to him, what you're doing is not good. And again, we do this too, don't we? Like our good intentions get to us sometimes, but your good intentions can lead to burnout as well. You got the big heart. You can do too much sometimes. And so here Jethro has this moment of courage to be able to say to Moses, like, hey, it's not working. And why I state that about courage is stop and think about this for just a second. First of all, Jethro is his father-in-law. How often do you all listen to your in-laws? But then on top of that, Jethro is an outsider. He's a Midianite. He's not an Israelite. And Moses is who? He's the handpicked leader of the Israelites who are God's chosen people. And it was God that picked Moses for this position. And so like in this moment, Moses had a lot of different ways he could have responded because of his position, right? I have a one-on-one relationship with God. And guess what? From this point, like we've been talking, he's been telling me exactly what it is I need to do. Thank you for the advice, but I don't need to hear it. That's just one way. He could have shut Jethro down. There's just a lot of different ways that because of the position that Moses held, he could have chosen to respond. But because of the fact that Moses leads from his posture, that didn't happen. Instead, he doesn't shut Jethro down. He turns to Jethro and he focuses in and listens to the words that he has to say. The other thing that's probably interesting to note in this moment between Moses and Jethro is that the Israelite camp is watching everything that's happening. Moses is their leader. So their eyes are always on him anyway. But they're learning so much about how to live their lives as well by watching how Moses chooses to lead his. And so when you call yourself a leader, the other thing you do really and truly have to remember is that people are not just listening to your words or to'all, but I distinctly remember this a lot when I had children. You heard the phrase, often more is caught than taught. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. How Moses responded wasn't some place of haughty attitude. It wasn't pride. It wasn't ego. It was none of that which spoke. But what spoke is he humbled himself and he stopped and he turned and he listened directly to what it was that Jethro had to say. And so as Christians, this is the asterisk that I was going to come back to. If we call ourselves Christians, we have a whole lot of eyes that are looking straight at us, whether we want them or not. People are looking to see how you're going to respond to pressure. They're looking to see how you treat others who aren't like you. They're looking to see how you choose to treat others who might be in positions below you. They're looking also to see how you respond and react and how you do things when you think no one is watching. Because I promise you, there's some out there that are wanting to catch us in a trap. And it's just so important for us to remember that our message and our walk need to come in a line together and the thing to remember too is is that holding a position without posture is super fragile there was a recent example of this and most of you all have probably heard about it, but for those that haven't, there was a concert that happened recently, and in this concert there was a kiss cam. And they went around and they were picking up various people in the audience, and the kiss cam, big jumbotron, landed on this very attractive couple standing. Man's got his arms around this woman. Well, when they realized that they were the ones on the jumbotron, the woman like ducks this way. The guy literally dives out of the camera's view and the lead singer of the band makes the comment of, oh goes they're either having an affair or they're just really shy well come to find out because you know social media is so quick on figuring out who these people were come to find out he was the CEO of a company she was the head of people is what they called it so basically human resources and they were but not to each other. And so now their affair has been exposed and is blasted all over from millions of people to see. And needless to say, he is no longer the CEO, and she is no longer in charge of human resources. And so here's the thing, position or yes, position without posture is super fragile and it will crumble. Give it time and give it just a little bit of correction or otherwise it will crumble. But the thing is, is that if you have your posture, then you actually are making space for growth to happen in yourself as well as in those people whom you lead. And so if we go back to Jethro and Moses and where they are in this story, Jethro has given Moses this, you can't do this alone. But then in turn, because Moses is listening, Jethro feels called to say, hey, I have a solution for you though. Let's talk about what this might look like. He tells him to go and select capable godly men. He says to teach them all about God's decrees and to appoint them as officials and then to delegate. It's time to let them have some of this work. And so he's telling him basically it's time for you to build a healthy, sustainable, multiplying community slash let's multiply yourself. This is what it looks like. This is a beautiful picture also of spiritual maturity. Because inside of this moment, you don't ever see fear. You don't ever see insecurity on Moses's part. You don't ever see power grabs either. You just see Moses as a humble leader saying, I like this. Let's put this in place. Let's raise up other leaders. And y'all, that's Jesus's way of doing it too. It's called discipleship. It happens in both places. I was fortunate enough to be raised by a dad who was one of those beautiful natural born leaders. And so I got to watch his life. And I have all kinds of what we used to call Sawyerisms about leadership and management and all the things. But one of the things that my dad did exceptionally well was something that he called successor planning. And so to him, it was his years of management, the people that he managed, part of your performance appraisals always included a section that said, who is it that's taking over your job when either you leave or you get promoted? Who is it that you've identified? And how is it that you're empowering them and equipping them and training them up to be able to get there. It was part of what they did. They checked in on it periodically as well. And so this is that picture of you've got these people reaching down, right? And then he says, you're hoping that there's somebody up here that's targeted you as their successor as well. So now you have another pipeline of somebody who's speaking into your life and who's training you and who's giving you the tools and all that you need and equipping you and empowering you and saying, go, go, go, go. So you've got this beautiful picture of reaching down to help somebody else up. In turn, somebody's doing the same thing for you. It's discipleship in action. In the corporate world, like my dad called it, it was successor planning. But it's the same concept. But it's not about fear and it's not about insecurity. Because see, the thing is with all of us, we like control, right? We like control. We like to hold on to the power. And somewhere in there, we're afraid that if we train and coach and give it away, that it's not going to get done the way we want it to get done. I had an example of this one, and y'all can laugh at me later, but I'm going to tell it anyway. I was talking to my brother, and he was discussing the idea of loading the dishwasher. And you all do not know my brother nor my sister-in-law, but it's an interesting dynamic in their house. And needless to say, Zach knows them. Can you tell? So needless to say, my brother will load the dishwasher. My sister-in-law comes behind him and rearranges it and puts it the way that she feels that it's supposed to be. Okay, can I ask a question? Is it still going to get clean, whether it's loaded my brother's way or my sister-in-law's way? It's still, in the end, the product is, it's still going to come out clean dishes. But somewhere in there, my sister-in-law is not ready to release that control. And so for those of y'all that have kids in the house and you're exhausted, give them a vacuum. Tell them to go vacuum. It's not going to be perfect. It's not going to be pretty. You're not going to have those beautiful lines like you might like, etc. But you've released it. You've let go of the control. And somewhere in there too, those little people are now very excited because they got to help. You're starting to empower them and equip them. Those are the things we have to remember to release the control because the thing is is that leadership that doesn't release can't reproduce. We are all expendable. There's somebody else that could easily take my job. As a matter of fact, Kyle's getting ready to do it. I just thought about that. But hey, there's somebody else that can always take your job. So the thing is, is that you're expendable. So what is it then that, why can't we all just let go of that control? And why can't we speak into the lives of other people around us and raise them up so that they can in turn help us to multiply our influence? So I think, yeah, let's just land this. I got Kyle in my head now, so let's just land this. Here's the thing, though, about leadership. Leadership is something straight up that is not something, I say. It's not something that we're appointed to. It's actually something that we live. As you look at especially leadership in the kingdom of God, it's not about the position, right? It's not something we're appointed to. It's about how we live. It's not about power because there's nothing in the story of Moses and Jethro that shows you any kind of power. It's all about your posture, that of having your heart directly in line with that of Christ and that of the people that you serve. It's not about commanding any kind of attention. The spotlight's not on you, but we're hoping it's about inspiring worship, inspiring a response from those people. And it's not about being the hero, but it's actually about raising up the heroes. So are you in your space where you lead? Things to think about is, are you leading from a place of posture or position? Are you holding on tight? Or are you lifting others up? And are you preaching with your words? Or are you preaching with your life? Because this world, y'all, it doesn't need any more loud leaders. It just needs humble ones. It needs ones that want to be present. It needs ones that have a servant heart. And you know, here at Grace, inside of our teams, we have some amazing leaders. We have lots of people who like to help out, like Aaron and Er in the story last week. We have people who lead from up front. But I will also tell you, we can always use more leaders, especially ones that are more like Moses, who are actually willing to lead like they live. And so maybe that's what God's calling you to today, that you take a step out to step into more of a leadership type role. That tomorrow morning you call Kyle and say, hey, Kyle, guess what? I think it's time for me to go speak into the lives of some of the kids at Grace, whether it's in Grace Kids or Grace Students. But I think it's time for me to do that, to reach down to lift somebody else up. Or maybe it's time that you call me on Monday and say, hey, I think it's time for me to lead a small group. I think it's time. I've got something that I can do. Because I want to be able to speak into the lives of those around us. So think about what your next steps are. Because the thing is, is that to serve in God's kingdom, you don't have to be perfect by no means. You just need to be willing. You just need to be humble. You just need to have your heart aligned with Christ. Because again, influence doesn't come from your position, but it comes from your posture. So today, I hope that as we walk out these doors, we let our lives preach more than our words do. Will you all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you for this beautiful example that you give us of what it is to be a humble, servant-hearted leader. One who looks at you before speaking, one that seeks your heart for your people. We just ask that as we walk out of here today that we remind ourselves of the places where we lead because we do. We all lead someplace. So remind us of those places and give us what we need to be able to begin the process of empowering and equipping and raising up those that are coming behind us. And Lord, thank you for loving us. And we love you. Amen.

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

All right, well, good morning, everyone. It's so good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday. I kind of had a feeling that this Sunday would look like this. Last Sunday, people begged out because of the weather, and we have a pretty good every other week crowd. So if everyone didn't come last week, I thought, you know, we might have some folding chairs up this week. So it's good to see everybody. I hope that you had a good week. For those of you that were able to enjoy the snow, I hope that that was fun and a nice reprieve for you. This morning we continue in our series called Mark's Jesus, where we're going through the Gospel of Mark, just looking at different stories and aspects of the life of Christ that Mark records. This week, we get to probably the most famous parable that Jesus teaches. Parables are the way that Jesus chose to teach most of the time. And parables are short, made-up stories that are told to make a point. And stories stick with us better. They help us think through things. They tend to drive the point home a little bit better. I've told you before, in a previous life, I was a Bible teacher and an assistant high school football coach. And the head football coach was a guy named Coach McCready. He was a recon Marine in Vietnam. I love that man so much. And whenever I'd ask him a question about what to do in life, he'd go, baby. And he'd tell me a story. He called everybody baby or everybody sugar. So sugar, sit down. And he'd tell me a story about him and Nam and the way that he had to handle some troops sometime. Or he did about when he ran an envelope factory after that in the 70s. He'd tell me about a problem employee that he would have. And he would never answer my question. He would just tell me a story. And I'd be thinking like, this old man's crazy. Like he's just, he's lost it. He's not paying attention to me anymore. But by the time he got to the end of the story, I realized, oh, and I had some clarity about what I needed to do in a situation. And so Jesus taught in similar ways. He taught through telling stories. And part of this, he tells us, is so that you kind of have to work to understand it a little bit because some of the Pharisees, he says, are ever seeing, but never perceiving, never hearing, never understanding. And so he wanted to teach this way to make things more memorable, to help you along, and to make you work for it a little bit. Now, you may have your favorite parable. You may know a bunch of parables. One of my favorite parables is the one about the unforgiving servant, the servant that was forgiven a ton by the king, this huge debt, and then turns around and he won't forgive a much smaller debt to a peer, and he gets in trouble for that one. And there's different, there's the workers in the vineyard, there's the pearl of great price, there's a bunch of different parables. But this parable that we're going to look at today is actually kind of the apex parable in that Jesus tells it to help us understand how we are to process the rest of the parables and the rest of the teachings of Jesus. So rather than sum up the parable, I'm just going to read it to you. It's in Mark chapter 4. We're going to look first at verses 3 through 8. Then we're going to look at verse 14. Then we'll go 15 to 20. So we're going to do a lot of work in Mark chapter 4 today. So if you have a Bible or you can reach that one in front of you, grab that and let's go through it together. I always try to encourage you, bring your Bibles to church, mark them up, take notes. I've been told recently I'm starting to make up words. So you could keep a list of the words that I'm making up. Tom was right last week. I made up the paralyzation. Yeah, yeah, paralyzation. That's not a word. Paralysis will do fine. You don't have to say paralyzation. So you can keep a list of those if you want to. But bring your Bible, mark them up, and let's have a spiritual track record of where we're going and what we're learning. This morning in Mark chapter 4, Jesus shares with us the parable of the sower. And it goes like this in verse 3. Listen. and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, some multiplying 30, some 60, some 100 times. So when you hear this parable on the surface without any context, it is a little bit difficult to understand. Like, okay, great. There's a farmer, throws out some seed. There seems to be four different kinds of soils. Four different things happen on those four different kinds of soils. Only one of them's good. But what are you talking about, Jesus? With no context, it's a little bit tricky to understand. And so the following verses, 9 through 13, are the disciples saying, hey, what are you talking about? What do you mean by that? And when you read the Gospels carefully, you see the disciples doing this often. What is he talking about? Maybe they don't even ask each other or ask him because they don't have the guts to do it. But he leaves and Peter will be like, did anybody get that? And they're like, no, we have no idea. And then they just have to try to pick it up the next time. But in this particular instance, lucky for us, Jesus explains it. And we have access to this explanation. Now here's one of the things that's really interesting to me as I dug in and studied this parable this time around. Many, many, many, I'm not going to raise your hand because I don't want to embarrass people who don't raise their hand, but I would bet that most of you in this room have heard that parable before. Most of you in this room, if I say the parable of the sower, you can at least, before you walked in today, you could have at least gotten two out of those four soils right. You know what I'm talking about. And so if you're a church person, we tend to think that that seed that goes out is the gospel. That's us sharing our faith, going throughout the world and planting the gospel. And we tend to make this parable about what we should do to plant the gospel of Jesus Christ, what we should do to share the good news of Jesus Christ with our unbelieving friends, neighbors, and cultures. And when we do that, it makes it reductive. It makes the parable smaller than it's supposed to be, I think. Because we make it this one-time deal. We make it this one-time thing where we throw the seed out, and if you respond to the gospel, there's four different ways to respond to the gospel. Three of them are bad. One of them are good. I'm going to throw out this gospel seed and hope that it lands on the good soil, and then I'm going to keep moving on. But it doesn't apply to us anymore because I'm a Christian. And when the seed landed on me, lucky me, I was good soil, and now this plant springs forth, and I have a spiritual life. So this is good. The way that the parable of the sower applies to me is that it's my job to sow the seeds because we say that the seed is the gospel. But that's not what it says. And that's not what Jesus says. Look at verse 14. This will not be on the screen, but look at verse 14. This is Jesus explaining the parable. The farmer sows the word. The farmer sows the word. The seed is the word, not the gospel. It's the word of God, not the gospel of God. Now, is the gospel part of the word of God? Yes. But so is Ecclesiastes, and the gospel is not abundantly clear in Ecclesiastes. Is the gospel part of the word of God? Absolutely, but God's word is so much more expansive than simply the salvation message. Now, everything in scripture points to Christ in one way or another. There's a scarlet thread woven through all 66 books where you can go through any portion of scripture and show how that eventually is pointing you and leading you to Christ. That's the whole point of it. But when we say God's word is the gospel, we either expand the gospel to include every possible thing that God says, or we reduce the word to just the gospel. And that's not right either. So when Jesus says the farmer sows the word, what he means is the word of God. So for us, that's any teaching based on scripture, any song that we would sing that's based on scripture, any word that we have from Jesus, anything that comes from God's word, any words that come from God, when we hear those, when we are taught those, when we sing those, when we talk about those, when we discuss those, that's the word of God. And so what he's saying is, what Jesus is saying is, the farmer sows the word. And if that's true, and the seed lands more than one time on us, but it's not just when we receive the gospel, it's every time the word of God is spoken or preached or sung, then what we see in this parable is this. This parable shows us that we can be different soils in different seasons. This parable shows us that we can be different soils in different seasons. So for us long-time Christians who always hear the parable of the sower and think it's my job to spread the seed. I've already received the gospel. I'm good. You have received the gospel. But you are, hopefully as a Christian, regularly, daily, multiple times a day, through a quiet time, through prayer, through what we're listening to, through what we consume, through our discourse, hopefully multiple times a day, the seed of God's word is landing on our soil. And this is helpful because we are reminded that we can be different soils in different seasons. I heard one time somebody said that a good book is 50% content and 50% timing. That you can read one great book in one season of your life and it just doesn't hit right. And you can read it 10 years later and oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing I've ever read. I suppose that works for movies and TV shows as well for you Neanderthals who don't read. But I think that that's true. And I think that that's true of different sermons. I know for me, there are sermons that I preached. I'll just be honest with you, okay? Haley Lee, she did our announcements last week, did a phenomenal job doing the announcements. She and I were talking before the service and she said, nobody's coming this week because it was just because the weather was miserable. And word had gotten out that she was hosting, and so people said, I'll mail this one in. And I said to her, and I meant this in all sincerity, I said, that's fine with me. This sermon is the worst one I've preached in like six weeks. She goes, what? And I go, yeah, I don't like it. It's not very good. Like I, it is, it's, it honors the text. It is what it is. But the last five I've preached, I've liked more than this one. And she was like, well, do your best. And I tried. And the wild part to me is, um, I'm almost eight years in now. It'll be, it'll be, uh, Easter will be my eighth anniversary. So I'm almost eight years in here. And after doing this for eight years, week in and week out, you know, there's some sermons that you preach. And the only people who say a word to you about them are the ones that happen to make the mistake of looking you in the eye in the lobby. And they kind of see it and they're like, good job. Like, right? And it's only because they saw you. They don't mean it, and I know you don't mean it. That's fine. But then there's others that people, like, pull you aside, and they want to talk about it, and yada, yada, yada. You can kind of tell based on the feedback. And after I preached this one last week, the feedback I got, I was like, oh, okay, God. That must have landed on good soil. That must have been something that people needed to hear. So it's sometimes you preach a sermon, and you think it's going to be great. I'm going to rip their faces off. I'm going to light them on fire. This is going to be fantastic. And people are like, yeah, good job. And then other times I'm like, God, I'm sorry for this one. I'll try better next time. And then he uses it. So different, different teachings, sometimes different songs, sometimes different conversations we have with godly people who love Jesusesus and we just talk about spiritual things hit differently at different times of life and i think that this is tremendously encouraging particularly for those of you with children their soil changes season to season what they reject at one age they may receive at another what the enemy snatches up at one point may actually have time to germinate at another. Those of you sharing your faith and sowing seeds with your coworkers and with family members and with friends and with loved ones, keep spreading it. There's different soils at different seasons, and it may catch them differently if it got rejected the first time. But I think it's tremendously helpful to approach this parable not as a depiction of what happens when we share the gospel. That's a limited understanding of it. But let's approach this parable as an explanation from Jesus himself of what happens when we receive teaching about God's word, when we hear the good news of God's word, and how we receive that and what happens when we do. Because in that way, it continues to apply to us until we enter into eternity. So let's look at the explanations of Christ of each of the soils and understand what they are and what they're doing and identify those things in our own seasons of our own lives. Let's look at Mark 4.15. He describes the first one. Some people are like seed along the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Okay. So that's the first kind of soil. It's like seed that's thrown along the path, never even has a chance to get into any soil at all, lands on concrete, lands on hard ground, cannot germinate, and Satan comes by and he scoops it up and he knocks it away. Okay. So how do we understand this soil in our own life? Well, we don't talk a lot about Satan around here. I've found that doing sermons on the devil are not the most fun. So we don't talk a lot about him, but when Satan comes up, I try to remind you guys that here's what's true, whether we're comfortable with this idea of an enemy or not, that Satan is real and he is against you. Satan is very much real and he is very much against you and your family and your children and your spouse and your friends. And he is constantly scheming on how to break up what God is doing. God is about the kingdom of God and inviting us to be in, participate in the building of the kingdom of God. Satan is about the tearing down of the kingdom of God. And anytime we get serious about building God's kingdom up, Satan gets serious about tearing us down. We're told that he prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, that he is a liar and the father of lies, that his native tongue is lies. So we know that Satan is real and that he is against us. And the last thing Satan wants is for God's word to land on someone's life and take hold of it. So he's constantly trying to sweep those away. I don't have specific guesses for how Satan is active in our lives and in our world and in our communities. I don't have guesses for you there. But I do think that in the United States that Satan doesn't have to work very hard. I think he may have even set us on cruise control and gone and tended to other countries where the church is flourishing. Because I think that one of the greatest tools of Satan, I'm absolutely convinced of this, particularly in this generation, in this day and age, one of the greatest tools of Satan is simply distraction. He will just distract you. You stop at a red light. How many of you, don't raise your hand, how many of you, you can't just sit at a red light in peace. You reach down, you grab your phone, you start to do this. You can't just sit for 30 seconds. You're in the doctor's office, the wait is five minutes. You're picking something up to read or do. Because you look like a psychopath if you just stare at the wall. You've got to at least not intimidate other people even if you're not doing anything. But we are easily the most distracted, when I say generation, I mean historical generation, like people who are alive. I'm not talking about X's and millennials. I'm talking about everyone in the room, one generation of history. We are easily the most distracted generation in history. And I believe that that distraction is a tool of Satan to keep us from thinking about what actually matters, to keep seeds from germinating in our lives. We might be very moved by what happens in a service on a Sunday morning, and then as soon as we exit those doors, what do you want to do for lunch? What do you want to do about this? What do you want to do about this? We get into the car, whatever was playing on our phone that morning when we got to church, it starts to play again. And that begins to distract us. It takes our thought away. We've removed all time for contemplation. We've removed all time for stillness. There was one time, some of y'all will remember, I got so concerned about the distractions of the world and our need for stillness and silence that I tricked you guys. I didn't tell anybody. I brought you in here for a Sunday morning service. Emil knows what I'm talking about. Emil, our keyboardist, he remembers this. Me and him were laughing about it because I tricked everyone. And then we did a silent service. I shut the lights down. We played soft music. I put words on the screen and I made you preach to yourself through God's word and I didn't say anything. And some of y'all were like, that was amazing. And others of you said, never do that to me again. You've got to tell us. That's not fair. We have so little space for silence and contemplation in our lives, and I believe that that's absolutely a trick of Satan to keep things from germinating that should take hold. So if you are a person who's constantly distracted, who's constantly looking, who's constantly watching, who's constantly listening, who has no stillness, who has no peace, there's always noise in your life, I just want you to think about whether or not that's a trick of the enemy to keep you from thinking about what you really need to think about and to keep God's word from germinating in your life in the ways that it needs to. The other reason I think Satan doesn't have to work very hard in our culture is that, and I don't want to get too existential here, but we are the result of Greek thought as a culture. We are materialistic. And when I say materialistic, I don't mean we're greedy and we want things, although we are greedy and we do want things, and we are materialistic in that way. But I mean materialistic in that in our culture, if you can't taste it, touch it, smell it, feel it, it's not real. We insist that everything makes sense to us. We have even reduced emotions to chemicals in our brains. And until we can understand how those chemicals interact, we refuse to believe that emotions actually exist. We think that we've fabricated everything. We have no space for wonder left in our culture. We have no space for the fanciful. We have no patience for not understanding. And I think it is to our detriment that when we walk outside, we can't see stars anymore because we live too close to the city. There's this great book. I'll just throw this out here. This is for only one person, and I don't know who, but maybe it's you. Write it down. Abraham Kuyper was the Dutch prime minister, I think, in about 1900. He was a Christian, and he was a scientist, and he wrote a book called Wisdom and Wonder about this, about the things that we should try to know and the things that we should be so glad that we don't know and wonder at. We've lost our childlike ability to wonder and to wonder. And when we insist that everything makes sense to us all the time, I think we become way overly reductive with our faith. Because if you're trying to shrink it to what you can understand, I don't need to finish that thought. It's very easy to have a quick emotional response to a sermon or to a song or to a discussion. It's very easy to feel that quick conviction. Churches even know how to do this. Sometimes there'll be a cue at the end of the sermon, and Aaron knows that at that cue, when I say this word, you come up and you start to play soft music behind me, and it's going to make what I say a lot more impactful, right? Like we know those little tricks. I try not to use them very much because I'm not good at them, and then I feel this undue pressure to actually say something that matters at the end, and I'd rather just coast it out. But we know how to have emotional responses to things, and oftentimes church does this. How many times have you left, because I say this all the time, you guys know that I say this all the time. There's no more important habit that anyone in their life can develop than, a lot of you can complete the sentence, than to wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. How many of you have heard me preach a sermon on that and prayed at the end and said, God, I am reading my Bible every day, and you didn't make it a week? Multiple times, I bet, we've done that. How many times have I been convicted? I've had more day ones at the gym than anybody that's 44 ever. How many times do we hear things we should do, we receive conviction about it, and we go, yes, this is what I'm going to do, and then we flare out. That's the gospel landing on rocky soil. It flourishes, it shoots up quick. But it doesn't have any roots. And we don't tend it. And it gets crowded out. And we forget it. This is what happens. I've seen this over and over again. I don't mean to be too cynical. But I've seen people who come to church. They're new. They're coming from a different church. Or they're moving into town. Or they started to go to church again or whatever. And they come. they want to meet everybody. They meet everybody. They're such sweet people. They want to meet me. They want me to hear their story. I want to hear their story. They come to the very first Discover Grace that we have or the very first newcomers class that we have, and they sign up for all the things. They are on fire. I just know, I just know, this person's going to leave as easily as they came. There's other people who come and they sit back there and they're just kind of, who are these weirdos? What are they about? Sometimes their worship pastor stops singing and the rest of them just kind of keep doing it. What's going on? Is that pastor for real? Is he always like that? Yeah, yeah. And there's just slow germination. And then after about a year, they're like, maybe I'll help you hand out some bulletins. Great. Often that's signs of seed germinating and taking root because they're taking their time and there's deep soil there. I can remember going to camp when I was 17 and I came home absolutely on fire for God, camp high. And I told my dad, my life has changed. I'm going to make disciples. I'm giving my whole life to Christ. I'm doing all the things. Dad, I just, I can't wait to serve God. And my dad's response was, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom and your sister. Let it take root. Otherwise, I don't believe you. This happens to us, these flash-in-the-pan convictions. So my encouragement to you is if you're convicted about reading your Bible, don't tell anyone that you're going to do it every day. Just set your alarm. If you're convicted about praying with your spouse, don't tell her that you're going to pray with her every day. Just go grab her and say, can we pray? If you're convicted by God's word about something that you need to do or change, don't tell anybody. Just do it and let other people notice your conviction. But let's not be the flash in the pan faith that happens with this soil. The next one, 18 and 19. Still others, like seeds sown among thorns, hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. This is a picture of a cluttered life, of a life that's not correctly prioritized. The seed of God's word lands in a place that's able to convict us, lands in a place where it's able to germinate. The problem is our soil is so riddled with weeds and other things that it has no space where it can grow and call its own. This is a life where we've over-prioritized career. We've over-prioritized physical health, physical fitness. We've over-prioritized sometimes even family or friends. Often it's a life where we've over-prioritized pleasure and rest. And God's word starts to germinate in our life, but as it does, it requires of us. It requires space. It requires energy. It requires effort. It needs to grow. It needs the resources and nutrients offered by the soil that we're following along with the parable and with the metaphor, it needs its resources, but we're taking the resources that are needed to allow God's word to grow in our life and to grow us, and we're allocating them to other things that are not as important. This is the description of a life that's not correctly prioritized. Yeah, I know that I should probably go to a women's group, but I've got work. I know that I should probably go to a women's group, but I'm already out three nights a week, and so I can't add another night. And so instead of thinking about what's taking us out the other three nights and going, that can't possibly be as important as the spiritual health and the seed within me that is germinating. That can't possibly be as important. So let me rearrange my schedule around allowing God to grow me. We just say, I can't do that right now. I'm not available for that. I'd like to go to small group, but I'm shy and I don't really feel comfortable doing that. So I'm not going to prioritize that. I know I need to get up early and read my Bible, but it's just, I'm so tired in the mornings and it doesn't occur to us. Okay, well, what were you doing last night? That's making you tired. How late were you up? How do you, how do you, how can you recalibrate? I'll just tell you this, this year, one of my, one of the things I've been doing this year is I try to get up every day at five. I just, I just feel like that's a healthy pattern for me. I try to get up every day at five. And at first it was really tough because I'm not getting tired until 1130 or 12 o'clock at night and I'm only getting four or five hours of sleep at night. But you know what started happening? My body changed. Now at like 845, I'm like, Jen, we gotta get in bed. I got one episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in me and then I'm out. And now I wake up at 430 with no alarm. My body just changed. I said, okay, if this is what you're going to do, let's do this. So we come up with excuses to not follow through on the things that we're convicted about without thinking about how do I actually tend my soil to make space for God's Word to grow. This is what the author of Hebrews is talking about when he tells us that to run our race well, we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. The things that we have in our life that prevent God's word from growing and taking hold and taking root and radically changing us aren't always out and out sin. It's just things that we allocate energy to that is displaced. So I would challenge us this morning as we reflect on this soil, how much are you prioritizing your spiritual health and allowing God's word to grow in your life? And how much have you just allocated just a passive corner of your lot to it so that you can tend to everything else. Lastly is the good soil. Verse 20. Others, like seeds sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop, some 30, some 60, some 100 times what is sown. This is obviously what we want to be. This is obviously what we're hoping for when we share God's word with other people. But here's what's interesting to me about this good soil. In both the telling and in the explanation, Jesus makes sure to make that point, and it reproduces some 30, some 60, some even 100 times. I'm reminded of the parable of the talents, where the expectation of the master going out of town, who he gives the talents to his servants, is that they would produce more, that they would double what they're left behind. We are always expected to produce. The vine and the branches illustration in John chapter 15, abide in me and I in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and you will bear much fruit. Here's the thing, is good soil always bears fruit. Good soil, where the seed is growing, where there is good healthy life, a good spiritual life will always, always, always bear fruit. We cannot both be flourishing and barren within the kingdom of God. Do you see? If we are growing and flourishing, if that seed has taken root, if we are becoming the people that God has created us to be because we are his workmanship created for good works, if we are doing that, then we will absolutely produce fruit without question. Now, what does fruit look like? That's an important thing to understand, and I think it's an important thing for us to have a communal definition of. To produce fruit, and there's a bunch of ways to explain this, but let's explain it this way. Let's understand it this way this morning. To produce fruit means to grow God's kingdom in breadth or depth. That's what it means. If you are producing fruit in the kingdom of God, God is using you to grow it in its breadth or depth. Grow it in its breadth, evangelism, telling other people about Jesus. If you have been producing fruit by growing God's kingdom in its breadth, then in your wake, in your past, in the last six months, three years, five years, there are people who would say, because this person is in my life, because Jim Price is in my life, I am closer to God than I was when I met him. It's a wake of people who do not know the Father or are far from Jesus who have moved closer to him because God has placed you in their life. It's growing the kingdom of God in breadth. And so I would ask you, Christians, are there people in your past, in the last six months, three years, five years, who would point to you and say, because you exist in my life, I moved from being very far from Jesus to much closer to him. If that's true, then God is using you to produce and to bear fruit. And then hopefully they do that and they do that and they do that. And that's how it gets to 30, 60, 100 fold. And when we produce fruit, we grow the kingdom in depth. We disciple other people. We help people along in their sanctification journey. We help people become deeper in their spiritual walk to take their faith more seriously. And this way you look at the wake of your life and there are people who are in your life who say, yeah, when I met Jeff Lemons, I knew Jesus, but because God placed him in my life, I now know him in a more deep and passionate way. I would never know Jesus as deeply as I do if I had not been friends with Linda Sartorius. When people start to say things like that about you, that means that you are producing fruit. So if we are going to be the good soil, we will bear fruit. It's not we must bear fruit. It's not that we have to try to bear fruit. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. All we have to do is try to follow Jesus. All we have to do is make ourselves receptive to God's word. He does the rest. We don't have to come up with some plan. He handles it. Which is why I'm so confident that a byproduct of walking with Jesus is producing fruit, growing God's kingdom in breadth and in depth. And that's what we should be doing. And I would say this, if you look at your life, I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad, but if you look, if you've been a Christian for three years, at least, and you look at the last three years of your life, and you ask yourself, who's closer to Jesus because God placed me in their life? Who have I had the honor and privilege of walking with as I watch them grow in their faith? If you can't point to anybody, there's a good chance that some of those other soils are happening in your life, that your priorities are crowding out God's word, that the schemes of Satan are actually working on you and keeping things from taking root. There's a good chance that the first three might apply to you. And that's for your soul to search. That's a question for you to answer. But here's how this applies to all of us. Because this is true that this parable, because this is true that this parable isn't just about the moment that we receive the news of the gospel, but it's about every moment that we receive the teachings of God's word. And it's ongoing for our whole life. We're different soils at different seasons because it continues to apply to us both as we share and as we receive. What should we do in light of this parable? What would Jesus have us do? I think it's this, keep spreading and keep tending. Christians, keep spreading God's word. Keep teaching God's word. Keep sharing God's word. Keep singing God's word. Keep inviting people into God's word. And keep tending. Keep tending your soil so that when you hear God's word, you can be receptive to it. To this end, this is not my point. This is a point that I heard another pastor named Alistair Beg make, and I thought it was fantastic. He didn't say it like this, but I am. Beware the spiritual atrophy of the informed. Church people, beware the spiritual atrophy of the informed. Here's what I mean. When you've been going to church long enough, when you've heard enough sermons, it doesn't take you but a minute or two to get into a sermon and figure out what the pastor's going to be talking about. You start a sermon, pastor says, open up John 15. You go, okay, we're doing Abiding in Christ this morning. Cool. Open up to 1 Samuel 17. Oh, good, we get to do David and Goliath, right? Open up to Philippians 3. Oh, I can do all things. Or 4. We know what it's going to be about. What I said this morning, we're going to be talking about the parable of the sower. A lot of us went, okay, I know what that one is. And what happens when we already know is that our knowledge inoculates us against truth. We're callous to it. I've heard that before. That's not for me. I actually know some people. I love them very much. They do not go to this church all the time. They have told me. They have told me that they don't go to church on Christmas and Easter because church is always really crowded on those holidays, and they already know those stories. They know what the message is going to be. The message is not for us. It's for the people who don't come very regularly, so we want to make sure that they have a parking space and that they have seats, which is an incredibly well-tuned argument of bullcrap. It's just a smoke screen for we don't want to deal with the crowds. That's all it is. That's all it is. But here's the sad part about that. How do we get to a place as Christians where we say, the message of the resurrection is not for me? The pastor, listen, I'm not complaining, okay? I'm not complaining, I'm not whining, but I know what it is to listen to sermons too. And I know that when I listen to sermons, you know what I want? Tell me something about this passage I don't know yet. Take a different angle. Ooh, I haven't seen it done that way before. We want something new. We want something shiny. We want something that we can chew on. We want something different. We don't want same. And in that way, our knowledge inoculates us from truth because we're not receptive to it anymore. May we Christians, longtime Christians, who already know where the sermon is going before it starts, may we be people who freshly open up our hearts to the truth of God's word so that it might take root in ways that it hasn't in years. And maybe, maybe, if we're not producing very much fruit, maybe it's because we're in spiritual atrophy because we know too much. And those of us who do, let us open our hearts in renewed ways to God's word that it might grow and produce a fruit 30, 60, and 100-fold. I'm going to pray, and we're going to move into a time of communion together. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth that is in it. Thank you, God, that its depths are unfathomable. Thank you that we can read the same book in your Bible two dozen times and have it mean something different and reach a different part of us every time. God, for those of us who have allowed our knowledge to inoculate us from your truth, would you please cure us of that? Would you please help us wonder again? Would you please help us be receptive to your word in fresh ways? God, for those of us who are distracted, for those of us who insist on making everything make sense, for those of us who have our priorities out of order. God, I pray that we would see those tendencies in ourself and that we would take very seriously tending our soil to prepare our hearts for your word. And God, here in this family of faith, would you build up healthy people who are flourishing in you and producing fruit beyond their wildest imaginations in whatever way you would have them do that in Jesus name amen

All right, well, good morning, everyone. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. If you're in the back there, that looks pretty crowded. You'd like some more room. We got two completely empty rows right here in the front. Just get up in front of everyone and come sit right here. That's where we make the latecomers sit, so we parade you in front of everyone. This is the first part of our new series called Mark's Jesus, where we're going to be going through the Gospel of Mark for a long time. For about 12 weeks, it's going to carry us all the way until Easter. And so I'm excited to kind of steep in this book together in Mark's Gospel. As we approach the gospel, it begins in a way, at the beginning chapters of the gospel of Mark, there is a story that's ubiquitous in all of the gospels, and they all have this towards the beginning. And it's kind of, in my view, a story about people who had disqualified themselves from a particular service. And we'll talk about why in a minute. But it reminds me of a time when I disqualified myself from something, which was my freshman year of college. You may not know this about me. I got my degree from a small Bible school called Toccoa Falls College that I would not recommend to anyone. That place was boring. I did meet Jen there, though, so that's nice, but we both hated it. But my freshman year, I went to Auburn University. I went there because it was February or March, I think, and I had not taken the SATs or applied to a college yet, and one of my good friends that I played volleyball with every afternoon said, hey, I'm going to Auburn, would you like to be my roommate? And I said, do you have an application? And he goes, yes. I said, will you fill it out for me? He goes, yes. I said, great, send it in. And so then literally two weeks later, I get home from school, and my mom's like, what's this? It's an acceptance letter from Auburn. It was never even on the radar screen so I'm a freshman year I go to Auburn University Auburn does not have an intercollegiate men's soccer team but they did have a club team and for those of you who don't know what a club team is it's it's a glorified intramural team you try out for it and then you go play other schools in the area that also have club soccer teams and so I thought I'd go out for this team because I play, I'm not trying to brag, I played all four years in high school. I was a four-year letterman at Killian Hill Christian School. Now, it didn't matter to me that the entire high school consisted of about 100 students. Roughly 50 of those are boys. Roughly 20 of those have ever touched a soccer ball in their life. And about five of us had, like, played consistently. So that didn't factor in. I thought I was good at soccer. My junior year, we won the state championship. I was the MVP of the state championship game. My senior year, I made All-State. So I go to tryouts at Auburn thinking I'm somebody. Michelle Massey's back there grinning at me because she even played actual Division I soccer and knows the difference, right? She knows what I was about to walk into. She succeeded where I failed miserably. So I go to tryouts the first day and there's like 250 people there. 250 to 300 grown men are there. I had, the most people I'd ever seen at a tryout was like 25 and everybody made it,. The coaches took him because he felt bad for him that's why we got pudgy seventh graders with state championship patches on their arm right now because the coach felt bad for them. So I go to tryouts and I'm looking at my competition. Now when I was a freshman in college this may be hard to believe but I was a hundred and fifty five pounds soaking wet. All right I it's a little, I put on a few since then. I was a skinny little nothing. And I'm looking at these guys that I'm now trying out against and they have like hairy chests and muscles and stuff. And I am out of my depth. And I was just immediately so intimidated. And that was the, that was the day where I realized I wasn't an athlete, right? I had, previous to that day, previous to that tryout, I had always thought I was pretty athletic. And then when I went to that tryout and I watched other athletes actually do athletic things, I realized you're a coordinated white kid. You are not an athlete. And so I did the best I could to go through the tryout, had a good attitude, tried to keep my head up, do the best that I could. But by the end of it, I just realized this ain't it. And so they got us together and they said, hey, listen, we're going to whittle. There's 250 of you. We're going to whittle it down to 50. If you're invited to the tryout tomorrow afternoon, we're going to put your name on a list in the student union. Go to the student building, whatever it is. go there and the Foy Student Union Center and We're gonna post a list of 50 names if your names on the list you're invited to come try out again tomorrow We'll whittle it down to 25 Well, I got up the next day and do you want to know what I did not go do? That's right walk to the Foy Student Union Center to see if my name was on the list I knew pretty good good and well it wasn't. I took myself out of the running for that. I went ahead and told them, you don't fire me, I quit. Before you, even if my name's on the list, I'm not trying to, I don't like your attitude. Like I'm not going. I knew that my name wasn't on that list, not even worth the seven minute walk across campus to figure it out. I completely took myself out of the running. And what we see at the beginning of Mark is something that we see when this happens in the other Gospels, where we have some people who have either been told by themselves or by others, you're not good enough to make the team. You're out of the running. You're disqualified. Now, as we dive into Mark, I would be remiss if I didn't give just a little bit of background on it. I'm not going to do much because not much is required, but every gospel, all four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are written to different audiences. Mark is written to the Romans and it depicts Jesus as a servant. So Mark is the fastest moving gospel in the Bible. It's very quick, very fast paced from task to task to task because Mark is painting Jesus as a servant. That's what he's doing, and he wants to see that this is where we see like he must become greater, I must become less. This is where we see the greatest, whoever is greatest of you must be the servant of all. Those are Mark's words. And I would tell you if you've never read a gospel before, Mark is a great one to start with. It's incredibly, as far as gospels are concerned, action packed. It just goes from event to event to event. He doesn't dally in the inefficient details. But that's the gospel of Mark, and that's where we're going to be. And the series is called Mark's Jesus. This is the Jesus that Mark saw as he heard the stories from Peter. And so in this first chapter of Mark, the other gospels tarry a little bit at the beginning. Matthew and Luke kind of focus on genealogy and the Christmas story and the early years. And then the Gospel of John focuses on the ministry of John the Baptist kind of paving the way for Christ. But Mark jumps right into it. And halfway through the first chapter, Jesus is already calling his 12 disciples. And we have maybe the most famous call here in Mark chapter 1, verses 16 through 20, where Jewish educational system. Because if we don't understand the Jewish educational system, then some of what happens here doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right? Some of what happens here is curious. Have you ever wondered why the disciples just immediately, he's in the boat with his dad. He's doing his job. This is his future. And Jesus says, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. And he's like, see you dad. And he goes, he leaves his job. We'll talk more about the call of Matthew, the tax collector, but Matthew's collecting taxes when Jesus calls him and he gets up from his career and he follows Jesus immediately. Have you ever wondered why they do that? I think when I was growing up and I was, and I encountered these passages, I just assumed that it was because they know who Jesus is. Jesus is Jesus, and so they want to be around Jesus because they've heard about Jesus and they want to follow Jesus. And that's not true. They didn't know yet that he was the Messiah of the world. They didn't know yet what that meant. So they're not following Jesus because he's Jesus. There's something more at play there. And when I explain to you kind of how the educational and rabbinical and discipleship system work, I think it might make sense to more of us. So I'm going to get in some details a little bit, but this helps us understand the calling of the disciples and then therefore our call so much better. So if you grew up in ancient Israel, if you grew up at the time of Christ, then you would start Jewish elementary school at about five years old. And Jewish elementary school would go from the age of five to 10. Boys and girls would do it together. And in these first five years, you would study the first five books of the Old Testament, what they called the Tanakh. And this was the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. You'd spend the first five years of your education studying those five books, and the goal was to memorize those five books. This is a culture with oral tradition. Memorization is heavy. People aren't writing things down and taking notes. So the idea of memorizing large swaths of text like that is not as anathema to them as it is to us. It was very approachable for them. We've lost that part of our brain a little bit with the ability to write things down all the time. But they would try to memorize the first five books of the Old Testament and become a master of those. Then at the age of 10, you would graduate to what I believe was called Beth Medrash Middle School. From 10 to 11, the girls, the Jewish girls, would learn Deuteronomy. They would focus more in on Deuteronomy for the worship aspects of it, and then they would look at Psalms, and they would look at Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, the wisdom books, because the women in Jewish history at this time carried the bulk of the load for the worship. So they were the ones that led the worship at the beginning in the temple. Now you guys can do what you want to to make jokes about Aaron's profession in your head, all right? I'm too dignified to do that, so I'm just going to let you do it. But that was the women's responsibility early on. And so from 10 to 13, middle school girls focused on that. And at 13, middle school girls graduated. Now help your mama, help your grandmama participate in the gathering, participate in the leading of worship. That was the role. But little boys would study the law and the prophets. So they would study the rest of the Old Testament or the Tanakh, and they would try to become masters of that. Then at 13, they would take a little break and they would go home and they would learn their father's profession. So if your dad was a fisherman, you'd go, you went home and you learned how to fish. If your dad was a tax collector, you'd go do that. If your dad, if your dad was a carpenter, you'd go be a carpenter, right? That's why it's important that we know what Joseph's profession was because that was Jesus's future had he not stayed in the educational system. So you would go and do that. And then around age 15, if you wanted to do more than that, if you wanted to continue your education, you would go find a rabbi that was legally allowed within the church to have disciples. And you would say, can I follow you? Will you be my rabbi? And if that rabbi said yes and accepted you as a student, which was very exclusive and very, very difficult to get into, listen to me, this is not an exaggeration. To become a disciple in ancient Israel at the time of Christ is not dissimilar at all from getting a scholarship to an Ivy League school. It's not dissimilar at all from going to Harvard or Yale or Georgia Tech. It was really like elite. For the new people, NC State stinks and Georgia Tech's the best. That's the basic line of joking that's been present for the duration of my tenure. But it was not dissimilar to getting to go to an Ivy League school. Your future is very bright. And only the best of the best get accepted, get taken on as disciples. And you wouldn't wait for the rabbi to come to you. You went to the rabbi and you would say, can I follow you? And what that question really means is, can I be who you are? Do I have what it takes to do what you do? And the rabbi would decide yes or no, whether or not to take you on as a disciple, as a student. And then from 15 to sometimes as late as 30, which makes sense why Jesus's ministry started at 30, you would train under your rabbi And he would teach you to do what he did. And there was a saying, may you be ever covered in the dust of your rabbi. May you be following so closely behind him on the dusty streets of Israel that his dust is kicked up on you and you are covered in the dust of your rabbi. You're following him to learn to do what he does. Okay? Understanding that, looking back at the text that we read, when Jesus sees Simon, Peter, what are they doing? They're fishing. What does that tell you about where they were in life and what the educational system had told them at some point? Because if at any point you weren't progressing as a student, if you're doing middle school and your teacher's like, nah, you're not really getting it, that's okay. Go home, be a godly fisherman, come to the temple and tithe and serve God in other ways. We're going to let the more elite students serve you in that way. If your rabbi said you're just not getting it, go home at 20 years old, be a godly carpenter. We love you. You're a good person. Serve the Lord in different ways. You're not qualified for this way. So the fact that Peter and James and John are at home with their dads fishing tells us that at some point or another, voices from within or without disqualified them from further education. And make no mistake about it, it's not as if they weren't interested. The ancient Hebrews, ancient Israel, didn't have professional sports. There was no gladiatorial arena. There was no way to make it. There was no way to ascend to the next level of society. There was no way to make your name great. There was no way to get famous. The only path forward to do any of those things, to make something of yourself, to be somebody, was to be a rabbi and hopefully elevate to Pharisee or a member of the Sanhedrin. That was the only way to climb the ladder in ancient Israel. So every little boy wanted to be a disciple one day and wanted to be a rabbi one day. And every father wanted their little boy to be a disciple who becomes a rabbi. That was the almost ubiquitous dream of ancient Israel. And so Peter and James and John fishing with their dad tells us that at some point a voice from within or without told them that they were not qualified to continue in service to God's kingdom in that way. Do you see that? And when I say from within or without, it could have been a voice within, like my voice at Auburn, going, dude, you don't need to go look at that list. You're not making it. Maybe they never went to a rabbi and said, can I follow you? Because they just knew what the answer would be. Or maybe they did go to a few and they kept getting shot down. But for some reason or another, what it tells us is that a voice from within or without had told them that they were not qualified. Somebody told them they weren't talented enough to do this. And then I also think of Matthew and his call. Matthew, who's the author of the first gospel in the New Testament, was a tax collector. Tax collectors were deplorable in ancient Israel. They were deplorable because they were turncoats and they were traders to their people for the sake of their own pocketbook, for the sake of their own greed. Here's how the tax collecting system worked in ancient Israel. Israel is a far-flung province of the Roman Empire, headed up by a likely failed senator named Pilate, because you don't get sent to Israel to be the governor from Rome unless you're terrible at your job and the emperor doesn't like you anymore. It's like being the diplomat to whatever the heck, okay? Go out here. We're going to put you in the wilderness for three years. Pilate's leading ancient Rome. His only, or leading ancient Israel, his only job is to keep the peace and keep the money flowing. That's it. Squelch rebellion, keep the income coming in. How do they make income? They tax the people. They tax the people at a rate that they had never been taxed before in their history. And this rendered many, many, many of the families in Israel as completely impoverished. They are living lives of what we would say is abject poverty. And the way that those taxes got paid is the tax collector, you'd go to the tax collector to pay your taxes, and Rome said it's a 20% tax on all goods and income, and the tax collector would go, oh gosh, looks like it's 22.5% this year. Looks like it's 25% this year. They would just tack on a few extra percentage points to make whatever they could make to get money off of you by being a toy of the empire of Rome. They were turncoats who rejected their people for the sake of their own greed. They were disrespected. They were considered sinful and sinners. They were considered unclean because they handled money all the time. To be a tax collector is to disconnect from your spiritual heritage. It's to choose to live a life that you know disqualifies me from service in God's kingdom. I have put that thought away. I will never think about it again. So Matthew was a person who had chosen a path in life that was completely separate from a religious path and had at some point or another inevitably made the decision due to the cognitive dissonance of the two existing of, I am not going to embrace that religious faithful life anymore. I'm not good enough for it. I cannot do it. I cannot serve it. That is not me. I'm going to make a decision for myself to live greedily and selfishly and indulge in my own sin and in my own desire. That's what he did. So he had chosen a life that anyone around him, including himself, would have said, I am not worthy to be used in the kingdom of God in any way, and I'm good with it. And yet Jesus goes to him and calls him too. Now here's what's remarkable to me about the calling of these disciples. One of the things. Jesus had every right as a rabbi who had achieved an authority that allowed him to call disciples. He had every right to sit back and wait for young men to come to him and ask him if they could follow him. He had every right to stay back and say, hey, I'm a rabbi. Now's the time. If you want to come work for me, let me know. And he doesn't do that. We see him pursuing the disciples. He doesn't wait for Peter to come to him and say, Jesus, may I follow you? He goes to Peter and he says, would you like to follow me? He goes to John and James and says, would you like to follow me? He goes to the tax collector who would never, ever, ever have the audacity to go to Jesus, the rabbi, the son of God and say, can I please follow you? No, he would never have the audacity to do that. His life of sin had disqualified him from approaching Christ. And Christ doesn't wait for him to get over that to invite him. No, he goes to Matthew in his sin, in his deplorable life, in his feeling like crud, and he says, would you follow me? And what do they all do? They all immediately throw down everything and follow Christ. And what we see here is that Jesus has a remarkable pattern of pursuit. Jesus, like his dad, has a remarkable pattern of pursuit. In the Old Testament, God called out to Abraham and told him what to do. He showed himself to Moses in the burning bush and told him what to do. He showed himself to David and told him what to do. He pursued his children in the nation of Israel over and over and over again, generation after generation after generation, despite their rejection, despite their betrayal, despite their refusal to obey him and to follow him and to serve him. He pursues and pursues and pursues. And when that pursuit isn't enough, he sends his son as a personification of divinity to pursue us in human form. It is. That's very good. If you didn't hear that, somebody's phone in the front row, Siri, just to find personification for us in case you didn't know what that was. It's in the back next week. We see Jesus early in his ministry display this pattern of pursuit where he goes to the disciples. He doesn't wait for them to come to him. We see later on when Jesus teaches about the 99 and he says that a good shepherd leaves the 99 and pursues the lost sheep. We see him telling a story of a rich man whose son went off and squandered his money on wild living. And as he came back home, the rich man saw him far off and he went running to him. He pursued him. Our God does not sit back and wait for us to come to him. Jesus says he stands at the door and knocks, waiting for us to let him into our lives. Our Jesus chases after us. He pursues us. He does it gently, but he does it relentlessly. And many of you, I would wager all of you, at one point or another, even at your worst, sometimes especially at your worst, have felt this gentle, relentless pursuit of Christ, have felt Christ whispering to you in the shadows and in the isolation that he still loves you, he still cares about you, he's still coming for you. You've seen how he pursues people in your life. You know experientially how Christ never gives up on you. There is no barrel that has a bottom too far down for Christ to not chase you there. He has an incredible pattern of pursuit. And Jesus continues to pursue us to this day. He continues to pursue you. And what I want you to hear this morning more than anything else is, that invitation that he extends to these disciples that he pursued, Come and follow me. Very, very simple invitation. It's the same one that he extends to you this morning. Come and follow me. Come follow me. Now, here's what's so important to understand about this call and this invitation. The disciples, Peter, James, John, Matthew, Andrew, the rest of them, Thomas, they did not know then at their call, Nathaniel and Philip, they did not know at their call that Jesus was the Messiah and they didn't know what it meant to be the Messiah. The only person on the planet, I believe at this point in history, who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was marry his mother. I don't think anybody else had an accurate clue what he was doing. So the disciples definitely don't know that he's the Messiah and they don't even really know what the Messiah is. They don't even yet know that he's the son of God. That has not been revealed to them yet. Jesus has not made that public yet. And what we see in the three years of ministry, what we'll see throughout the rest of the gospel of Mark is this progressive revelation and understanding amongst the disciples about who Jesus is. We fast forward a year in and Jesus comes out on the boat and he calms the storm, right? He says, wind and waves be still. And he calms the storm and he goes back down into the hold and he goes to sleep. And what did the disciples say? Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? The last week of his life, Jesus is walking into the city of Jerusalem and James and John are lagging behind him arguing about who gets to be the vice president and the secretary of defense. They still don't get it. So when Jesus calls them and they receive the call, they were not encumbered with all this sense of belief that we encumber that with. They simply responded to who he was and said, okay, I'll go. They didn't know all there was to know about Jesus. They didn't even fully believe in Jesus yet. But they responded to his invitation and they followed. And the same invitation with the same parameters and expectations around it is extended to us and every generation through the centuries to simply follow Jesus. Here's another thing I love about this invitation from Jesus to follow him. He didn't just give them protection. He gave them purpose. He wasn't just offering them, because when we think about Jesus extending an offer, us follow me and I'll make you fishers and men, come follow me, come let me in, I stand at the door and knock, let me into your life. When we think about responding to the invitation of Christ, I think we typically take that to the moment of salvation. I'm going to respond to the invitation of Christ by letting him into my life and I'm going to become a Christian. That's typically where we go with that. But I would say, first of all, I think that this is a daily response to choose to follow Jesus every day. Second of all, when we reduce following Jesus, that moment of salvation to just now I'm in, now I'm a Christian, and that's it. When we make that the inflection point, we reduce the call of Christ down to mere protection. Protection from hell, eternal separation from God, protection from our sins, I no longer have to pay the penalties for those, protection in taking us to heaven, protection in overcoming sin and death. If we've've lost a loved one who also knows Jesus then we know that one day we get to see them again that when we say goodbye to them on their deathbed it's goodbye for now not goodbye forever so we're offered protection over sin and death and sometimes we reduce the call of Christ down to this offer of protection follow me and I will protect you from your sins and from the judgment of God and from the pains of death. And then one day everything will be perfect in eternity. Just hold on until we get there. But no, he doesn't just offer them protection. He offers them purpose. Because what does he say after he invites them to follow me? Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Follow me and I will imbue your life with a greater sense of purpose than you've ever had. Follow me, I have things for you to do. Follow me, I believe in you. Follow me, we're going to do great things. And I'm going to equip you for everything that I want you to do. And he imbues us with purpose that he's got plans for us in his kingdom. And just like then when Jesus asked them to follow and said, come and follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. He also tells us vicariously through the Great Commission, the last thing that Jesus instructs the disciples to do, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Don't go into all the world and make converts. Don't go into all the world and offer my protection and that's it. Go into all the world and offer them my protection and my purpose. Make disciples and train them to do what I trained you to do. Go and make people who contribute to the ministry and the kingdom of God. We're all kingdom builders pushing this thing forward. That's how we talk about it around here. So he imbues us with purpose. And the same invitation to the disciples there is the one that he offers us this morning. Jesus is not, when he comes to you and he says, follow me, just follow me, just do what I'm asking you to do. It's not a simple offer of protection. It's an offer to imbue your life with purpose. I'm going to make your life matter in the kingdom of God. I want you to experience what it is to do my work and to love my people. It's a remarkable, remarkable invitation. And even as I articulate those things, I am certain that most of us in this room have already found ways to disqualify ourselves with the voices from within and from without from this call of Jesus. I'm certain that there are plenty of you who are sitting there during this sermon, hopefully thinking along with me, nodding along with me. Yes, believe all that. Yes, he calls us and he equips us. Yes, I agree with that. Yes, Jesus offers that same invitation. Yeah, they were unqualified. I feel unqualified, but I'm not yet sold. This sermon is for other people with more talent. It's for people who are younger than me. It's for people who are more charismatic than me. It's for people who have more potential than me, who are better looking than me, whatever it might be. So yeah, I agree, Nate, with the points that you're making, but that's not really for me. And what I want you to see is that that's your disqualifying voice coming from within or without that's telling you stuff that's not true about yourself. There's got to be a handful of us in here who go, yeah, I'm just a mom. That's what I do. I'm just a mom and my world is so small. God can't possibly have a plan for me to be used in incredible ways to build his kingdom. That's not true. We're told that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. God has a plan for you. God has something he wants to do with your life. He has a way that he wants to use you. He has a load that he wants you to carry joyfully and gleefully as you go through your life doing his work. He's created you for that. The problem, and he invites us this morning just as he invited the disciples to walk in that purpose and in that usefulness. The problem is we continue to have these voices that we believe in our head that tell us that we're not good enough, that we're not smart enough. I'm too old. I just teed off on 18, buddy. Like I'm looking at the sunset. That's a young man's game. Let somebody else do that work. I'm coasting it in, loving my grandkids. That's not for me. Or I'm too young. No one's going to listen to me. Or I don't have enough education. I'm not qualified enough to do this. Or I'm too inconsistent in my walk. Or I feel like Matthew and the choices that I've made in life have utterly you that you're not qualified for service in the kingdom of God do not come from God. They come from the world. They come from you. And they come from the people in your past who, well-meaning or not, damaged you and told you you weren't good enough and that you couldn't do it. I carry myself plenty of wounds from people that I respect a lot who indicated to me directly and indirectly that I would never make it in ministry. You've had people in your life, well-meaning or not, who have indicated to you in different ways, directly and indirectly, that you don't really have a lot to offer the kingdom of God. You've told yourself that so many times that you now can't even sort out the truth of where these voices are coming from. But here's what I want you to understand this morning. We are not qualified for ministry by our talent. We are qualified by our Savior. We are not qualified for service in God's kingdom by the gifts and abilities that we bring to the table. We are qualified by our Savior and by him alone. Do you think for a second there was anybody in Peter's life? If you know what you know about Peter, Peter was ready, fire, aim. That was him. Peter having nothing to say, thus said. He was always the one out in front, sticking his foot in his mouth. Do you think anybody looked at Peter at this point in his life on the banks of the Sea of Galilee outside the city of Capernaum and went, you know what this guy is? This guy's probably going to be like the very first head pastor of this movement that Jesus is about to birth with his perfect life and death. I bet he's going to be the guy. Nobody said that about Peter. Do you think anybody looked at John, who was maybe 10 to 15 years old at the time of his call? Do you think anybody looked at John and went, you know what John's probably going to do? John's probably going to write a gospel that's different and more influential than the others. He's going to write three great letters that are going to be included in the canon and printed for all of time. And he's going to write the apocryphal book in the New Testament that tells us about the end times. And he's going to die a martyr. He's going to be the last of the generation of disciples to die on the island of Patmos, an honorable death. And he's going to be so close to Christ during these next three years that the Savior of the universe is going to refer to him as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Not even John's mom thought that was possible. Nobody thought that was going to happen to the two boys called the sons of thunder, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Nobody looked at Matthew collecting taxes and thought, you know what? This degenerate, who's totally rejected religion religion and the world and rejected his community and the people around him, he's going to become a disciple that writes one of the four gospels that's read by more people in human history than any other book. That's probably what Matthew's going to do. Nobody, nobody but Jesus looked at those disciples before their call and had any clue or any vision about how he could use them in his kingdom. Nobody but Jesus would have believed the plans that he had for those young men. So who are you to look at Christ and tell him that he can't use you? Nobody but Jesus knows what path you can have from this day forward. Nobody but God has the vision for what your life can be in the years that he is giving to you. Nobody knows what your potential is, least of all you. Our talent does not qualify us for service in God's ministry. Our Savior does. But we're so busy avoiding the walk to the student union because we are certain that our name is not on the list, that we don't even try, and we disqualify ourselves from service in God's kingdom. And I just want to remind you of this, that God alone can cast you aside, and he's promised never to do that. You can't disqualify yourself. Only God can do that. And he's promised to never forsake you. Only God can cast you aside and he will not do that. So quit casting yourself aside. This morning comes down to two simple thoughts. Whose voice are you going to believe about who you are and what God has planned for you? The world's or God's? Because a lot of us have been spending a lot of time listening to the world, believing that God's voice is for other people beside us. And the second one is this. Will you accept that simple invitation that tumbles down through the centuries from our Savior, that is the same now as it was then? Will you accept Christ's invitation to follow him and go where that leads? Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a God who pursues. Thank you for being a God who chases. For a God who believes and equips and calls and qualifies. Lord, I lift up those of us in this room who feel particularly unqualified. Who feel that our poor choices, our bad decisions, our lack of discernible skills, at least according to us, disqualify us from any kind of use in your kingdom. Father, would you help our eyes open to the reality that no one but you knows what your plans are. No one but you knows what you can do with a willing servant who will simply follow you. No one but you knows the potential of use and blessing and life that exists in this room. And so God, I pray that we would follow you. And I pray that we would begin to choose to listen to your voice about who we are and what we can do. And that we would refuse to listen to our own that doesn't tell us the truth. Help us to be followers of you and imbue us with purpose to build your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. Well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here and making grace a part of your Sunday. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service if you'd like to do that as well. This is the fourth part of our series that we're kicking the year off with called Prayers for You. So it's different aspects of life and kind of prayers over those things for 2025. And so we've looked at marriage, and we've looked at kids and legacy. We've looked at life in general. And this morning, we're going to talk about finances. We have a prayer for you with your finances in 2025. And now as I say that, that this morning, I'm going to do the sermon about money, the whole room tightens up, right? Some of you brought guests and you just thought, are you serious right now? This is their first time and this is what you're going to preach. Some of you are probably here for the first time. You wandered in, maybe you've watched a few online and now you're like, okay, I'm going to go kick the tires. And on your very first Sunday, you're like, I'd like a pass, please. Can I come back next Sunday when we're not talking about money? And so I know that the room gets tight when this topic comes up. I'll be honest with you. I don't love talking about this either. And I'm going to tell you why in a minute. But just because I know that that's in the room, I want to say the quiet part out loud to diffuse maybe some of the discomfort around this topic, particularly in a church setting. This is the first thing on your notes. If you have a bulletin on the top of your notes, there's no fill in the blanks. This is just a statement that I'm writing for you that I'm going to say out loud and we are going to acknowledge. This morning is not a thinly veiled attempt to use the Bible to guilt you into giving us your money. Okay? That is not what we are doing. I've been in those. I've sat in those sermons. And they strike me as incredibly disingenuous. And if you have been a part of Grace for any length of time now, I've been here since 2017, April of 2017. I'm finishing up, believe it or not, my eighth year here. You know that I don't preach like that about money. You know that it is really important to me that this not be self-serving. And that's why I don't love to talk about it all the time, because it's really, really hard to thread the needle of appropriate biblical teaching on the topic that doesn't come across as self-serving for me. Because, let's say this part out loud too, I have a vested personal interest in you getting good at this. Right? I do. But that's not the place that I'm coming from. I just have to acknowledge that as true. I actually, and so I know that this is going on. This is kind of the reason why I don't, I'm not, I don't just jump at the chance to preach about money all the time. I was talking to a buddy yesterday and he said, what are you preaching about tomorrow? He doesn't go to church here. He lives, he lives down in Fuqua. He said, what are you preaching about tomorrow? And I said, I'm preaching about money. And he goes, ah, the obligatory money sermon so you can get that building built, huh? And I went, sure. But we know that that's in the mix, right? We know that those thoughts exist. And I can acknowledge that too. And I've been on both sides of it. So the absolute last thing I want to do is be disingenuous in what I'm sharing with you this morning. But here's the reality. The Bible talks about giving and finances a lot. If you do a quick Google, you'll find people out there who say that money is the topic that Jesus spoke about the most in his ministry. Now that is misleading because I'm not going to get into why because I have a lot to cover and I don't have time to get into why. That's misleading. I don't think it's fair to say that the most important topic to Christ in his lifetime was money. He gave a lot of examples that involved money, but he wasn't talking specifically about giving or about finances. But the reality is that this topic comes up a lot in the Bible. And if you were to make a grid of all the topics in the Bible, all the things that show up throughout Scripture, and then look at how often in my nearly eight years I've addressed those things, one of the things that the grid would reveal is that I have fallen woefully short of my responsibility to teach us about this topic because it is one that shows up with great frequency in Scripture and does not show up with great frequency in my preaching calendar. So let's talk about money this morning because the Bible talks about it way more than we do. To illustrate this point and to give us just a good swath of the philosophy of giving from Scripture, and then to draw out a singular point that I believe jumps out of the text of all of these verses, I want to read to you six different passages on money. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. They're going to be on the screen. You read with me. This is an overview beginning all the way back in Deuteronomy, moving all the way to the book of James, kind of a sweeping view of how God thinks about giving in his children. We're going to start in Deuteronomy chapter 15. He writes, there will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. There's always going to be poor people, and you should always give to them. This is an instruction from very, very early on. Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Bible, and it means the law repeated. So it's really just a summary of the first four books, more specifically Leviticus and Numbers. So this is the very beginning, the foundation of faith. He is saying from the get-go, you will always have needy people around you. Be the people who give to them. And then we jump to the end of the Bible, James chapter 2, suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? What good are you? You're just a well-wisher. I remember years ago, and I told, sorry, Andrea, I told Andrea, who's running our slides very faithfully this morning, that I wasn't going to talk in between these verses so she could leave them up there. So now there should be a blank slide, but there's not because I'm going to tell you something real quick. I remember a few years ago when Jen and I first moved here, we lived off of Tealbrier, right there off of Spring Forest. And so we would go to the Harris Teeter and there's a St. Jacques used to be in there. And next to it, some store went out of business. And then another store called Pet Wants was going up in there. And because I frequented the Harris Teeter, I noticed that they were there. And I noticed it was kind of a mom and pop operation. It looked like family was doing it. They were working really hard in the store for several weeks to revamp it. And one night I was at the grocery store late. Probably when you live 35 seconds away from the grocery store, your nine o'clock purchase of Ben and Jerry's statistic goes through the roof. Okay. So I was heading over there probably to get a pint of Ben and Jerry's Americone Dream. Thank you very much. And I noticed that they were working in there. And I was just touched by how hard they're working on this place and the hopes that they must have for this place. And so I went and I knocked on the door and some guy looks at me like, what, we're closed, you know? And I go, and so he opened the door and I said, hey, I just want to say, I've seen you working really hard. I've seen what you guys are doing here. I think it's great. I hope it goes really well for you. I hope this is a fantastic store. And he goes, thanks so much. We're actually having a friends and family sale tomorrow if you'd like to stop by and get anything. And I went, okay, yeah, great, thank you. And the door shut, and I was like, no way. I'm not buying anything from there. I don't like my dog. I'm not going to go spend money on a thing I don't want. I don't even want to spend the money we do spend on her. I'm not going in your store ever. I just hope it goes well. And what I realized is it's one thing to be a well-wisher. It's another thing to be bought in. James says, don't be a well-wisher. Oh, you're cold and you're hungry and you need? Be warm and well-fed. I'm going to keep my wallet in my pocket. Don't be a well-wisher. Malachi 3, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. Then Jesus in Mark chapter 12 tells us this, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes about giving. Remember this, whoever then last, Jesus in Matthew chapter 6. This is a big verse about giving that is really indicative of the culture of giving a grace. And so while we're here, I just wanted to share this little bit about the way that money is handled here, because if you haven't been going here for a long time, you may actually not know this. But at Grace, this predates me. This was the culture when I got here. They've always taken very seriously, we've always taken very seriously, this direction from Christ to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, to give in secret and to give in private and not ostentatiously. And because of that, when you give, there are only two people on the planet who see what you give. One is our office manager, Julie, our children's assistant office manager, Julie Sauls, but that's because someone has to manually process the check. So if you write a check, someone has to fill out a deposit slip and put that in. Someone has to see it, and so that's her job. That falls to her to do it. The only other person who sees what is given, this includes elders and this includes our finance committee, is our finance manager, a guy named Tom Ledoux. Tom lives in Michigan, and you never have to look him in the eye, so it's a really great setup for you, right? You won't find yourself in Bible study with Tom feeling uncomfortable because he knows some things. Those are the only two people. No one else knows, no one else has access, no one else sees, and so this is something we take very seriously. But as I looked at all of these verses, I don't know as I read through those what kinds of themes leapt out to you. I don't know what you perceived. I don't know what kind of impression they made. And we could probably look through those six verses and do 12 sermons out of them. There's enough things in there that are worth talking about and unpacking. But the thing that I saw the most as I went through those verses, because it wasn't just those verses that I read. When I sat down to do this and to start preparing for the sermon, I just read all the verses I could find on giving in Scripture. And one of the things that was incredibly apparent as I read through those, and I think is's highlighted specifically in these verses is this. Giving has never been optional. Giving for God's children. If you call God your father and Jesus your savior. Giving has never ever been optional. If you look back through the verses. Especially that last one. Jesus' words about giving to the needy and not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing, how does it start out? So when you give to the needy, not if, when you do it. Deuteronomy, very beginning, there will always be poor people. Be people who give to the poor people. James, when you encounter someone who is needy, and you will, be the person that gives to them. Malachi, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. The tithe that you're giving, that you're expected to give, that's going to be given, bring it into my temple. When Jesus looks at the poor widow and she gives two cents, I think sometimes we would think that he would go to her and he would say, hey, you take that back. You need that more than the church does. You take it. That's not what he does. Instead, he honors it because of the assumption that this is something that she is going to do. In Corinthians, whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and vice versa. But he says, when you give, not if you decide to give, but when you give, determine what you want to do, not out of a sense of ought, but out of a sense of want to, because God loves a cheerful giver. But what I see as I read through these scriptures and I read through the rest of the Bible about these scriptures or about this topic is that giving is not optional at all. In fact, giving is essential to becoming a mature, healthy believer. It is part of the essential nature of sanctification and growing in our spiritual maturity and in the depth of our spiritual lives. As a matter of fact, I would say it like this. Thinking that you can become a healthy Christian without the discipline of giving is like thinking you can become a healthy person without the discipline of exercise. If you want to be healthy, if you want a good heart rate, if you want your blood work to come in right, and I'm about to be 44 next month, so I'm getting to an age where I have to start caring about those things, and I'll probably know what my cholesterol is here in the next few months. If you want to be a healthy person, you can eat right. You can eat like a rabbit. You can monitor what goes into your system. You can be careful about not consuming alcohol or not consuming other chemicals or whatever it is. You can be careful about what goes into your body. You can be careful about what you eat. You can be diligent about your sleep time. You can do a lot of healthy things. But until you're exercising, until you're getting your heart rate up for 30 minutes a day, you will not be a healthy person. And I believe that trying to be a healthy Christian, trying to grow in our faith and in our spiritual maturity without the discipline of giving is just as silly and as much of a pipe dream as it is to try to be a healthy person who does not exercise. Which is why it's important for us as we look through scripture to acknowledge giving, in God's view, has never been optional. And I don't think that that's how we think about it. I think for a lot of us, we do think of it as optional. Maybe not intentionally, but by default and behaviorally, we approach it as something that maybe I need to do one day sometimes. I used to joke, I used to be, when I would drive, I was a bit of a speeder. Our state patrol person is not here today. So yeah, I speed all the time. And the older I get, the less I do it. This morning I was driving in, it's 0 dark 30 on 540 to get here. And I looked down, I went, because I was driving and I literally thought, am I going too fast? And I looked down and I was doing 58 miles an hour. So I was, it was under control. So I don't speed very much anymore, but I'll still do it sometimes. And I'm always going to go a little bit over the speed limit because, come on, no one wants to be. Don't be the jerk that goes to speed limit. Nobody likes you on the road if that's what you do. Get out of the way. And so I used to joke because sometimes it would come up in different circles, especially like pastor circles where you're trying to out-compete each other in righteousness, and someone would be like, yeah, I don't speed because I believe it's a sin and it's wrong. And I would just say like, you may be right, but God hasn't gotten that far down the conviction tree on me yet. All right? There's some bigger fish to fry in my life than going eight over. All right? So I haven't gotten to that portion of conviction. I think some of us think about giving that way. Yeah, that's a thing I need to do one day. I know that's an essential part of the Christian life, but, but not yet. There's some bigger fish to fry. And I think what these, what these scriptures show us is no, no, that's a pretty important one. That's what, that's essential to the nature of being a Christian. It's an expected thing of believers. But I think that even in light of that, maybe we don't put it off and go, gosh, one day I'm just not there yet. Later on in my spiritual maturity, I will get there. Maybe we think of it like this. Maybe it's just hard for us to do it. Maybe we don't have a lot of extra right now. I mean, inflation's up. Things are tough. That's a bit, I mean, everybody, a lot of people that I know have had to tighten the purse strings a little bit in the last two years. And so maybe for us, the idea of giving is something that we want to do, but we just don't feel like we can afford it. Or we just don't feel like it's wise. And so we put it off. But whenever I think about that, first of all, if you look at the way that Jesus applauds the old lady who gives out of little, that's a good indicator that that may not be a good way to think about giving. I can't afford it, so I'm not going to do it. Another thing that informs my thinking on this is a conversation I had with Jen years ago. Early on in our marriage, I was a poor student pastor and she was a poor private school teacher. And we bought our house. We got married in 2006. We bought our first house in 2007. Excuse me. We bought our first house in 2007, which is wonderful because we bought it, I think, for like $180,000, our very first house. It took 10 years for that house to be worth $180,000 again. It was just right at the brink of the recession. By the next year, that thing was worth $125,000. Great. So we're not living in plenty. We are living in very close to want. We don't have a lot. And Jen's dad has always been a remarkably generous man. And I remember making the comment to her, I hope one day we make more money and live more comfortably so that we can be generous like your dad is. I want to have that experience and be that kind of, now the word I would use is be that conduit of grace to other people. And Jen said, yes, I hope so too, but my daddy always taught me that the way you give when you don't have a lot is the way that you will give when you do have a lot. So the generosity trait starts early. And his larger point was, if we are people who think one day when I have more margin, I'll be more generous. There's no magical generosity button that gets hit when you have plenty. However generous you are with little is how generous you will be with a lot. So if you want to be generous one day, then you need to start being generous today. It's never been optional. And because of that, the encouragement today, what I want to press upon you is just the idea of being faithful in your giving. My prayer for you, these are prayers for you. My prayer for you for your finances this year is very, very simple. My prayer is that you would be faithful in your giving, whether you're giving out of little or you're giving out of much. Each one has different kinds of pains associated with it. But my prayer is that you would be faithful to what God expects of his children, understanding that giving is what's best for you. Being a generous person is what's best for you. Understanding that you will not mature as a Christian into full maturity if this is not a part of your regular discipline. So my prayer for you is that whether you give out of little or you give out of a lot, that you would simply be faithful in that giving. And like everything else, when God tells us we have to do something, when God says do this or don't do that, it is always because he has our best interest in mind. So giving and being a generous person is actually what's best for us, which is why I'm preaching the sermon today. Because if you study scripture, it's very clear that this is what God wants for us. And if I don't tell you that, then I'm derelict in my duty. So we can be adults and have an honest conversation about it. Giving is something that God wants you to do. It has never, ever been optional. Now, the question then becomes, okay, if it's what's best for me, why is it what's best for me to give away the money that I feel like I've earned? Here's why. Three reasons. There's more than this, but three reasons. Giving reminds us, invites us, and fuels us. The act of giving reminds us, invites us, and fuels us. Here's what I mean. The act of giving reminds us, first and foremost, that what we're giving is not ours to give. We are simply giving back to God what he has entrusted us with. It is the idea of stewardship. The act of giving, whether it's to the church or to a nonprofit that you believe in or to anything else that's going on in God's kingdom, the act of giving to God's kingdom is a reminder every time I am giving out of my allotment that God has assigned to me, I am not giving out of my possessions. Do you see the difference? God has allocated his resources out amongst us, and he's trusted us to be good stewards of those resources and to direct those in ways that build his kingdom, not our own. This is the idea of kingdom builders. This is also the idea of being a conduit of grace. A conduit connects to one source and funnels those resources to another source. So when I say at grace, we are conduits of grace. Yes, we offer grace to one another, but we're also, we also understand and see our lives as a conduit from God to the people and to building his kingdom. And so when we give, we are reminded of that conduit status. We are reminded of who we are and what we have. And we're even reminded if we're willing to take it a step further. Okay, I have these resources and I'm reminded that they're God's, they're not mine. I would take it a step further and I would say, yes, and the talents and abilities that you applied to garner those resources were also given to you by God to be a steward of and to use. So the fact that he allowed us to have resources is his gift and grace anyway, so we continue to be a funnel and let those resources flow out of us in generosity. It reminds us of how we should think about our finances and our resources. It puts us in the proper perspective. A wonderful thing about giving, maybe the best part, is that it invites us. You could say it invests us here too, but giving invites us into ministries that we might not be capable of doing ourselves. It's one thing to go to a charity dinner, to a charity gala where they're going to give you a cold chicken or a cold barbecue or something and a salad that's really terrible. Like we've all been. It's like $150 a plate and I'd rather go to McDonald's. But you go and you sit and you hear about the ministry and you hear about the thing and maybe you write a check for $200 or whatever it is you do. It's one thing to go to a charity gala or a charity dinner. It's another thing to be a giver to that ministry and go participate in the blessing of what God is doing and where he is doing it, to be invested in this ministry so that when you hear the stories of the families that are reached, when you hear the stories of the children that are no longer orphaned, when you hear the stories of the women in third world countries who have been equipped with skills and have been running a successful small business on their own that is sustaining their family in ways that they were never capable of, you get to feel like a participant in that. You realize that your participation in that nonprofit, in that entity, in that institution is something that can be celebrated by you because I'm a part of this. It invites you into areas of God's kingdom that you might not otherwise go, and it invests you in what those people are doing. And I say this with all candor. God may not have put you in a situation in your life where you have the time, the skill set, the life circumstances that allow you to go to an African country and start a ministry that prohibits children from becoming orphans and trains up their moms so that they can sustain their family. You might not have the bandwidth to go to another country and start that ministry. But somebody else has had that bandwidth. And somebody else has done that. And you've got the bandwidth to go make money. God's given you those gifts to do that and you're good at it. Maybe you're good at it so that you can funnel those gifts into other areas of God's kingdom where his work is being done and where God is showing up. And now I might not have the skill set to go down the street and start the nonprofit and do English as a second language for Spanish-speaking parents who are just trying to navigate their kids through middle school. But I have the resources to help and to fund those who do have those gifts and talents. And so the opportunity to give invites us into ministries and into opportunities and into blessings that we might not otherwise have based on our gifting and our life circumstances and where we are. It invests us in what's happening there. And it's a tremendous privilege to do that. I think one of the great benefits of investing our lives in things that build God's kingdom is that he gives us front row seats into places where we would not otherwise get to go. One of my great joys of being a pastor is the sacred spaces that I get invited into because of my position. Sitting in the hospital room in the middle of fear and praying with people. I realize that's not a normal place for people to get invited. Being entrusted with people who come and sit down in my office and ask for help in certain areas of their life or ask for prayer about this or advice about this, I realize that that's not a typical life experience for everyone. Having the opportunity when there's something on my heart that I really feel like I need to say, I have a platform where I can do that. There's different things about my position that give me access to front row seats to what God is doing in different places that I might not otherwise get. And by being a person who is a generous giver, we now have front row seats into different places where God is doing work and we're showing up to build his kingdom and we get a unique perspective there. It's an invitation into the blessing of what God is doing. And then finally, candidly, giving fuels us. It fuels our desire to give more, to be more, to be involved more, but it also fuels the ministries of God. This is an undeniable fact. The very first time God instructs his people to give is in the book of Numbers. And do you know why he does it? He says, bring your tithe to the temple because the Levites are not allowed to have jobs. They do this all the time and we need to be able to sustain them as a society. So the other 11 tribes, you give 10% of what you have to the Levites so that they can serve us as our priests. It's God said to begin to give, to fuel the ministries that he is doing. And so giving, quite literally, fuels the ministries going on around us. To this end, grace is fueled by our partners. And this is where I just want to speak to you directly because you're grownups. This church is fueled by the generous giving of our partners. If you guys don't give generously, this all goes away. We have four full-time staff people. We have three part-time staff people. We pay them. If we don't give, Miss Erin is the first one on the chopping block. Out of here. Right away. No kids ministry. We have to pay rent. We pay $13,000 a month for this dump. All right? We do. We can't even get the pole removed. And every year they charge us more for common area maintenance so that our grass can look cruddy out there and we don't have any. We have to keep the lights on. We fund different ministries through the church. The reality of this place is that it is fueled by the partners. And if that's not happening, then this place doesn't happen. So one of the things that I've started doing in our Discover Grace class, if you want to be a partner of grace and you come to the class, I think we're going to have one in February or later this month, I guess. At some point we go, okay, what is required to be a partner here? And it's not in the writing yet, but I've started to say, if you want to be a partner with us, nothing's compelling you to do that. If you're here this morning and you're not a partner of grace, which we have partners, we don't have members because members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's how we do it here. If you're here and you're just like, man, I'm kicking the tires, then what I would tell you is this part's not for you. It's for you one day, wherever you go, what I'm about to say is for you. But if you don't call yourself a partner at grace, then this part's not for you. But for the folks who come to Discover Grace, we say there's nothing compelling you to be a partner. You can come, and you can volunteer, and you can be in small group, and you can be an active participant in our church to whatever degree you want to be besides sitting on a committee or becoming an elder. But if you want to partner with us, then partner with us and support us financially. So here's what I would say about that. Scripture, and this is important, does not explicitly say anywhere that you should give to your local church. It does not come out and say that anywhere. But I think that's because the concept of a local church hadn't yet been, it was just the church, the church in Ephesus, the church in Rome, the church in Thessalonica. It was just the church. And in those churches, the expectation is you are giving because that's always been the expectation because the entire scope of scripture assumes that we know that. So what I would say is, even though it doesn't explicitly say it in the Bible, that I believe that you should give to your local church. I really do think that, and it took me some years to be able to say that, but the more I think about it, the more I study, the more I talk about it, the more I'm convinced that if you are a Christian, you should A, be a part of a local church, and B, you should give to that church. So I know the implications of that. We can all connect the dots. If you're a part of grace, you should give to grace. That's what Nate's saying. Sure. But here's what else I'll say. If you are a part of grace, and I don't think a lot of pastors would say this, and maybe the finance committee will get mad at me for saying this, but if you are a part of grace, but you don't give to grace, you need to find a church that compels you to give and go there. You need to go to a church that does inspire you to give. Because what I believe is, if you're here and you're thriving and your spiritual life is becoming healthy and your kids are thriving and they're being taught about Christ and you're experiencing community community. And you would call grace a blessing in your life. And you feel like you or your family or you and your spouse have benefited from grace. Then you ought to support grace so that other people can benefit in the same way. Because we are fueled by that giving. And if the ministry that you are experiencing from us is not compelling enough to make you want to partner with us in giving, then because I believe you should give to a local church, I have to believe that you should find one that compels you. But that's the encouragement this morning. Plain and simple. Adult to adult. This is what scripture teaches. We should be givers. We should be compelled to give to God's kingdom, particularly the parts of it where we are personally benefiting from that. So if we are a part of grace, we should give. Which brings me back to my prayer for you this year, that you would simply be faithful in your giving. I always say this, and I know a little bit contradictory to what I just said, but I can also be honest with you enough to say this. If you are someone, or if you are a couple, who is not in the habit of giving, and this is going to be a new exercise for you, and it feels remotely manipulative or self-serving that I'm trying to get you to give to grace, I would encourage you, as your brother in Christ, begin to give to things that aren't grace but that God is still doing. Begin to give to God's kingdom. Become a giver. And then in time, as it feels right, because God loves a cheerful giver, direct some of that towards your local church. But if you think that what I'm saying is self-serving, then don't give to grace. Don't do it under compulsion. But I would encourage you to begin that discipline and watch what God does as you become generous with your resources. So that's my prayer for you this year. And every year as we move forward. That as God's children, as believers, you would take seriously the teaching about giving in Scripture. And that you would be a person who is a giver. My prayer is that whether you have a little or a lot, that you would simply be faithful. Because that's what God calls us to. Let me pray that over us. Father, thank you for what we have. Thank you for what you've entrusted to us. I pray, God, that we would be good stewards of the resources that you've allocated to us, whether that's time or talent or treasure. Father, I pray that for those of us who are not yet people who give, for whatever reason, that we would be convicted and compelled to take steps towards becoming those people. That we would quit viewing this as something that's optional for your children, but view it as something that's necessary and good. Let us step into that generosity. Father, for those of us who were convicted by this long ago and are regular givers, I pray that we would be inspired. That we would be encouraged. That we would be grateful for all the opportunities we've had to give and all the times we got to sit on the front lines of what you were doing because you invited us in there through giving. But God, more than anything, I just ask that grace would be a church filled with faithful people, faithful to your word, faithful to obedience in you, and faithful to entrust you with their finances. God, we ask these things in your son's name. Amen.