My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this very hot July Sunday. Hopefully it'll cool down and we can get back outside soon. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. To know the Bible, to be around church culture at all, is to know some of the main characters of the Bible, some of the people that are a little bit more prominent in the Bible. Even if you've not spent any time in church at all, we've heard of David and of Moses and of Paul, but there are some other people in the Bible that give us great examples of behavior or character that we should emulate that are worth exploring. And so we're investing our summer series in looking at some of these heroes that are a little bit lesser known in the Bible. Now, full disclosure, when I told Jen, my wife, what I was going to be preaching about this week and who I was going to be preaching about, a guy named Naaman in 2 Kings 5. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in front of you. But we're going to be in 2 Kings 5 today looking at the story of Naaman. And so she pointed out, and I should tell you, that he is not really a hero. Okay? Like he's not, what he does isn't really great. So I told her what I was going to be preaching about and she goes, well, he's not really like that heroic. And I said, well, nobody cares. It's just like, it's just obscure heroes, but this is an obscure story. What's it matter? She was like, it matters. So if it matters to you, I apologize. I beg your forgiveness. All right. But I'm just not going to, I'm not going to check that box today. So this is more like an obscure story. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a lot from the example of Naaman. So if you look in second Kings chapter five, there is a general by the name of Naaman. He's the head general in the Syrian army, which was a really powerful army at this point in history. They're far more powerful than Israel. Israel is like a third world country at this point in history. They're really not impactful on the geopolitical scale. The Syrian army is, and Naaman is the general of this army. And so you have to figure, if you just think about in the ancient world ways to get famous, that pretty much the king in general is it. They didn't have Instagram. They didn't have any influencers back then. So like Naaman, that was all you got. So he had risen to prominence. He was at least regionally famous. If not, at the time, world famous. He was a heavy hitter. He was an important dude. And Naaman comes down with leprosy. We see leprosy through the Bible. It's in the Old Testament and it's in the New Testament. Leprosy was a disease that you got in your skin. I think you can still get it now. It's just we've fixed it. But you can still get it in your skin, and it begins to eat away at your skin, slowly but surely, killing you from the outside in. And to get leprosy was to receive a death sentence. If you contracted leprosy, somehow it was eventually going to eat away at you enough that it was going to kill you. Leprosy was certain death. And it didn't happen a lot in the upper echelons of the socioeconomic scale, but somehow or another, Naaman, maybe from his time spent out on the battlefield in foreign countries and things like that, Naaman contracted leprosy. And of course he feels like he's going to die. But on their last conquest through Israel, they brought back a little Jewish girl to serve Naaman's wife. And she hears that Naaman has leprosy, and she says in 2 Kings 5, she says, Oh, that my Lord would go, my Lord Naaman would go to Israel. There's a prophet there who can heal him. Now, she's talking about a man named Elisha. In the books of 1 and 2 Kings, there's two incredible prophets. I've said there's some of the most underrated figures in the Bible, Elijah and Elisha. One day I want to do a series through their lives, maybe next summer. It's just phenomenal stories. They were tremendous men of faith that God entrusted with tremendous power for the miracles that they would do. And apparently he had cured people before, even of leprosy. And so this little girl that they took back from Israel says, oh, that my Lord would go back to Israel and find Elisha, he could heal her. He could heal him. And so Naaman's wife goes to Naaman and says, hey, there's a prophet back in Israel that can heal you. Like, you should go back there. And so he decides to go. And I wonder, and I try to do this as I read stories in the Bible, and I would encourage you guys to do it too. Sometimes if we read stories in the Bible, if you were to open up your Bible and read 1 and 2 Kings, the stories move so fast. The narrative moves so quickly. There's so little nuance. It's just this happened, this happened, this happened, and then this is the end of the story. So I like to try to slow down and read the humanity into things and figure out what would I be thinking, what would I be feeling if I were in that situation. And I think that when we do this, when you'll read it on your own and you'll put your humanity into what's happening there, I think what you'll get is that the story starts to come alive for you a little bit. And so Naaman hears the testimony of this Hebrew girl and decides that he's going to travel hundreds of miles away to a third world country that's going to take him several weeks to do to go see a faith healer in the backwoods of Israel. Now what would it take for you to do that? If you got a diagnosis that nobody wants, it was a death sentence, you're definitely going to pass away. This is going to claim your life. But if you travel to the Dominican, to the back of a mountain there, there's a faith healer and he's going to make you feel better. How desperate would you have to be to go? Naaman went. He's not a believer. He doesn't believe in the Hebrew God. It's just a weird faith healer in the backwoods of a third world country, and he goes. And before he goes, what does he do? Naaman is so very American. He packs up all of his stuff, and he puts together a small fortune, some changes of clothes, which apparently are a big deal. Like if you wanted to be wealthy, have two jackets. So he puts together some change of clothes to offer to the person that's going to heal him and to the people around that person. He gathers together some livestock and some gold, and he takes a small fortune with him. Because when you get sick, what do we do? If you're diagnosed with something tough, what do you do? You marshal all your resources, you pull everything together, and you go to the best place that's going to treat you, and then you compensate them for their treatment. That's what Naaman's going to do. So he loads everything up, heads to Israel. He gets to Israel, and he tells his king he's going to go. He asks permission from the king of Syria, hey, there's a prophet in Israel, can I go see him? King of Syria says, yeah, sure, go ahead. Gives gives him a letter to carry with him to present. So he goes to Israel. He goes and he sees the king. And listen, what kind of a dude do you have to be to get the audience of a king when you just wander into a country? You have to be a big deal. So the king hears Naaman's here. Oh no, what does the general of the Syrian army want? And Naaman presents him with a letter. And the letter's from the king of Syria, and it says, be pleased to heal my servant Naaman of leprosy. And the Bible says that the king went and tore his clothes, because at this time in history, that's how you express anguish and sadness and despair and anxiety. And I've always wondered if these people had like spare, like tearing clothes that they got from Walmart. Like when I got sad, I would be like, time out. And then I would put on those things and probably pre-snip them and then tear them and then put on my nice kingly garb and be like, okay, that's terrible for those clothes. I don't know what he did. Maybe he just, he could tear outfits all he wanted. But he goes and he tears his clothes and he expresses this great sadness. Why has the king of Syria put this on me that he expects me to provoke him for war? Because it's an impossible task. I can't heal somebody from leprosy, much less the general of the most powerful army in the region right now. There's nothing I can do about this. This is a death sentence for him too. It's an excuse when Naaman goes there and he eventually dies because the king doesn't cure him. Then the Syrians can get ticked off at Israel and go sweeping through there again. And so the king, he's anxious. He is worried. He is in anguish. And word gets to Elisha, the chief prophet, that the king has gotten this letter. So he sends word to the king and he says, I've heard that you've torn your clothes. I hope it was the cheap ones that you got from Walmart. If you would just send Naaman to me, I'll take care of it. Send Naaman to me, I'll heal him. So the king says, okay, here's Naaman's address. You go and, or here's Elisha's address. You go and you see him. And I love how Naaman arrives. He goes to Elisha's house and it says, he arrived on his horses and chariots. So he brings his whole entourage with him. He arrives on his chariots. Nobody in Israel can afford a chariot. Israel has zero chariots. And so this is a huge deal. This is like when they line the streets for some political figure and on the line of Tahos come through and you're like, I don't know where, but somewhere in there, there's somebody that's important. So Naaman creates his own processional and arrives at the gate of Elisha's house, almost with this sense of, I'm here, congratulations. And he tells them, I'm here. And what does Elisha do? I love what Elisha does. What would you do? What would you do if one of the most famous people in the country showed up at your house, showed up at your office, and whoever works the front desk came to you, and they're like, excuse me, Nate, Peyton Manning's here to see you. What would you do? I don't know. I thought all week about who do I say that everybody recognizes as famous? I don't know what to say. Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, whoever you want, Justin Timberlake, take your pick. Somebody shows up, they're super famous and they want to talk to you. What would you do? I would be like, Aaron, Steve, Kyle, which is, that's the staff here. Sorry, I'm out. I got to go talk to them. Like, I got to, I got to go see them. I would, hello, I'm the senior pastor. It's good to meet you. I'm glad that you're here to see me. Right? Of course, we would soak that up, wouldn't we? What's Elisha do? He grabs an intern. Hey, name is at the gate. Would you go tell him that if he'll dip in the Jordan River seven times that he'll be healed and he'll be good to go? Like, what's Elisha working on? Like a proposal? Like, I'm busy. But he just says, hey, go tell Naaman if he'll dip in the river seven times he'll be healed. And so the intern goes down and tells this to Naaman. And this is how Naaman receives it. If you have a Bible, you can look in 2 Kings 5. I love what he does. Verse 10 says, and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. He doesn't even let him in. He's like, there's no reason for you to come in here and all that stuff. Just go to the Jordan River. You'll turned and went away in a rage. Naaman's ticked. He's ticked. I remember when I first got out of college, or when I was finishing up college, I sold cars. People don't know this about me, but I sold cars for like six months. And I was on the phone with a guy one day. He was a good old southern boy. And we were kind of going back and forth on the price of a truck. You know, he's got to ask for a price, and I've got to hang on. Let me go check with my manager, and I come back with the price. And it's a whole deal. It's real silly. And so we're going back and forth. And finally he goes, listen, son, am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? Because I need to be talking to the man. And I had to admit, I was not the man at Hayes Chrysler. Sir, you are talking to the boy. It was a very low moment in my life. If you know me well, you know that I need more of those and you do not feel sorry for me. And I had to admit, I'm not the decision maker here. That's what Naaman thought. Am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? He wanted to talk to the man. He wanted to be made over. He wanted to be fussed over. He wanted Elisha to come out and, oh, it's so great to have you. I'm honored to heal you. And then he wanted the chance after the healing to be able to offer his small fortune, right? He wanted to be able to offer a one-for-one exchange. None of us likes to get help without being able to reciprocate that help, without being able to feel like we in some way earned this or deserve this. He wanted to be able to compensate Elisha, and now he's robbed of that chance. He's not treated like he expects to be treated. Elisha is supposed to make this big scene and wave his hand over him, and I call on the name of the Lord and yada, yada. And he's like, no, just, you're good. Just see the water over there? Just go get in it. And he's going, I traveled hundreds of miles and brought all this stuff for this? You kidding me? I have rivers back home, and they're better than this backwoods river. And so he storms off. He takes his ball and goes home, and he sulks like a little kid. And a little while later, his servants go to him, and it's a loose paraphrase, but essentially they say, Naaman, what do you have to lose, man? You're out here. Just go do it. Just go do what he says. And I can imagine them saying, like, what's the worst that can happen? You get some Jordan River on you. You go home and you rinse off in the Farper. It'll be all right. Just do it. And so he goes after he's calmed down. He dips in the Jordan River, and he's healed of his leprosy. When he sees that he's healed of his leprosy, he's overjoyed. He rushes back to Elisha, and he tries to give him all the stuff. He tries to compensate him. Thank you. Here's this fortune that I brought. And Elisha's like, I don't need it. I didn't do that for your stuff, man. I just did that for you. God told me to heal you. I healed you. I don't need it. And he keeps trying to give it away to whoever will take it. And then a guy named Gehazi, one of Elisha's servants comes to him and he's like, actually, you know, on second thought, Elisha really does need the stuff. And Naaman gives him the stuff. And then Gehazi gets in trouble for taking the stuff. And that's a whole separate story if you keep reading on. But Naaman responds to this healing with a joyful and generous love. Here, here, take all my stuff. This was given to me. I want to be able to give this to you. And he leaves that space professing that there is one true God, and it is the God of Israel. We get a convert out of this interaction. Now, this is a good story, and it's a good one to unpack in the Old Testament. But how does it apply to us? I think we can begin to understand how it applies to us when we realize that leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. We see leprosy in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When we see it in the New Testament, generally Jesus is interacting with them. If you contracted leprosy, you were sent to a colony. You were quarantined. You were no longer allowed to interact with general society. You were unclean. You were sent to a colony, and you were sent there to die. Can you imagine how depressing leper colonies would be? And Jesus walked into these places and he touched and he touched and he touched and he healed and he healed and he healed in the same way that Jesus walks through a sinful world and he heals and he heals and he restores. The picture of leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. Leprosy was a disease that once you got it, it may have started small. In the story of Naaman, it says that he expected Elisha to come out and wave his hand over the place. So maybe leprosy was just starting to appear. Maybe it was on his arm and he could wrap it up. Maybe it was on his ribs and he could cover it up. Maybe it was in a place where if you looked at him, you didn't know that he had it, but he knew that he had it. And isn't that how sin works? When we have things in our lives that don't need to be there, sometimes we can cover it up. We can wrap it up. We can keep it from other people. And sin, just so we're clear, sometimes that word is misunderstood and it's used to make people feel guilty. But really, sin is anything that happens when we elevate our judgment in our life to equivocate God's judgment in our life. And when we say, no, God, I don't think that I want to do the thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do the thing that makes the most sense to me. That's sin. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like, whatever form that takes on. And when we get that, when we sin, just like leprosy, it is a disease that eats away at us and leads to certain death. Isn't this what Jesus, isn't this what God said in Genesis? He told Adam and Eve that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you will surely die. And they ate of it and they didn't drop dead. So either God's a liar or he's not talking about physical death. He's talking about a spiritual death. And what he's saying is, if you elevate your judgment to mine and you throw off my lordship in your life and you become your own little God, then you have eternally separated yourself from me. That's a spiritual death. So sin, just like leprosy, leads to a certain death. Leprosy leads to a physical death. Sin leads to a spiritual death. But there's a parallel there. And in this story, Naaman is healed, but we should think about it as salvation. Naaman seeks salvation. And to be healed for his salvation, he had to accept the word of God and be obedient and humble himself and go dip in a river that didn't make any sense. For us to receive salvation, spiritual healing from God, we place our faith in what Jesus did on the cross for us. And in some ways, sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But we accept that free gift from Jesus. As we move through the Christian life and we understand salvation is, yes, an event when we place our faith in Christ, but it's also this ongoing process that the Bible calls sanctification, which just means becoming more like God in character. And that to be sanctified, to become more like God in character, it's every day this decision to trust on God rather than ourselves. It's every day to trust in God's way rather than our way. It's every day to trust in his lordship rather than our lordship. It's the same decision that Naaman had to make every day as we seek this salvation, as we fight off sin. And so what we see in the story of Naaman and what makes it relevant to us is that the physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. The physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. It works the same way. Naaman needed salvation for a disease that would lead to certain death. We need salvation from a disease that will lead to certain spiritual death or eternal separation from God. And what's interesting to me about this and where the rubber really meets the road in this story is, if I were to take you back to Damascus, back to Syria, when Naaman contracted leprosy, and he were to ask you, I need to be healed, what do you think my biggest obstacles are between health and unhealth? What do you think are the biggest things I need to overcome to be healed and to live? We would probably look at external factors, wouldn't we? We would look at the distance between he and Elisha. We would look at the cost. We would look at the probability of it actually working. We would look at all these other external factors. But what we see when we look at the story of Naaman is that Naaman's biggest obstacles for healing were his ego and his expectations. They were internal factors. His biggest obstacles to being healed, to salvation, were his ego and his expectations. He wanted to compensate. He wanted it to be a one-for-one exchange. He wanted to be able to look at Elisha and say, you are going to give me this, and I'm going to give you this. I earned this. I deserve this. It makes sense for you to heal me. We're going to both benefit from this exchange. His ego said that he needed to be able to contribute to it. And isn't that how we work too? I've been in church long enough to hear a line several times talking to people who are considering coming to faith. And they'll say something like, I do think that I want to become a Christian. I do think I want to get back into the church thing, but I just got some stuff I need to clean up first. Or I'll talk to somebody who wants to be baptized. We're going to do a baptism service in September, by the way, so start thinking about whether or not you might want to be a part of that. I've talked with so many people who are thinking about being baptized, but they'll say, yeah, I want to do that, but I've got some things that I need to get in order before I do that. When we say that, what are we doing? Our egos are saying, yeah, I'm going to take that step, but when I do, I'm going to deserve it. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be on my terms. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be because I'm worthy of it. It's going to be because I've gotten through white-knuckle discipline myself in line enough that I feel like I can approach him with a pure heart. When I get baptized, I'm going to earn the right to be baptized. I'm going to bring something to that exchange. It's going to feel like I deserve this gift from God of salvation. When we know that we bring nothing to that exchange. We don't pay God for it. We don't compensate him for his son. We just get our ego out of the way and we accept it. See, to get healed of leprosy, you have to first admit that you have it and that you desperately need to be healed. To get rid of the sin that's in our life, to be aligned with our Creator, to experience salvation, we have to first come to a place where we admit, I'm broken and I need healing. And that's a really hard thing for some of us. We have to come to a place where we admit, my lordship in my life is not working. I need your lordship. It's a hard place for some of us to get to. And what we see from the story of Naaman as we think about it in ourselves is that humility is a prerequisite for salvation. I would be willing to bet, and I don't know everybody enough to say this to you, and I'm sorry if this is too far, but I would be willing to bet that there are those of us who have kept kind of Christianity at arm's length for a while. We've considered it, it's there, and maybe we even think one day I will. Or maybe we think, I know that I should take it more seriously, but one day I will. I wonder if that obstacle between you and just a full bore faith is an ego. Is an, I want to do this on my terms. I'm not ready to accept that lordship all the way. I still think that I'm a pretty good authority in my life. And as long as that exists, as long as we think our rivers back home are good enough, we can't take the steps that God wants us to take. Humility, coming to him humbly, is a prerequisite for salvation. The other thing that got in Naaman's way were his expectations. He said, you're not going to come out and talk to me? You want me to go dip in the river? That's it? You're not going to wave your hand? There's not going to be this big thing and this huge ceremony. I expect that I'd at least get a good prayer out of this. None of that's going to happen. And so often we bring our own expectations to God, and then when he doesn't meet the expectations that we've created in our own heads, we push him off because he's not the God who he said he is, when he never said he would do any of that stuff. Naaman wasn't given those expectations by other prophets who said, listen, when you get to Israel, this is how healings work. That's just what he conjured up. And so when it didn't go according to his plan that he created in his own head, he rejected the plan that God presented him with because it didn't meet his expectations. But if you examine them, he had no right to those expectations. And so often I think we push God away because he doesn't meet the expectations that we created. And here's how this works. We have a tendency, if you think about it, and you think about who God is, we have a tendency to remake God in our own image. For most of us, God is simply the best possible version of us. I think about the things that I value in me, and we assume that God must be those things. And we never do it intentionally. No one would admit to this. No one would be like, oh yeah, totally, I do that. But if you think about who you think God is and how you think he should respond to different situations, what you picture God as is the best possible version of you. It's this version of you that you'll probably never attain, but God is probably that. So then when stuff happens in our life, we think, how would the best possible version of me respond to this? Well, it would respond this way, and that's not how God is responding, so he's not fair. When the God in heaven said, hey, I never gave you those expectations. I never promised you that. When we enter into a season of pain and suffering, when something happens in our life that we feel like isn't fair. And we say a loving God would never let this happen. He let it happen to person after person after person in the Bible. He let it happen to his own son. He let David's infant son die. We can go through story after story after story in the Bible where people who loved God and served him well had to deal with incredible pain. So where are we getting the expectation that when I go to God, everything is going to be good? We made that up. When I go to God, everything is going to go well for me. I'm going to close the sale. I'm going to do the business. My kids are going to finally behave because I'm raising them according to the right standards. Who gave you that expectation? Where are we getting that? Now, the expectation that God gives us is that all things work out in eternity. And that one day when we meet him, everything will make sense. I am confident there are things that are happening even now that I do not understand and I can't pretend to explain. But here's what I trust. One day I'll get to look God in the eye and if I even still care about all the stuff that happened here, if I were to ask him, God, why'd you let this stuff happen? If he would explain it to me in my heavenly form, I would go, okay, that makes sense. Can I get back to worshiping you now? I think so often our expectations that we generate, that God never signed up for, keep us from going to him and knowing him fully. Even expectations on the other end of the pendulum. Sometimes our expectations are, I've done so little. I've known better and not responded to it properly for so long that there's no way that God could accept me. And we let those expectations of God's response keep us away from him when that's not at all what he says. It says in Luke 15 that he's the father that runs to us and waits for us to come back to him. So in the story of Naaman, we see a person like us who was in need of salvation. We see a person like us and like me who very often keeps his ego and his expectations as an obstacle between him and the God that he desperately needs. And my prayer for you, even this morning, even as I was kneeling and praying before I would come preach, is that God would give you the courage and the honesty to see where your ego and your expectations in your life, and in my life, this is a me too thing, are keeping us from knowing God the way he wants to be known. Help us to identify those. Give us the courage to move past those. And if we do that, what will be the result? Look at what Naaman did. I believe. I'm in. Take all my stuff. I don't need it anyways. Naaman's response after humility and receiving the salvation was a joyful and generous love. The result of humble acceptance is a joyful and generous love. It's a love so big and so generous that I have grace for you as I watch you struggle through life. I have grace for you as I see clearly that your ego is keeping you from knowing everything about God that you could know. You have grace for me as you see my wrong expectations keeping me from knowing God well because you know that you've been met there with grace too. We have this contagious joy when we accept love in that way. Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us in Matthew that we are to honor God, that we are to love people in such a way that others will see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. That without us ever telling them about our faith, they will see our faith lived out and go, there's something different about them and I want it. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we are led in a procession by Christ and that through us, one of my favorite phrases in the Bible, spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This thing that just wafts into the lives of others passively as we move through their life and they look at us and they see something that's different. You know what's supposed to be different? A joyful and generous love. You know how we come by that love? By humbling ourselves before God and freely receiving his salvation and his love and his affirmation every day. And then we move through life like Naaman did after he got healed. So my prayer for you is that if there are places in your life where either your ego or your expectations are keeping you from knowing God, from submitting to him, that you would have the courage to see those things. And then ultimately, my prayer for us is that we would move through life like Naaman did at the end of this story with a joyful and generous love of God and love for others. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are so grateful for you. We thank you for your word, for the Bible, for how rich it is, for everything that we can learn from it and see in it. God, I pray that you would help us to go and to read it on our own and to see the pages come to life and to, God, really study and invest in it. God, speak to us through your word even this week as we read it in the quiet of our own houses and offices. Father, I just pray that you would give us the courage, the clarity, the conviction to see where our ego, our expectations may be keeping us from you. If we see those, God, give us further courage to get them out of the way. And finally, Lord, let us love people with a generosity and a joy that can come only from you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this very hot July Sunday. Hopefully it'll cool down and we can get back outside soon. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. To know the Bible, to be around church culture at all, is to know some of the main characters of the Bible, some of the people that are a little bit more prominent in the Bible. Even if you've not spent any time in church at all, we've heard of David and of Moses and of Paul, but there are some other people in the Bible that give us great examples of behavior or character that we should emulate that are worth exploring. And so we're investing our summer series in looking at some of these heroes that are a little bit lesser known in the Bible. Now, full disclosure, when I told Jen, my wife, what I was going to be preaching about this week and who I was going to be preaching about, a guy named Naaman in 2 Kings 5. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in front of you. But we're going to be in 2 Kings 5 today looking at the story of Naaman. And so she pointed out, and I should tell you, that he is not really a hero. Okay? Like he's not, what he does isn't really great. So I told her what I was going to be preaching about and she goes, well, he's not really like that heroic. And I said, well, nobody cares. It's just like, it's just obscure heroes, but this is an obscure story. What's it matter? She was like, it matters. So if it matters to you, I apologize. I beg your forgiveness. All right. But I'm just not going to, I'm not going to check that box today. So this is more like an obscure story. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a lot from the example of Naaman. So if you look in second Kings chapter five, there is a general by the name of Naaman. He's the head general in the Syrian army, which was a really powerful army at this point in history. They're far more powerful than Israel. Israel is like a third world country at this point in history. They're really not impactful on the geopolitical scale. The Syrian army is, and Naaman is the general of this army. And so you have to figure, if you just think about in the ancient world ways to get famous, that pretty much the king in general is it. They didn't have Instagram. They didn't have any influencers back then. So like Naaman, that was all you got. So he had risen to prominence. He was at least regionally famous. If not, at the time, world famous. He was a heavy hitter. He was an important dude. And Naaman comes down with leprosy. We see leprosy through the Bible. It's in the Old Testament and it's in the New Testament. Leprosy was a disease that you got in your skin. I think you can still get it now. It's just we've fixed it. But you can still get it in your skin, and it begins to eat away at your skin, slowly but surely, killing you from the outside in. And to get leprosy was to receive a death sentence. If you contracted leprosy, somehow it was eventually going to eat away at you enough that it was going to kill you. Leprosy was certain death. And it didn't happen a lot in the upper echelons of the socioeconomic scale, but somehow or another, Naaman, maybe from his time spent out on the battlefield in foreign countries and things like that, Naaman contracted leprosy. And of course he feels like he's going to die. But on their last conquest through Israel, they brought back a little Jewish girl to serve Naaman's wife. And she hears that Naaman has leprosy, and she says in 2 Kings 5, she says, Oh, that my Lord would go, my Lord Naaman would go to Israel. There's a prophet there who can heal him. Now, she's talking about a man named Elisha. In the books of 1 and 2 Kings, there's two incredible prophets. I've said there's some of the most underrated figures in the Bible, Elijah and Elisha. One day I want to do a series through their lives, maybe next summer. It's just phenomenal stories. They were tremendous men of faith that God entrusted with tremendous power for the miracles that they would do. And apparently he had cured people before, even of leprosy. And so this little girl that they took back from Israel says, oh, that my Lord would go back to Israel and find Elisha, he could heal her. He could heal him. And so Naaman's wife goes to Naaman and says, hey, there's a prophet back in Israel that can heal you. Like, you should go back there. And so he decides to go. And I wonder, and I try to do this as I read stories in the Bible, and I would encourage you guys to do it too. Sometimes if we read stories in the Bible, if you were to open up your Bible and read 1 and 2 Kings, the stories move so fast. The narrative moves so quickly. There's so little nuance. It's just this happened, this happened, this happened, and then this is the end of the story. So I like to try to slow down and read the humanity into things and figure out what would I be thinking, what would I be feeling if I were in that situation. And I think that when we do this, when you'll read it on your own and you'll put your humanity into what's happening there, I think what you'll get is that the story starts to come alive for you a little bit. And so Naaman hears the testimony of this Hebrew girl and decides that he's going to travel hundreds of miles away to a third world country that's going to take him several weeks to do to go see a faith healer in the backwoods of Israel. Now what would it take for you to do that? If you got a diagnosis that nobody wants, it was a death sentence, you're definitely going to pass away. This is going to claim your life. But if you travel to the Dominican, to the back of a mountain there, there's a faith healer and he's going to make you feel better. How desperate would you have to be to go? Naaman went. He's not a believer. He doesn't believe in the Hebrew God. It's just a weird faith healer in the backwoods of a third world country, and he goes. And before he goes, what does he do? Naaman is so very American. He packs up all of his stuff, and he puts together a small fortune, some changes of clothes, which apparently are a big deal. Like if you wanted to be wealthy, have two jackets. So he puts together some change of clothes to offer to the person that's going to heal him and to the people around that person. He gathers together some livestock and some gold, and he takes a small fortune with him. Because when you get sick, what do we do? If you're diagnosed with something tough, what do you do? You marshal all your resources, you pull everything together, and you go to the best place that's going to treat you, and then you compensate them for their treatment. That's what Naaman's going to do. So he loads everything up, heads to Israel. He gets to Israel, and he tells his king he's going to go. He asks permission from the king of Syria, hey, there's a prophet in Israel, can I go see him? King of Syria says, yeah, sure, go ahead. Gives gives him a letter to carry with him to present. So he goes to Israel. He goes and he sees the king. And listen, what kind of a dude do you have to be to get the audience of a king when you just wander into a country? You have to be a big deal. So the king hears Naaman's here. Oh no, what does the general of the Syrian army want? And Naaman presents him with a letter. And the letter's from the king of Syria, and it says, be pleased to heal my servant Naaman of leprosy. And the Bible says that the king went and tore his clothes, because at this time in history, that's how you express anguish and sadness and despair and anxiety. And I've always wondered if these people had like spare, like tearing clothes that they got from Walmart. Like when I got sad, I would be like, time out. And then I would put on those things and probably pre-snip them and then tear them and then put on my nice kingly garb and be like, okay, that's terrible for those clothes. I don't know what he did. Maybe he just, he could tear outfits all he wanted. But he goes and he tears his clothes and he expresses this great sadness. Why has the king of Syria put this on me that he expects me to provoke him for war? Because it's an impossible task. I can't heal somebody from leprosy, much less the general of the most powerful army in the region right now. There's nothing I can do about this. This is a death sentence for him too. It's an excuse when Naaman goes there and he eventually dies because the king doesn't cure him. Then the Syrians can get ticked off at Israel and go sweeping through there again. And so the king, he's anxious. He is worried. He is in anguish. And word gets to Elisha, the chief prophet, that the king has gotten this letter. So he sends word to the king and he says, I've heard that you've torn your clothes. I hope it was the cheap ones that you got from Walmart. If you would just send Naaman to me, I'll take care of it. Send Naaman to me, I'll heal him. So the king says, okay, here's Naaman's address. You go and, or here's Elisha's address. You go and you see him. And I love how Naaman arrives. He goes to Elisha's house and it says, he arrived on his horses and chariots. So he brings his whole entourage with him. He arrives on his chariots. Nobody in Israel can afford a chariot. Israel has zero chariots. And so this is a huge deal. This is like when they line the streets for some political figure and on the line of Tahos come through and you're like, I don't know where, but somewhere in there, there's somebody that's important. So Naaman creates his own processional and arrives at the gate of Elisha's house, almost with this sense of, I'm here, congratulations. And he tells them, I'm here. And what does Elisha do? I love what Elisha does. What would you do? What would you do if one of the most famous people in the country showed up at your house, showed up at your office, and whoever works the front desk came to you, and they're like, excuse me, Nate, Peyton Manning's here to see you. What would you do? I don't know. I thought all week about who do I say that everybody recognizes as famous? I don't know what to say. Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, whoever you want, Justin Timberlake, take your pick. Somebody shows up, they're super famous and they want to talk to you. What would you do? I would be like, Aaron, Steve, Kyle, which is, that's the staff here. Sorry, I'm out. I got to go talk to them. Like, I got to, I got to go see them. I would, hello, I'm the senior pastor. It's good to meet you. I'm glad that you're here to see me. Right? Of course, we would soak that up, wouldn't we? What's Elisha do? He grabs an intern. Hey, name is at the gate. Would you go tell him that if he'll dip in the Jordan River seven times that he'll be healed and he'll be good to go? Like, what's Elisha working on? Like a proposal? Like, I'm busy. But he just says, hey, go tell Naaman if he'll dip in the river seven times he'll be healed. And so the intern goes down and tells this to Naaman. And this is how Naaman receives it. If you have a Bible, you can look in 2 Kings 5. I love what he does. Verse 10 says, and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. He doesn't even let him in. He's like, there's no reason for you to come in here and all that stuff. Just go to the Jordan River. You'll turned and went away in a rage. Naaman's ticked. He's ticked. I remember when I first got out of college, or when I was finishing up college, I sold cars. People don't know this about me, but I sold cars for like six months. And I was on the phone with a guy one day. He was a good old southern boy. And we were kind of going back and forth on the price of a truck. You know, he's got to ask for a price, and I've got to hang on. Let me go check with my manager, and I come back with the price. And it's a whole deal. It's real silly. And so we're going back and forth. And finally he goes, listen, son, am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? Because I need to be talking to the man. And I had to admit, I was not the man at Hayes Chrysler. Sir, you are talking to the boy. It was a very low moment in my life. If you know me well, you know that I need more of those and you do not feel sorry for me. And I had to admit, I'm not the decision maker here. That's what Naaman thought. Am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? He wanted to talk to the man. He wanted to be made over. He wanted to be fussed over. He wanted Elisha to come out and, oh, it's so great to have you. I'm honored to heal you. And then he wanted the chance after the healing to be able to offer his small fortune, right? He wanted to be able to offer a one-for-one exchange. None of us likes to get help without being able to reciprocate that help, without being able to feel like we in some way earned this or deserve this. He wanted to be able to compensate Elisha, and now he's robbed of that chance. He's not treated like he expects to be treated. Elisha is supposed to make this big scene and wave his hand over him, and I call on the name of the Lord and yada, yada. And he's like, no, just, you're good. Just see the water over there? Just go get in it. And he's going, I traveled hundreds of miles and brought all this stuff for this? You kidding me? I have rivers back home, and they're better than this backwoods river. And so he storms off. He takes his ball and goes home, and he sulks like a little kid. And a little while later, his servants go to him, and it's a loose paraphrase, but essentially they say, Naaman, what do you have to lose, man? You're out here. Just go do it. Just go do what he says. And I can imagine them saying, like, what's the worst that can happen? You get some Jordan River on you. You go home and you rinse off in the Farper. It'll be all right. Just do it. And so he goes after he's calmed down. He dips in the Jordan River, and he's healed of his leprosy. When he sees that he's healed of his leprosy, he's overjoyed. He rushes back to Elisha, and he tries to give him all the stuff. He tries to compensate him. Thank you. Here's this fortune that I brought. And Elisha's like, I don't need it. I didn't do that for your stuff, man. I just did that for you. God told me to heal you. I healed you. I don't need it. And he keeps trying to give it away to whoever will take it. And then a guy named Gehazi, one of Elisha's servants comes to him and he's like, actually, you know, on second thought, Elisha really does need the stuff. And Naaman gives him the stuff. And then Gehazi gets in trouble for taking the stuff. And that's a whole separate story if you keep reading on. But Naaman responds to this healing with a joyful and generous love. Here, here, take all my stuff. This was given to me. I want to be able to give this to you. And he leaves that space professing that there is one true God, and it is the God of Israel. We get a convert out of this interaction. Now, this is a good story, and it's a good one to unpack in the Old Testament. But how does it apply to us? I think we can begin to understand how it applies to us when we realize that leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. We see leprosy in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When we see it in the New Testament, generally Jesus is interacting with them. If you contracted leprosy, you were sent to a colony. You were quarantined. You were no longer allowed to interact with general society. You were unclean. You were sent to a colony, and you were sent there to die. Can you imagine how depressing leper colonies would be? And Jesus walked into these places and he touched and he touched and he touched and he healed and he healed and he healed in the same way that Jesus walks through a sinful world and he heals and he heals and he restores. The picture of leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. Leprosy was a disease that once you got it, it may have started small. In the story of Naaman, it says that he expected Elisha to come out and wave his hand over the place. So maybe leprosy was just starting to appear. Maybe it was on his arm and he could wrap it up. Maybe it was on his ribs and he could cover it up. Maybe it was in a place where if you looked at him, you didn't know that he had it, but he knew that he had it. And isn't that how sin works? When we have things in our lives that don't need to be there, sometimes we can cover it up. We can wrap it up. We can keep it from other people. And sin, just so we're clear, sometimes that word is misunderstood and it's used to make people feel guilty. But really, sin is anything that happens when we elevate our judgment in our life to equivocate God's judgment in our life. And when we say, no, God, I don't think that I want to do the thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do the thing that makes the most sense to me. That's sin. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like, whatever form that takes on. And when we get that, when we sin, just like leprosy, it is a disease that eats away at us and leads to certain death. Isn't this what Jesus, isn't this what God said in Genesis? He told Adam and Eve that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you will surely die. And they ate of it and they didn't drop dead. So either God's a liar or he's not talking about physical death. He's talking about a spiritual death. And what he's saying is, if you elevate your judgment to mine and you throw off my lordship in your life and you become your own little God, then you have eternally separated yourself from me. That's a spiritual death. So sin, just like leprosy, leads to a certain death. Leprosy leads to a physical death. Sin leads to a spiritual death. But there's a parallel there. And in this story, Naaman is healed, but we should think about it as salvation. Naaman seeks salvation. And to be healed for his salvation, he had to accept the word of God and be obedient and humble himself and go dip in a river that didn't make any sense. For us to receive salvation, spiritual healing from God, we place our faith in what Jesus did on the cross for us. And in some ways, sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But we accept that free gift from Jesus. As we move through the Christian life and we understand salvation is, yes, an event when we place our faith in Christ, but it's also this ongoing process that the Bible calls sanctification, which just means becoming more like God in character. And that to be sanctified, to become more like God in character, it's every day this decision to trust on God rather than ourselves. It's every day to trust in God's way rather than our way. It's every day to trust in his lordship rather than our lordship. It's the same decision that Naaman had to make every day as we seek this salvation, as we fight off sin. And so what we see in the story of Naaman and what makes it relevant to us is that the physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. The physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. It works the same way. Naaman needed salvation for a disease that would lead to certain death. We need salvation from a disease that will lead to certain spiritual death or eternal separation from God. And what's interesting to me about this and where the rubber really meets the road in this story is, if I were to take you back to Damascus, back to Syria, when Naaman contracted leprosy, and he were to ask you, I need to be healed, what do you think my biggest obstacles are between health and unhealth? What do you think are the biggest things I need to overcome to be healed and to live? We would probably look at external factors, wouldn't we? We would look at the distance between he and Elisha. We would look at the cost. We would look at the probability of it actually working. We would look at all these other external factors. But what we see when we look at the story of Naaman is that Naaman's biggest obstacles for healing were his ego and his expectations. They were internal factors. His biggest obstacles to being healed, to salvation, were his ego and his expectations. He wanted to compensate. He wanted it to be a one-for-one exchange. He wanted to be able to look at Elisha and say, you are going to give me this, and I'm going to give you this. I earned this. I deserve this. It makes sense for you to heal me. We're going to both benefit from this exchange. His ego said that he needed to be able to contribute to it. And isn't that how we work too? I've been in church long enough to hear a line several times talking to people who are considering coming to faith. And they'll say something like, I do think that I want to become a Christian. I do think I want to get back into the church thing, but I just got some stuff I need to clean up first. Or I'll talk to somebody who wants to be baptized. We're going to do a baptism service in September, by the way, so start thinking about whether or not you might want to be a part of that. I've talked with so many people who are thinking about being baptized, but they'll say, yeah, I want to do that, but I've got some things that I need to get in order before I do that. When we say that, what are we doing? Our egos are saying, yeah, I'm going to take that step, but when I do, I'm going to deserve it. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be on my terms. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be because I'm worthy of it. It's going to be because I've gotten through white-knuckle discipline myself in line enough that I feel like I can approach him with a pure heart. When I get baptized, I'm going to earn the right to be baptized. I'm going to bring something to that exchange. It's going to feel like I deserve this gift from God of salvation. When we know that we bring nothing to that exchange. We don't pay God for it. We don't compensate him for his son. We just get our ego out of the way and we accept it. See, to get healed of leprosy, you have to first admit that you have it and that you desperately need to be healed. To get rid of the sin that's in our life, to be aligned with our Creator, to experience salvation, we have to first come to a place where we admit, I'm broken and I need healing. And that's a really hard thing for some of us. We have to come to a place where we admit, my lordship in my life is not working. I need your lordship. It's a hard place for some of us to get to. And what we see from the story of Naaman as we think about it in ourselves is that humility is a prerequisite for salvation. I would be willing to bet, and I don't know everybody enough to say this to you, and I'm sorry if this is too far, but I would be willing to bet that there are those of us who have kept kind of Christianity at arm's length for a while. We've considered it, it's there, and maybe we even think one day I will. Or maybe we think, I know that I should take it more seriously, but one day I will. I wonder if that obstacle between you and just a full bore faith is an ego. Is an, I want to do this on my terms. I'm not ready to accept that lordship all the way. I still think that I'm a pretty good authority in my life. And as long as that exists, as long as we think our rivers back home are good enough, we can't take the steps that God wants us to take. Humility, coming to him humbly, is a prerequisite for salvation. The other thing that got in Naaman's way were his expectations. He said, you're not going to come out and talk to me? You want me to go dip in the river? That's it? You're not going to wave your hand? There's not going to be this big thing and this huge ceremony. I expect that I'd at least get a good prayer out of this. None of that's going to happen. And so often we bring our own expectations to God, and then when he doesn't meet the expectations that we've created in our own heads, we push him off because he's not the God who he said he is, when he never said he would do any of that stuff. Naaman wasn't given those expectations by other prophets who said, listen, when you get to Israel, this is how healings work. That's just what he conjured up. And so when it didn't go according to his plan that he created in his own head, he rejected the plan that God presented him with because it didn't meet his expectations. But if you examine them, he had no right to those expectations. And so often I think we push God away because he doesn't meet the expectations that we created. And here's how this works. We have a tendency, if you think about it, and you think about who God is, we have a tendency to remake God in our own image. For most of us, God is simply the best possible version of us. I think about the things that I value in me, and we assume that God must be those things. And we never do it intentionally. No one would admit to this. No one would be like, oh yeah, totally, I do that. But if you think about who you think God is and how you think he should respond to different situations, what you picture God as is the best possible version of you. It's this version of you that you'll probably never attain, but God is probably that. So then when stuff happens in our life, we think, how would the best possible version of me respond to this? Well, it would respond this way, and that's not how God is responding, so he's not fair. When the God in heaven said, hey, I never gave you those expectations. I never promised you that. When we enter into a season of pain and suffering, when something happens in our life that we feel like isn't fair. And we say a loving God would never let this happen. He let it happen to person after person after person in the Bible. He let it happen to his own son. He let David's infant son die. We can go through story after story after story in the Bible where people who loved God and served him well had to deal with incredible pain. So where are we getting the expectation that when I go to God, everything is going to be good? We made that up. When I go to God, everything is going to go well for me. I'm going to close the sale. I'm going to do the business. My kids are going to finally behave because I'm raising them according to the right standards. Who gave you that expectation? Where are we getting that? Now, the expectation that God gives us is that all things work out in eternity. And that one day when we meet him, everything will make sense. I am confident there are things that are happening even now that I do not understand and I can't pretend to explain. But here's what I trust. One day I'll get to look God in the eye and if I even still care about all the stuff that happened here, if I were to ask him, God, why'd you let this stuff happen? If he would explain it to me in my heavenly form, I would go, okay, that makes sense. Can I get back to worshiping you now? I think so often our expectations that we generate, that God never signed up for, keep us from going to him and knowing him fully. Even expectations on the other end of the pendulum. Sometimes our expectations are, I've done so little. I've known better and not responded to it properly for so long that there's no way that God could accept me. And we let those expectations of God's response keep us away from him when that's not at all what he says. It says in Luke 15 that he's the father that runs to us and waits for us to come back to him. So in the story of Naaman, we see a person like us who was in need of salvation. We see a person like us and like me who very often keeps his ego and his expectations as an obstacle between him and the God that he desperately needs. And my prayer for you, even this morning, even as I was kneeling and praying before I would come preach, is that God would give you the courage and the honesty to see where your ego and your expectations in your life, and in my life, this is a me too thing, are keeping us from knowing God the way he wants to be known. Help us to identify those. Give us the courage to move past those. And if we do that, what will be the result? Look at what Naaman did. I believe. I'm in. Take all my stuff. I don't need it anyways. Naaman's response after humility and receiving the salvation was a joyful and generous love. The result of humble acceptance is a joyful and generous love. It's a love so big and so generous that I have grace for you as I watch you struggle through life. I have grace for you as I see clearly that your ego is keeping you from knowing everything about God that you could know. You have grace for me as you see my wrong expectations keeping me from knowing God well because you know that you've been met there with grace too. We have this contagious joy when we accept love in that way. Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us in Matthew that we are to honor God, that we are to love people in such a way that others will see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. That without us ever telling them about our faith, they will see our faith lived out and go, there's something different about them and I want it. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we are led in a procession by Christ and that through us, one of my favorite phrases in the Bible, spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This thing that just wafts into the lives of others passively as we move through their life and they look at us and they see something that's different. You know what's supposed to be different? A joyful and generous love. You know how we come by that love? By humbling ourselves before God and freely receiving his salvation and his love and his affirmation every day. And then we move through life like Naaman did after he got healed. So my prayer for you is that if there are places in your life where either your ego or your expectations are keeping you from knowing God, from submitting to him, that you would have the courage to see those things. And then ultimately, my prayer for us is that we would move through life like Naaman did at the end of this story with a joyful and generous love of God and love for others. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are so grateful for you. We thank you for your word, for the Bible, for how rich it is, for everything that we can learn from it and see in it. God, I pray that you would help us to go and to read it on our own and to see the pages come to life and to, God, really study and invest in it. God, speak to us through your word even this week as we read it in the quiet of our own houses and offices. Father, I just pray that you would give us the courage, the clarity, the conviction to see where our ego, our expectations may be keeping us from you. If we see those, God, give us further courage to get them out of the way. And finally, Lord, let us love people with a generosity and a joy that can come only from you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this very hot July Sunday. Hopefully it'll cool down and we can get back outside soon. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. To know the Bible, to be around church culture at all, is to know some of the main characters of the Bible, some of the people that are a little bit more prominent in the Bible. Even if you've not spent any time in church at all, we've heard of David and of Moses and of Paul, but there are some other people in the Bible that give us great examples of behavior or character that we should emulate that are worth exploring. And so we're investing our summer series in looking at some of these heroes that are a little bit lesser known in the Bible. Now, full disclosure, when I told Jen, my wife, what I was going to be preaching about this week and who I was going to be preaching about, a guy named Naaman in 2 Kings 5. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in front of you. But we're going to be in 2 Kings 5 today looking at the story of Naaman. And so she pointed out, and I should tell you, that he is not really a hero. Okay? Like he's not, what he does isn't really great. So I told her what I was going to be preaching about and she goes, well, he's not really like that heroic. And I said, well, nobody cares. It's just like, it's just obscure heroes, but this is an obscure story. What's it matter? She was like, it matters. So if it matters to you, I apologize. I beg your forgiveness. All right. But I'm just not going to, I'm not going to check that box today. So this is more like an obscure story. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a lot from the example of Naaman. So if you look in second Kings chapter five, there is a general by the name of Naaman. He's the head general in the Syrian army, which was a really powerful army at this point in history. They're far more powerful than Israel. Israel is like a third world country at this point in history. They're really not impactful on the geopolitical scale. The Syrian army is, and Naaman is the general of this army. And so you have to figure, if you just think about in the ancient world ways to get famous, that pretty much the king in general is it. They didn't have Instagram. They didn't have any influencers back then. So like Naaman, that was all you got. So he had risen to prominence. He was at least regionally famous. If not, at the time, world famous. He was a heavy hitter. He was an important dude. And Naaman comes down with leprosy. We see leprosy through the Bible. It's in the Old Testament and it's in the New Testament. Leprosy was a disease that you got in your skin. I think you can still get it now. It's just we've fixed it. But you can still get it in your skin, and it begins to eat away at your skin, slowly but surely, killing you from the outside in. And to get leprosy was to receive a death sentence. If you contracted leprosy, somehow it was eventually going to eat away at you enough that it was going to kill you. Leprosy was certain death. And it didn't happen a lot in the upper echelons of the socioeconomic scale, but somehow or another, Naaman, maybe from his time spent out on the battlefield in foreign countries and things like that, Naaman contracted leprosy. And of course he feels like he's going to die. But on their last conquest through Israel, they brought back a little Jewish girl to serve Naaman's wife. And she hears that Naaman has leprosy, and she says in 2 Kings 5, she says, Oh, that my Lord would go, my Lord Naaman would go to Israel. There's a prophet there who can heal him. Now, she's talking about a man named Elisha. In the books of 1 and 2 Kings, there's two incredible prophets. I've said there's some of the most underrated figures in the Bible, Elijah and Elisha. One day I want to do a series through their lives, maybe next summer. It's just phenomenal stories. They were tremendous men of faith that God entrusted with tremendous power for the miracles that they would do. And apparently he had cured people before, even of leprosy. And so this little girl that they took back from Israel says, oh, that my Lord would go back to Israel and find Elisha, he could heal her. He could heal him. And so Naaman's wife goes to Naaman and says, hey, there's a prophet back in Israel that can heal you. Like, you should go back there. And so he decides to go. And I wonder, and I try to do this as I read stories in the Bible, and I would encourage you guys to do it too. Sometimes if we read stories in the Bible, if you were to open up your Bible and read 1 and 2 Kings, the stories move so fast. The narrative moves so quickly. There's so little nuance. It's just this happened, this happened, this happened, and then this is the end of the story. So I like to try to slow down and read the humanity into things and figure out what would I be thinking, what would I be feeling if I were in that situation. And I think that when we do this, when you'll read it on your own and you'll put your humanity into what's happening there, I think what you'll get is that the story starts to come alive for you a little bit. And so Naaman hears the testimony of this Hebrew girl and decides that he's going to travel hundreds of miles away to a third world country that's going to take him several weeks to do to go see a faith healer in the backwoods of Israel. Now what would it take for you to do that? If you got a diagnosis that nobody wants, it was a death sentence, you're definitely going to pass away. This is going to claim your life. But if you travel to the Dominican, to the back of a mountain there, there's a faith healer and he's going to make you feel better. How desperate would you have to be to go? Naaman went. He's not a believer. He doesn't believe in the Hebrew God. It's just a weird faith healer in the backwoods of a third world country, and he goes. And before he goes, what does he do? Naaman is so very American. He packs up all of his stuff, and he puts together a small fortune, some changes of clothes, which apparently are a big deal. Like if you wanted to be wealthy, have two jackets. So he puts together some change of clothes to offer to the person that's going to heal him and to the people around that person. He gathers together some livestock and some gold, and he takes a small fortune with him. Because when you get sick, what do we do? If you're diagnosed with something tough, what do you do? You marshal all your resources, you pull everything together, and you go to the best place that's going to treat you, and then you compensate them for their treatment. That's what Naaman's going to do. So he loads everything up, heads to Israel. He gets to Israel, and he tells his king he's going to go. He asks permission from the king of Syria, hey, there's a prophet in Israel, can I go see him? King of Syria says, yeah, sure, go ahead. Gives gives him a letter to carry with him to present. So he goes to Israel. He goes and he sees the king. And listen, what kind of a dude do you have to be to get the audience of a king when you just wander into a country? You have to be a big deal. So the king hears Naaman's here. Oh no, what does the general of the Syrian army want? And Naaman presents him with a letter. And the letter's from the king of Syria, and it says, be pleased to heal my servant Naaman of leprosy. And the Bible says that the king went and tore his clothes, because at this time in history, that's how you express anguish and sadness and despair and anxiety. And I've always wondered if these people had like spare, like tearing clothes that they got from Walmart. Like when I got sad, I would be like, time out. And then I would put on those things and probably pre-snip them and then tear them and then put on my nice kingly garb and be like, okay, that's terrible for those clothes. I don't know what he did. Maybe he just, he could tear outfits all he wanted. But he goes and he tears his clothes and he expresses this great sadness. Why has the king of Syria put this on me that he expects me to provoke him for war? Because it's an impossible task. I can't heal somebody from leprosy, much less the general of the most powerful army in the region right now. There's nothing I can do about this. This is a death sentence for him too. It's an excuse when Naaman goes there and he eventually dies because the king doesn't cure him. Then the Syrians can get ticked off at Israel and go sweeping through there again. And so the king, he's anxious. He is worried. He is in anguish. And word gets to Elisha, the chief prophet, that the king has gotten this letter. So he sends word to the king and he says, I've heard that you've torn your clothes. I hope it was the cheap ones that you got from Walmart. If you would just send Naaman to me, I'll take care of it. Send Naaman to me, I'll heal him. So the king says, okay, here's Naaman's address. You go and, or here's Elisha's address. You go and you see him. And I love how Naaman arrives. He goes to Elisha's house and it says, he arrived on his horses and chariots. So he brings his whole entourage with him. He arrives on his chariots. Nobody in Israel can afford a chariot. Israel has zero chariots. And so this is a huge deal. This is like when they line the streets for some political figure and on the line of Tahos come through and you're like, I don't know where, but somewhere in there, there's somebody that's important. So Naaman creates his own processional and arrives at the gate of Elisha's house, almost with this sense of, I'm here, congratulations. And he tells them, I'm here. And what does Elisha do? I love what Elisha does. What would you do? What would you do if one of the most famous people in the country showed up at your house, showed up at your office, and whoever works the front desk came to you, and they're like, excuse me, Nate, Peyton Manning's here to see you. What would you do? I don't know. I thought all week about who do I say that everybody recognizes as famous? I don't know what to say. Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, whoever you want, Justin Timberlake, take your pick. Somebody shows up, they're super famous and they want to talk to you. What would you do? I would be like, Aaron, Steve, Kyle, which is, that's the staff here. Sorry, I'm out. I got to go talk to them. Like, I got to, I got to go see them. I would, hello, I'm the senior pastor. It's good to meet you. I'm glad that you're here to see me. Right? Of course, we would soak that up, wouldn't we? What's Elisha do? He grabs an intern. Hey, name is at the gate. Would you go tell him that if he'll dip in the Jordan River seven times that he'll be healed and he'll be good to go? Like, what's Elisha working on? Like a proposal? Like, I'm busy. But he just says, hey, go tell Naaman if he'll dip in the river seven times he'll be healed. And so the intern goes down and tells this to Naaman. And this is how Naaman receives it. If you have a Bible, you can look in 2 Kings 5. I love what he does. Verse 10 says, and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. He doesn't even let him in. He's like, there's no reason for you to come in here and all that stuff. Just go to the Jordan River. You'll turned and went away in a rage. Naaman's ticked. He's ticked. I remember when I first got out of college, or when I was finishing up college, I sold cars. People don't know this about me, but I sold cars for like six months. And I was on the phone with a guy one day. He was a good old southern boy. And we were kind of going back and forth on the price of a truck. You know, he's got to ask for a price, and I've got to hang on. Let me go check with my manager, and I come back with the price. And it's a whole deal. It's real silly. And so we're going back and forth. And finally he goes, listen, son, am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? Because I need to be talking to the man. And I had to admit, I was not the man at Hayes Chrysler. Sir, you are talking to the boy. It was a very low moment in my life. If you know me well, you know that I need more of those and you do not feel sorry for me. And I had to admit, I'm not the decision maker here. That's what Naaman thought. Am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? He wanted to talk to the man. He wanted to be made over. He wanted to be fussed over. He wanted Elisha to come out and, oh, it's so great to have you. I'm honored to heal you. And then he wanted the chance after the healing to be able to offer his small fortune, right? He wanted to be able to offer a one-for-one exchange. None of us likes to get help without being able to reciprocate that help, without being able to feel like we in some way earned this or deserve this. He wanted to be able to compensate Elisha, and now he's robbed of that chance. He's not treated like he expects to be treated. Elisha is supposed to make this big scene and wave his hand over him, and I call on the name of the Lord and yada, yada. And he's like, no, just, you're good. Just see the water over there? Just go get in it. And he's going, I traveled hundreds of miles and brought all this stuff for this? You kidding me? I have rivers back home, and they're better than this backwoods river. And so he storms off. He takes his ball and goes home, and he sulks like a little kid. And a little while later, his servants go to him, and it's a loose paraphrase, but essentially they say, Naaman, what do you have to lose, man? You're out here. Just go do it. Just go do what he says. And I can imagine them saying, like, what's the worst that can happen? You get some Jordan River on you. You go home and you rinse off in the Farper. It'll be all right. Just do it. And so he goes after he's calmed down. He dips in the Jordan River, and he's healed of his leprosy. When he sees that he's healed of his leprosy, he's overjoyed. He rushes back to Elisha, and he tries to give him all the stuff. He tries to compensate him. Thank you. Here's this fortune that I brought. And Elisha's like, I don't need it. I didn't do that for your stuff, man. I just did that for you. God told me to heal you. I healed you. I don't need it. And he keeps trying to give it away to whoever will take it. And then a guy named Gehazi, one of Elisha's servants comes to him and he's like, actually, you know, on second thought, Elisha really does need the stuff. And Naaman gives him the stuff. And then Gehazi gets in trouble for taking the stuff. And that's a whole separate story if you keep reading on. But Naaman responds to this healing with a joyful and generous love. Here, here, take all my stuff. This was given to me. I want to be able to give this to you. And he leaves that space professing that there is one true God, and it is the God of Israel. We get a convert out of this interaction. Now, this is a good story, and it's a good one to unpack in the Old Testament. But how does it apply to us? I think we can begin to understand how it applies to us when we realize that leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. We see leprosy in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When we see it in the New Testament, generally Jesus is interacting with them. If you contracted leprosy, you were sent to a colony. You were quarantined. You were no longer allowed to interact with general society. You were unclean. You were sent to a colony, and you were sent there to die. Can you imagine how depressing leper colonies would be? And Jesus walked into these places and he touched and he touched and he touched and he healed and he healed and he healed in the same way that Jesus walks through a sinful world and he heals and he heals and he restores. The picture of leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. Leprosy was a disease that once you got it, it may have started small. In the story of Naaman, it says that he expected Elisha to come out and wave his hand over the place. So maybe leprosy was just starting to appear. Maybe it was on his arm and he could wrap it up. Maybe it was on his ribs and he could cover it up. Maybe it was in a place where if you looked at him, you didn't know that he had it, but he knew that he had it. And isn't that how sin works? When we have things in our lives that don't need to be there, sometimes we can cover it up. We can wrap it up. We can keep it from other people. And sin, just so we're clear, sometimes that word is misunderstood and it's used to make people feel guilty. But really, sin is anything that happens when we elevate our judgment in our life to equivocate God's judgment in our life. And when we say, no, God, I don't think that I want to do the thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do the thing that makes the most sense to me. That's sin. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like, whatever form that takes on. And when we get that, when we sin, just like leprosy, it is a disease that eats away at us and leads to certain death. Isn't this what Jesus, isn't this what God said in Genesis? He told Adam and Eve that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you will surely die. And they ate of it and they didn't drop dead. So either God's a liar or he's not talking about physical death. He's talking about a spiritual death. And what he's saying is, if you elevate your judgment to mine and you throw off my lordship in your life and you become your own little God, then you have eternally separated yourself from me. That's a spiritual death. So sin, just like leprosy, leads to a certain death. Leprosy leads to a physical death. Sin leads to a spiritual death. But there's a parallel there. And in this story, Naaman is healed, but we should think about it as salvation. Naaman seeks salvation. And to be healed for his salvation, he had to accept the word of God and be obedient and humble himself and go dip in a river that didn't make any sense. For us to receive salvation, spiritual healing from God, we place our faith in what Jesus did on the cross for us. And in some ways, sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But we accept that free gift from Jesus. As we move through the Christian life and we understand salvation is, yes, an event when we place our faith in Christ, but it's also this ongoing process that the Bible calls sanctification, which just means becoming more like God in character. And that to be sanctified, to become more like God in character, it's every day this decision to trust on God rather than ourselves. It's every day to trust in God's way rather than our way. It's every day to trust in his lordship rather than our lordship. It's the same decision that Naaman had to make every day as we seek this salvation, as we fight off sin. And so what we see in the story of Naaman and what makes it relevant to us is that the physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. The physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. It works the same way. Naaman needed salvation for a disease that would lead to certain death. We need salvation from a disease that will lead to certain spiritual death or eternal separation from God. And what's interesting to me about this and where the rubber really meets the road in this story is, if I were to take you back to Damascus, back to Syria, when Naaman contracted leprosy, and he were to ask you, I need to be healed, what do you think my biggest obstacles are between health and unhealth? What do you think are the biggest things I need to overcome to be healed and to live? We would probably look at external factors, wouldn't we? We would look at the distance between he and Elisha. We would look at the cost. We would look at the probability of it actually working. We would look at all these other external factors. But what we see when we look at the story of Naaman is that Naaman's biggest obstacles for healing were his ego and his expectations. They were internal factors. His biggest obstacles to being healed, to salvation, were his ego and his expectations. He wanted to compensate. He wanted it to be a one-for-one exchange. He wanted to be able to look at Elisha and say, you are going to give me this, and I'm going to give you this. I earned this. I deserve this. It makes sense for you to heal me. We're going to both benefit from this exchange. His ego said that he needed to be able to contribute to it. And isn't that how we work too? I've been in church long enough to hear a line several times talking to people who are considering coming to faith. And they'll say something like, I do think that I want to become a Christian. I do think I want to get back into the church thing, but I just got some stuff I need to clean up first. Or I'll talk to somebody who wants to be baptized. We're going to do a baptism service in September, by the way, so start thinking about whether or not you might want to be a part of that. I've talked with so many people who are thinking about being baptized, but they'll say, yeah, I want to do that, but I've got some things that I need to get in order before I do that. When we say that, what are we doing? Our egos are saying, yeah, I'm going to take that step, but when I do, I'm going to deserve it. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be on my terms. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be because I'm worthy of it. It's going to be because I've gotten through white-knuckle discipline myself in line enough that I feel like I can approach him with a pure heart. When I get baptized, I'm going to earn the right to be baptized. I'm going to bring something to that exchange. It's going to feel like I deserve this gift from God of salvation. When we know that we bring nothing to that exchange. We don't pay God for it. We don't compensate him for his son. We just get our ego out of the way and we accept it. See, to get healed of leprosy, you have to first admit that you have it and that you desperately need to be healed. To get rid of the sin that's in our life, to be aligned with our Creator, to experience salvation, we have to first come to a place where we admit, I'm broken and I need healing. And that's a really hard thing for some of us. We have to come to a place where we admit, my lordship in my life is not working. I need your lordship. It's a hard place for some of us to get to. And what we see from the story of Naaman as we think about it in ourselves is that humility is a prerequisite for salvation. I would be willing to bet, and I don't know everybody enough to say this to you, and I'm sorry if this is too far, but I would be willing to bet that there are those of us who have kept kind of Christianity at arm's length for a while. We've considered it, it's there, and maybe we even think one day I will. Or maybe we think, I know that I should take it more seriously, but one day I will. I wonder if that obstacle between you and just a full bore faith is an ego. Is an, I want to do this on my terms. I'm not ready to accept that lordship all the way. I still think that I'm a pretty good authority in my life. And as long as that exists, as long as we think our rivers back home are good enough, we can't take the steps that God wants us to take. Humility, coming to him humbly, is a prerequisite for salvation. The other thing that got in Naaman's way were his expectations. He said, you're not going to come out and talk to me? You want me to go dip in the river? That's it? You're not going to wave your hand? There's not going to be this big thing and this huge ceremony. I expect that I'd at least get a good prayer out of this. None of that's going to happen. And so often we bring our own expectations to God, and then when he doesn't meet the expectations that we've created in our own heads, we push him off because he's not the God who he said he is, when he never said he would do any of that stuff. Naaman wasn't given those expectations by other prophets who said, listen, when you get to Israel, this is how healings work. That's just what he conjured up. And so when it didn't go according to his plan that he created in his own head, he rejected the plan that God presented him with because it didn't meet his expectations. But if you examine them, he had no right to those expectations. And so often I think we push God away because he doesn't meet the expectations that we created. And here's how this works. We have a tendency, if you think about it, and you think about who God is, we have a tendency to remake God in our own image. For most of us, God is simply the best possible version of us. I think about the things that I value in me, and we assume that God must be those things. And we never do it intentionally. No one would admit to this. No one would be like, oh yeah, totally, I do that. But if you think about who you think God is and how you think he should respond to different situations, what you picture God as is the best possible version of you. It's this version of you that you'll probably never attain, but God is probably that. So then when stuff happens in our life, we think, how would the best possible version of me respond to this? Well, it would respond this way, and that's not how God is responding, so he's not fair. When the God in heaven said, hey, I never gave you those expectations. I never promised you that. When we enter into a season of pain and suffering, when something happens in our life that we feel like isn't fair. And we say a loving God would never let this happen. He let it happen to person after person after person in the Bible. He let it happen to his own son. He let David's infant son die. We can go through story after story after story in the Bible where people who loved God and served him well had to deal with incredible pain. So where are we getting the expectation that when I go to God, everything is going to be good? We made that up. When I go to God, everything is going to go well for me. I'm going to close the sale. I'm going to do the business. My kids are going to finally behave because I'm raising them according to the right standards. Who gave you that expectation? Where are we getting that? Now, the expectation that God gives us is that all things work out in eternity. And that one day when we meet him, everything will make sense. I am confident there are things that are happening even now that I do not understand and I can't pretend to explain. But here's what I trust. One day I'll get to look God in the eye and if I even still care about all the stuff that happened here, if I were to ask him, God, why'd you let this stuff happen? If he would explain it to me in my heavenly form, I would go, okay, that makes sense. Can I get back to worshiping you now? I think so often our expectations that we generate, that God never signed up for, keep us from going to him and knowing him fully. Even expectations on the other end of the pendulum. Sometimes our expectations are, I've done so little. I've known better and not responded to it properly for so long that there's no way that God could accept me. And we let those expectations of God's response keep us away from him when that's not at all what he says. It says in Luke 15 that he's the father that runs to us and waits for us to come back to him. So in the story of Naaman, we see a person like us who was in need of salvation. We see a person like us and like me who very often keeps his ego and his expectations as an obstacle between him and the God that he desperately needs. And my prayer for you, even this morning, even as I was kneeling and praying before I would come preach, is that God would give you the courage and the honesty to see where your ego and your expectations in your life, and in my life, this is a me too thing, are keeping us from knowing God the way he wants to be known. Help us to identify those. Give us the courage to move past those. And if we do that, what will be the result? Look at what Naaman did. I believe. I'm in. Take all my stuff. I don't need it anyways. Naaman's response after humility and receiving the salvation was a joyful and generous love. The result of humble acceptance is a joyful and generous love. It's a love so big and so generous that I have grace for you as I watch you struggle through life. I have grace for you as I see clearly that your ego is keeping you from knowing everything about God that you could know. You have grace for me as you see my wrong expectations keeping me from knowing God well because you know that you've been met there with grace too. We have this contagious joy when we accept love in that way. Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us in Matthew that we are to honor God, that we are to love people in such a way that others will see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. That without us ever telling them about our faith, they will see our faith lived out and go, there's something different about them and I want it. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we are led in a procession by Christ and that through us, one of my favorite phrases in the Bible, spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This thing that just wafts into the lives of others passively as we move through their life and they look at us and they see something that's different. You know what's supposed to be different? A joyful and generous love. You know how we come by that love? By humbling ourselves before God and freely receiving his salvation and his love and his affirmation every day. And then we move through life like Naaman did after he got healed. So my prayer for you is that if there are places in your life where either your ego or your expectations are keeping you from knowing God, from submitting to him, that you would have the courage to see those things. And then ultimately, my prayer for us is that we would move through life like Naaman did at the end of this story with a joyful and generous love of God and love for others. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are so grateful for you. We thank you for your word, for the Bible, for how rich it is, for everything that we can learn from it and see in it. God, I pray that you would help us to go and to read it on our own and to see the pages come to life and to, God, really study and invest in it. God, speak to us through your word even this week as we read it in the quiet of our own houses and offices. Father, I just pray that you would give us the courage, the clarity, the conviction to see where our ego, our expectations may be keeping us from you. If we see those, God, give us further courage to get them out of the way. And finally, Lord, let us love people with a generosity and a joy that can come only from you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this very hot July Sunday. Hopefully it'll cool down and we can get back outside soon. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. To know the Bible, to be around church culture at all, is to know some of the main characters of the Bible, some of the people that are a little bit more prominent in the Bible. Even if you've not spent any time in church at all, we've heard of David and of Moses and of Paul, but there are some other people in the Bible that give us great examples of behavior or character that we should emulate that are worth exploring. And so we're investing our summer series in looking at some of these heroes that are a little bit lesser known in the Bible. Now, full disclosure, when I told Jen, my wife, what I was going to be preaching about this week and who I was going to be preaching about, a guy named Naaman in 2 Kings 5. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in front of you. But we're going to be in 2 Kings 5 today looking at the story of Naaman. And so she pointed out, and I should tell you, that he is not really a hero. Okay? Like he's not, what he does isn't really great. So I told her what I was going to be preaching about and she goes, well, he's not really like that heroic. And I said, well, nobody cares. It's just like, it's just obscure heroes, but this is an obscure story. What's it matter? She was like, it matters. So if it matters to you, I apologize. I beg your forgiveness. All right. But I'm just not going to, I'm not going to check that box today. So this is more like an obscure story. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a lot from the example of Naaman. So if you look in second Kings chapter five, there is a general by the name of Naaman. He's the head general in the Syrian army, which was a really powerful army at this point in history. They're far more powerful than Israel. Israel is like a third world country at this point in history. They're really not impactful on the geopolitical scale. The Syrian army is, and Naaman is the general of this army. And so you have to figure, if you just think about in the ancient world ways to get famous, that pretty much the king in general is it. They didn't have Instagram. They didn't have any influencers back then. So like Naaman, that was all you got. So he had risen to prominence. He was at least regionally famous. If not, at the time, world famous. He was a heavy hitter. He was an important dude. And Naaman comes down with leprosy. We see leprosy through the Bible. It's in the Old Testament and it's in the New Testament. Leprosy was a disease that you got in your skin. I think you can still get it now. It's just we've fixed it. But you can still get it in your skin, and it begins to eat away at your skin, slowly but surely, killing you from the outside in. And to get leprosy was to receive a death sentence. If you contracted leprosy, somehow it was eventually going to eat away at you enough that it was going to kill you. Leprosy was certain death. And it didn't happen a lot in the upper echelons of the socioeconomic scale, but somehow or another, Naaman, maybe from his time spent out on the battlefield in foreign countries and things like that, Naaman contracted leprosy. And of course he feels like he's going to die. But on their last conquest through Israel, they brought back a little Jewish girl to serve Naaman's wife. And she hears that Naaman has leprosy, and she says in 2 Kings 5, she says, Oh, that my Lord would go, my Lord Naaman would go to Israel. There's a prophet there who can heal him. Now, she's talking about a man named Elisha. In the books of 1 and 2 Kings, there's two incredible prophets. I've said there's some of the most underrated figures in the Bible, Elijah and Elisha. One day I want to do a series through their lives, maybe next summer. It's just phenomenal stories. They were tremendous men of faith that God entrusted with tremendous power for the miracles that they would do. And apparently he had cured people before, even of leprosy. And so this little girl that they took back from Israel says, oh, that my Lord would go back to Israel and find Elisha, he could heal her. He could heal him. And so Naaman's wife goes to Naaman and says, hey, there's a prophet back in Israel that can heal you. Like, you should go back there. And so he decides to go. And I wonder, and I try to do this as I read stories in the Bible, and I would encourage you guys to do it too. Sometimes if we read stories in the Bible, if you were to open up your Bible and read 1 and 2 Kings, the stories move so fast. The narrative moves so quickly. There's so little nuance. It's just this happened, this happened, this happened, and then this is the end of the story. So I like to try to slow down and read the humanity into things and figure out what would I be thinking, what would I be feeling if I were in that situation. And I think that when we do this, when you'll read it on your own and you'll put your humanity into what's happening there, I think what you'll get is that the story starts to come alive for you a little bit. And so Naaman hears the testimony of this Hebrew girl and decides that he's going to travel hundreds of miles away to a third world country that's going to take him several weeks to do to go see a faith healer in the backwoods of Israel. Now what would it take for you to do that? If you got a diagnosis that nobody wants, it was a death sentence, you're definitely going to pass away. This is going to claim your life. But if you travel to the Dominican, to the back of a mountain there, there's a faith healer and he's going to make you feel better. How desperate would you have to be to go? Naaman went. He's not a believer. He doesn't believe in the Hebrew God. It's just a weird faith healer in the backwoods of a third world country, and he goes. And before he goes, what does he do? Naaman is so very American. He packs up all of his stuff, and he puts together a small fortune, some changes of clothes, which apparently are a big deal. Like if you wanted to be wealthy, have two jackets. So he puts together some change of clothes to offer to the person that's going to heal him and to the people around that person. He gathers together some livestock and some gold, and he takes a small fortune with him. Because when you get sick, what do we do? If you're diagnosed with something tough, what do you do? You marshal all your resources, you pull everything together, and you go to the best place that's going to treat you, and then you compensate them for their treatment. That's what Naaman's going to do. So he loads everything up, heads to Israel. He gets to Israel, and he tells his king he's going to go. He asks permission from the king of Syria, hey, there's a prophet in Israel, can I go see him? King of Syria says, yeah, sure, go ahead. Gives gives him a letter to carry with him to present. So he goes to Israel. He goes and he sees the king. And listen, what kind of a dude do you have to be to get the audience of a king when you just wander into a country? You have to be a big deal. So the king hears Naaman's here. Oh no, what does the general of the Syrian army want? And Naaman presents him with a letter. And the letter's from the king of Syria, and it says, be pleased to heal my servant Naaman of leprosy. And the Bible says that the king went and tore his clothes, because at this time in history, that's how you express anguish and sadness and despair and anxiety. And I've always wondered if these people had like spare, like tearing clothes that they got from Walmart. Like when I got sad, I would be like, time out. And then I would put on those things and probably pre-snip them and then tear them and then put on my nice kingly garb and be like, okay, that's terrible for those clothes. I don't know what he did. Maybe he just, he could tear outfits all he wanted. But he goes and he tears his clothes and he expresses this great sadness. Why has the king of Syria put this on me that he expects me to provoke him for war? Because it's an impossible task. I can't heal somebody from leprosy, much less the general of the most powerful army in the region right now. There's nothing I can do about this. This is a death sentence for him too. It's an excuse when Naaman goes there and he eventually dies because the king doesn't cure him. Then the Syrians can get ticked off at Israel and go sweeping through there again. And so the king, he's anxious. He is worried. He is in anguish. And word gets to Elisha, the chief prophet, that the king has gotten this letter. So he sends word to the king and he says, I've heard that you've torn your clothes. I hope it was the cheap ones that you got from Walmart. If you would just send Naaman to me, I'll take care of it. Send Naaman to me, I'll heal him. So the king says, okay, here's Naaman's address. You go and, or here's Elisha's address. You go and you see him. And I love how Naaman arrives. He goes to Elisha's house and it says, he arrived on his horses and chariots. So he brings his whole entourage with him. He arrives on his chariots. Nobody in Israel can afford a chariot. Israel has zero chariots. And so this is a huge deal. This is like when they line the streets for some political figure and on the line of Tahos come through and you're like, I don't know where, but somewhere in there, there's somebody that's important. So Naaman creates his own processional and arrives at the gate of Elisha's house, almost with this sense of, I'm here, congratulations. And he tells them, I'm here. And what does Elisha do? I love what Elisha does. What would you do? What would you do if one of the most famous people in the country showed up at your house, showed up at your office, and whoever works the front desk came to you, and they're like, excuse me, Nate, Peyton Manning's here to see you. What would you do? I don't know. I thought all week about who do I say that everybody recognizes as famous? I don't know what to say. Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, whoever you want, Justin Timberlake, take your pick. Somebody shows up, they're super famous and they want to talk to you. What would you do? I would be like, Aaron, Steve, Kyle, which is, that's the staff here. Sorry, I'm out. I got to go talk to them. Like, I got to, I got to go see them. I would, hello, I'm the senior pastor. It's good to meet you. I'm glad that you're here to see me. Right? Of course, we would soak that up, wouldn't we? What's Elisha do? He grabs an intern. Hey, name is at the gate. Would you go tell him that if he'll dip in the Jordan River seven times that he'll be healed and he'll be good to go? Like, what's Elisha working on? Like a proposal? Like, I'm busy. But he just says, hey, go tell Naaman if he'll dip in the river seven times he'll be healed. And so the intern goes down and tells this to Naaman. And this is how Naaman receives it. If you have a Bible, you can look in 2 Kings 5. I love what he does. Verse 10 says, and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. He doesn't even let him in. He's like, there's no reason for you to come in here and all that stuff. Just go to the Jordan River. You'll turned and went away in a rage. Naaman's ticked. He's ticked. I remember when I first got out of college, or when I was finishing up college, I sold cars. People don't know this about me, but I sold cars for like six months. And I was on the phone with a guy one day. He was a good old southern boy. And we were kind of going back and forth on the price of a truck. You know, he's got to ask for a price, and I've got to hang on. Let me go check with my manager, and I come back with the price. And it's a whole deal. It's real silly. And so we're going back and forth. And finally he goes, listen, son, am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? Because I need to be talking to the man. And I had to admit, I was not the man at Hayes Chrysler. Sir, you are talking to the boy. It was a very low moment in my life. If you know me well, you know that I need more of those and you do not feel sorry for me. And I had to admit, I'm not the decision maker here. That's what Naaman thought. Am I talking to the man or am I talking to the boy? He wanted to talk to the man. He wanted to be made over. He wanted to be fussed over. He wanted Elisha to come out and, oh, it's so great to have you. I'm honored to heal you. And then he wanted the chance after the healing to be able to offer his small fortune, right? He wanted to be able to offer a one-for-one exchange. None of us likes to get help without being able to reciprocate that help, without being able to feel like we in some way earned this or deserve this. He wanted to be able to compensate Elisha, and now he's robbed of that chance. He's not treated like he expects to be treated. Elisha is supposed to make this big scene and wave his hand over him, and I call on the name of the Lord and yada, yada. And he's like, no, just, you're good. Just see the water over there? Just go get in it. And he's going, I traveled hundreds of miles and brought all this stuff for this? You kidding me? I have rivers back home, and they're better than this backwoods river. And so he storms off. He takes his ball and goes home, and he sulks like a little kid. And a little while later, his servants go to him, and it's a loose paraphrase, but essentially they say, Naaman, what do you have to lose, man? You're out here. Just go do it. Just go do what he says. And I can imagine them saying, like, what's the worst that can happen? You get some Jordan River on you. You go home and you rinse off in the Farper. It'll be all right. Just do it. And so he goes after he's calmed down. He dips in the Jordan River, and he's healed of his leprosy. When he sees that he's healed of his leprosy, he's overjoyed. He rushes back to Elisha, and he tries to give him all the stuff. He tries to compensate him. Thank you. Here's this fortune that I brought. And Elisha's like, I don't need it. I didn't do that for your stuff, man. I just did that for you. God told me to heal you. I healed you. I don't need it. And he keeps trying to give it away to whoever will take it. And then a guy named Gehazi, one of Elisha's servants comes to him and he's like, actually, you know, on second thought, Elisha really does need the stuff. And Naaman gives him the stuff. And then Gehazi gets in trouble for taking the stuff. And that's a whole separate story if you keep reading on. But Naaman responds to this healing with a joyful and generous love. Here, here, take all my stuff. This was given to me. I want to be able to give this to you. And he leaves that space professing that there is one true God, and it is the God of Israel. We get a convert out of this interaction. Now, this is a good story, and it's a good one to unpack in the Old Testament. But how does it apply to us? I think we can begin to understand how it applies to us when we realize that leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. We see leprosy in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When we see it in the New Testament, generally Jesus is interacting with them. If you contracted leprosy, you were sent to a colony. You were quarantined. You were no longer allowed to interact with general society. You were unclean. You were sent to a colony, and you were sent there to die. Can you imagine how depressing leper colonies would be? And Jesus walked into these places and he touched and he touched and he touched and he healed and he healed and he healed in the same way that Jesus walks through a sinful world and he heals and he heals and he restores. The picture of leprosy in the Bible is always a picture of sin. Leprosy was a disease that once you got it, it may have started small. In the story of Naaman, it says that he expected Elisha to come out and wave his hand over the place. So maybe leprosy was just starting to appear. Maybe it was on his arm and he could wrap it up. Maybe it was on his ribs and he could cover it up. Maybe it was in a place where if you looked at him, you didn't know that he had it, but he knew that he had it. And isn't that how sin works? When we have things in our lives that don't need to be there, sometimes we can cover it up. We can wrap it up. We can keep it from other people. And sin, just so we're clear, sometimes that word is misunderstood and it's used to make people feel guilty. But really, sin is anything that happens when we elevate our judgment in our life to equivocate God's judgment in our life. And when we say, no, God, I don't think that I want to do the thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do the thing that makes the most sense to me. That's sin. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like, whatever form that takes on. And when we get that, when we sin, just like leprosy, it is a disease that eats away at us and leads to certain death. Isn't this what Jesus, isn't this what God said in Genesis? He told Adam and Eve that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you will surely die. And they ate of it and they didn't drop dead. So either God's a liar or he's not talking about physical death. He's talking about a spiritual death. And what he's saying is, if you elevate your judgment to mine and you throw off my lordship in your life and you become your own little God, then you have eternally separated yourself from me. That's a spiritual death. So sin, just like leprosy, leads to a certain death. Leprosy leads to a physical death. Sin leads to a spiritual death. But there's a parallel there. And in this story, Naaman is healed, but we should think about it as salvation. Naaman seeks salvation. And to be healed for his salvation, he had to accept the word of God and be obedient and humble himself and go dip in a river that didn't make any sense. For us to receive salvation, spiritual healing from God, we place our faith in what Jesus did on the cross for us. And in some ways, sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But we accept that free gift from Jesus. As we move through the Christian life and we understand salvation is, yes, an event when we place our faith in Christ, but it's also this ongoing process that the Bible calls sanctification, which just means becoming more like God in character. And that to be sanctified, to become more like God in character, it's every day this decision to trust on God rather than ourselves. It's every day to trust in God's way rather than our way. It's every day to trust in his lordship rather than our lordship. It's the same decision that Naaman had to make every day as we seek this salvation, as we fight off sin. And so what we see in the story of Naaman and what makes it relevant to us is that the physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. The physical healing of leprosy is a picture of our spiritual healing from sin. It works the same way. Naaman needed salvation for a disease that would lead to certain death. We need salvation from a disease that will lead to certain spiritual death or eternal separation from God. And what's interesting to me about this and where the rubber really meets the road in this story is, if I were to take you back to Damascus, back to Syria, when Naaman contracted leprosy, and he were to ask you, I need to be healed, what do you think my biggest obstacles are between health and unhealth? What do you think are the biggest things I need to overcome to be healed and to live? We would probably look at external factors, wouldn't we? We would look at the distance between he and Elisha. We would look at the cost. We would look at the probability of it actually working. We would look at all these other external factors. But what we see when we look at the story of Naaman is that Naaman's biggest obstacles for healing were his ego and his expectations. They were internal factors. His biggest obstacles to being healed, to salvation, were his ego and his expectations. He wanted to compensate. He wanted it to be a one-for-one exchange. He wanted to be able to look at Elisha and say, you are going to give me this, and I'm going to give you this. I earned this. I deserve this. It makes sense for you to heal me. We're going to both benefit from this exchange. His ego said that he needed to be able to contribute to it. And isn't that how we work too? I've been in church long enough to hear a line several times talking to people who are considering coming to faith. And they'll say something like, I do think that I want to become a Christian. I do think I want to get back into the church thing, but I just got some stuff I need to clean up first. Or I'll talk to somebody who wants to be baptized. We're going to do a baptism service in September, by the way, so start thinking about whether or not you might want to be a part of that. I've talked with so many people who are thinking about being baptized, but they'll say, yeah, I want to do that, but I've got some things that I need to get in order before I do that. When we say that, what are we doing? Our egos are saying, yeah, I'm going to take that step, but when I do, I'm going to deserve it. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be on my terms. When I come to Jesus, it's going to be because I'm worthy of it. It's going to be because I've gotten through white-knuckle discipline myself in line enough that I feel like I can approach him with a pure heart. When I get baptized, I'm going to earn the right to be baptized. I'm going to bring something to that exchange. It's going to feel like I deserve this gift from God of salvation. When we know that we bring nothing to that exchange. We don't pay God for it. We don't compensate him for his son. We just get our ego out of the way and we accept it. See, to get healed of leprosy, you have to first admit that you have it and that you desperately need to be healed. To get rid of the sin that's in our life, to be aligned with our Creator, to experience salvation, we have to first come to a place where we admit, I'm broken and I need healing. And that's a really hard thing for some of us. We have to come to a place where we admit, my lordship in my life is not working. I need your lordship. It's a hard place for some of us to get to. And what we see from the story of Naaman as we think about it in ourselves is that humility is a prerequisite for salvation. I would be willing to bet, and I don't know everybody enough to say this to you, and I'm sorry if this is too far, but I would be willing to bet that there are those of us who have kept kind of Christianity at arm's length for a while. We've considered it, it's there, and maybe we even think one day I will. Or maybe we think, I know that I should take it more seriously, but one day I will. I wonder if that obstacle between you and just a full bore faith is an ego. Is an, I want to do this on my terms. I'm not ready to accept that lordship all the way. I still think that I'm a pretty good authority in my life. And as long as that exists, as long as we think our rivers back home are good enough, we can't take the steps that God wants us to take. Humility, coming to him humbly, is a prerequisite for salvation. The other thing that got in Naaman's way were his expectations. He said, you're not going to come out and talk to me? You want me to go dip in the river? That's it? You're not going to wave your hand? There's not going to be this big thing and this huge ceremony. I expect that I'd at least get a good prayer out of this. None of that's going to happen. And so often we bring our own expectations to God, and then when he doesn't meet the expectations that we've created in our own heads, we push him off because he's not the God who he said he is, when he never said he would do any of that stuff. Naaman wasn't given those expectations by other prophets who said, listen, when you get to Israel, this is how healings work. That's just what he conjured up. And so when it didn't go according to his plan that he created in his own head, he rejected the plan that God presented him with because it didn't meet his expectations. But if you examine them, he had no right to those expectations. And so often I think we push God away because he doesn't meet the expectations that we created. And here's how this works. We have a tendency, if you think about it, and you think about who God is, we have a tendency to remake God in our own image. For most of us, God is simply the best possible version of us. I think about the things that I value in me, and we assume that God must be those things. And we never do it intentionally. No one would admit to this. No one would be like, oh yeah, totally, I do that. But if you think about who you think God is and how you think he should respond to different situations, what you picture God as is the best possible version of you. It's this version of you that you'll probably never attain, but God is probably that. So then when stuff happens in our life, we think, how would the best possible version of me respond to this? Well, it would respond this way, and that's not how God is responding, so he's not fair. When the God in heaven said, hey, I never gave you those expectations. I never promised you that. When we enter into a season of pain and suffering, when something happens in our life that we feel like isn't fair. And we say a loving God would never let this happen. He let it happen to person after person after person in the Bible. He let it happen to his own son. He let David's infant son die. We can go through story after story after story in the Bible where people who loved God and served him well had to deal with incredible pain. So where are we getting the expectation that when I go to God, everything is going to be good? We made that up. When I go to God, everything is going to go well for me. I'm going to close the sale. I'm going to do the business. My kids are going to finally behave because I'm raising them according to the right standards. Who gave you that expectation? Where are we getting that? Now, the expectation that God gives us is that all things work out in eternity. And that one day when we meet him, everything will make sense. I am confident there are things that are happening even now that I do not understand and I can't pretend to explain. But here's what I trust. One day I'll get to look God in the eye and if I even still care about all the stuff that happened here, if I were to ask him, God, why'd you let this stuff happen? If he would explain it to me in my heavenly form, I would go, okay, that makes sense. Can I get back to worshiping you now? I think so often our expectations that we generate, that God never signed up for, keep us from going to him and knowing him fully. Even expectations on the other end of the pendulum. Sometimes our expectations are, I've done so little. I've known better and not responded to it properly for so long that there's no way that God could accept me. And we let those expectations of God's response keep us away from him when that's not at all what he says. It says in Luke 15 that he's the father that runs to us and waits for us to come back to him. So in the story of Naaman, we see a person like us who was in need of salvation. We see a person like us and like me who very often keeps his ego and his expectations as an obstacle between him and the God that he desperately needs. And my prayer for you, even this morning, even as I was kneeling and praying before I would come preach, is that God would give you the courage and the honesty to see where your ego and your expectations in your life, and in my life, this is a me too thing, are keeping us from knowing God the way he wants to be known. Help us to identify those. Give us the courage to move past those. And if we do that, what will be the result? Look at what Naaman did. I believe. I'm in. Take all my stuff. I don't need it anyways. Naaman's response after humility and receiving the salvation was a joyful and generous love. The result of humble acceptance is a joyful and generous love. It's a love so big and so generous that I have grace for you as I watch you struggle through life. I have grace for you as I see clearly that your ego is keeping you from knowing everything about God that you could know. You have grace for me as you see my wrong expectations keeping me from knowing God well because you know that you've been met there with grace too. We have this contagious joy when we accept love in that way. Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us in Matthew that we are to honor God, that we are to love people in such a way that others will see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. That without us ever telling them about our faith, they will see our faith lived out and go, there's something different about them and I want it. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we are led in a procession by Christ and that through us, one of my favorite phrases in the Bible, spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This thing that just wafts into the lives of others passively as we move through their life and they look at us and they see something that's different. You know what's supposed to be different? A joyful and generous love. You know how we come by that love? By humbling ourselves before God and freely receiving his salvation and his love and his affirmation every day. And then we move through life like Naaman did after he got healed. So my prayer for you is that if there are places in your life where either your ego or your expectations are keeping you from knowing God, from submitting to him, that you would have the courage to see those things. And then ultimately, my prayer for us is that we would move through life like Naaman did at the end of this story with a joyful and generous love of God and love for others. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are so grateful for you. We thank you for your word, for the Bible, for how rich it is, for everything that we can learn from it and see in it. God, I pray that you would help us to go and to read it on our own and to see the pages come to life and to, God, really study and invest in it. God, speak to us through your word even this week as we read it in the quiet of our own houses and offices. Father, I just pray that you would give us the courage, the clarity, the conviction to see where our ego, our expectations may be keeping us from you. If we see those, God, give us further courage to get them out of the way. And finally, Lord, let us love people with a generosity and a joy that can come only from you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.
All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.
All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.
Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. We've been moving through a series called Big Emotions. This is part six of the series. And within this series, as we kind of planned it, I realized that we needed to have a morning like this morning where we talk about some of the heavier, harder emotions that we can experience in life. In the past just few months, I had a lunch with a young man who was and is a recovering alcoholic, and actually today is his one-year sober anniversary, so we're excited for him today. Yeah, he's not here. That's okay. He didn't hear how much you didn't, how tepid that was. If he were here, I would have. But we're thrilled about that. And he shared with me as I talked with him about a story that part of what led him down that path is dealing with a depression. This creeping sense that he wasn't going to be who everyone expected him to be and who he was. And it was this feeling of not mattering anymore, of not living up to things that sent him into a depression that caused him to seek out some help for that from chemicals. In the past couple months, I've talked with two different dads in our community whose daughters are struggling mightily with depression. You could even call it a crippling depression. And one of them even shared with me that he's learned through her struggle that that's what he's always dealt with. He just never had the words to put around what he was feeling, or it's entirely possible because men are stupid, that he just didn't allow himself to admit that he was sad because we're too manly for that. I've sat with people in the wake of great loss. Sat with a family, and I won't detail the struggles, but they just kind of, life just keeps running them ashore, man. Life just keeps beating them up. I get texts from them, and I'm like, God, you've got to be kidding me with what they're having to walk through, and I'm certain. As a matter of fact, I know for a fact that some of them are staving off bouts of depression and anxiety and deep grief and deep sadness. In my own family, on both my side and Jen's side, Jen's my wife, on both my side and Jen's side, we have depression in our family. We're walking through it. Sometimes it's harder than other times. Sometimes it's more extreme than other cases, but it touches us and it touches our lives too. And I know that each of us deals with or loves someone who deals with depression, grief, melancholy, sadness from time to time, these seasons in life that just feel dark and heavy. And I also know that many more of us deal with feelings of insignificance, like we don't matter. I know firsthand that being, because of walking through it with my wife, that being a stay-at-home mom can make you feel very small. It can make your world feel very inconsequential, that all you are is the nursemaid for a toddler or a shuttle service for your kids or whatever it might be. Being a parent can sometimes make your world feel very small. As you age, sometimes your world can start to feel smaller and smaller and the things you do less and less significant. And some of us have gone from seasons of mattering a great deal to mattering not very much. Some of us have gone from having great identities that we are proud of to these small identities that we kind of wander in and aren't used to yet. And so I know that in our family of faith, in our congregation, in this room, and the people watching online, the people who will hear this later, all of us have dealt with personally or love someone dearly who struggles with bouts of depression, with grief, with sadness, with loss, or even insignificance. And so I thought it was absolutely appropriate to take a Sunday while we talk about big emotions and talk about these. And I thought it would be really helpful for us as we identify with that sadness, with that grief, with that inadequacy, to look at someone in the Bible who also dealt with that and to see how God meets him in this place. So we're going to look at just a part of the story of a prophet named Elijah. Now, many of you were not here years ago when I did a whole series in the summer on Elijah, or if you were here, you were probably at the beach and didn't hear it. So some of this stuff will be reviewed, but maybe not much. I'm not going to tell you the whole story of the life of the prophet of Elijah, but he is one of God's, as Aaron said in the announcements, one of God's great servants. Elijah was so great. In fact, I'm not sure I need to tell you anything else about his life, but at the end of his life, as he was aging and the end was near, he's walking with his disciple, Elisha, and on the west bank of the Jordan River and Elijah decides that he needs to go to the eastern bank of the Jordan River and so he just parts the waters and walks across it like this miracle of convenience. Like the ark stopped the Jordan River so that God himself could move into the promised land with his people and then Moses parted the waters so that God's people could escape from the Pharaoh. And Elijah parted the water so that his sandals wouldn't get wet. That's just okay. He just puts his cloak in the water, parts it, walks through, come on, Elisha, and then they go through. And when they get on the other side, a chariot descends down out of heaven. An angelic chariot comes down and scoops Elijah up and takes him to heaven. Dude was so righteous, he caught an Uber ride to the pearly gates because God didn't want him to experience death. We see Elijah again in the New Testament at the Mount of Transfiguration when he appears along with Moses to Jesus to strengthen him and encourage him. He's a major figure in the Old Testament and a hero of the faith. And when I say it's difficult for anyone to get closer to God than Elijah was, I mean it literally because all of us in here are very likely going to experience death. He did not have to. And yet, in his life, we see pretty convincing evidence that at least in this season, Elijah was low. He struggled mightily with depression and insignificance. And so I think it's worth looking at this part of his story and seeing how God responds there. The part of the story that I'm going to present to you is somewhere, I would guess, about 45 to 50 days of his life. So I'm not even sure you could call it a season. It was just a time of his life when he was low. We don't know if there were other times or not. One would assume that there were. But here we get just a snippet or a snapshot of Elijah's, what I believe to be, depression, at least in this season. We're going to be looking, and not yet, but if you have a Bible, you can turn there. 1 Kings chapter 19. If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Unless you're watching from home, I don't know what's in your seat backs. But in 1 Kings chapter 18 is the big showdown, the big thing that Elijah's famous for, the showdown with the prophets of Baal. And I don't have time to give the full treatment to the story. I wish I did because it's a fantastic story and you should really read it. But the predominant religion at this time was worshiping this God named Baal. The king was Ahab, the queen was Jezebel. They were evil and they supported this idol worship. The followers of God were pressed into the margins and the fringes. And Elijah was by all accounts, essentially the chief priest for God at the time and the head prophet. And so he goes to Mount Carmel and he has this showdown with the prophets of Baal. There's 450 prophets of Baal. And they make this deal that they're each going to build an altar. And whichever God from heaven itself lights the altars on fire first, that's the best God. And the other one has to take his ball and go home. And so they start this competition. And Elijah, I just have to point out, he says one of the best lines in the Bible. He is a sarcastic jerk, which breathed life into me from God himself. And Baal is not responding and lighting the altar on fire. And he's making fun of them. Maybe you should yell louder, yada, yada. And at. And at one point, he's like, maybe he can't hear you because he's in his heavenly bathroom taking a Tuesdays. Maybe that's what's going on, which is phenomenal. It's the kind of stuff you get here at Grace Riley. And after they give up, Elijah prays this humble prayer. God, it's time. God sends fire from heaven, lights the altar on fire, and Elijah has all 450 prophets arrested and put to death. After this, the beginning of chapter 19, Elijah's praying. There had been a drought for three years in Israel, and God told Elijah that the drought's going to be over. Get ready for rain. And then swept Elijah with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God sweeps Elijah to Jerusalem. So he beats Ahab's chariot back to Jerusalem. When Ahab, the king, gets to Jerusalem, he goes to Jezebel, the queen, and he tells Jezebel all that Elijah has done. She responds by sending a messenger to Elijah that says, everything that you did to my prophets, I'm going to do to you, and it's going to be worse. I'm going to kill you. And this is interesting because a couple chapters later in 2 Kings chapter 1, she tries to send soldiers to kill Elijah. And Elijah says, I'm a man of God, and if you try to arrest me, then he's going to send fire and kill you. And then they do, and then he does. Three times. Dude has nothing to be scared of. He has the protection of God on his head. He has the hand of God on him. But when the messenger reaches Elijah this time and says, Jezebel's wants to kill him. And in fear, he flees a day into the wilderness. He gets done with that day and he sits down and he prays a prayer that I hope none of us have prayed, but I bet some of us have. God, it would be better if I were dead. Please take my life. I'm done. I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give. I'm exhausted. I did this great miracle in your name, won a great victory, and it's like it doesn't matter. She's going to kill me. Do you understand that he was despaired to his point of death? He was despairing for his life. Do you understand that he went to sleep under that broom tree, that he closed his eyes praying, God, please don't let me wake up? You understand that when Elijah's eyes were opened that he was disappointed? I don't know if you have ever gone to sleep and before you went to sleep, you prayed, God, please don't let me wake up on this side of eternity. But I bet some of you have. I bet we know people who have felt what Elijah felt. God, I'm going to sleep and I don't want to wake up. This world has nothing left for me. I don't want to be here. No one cares about me. I don't matter. This needs to be over. It would be better off if I were in eternity than here any longer. Please don't let me wake up when I go to sleep, God. Elijah is despairing unto death. And is at, by all estimations, a very low point. But God wakes him up. He wakes him up with an angel who feeds him, gives him food. I love that that's God's response to the dark night of the soul. Like a loving divine grandma. Here, just eat a little something. You'll feel better after some cookies. Elijah goes back to sleep. The angel wakes him up again. Says, you're going to need this for your journey. You're going to Mount Horeb. So he eats and he travels 40 days to Mount Horeb. And God tells him when he gets there, go up into this cave. I'm going to talk to you there. And when he gets up to the cave, God speaks to him and he says, Elijah, what are you doing? And Elijah says, my part. I've served you well. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. And they've killed all my friends. They've killed all my companions. I, even I, only am left. There is no one left in Israel like me. I am totally alone, God. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. I have no love. I have no camaraderie. I'm alone and I'm destitute and nobody cares about me anymore, God. This time when I go to sleep, can I please just not wake up? I'm done. This is an articulation of the lowest of lows in his life. I, even I only, am left. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. It's just me, and I'm tired. And God says, I'm going to speak to you again. And it's this remarkable passage where Elijah is sitting in the cave on the side of this mountain. And the text tells us that there's this great earthquake and the ground shakes and the stones tremble and the trees shake. And you think surely that God's voice is in the earthquake, but he's not in the earthquake. And then God sends this fire by the mouth of the cave that consumes everything in its path, and you think, surely God is in the fire, and he's not in the fire. And he sends a mighty wind that shakes and vibrates and stirs and scares, and you think, surely God is in the wind, and he's not in the wind. And then scripture says there's a gentle whisper and God is in the whisper. And Elijah goes out to the mouth of the cave and God says, what are you doing, Elijah? And Elijah gives the exact same response in verses 14, in verse 14 that he did in verse 10. I've been very jealous for you. I've served you well. And I've put all my friends to the sword, and I, even I only, am left. And God hears him. And he says, I want you to go do something for me. I want you to go appoint this man and this man kings of their different areas. I've still got stuff for you to do. Go make them kings. And when you do, here's what's going to happen. Now go. And on his way to go do that, he comes across a man plowing in his field named Elisha. And he grabs Elisha and he says, I'm going to essentially make you my disciple. Come and follow me. I'm going to teach you to be a prophet like I'm a prophet. And Elisha goes and tells his parents that he's leaving and he leaves and he goes with Elijah. And he spends the rest of his life following Elijah. And when Elijah goes up into heaven on the chariot, his cloak wafts back down to Elisha, and Elisha receives a double portion of the Holy Spirit that Elijah had, and outperforms Elijah in miracles and in all the other things, has a greater ministry than Elijah did. And it can be argued that Elisha is probably the greater impact than defeating the prophets of Baal, that Elisha may have been Elijah's greatest work. But without question, in this 45 to 50 day period, we see one of the great servants of God at a low point in his life. We see him despair unto death. We see him go to sleep and not want to wake up. We see him express solitude and isolation, feeling completely alone and wanting to die. We see him despairing. What we see, I think, at least for this season, is a depression. And if you look at what he says, and if we think about what we've experienced when we've been low, then what we understand is that depression silently screams, you don't matter. Depression silently screams at you that you don't matter, that nothing you do matters. Look at what Elijah says the first time. I'm the only one left. I did everything you wanted me to do. Now they're going to kill me, and I'd rather just die I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give God. My best days are behind me. I have no bigger miracles to work. I've done everything I can do. All that's left is waiting for death. Please just go ahead and take me. And it occurs to me as I reflect on Elijah voicing in that way that he felt like he no longer mattered. That one of the great strengths of grace is having a generationally diverse congregation. I love that about our church. And what I'm about to say is in no way a joke. This is not a time for stupid jokes. I'm not doing that. It occurs to me that a large portion of us, a large portion of you, you've reached the end of your career, the last portions of your career. You've ended your career and you're in retirement. You've raised your kids. Maybe you've even helped raise your grandkids. In your mind, you've shifted. I've seen the shift in men and women that I love. From wanting to build a name for yourself to thinking about what kind of name you're leaving behind. You've shifted from establishment to legacy. And you've accepted that you are in the twilight of your life. And I think it would be very easy to become convinced in that season that your best days are behind you, that you've done the great work that you're going to do. You've climbed the biggest mountain that you're going to climb. You've defeated more prophets then than you ever will in the future. I think it would be very difficult to have lived a life where in one setting you were important. Your voice mattered. People came to you for your opinion. They paid a fair amount of money for your time to a place where people don't come as much anymore and they don't ask as much anymore and your voice isn't as weighty as it used to be and you become convinced that my best days are behind me and if we're not careful, we can slip into, as Elijah did, just kind of waiting for the last day to get here because I have nothing left to give. And so I think in that way, even if we're not people who are depressed, we can hear that message of the world and that message of depression creeping into our hearts. Hey, you don't matter. Your best days are behind you. Or we can feel insignificant for other reasons. Our role in life right now reduces us. We have a thankless job and a somewhat thankless marriage with thankless kids, and we just feel small, and no one tells us that we're good enough, and no one tells us that they respect us, and no one tells us that they're grateful for us. We can move through seasons of life where we just feel like we're going through the motions, and we feel so insignificant and small. I know firsthand that when I preach sermons about God having a purpose for us, God having a use for us, when I quote one of my favorite verses, Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we might walk in them. And I encourage you guys, identify your good works and walk in them. I know that there's a large portion of you that hear that and go, yes, that's good. I have no idea what my good works are. I have no idea how God gifted me. God's gifted other people to do other things, but he has not gifted me in any significant way. So the best thing I can do is just keep my head down and be nice because I don't really matter that much in God's kingdom. That's what Elijah was saying. I, even I only, am left. I don't matter. There's nothing around me that's important. And I talked with some friends of mine who deal with depression more than I do. Candidly, this is not something that I'm given to struggle with. I have other struggles, and I'm pretty transparent with you about those. For this one, I had to outsource a lot of it. So this idea that depression silently screams at us that we don't matter, that's not my idea. That came from someone who walks it. And then I called someone else who probably deals with depression in a little bit more profound way, and I said, hey, does this check out with you? If I say that depression insists that we don't matter, does that resonate? And he said, yeah, but it's worse than that. He says, my depression tells me that it doesn't matter, that nothing matters, let alone me. And so if you've ever sat in that place, or you've loved someone who sits in that place, when we start to listen to the voices that tell us that we don't matter, I think God's response to Elijah when he was giving into those voices should breathe some fresh air into our lungs. And here's what God does to Elijah. We go back through the story. Here's what we see him doing. God strengthens, whispers to, sends, and encourages Elijah. And I think all of those things are important. He strengthens Elijah. He whispers to Elijah. He sends Elijah. And then he finally encourages Elijah. He strengthens him. He literally wakes him up and gives him food. You're going to need this for your journey. He literally wakes him up again and gives him some food. You're going to need this for your journey. Eat up. He strengthens him. He gives him enough to get through the day. Whatever you need to get through today, God gives that to you to sustain you. That's the daily bread. That's the manna. That's the daily sustenance of God showing up and sustaining you for today. I shared with you a few weeks back that I was reading the Beth Moore biography, and she encountered her mother-in-law had walked through a tremendous trial, and she said, how do you do it? How did you giving me strength for that day. I'm reminded of this famous passage in Isaiah Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. God will sustain us if we trust him to do it. He will strengthen us in the darkest of days when it's so dark and so heavy and so cloudy that we can't see a glimmer of light or a glimmer of hope. God, if we have within us one ounce that is willing to reach out to God and ask him for that day, he will sustain you that day. He will whisper to you. I love that we have a God that speaks to us in the whisper. In the most unexpected places, in the most unexpected ways, God shows up with his presence. A few weeks ago in men's Bible study, one of the guys shared his story. He's a little bit older now, late 50s, early 60s, than he was when this happened. But at some point in his life, I'm not sure when, but he lost his wife. Lost his wife to breast cancer. I can't imagine the pain of losing a spouse or a child. Losing a parent is hard. But I bet losing a spouse or a child is harder. I used to work at a school years ago and there was this woman named Emmeline McKinnon who founded the school. Wonderful lady, everybody loved her. A few years ago, she passed away from cancer, and her husband, in his grief, took his own life too, a few days later. And to anyone with a heart, when they hear that story, I think they say, I get that. They loved each other for 60 years. How do you keep opening up your eyes after that? So understand it. I empathize with it. And I don't condemn it. And my friend was walking through that grief. Did not have kids. No one was relying on him. He was in the depths of sadness. And so he made the decision that he was going to go to heaven to be with her because he didn't want to be here. He went and acquired whatever it was he needed to acquire to put together a cocktail so that when he drank it, he would be in heaven with his wife. He went home, put it in the blender, started to mix it up. As the blender was going, the phone rang. So he stops it. He answers the phone. The person on the other end says, hey, is this so-and-so? He says, yeah, who's this? And he says, well, I'm Dr. So-and-so. I was your wife's optometrist. And my buddy said, I haven't heard from you in years. How you doing? And he said, I'm doing good. I just wanted to call you and tell you how special your wife was and how sorry I am for your loss. And my buddy said, well, thanks. I appreciate that. He said, how are you doing with it? And he lied, and he said, I'm doing fine. The way you're supposed to lie in polite society. And the doctor said, hey, I don't know if you're a religious man, but I am. And I feel like I need to tell you that God has been really pressing on me to call you. He's been doing it for a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry, I'm the worst. I've been putting it off. Every time he presses on me to call you, I kind of have something else pressing, and I think, yep, I need to do that, and I set it aside, and I mean to do it later. He said, but about five minutes ago, I felt the press again. And I was in the middle of doing paperwork, and I tried to put it off, but God would not let me put it off. He would not relent, and I just really felt like I needed to call you. So how are you doing? And my buddy really told him how he was doing and what he was up to that day. And they cried together and prayed together. And my buddy dumped it down the drain. Lived to remarry, to love nieces and nephews, and to sit in that circle and tell us that story. God whispered to him that day. So not only will God whisper to you, but sometimes he'll use you to whisper as well. When he's prompting you to do it. Do it. And then, God doesn't just whisper to Elijah. He sends him. And I love the matter-of-factness of God sending him. Because it's like, Elijah, listen, I can see that you're clearly bummed out, but I've got some things I need to do. There's some guys who need to be named king. They don't have kings right now. They need to be anointed. So I need you to get back to work. Go appoint these kings. He sends them. He says, I'm not done with you yet. I know you feel like you're done because you finished this thing with the prophets of Baal, and now there's nothing left to do. There's stuff to do, Elijah, and I need you to get to it. And I was actually talking with my dad this week. I wouldn't call it arguing. We weren't arguing. We were just kind of going back and forth, as we are wont to do, about what the greatest work was in Elijah's life. Was it the prophets of Baal? Or was it the training and developing of Elisha and leaving him behind as a legacy? Which one was bigger? And in the middle of the discussion, I said, Dad, this is really a stupid conversation. Which usually he's the one that gets to do that. So I was happy to be the one that got to do it this time. This is a really stupid conversation. And I just pointed out to him, the size of our works don't matter nearly as much as the faithfulness of our works. Who cares if the miracle with Baal was the bigger deal than anointing a king or naming a successor or raising someone's son from the dead? Who cares what the bigger miracle was, the size of the work, the grandeur of the work, the import of the work? Who cares if that's bigger than what's left? For those of us who maybe our best years are behind us, maybe the biggest thing we've done is behind us. Maybe the most important thing you think you'll do from a human perspective is already in your past and not as big of things are waiting on you in your future. I think that's silly. God could care less about the size of our work. Like God's impressed with the size of any work. What matters is our faithfulness within the works that he gives us for as many years as he gives us. Here's how I know it's true. I know that you guys would support me in this. Right now, there's probably about 200 people here this Sunday morning. If next week you snapped your fingers and you made grace 2,000 people? Would my work next week in preaching be any more impactful, any more great, any more important to God? Would I somehow be more spiritual next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am this week preaching to 200? Would I somehow be more faithful or more loved next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am faithful or loved in preaching to you today? No! It's stupid. The size of our work is irrelevant. It's our faithfulness within what he gives us. What lies ahead of you is not insignificant if God has placed it there. What's significant is your faithfulness as you are obedient to that. And after he sends Elijah, he encourages him. He peels back the curtain a little bit. And he says, hey, I know you think you're the last one here. There's 7,000 more just like you. I've kept them for myself. They have not been the need of bail. You're not alone. You have companions. You have friends. And I see you. And I'm not expecting you to carry all this weight. Now go do what I've asked you to do. What we see in the story of Elijah. If depression says, you don't matter, and if Elijah's expressing, God, I don't matter, and I am alone, then what God says in the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the encouraging from a megaphone is, Elijah, you matter, you matter, you matter, you matter. I see you. I know you. I love you. What you're doing is important. And what he says to us and what he says to you and what I hope you hear is that you matter. Look, the love of God drowns out other voices and gently reminds you of how much you matter. The love of God and the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the purposing and in the encouraging remind you in these subtle ways, I know life is hard. You matter. I know you feel insignificant. You matter. I know the world is trying to convince you that you don't matter, but I'm telling you that you do. Sorry, it's been an emotional week for me. One of the people I reached out to shared with me that he'll walk through really dark depression for months and sometimes a year at a time. And as I was walking through with him what I wanted to share, I admitted my own feelings of inadequacy to even address what it's like to actually be deeply depressed. Because I know that there's some depression that words don't touch. It just doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what I pray. It doesn't matter how I encourage. There's just some depression that you walk through that's so dark and so difficult that words don't touch it and arrest you from it. And so I said, in your greatest times of trial, what helped you? And as I even admit the own inadequacy of my words to you, what can I say to help you? And he said, let me write you an email because I'm better with my thoughts like that. And he responded with some very helpful things, but one thing he said was so profound that I thought I wanted to share it with you this morning. He wrote me this. Solitude and isolation are freedom. They're the ability to define you as you wish because there's no consequence to any decision you can make. If you decide to surrender, there's no consequence. Your story ends and nobody else is there to see. Nobody else is there to care. Nobody else is there to respond. The profundity of that struck me as I read it in my office. That when you are deeply depressed and you are convinced that it doesn't matter and that you don't matter, that you are all alone and no one sees you. That you're isolated. In your solitude. But then that is freedom because you can do whatever you want and no one's going to care. And I thought, my gosh. That's a low place. But then he said, but it's because of, and this is a paraphrase, we have a conversation preceding this to help me understand that what he meant in our language is that because of the cross, because I know Jesus died for me, because I know God made promises to me. Because I know I matter enough to God for him to send his son. He said this, because it means, because of the cross, it means that there is no way not to be seen. There is no situation in which you are finally, truly, absolutely alone. You understand the cross stands eternally reminding you of how much you matter, that in the depths of not mattering, in the depths of despair, in the depths of I'm not important and I don't matter to anyone and no one sees me and no one cares about me and it might just be better if I weren't here, that even in the depths of that, that God sent his son to die for you, to claim you back to him. And before you say, no, he did that for other people. No, no, he did that for you. If you're the only person on this earth, he still would have sent his son to die for you, to reclaim you to the heaven that he created for you. And if we will cling to the cross, to the glimmer of light that shines through the millennia, we can take hope and solace in the fact that there's going to be a day where depression doesn't exist and where the darkness goes away and every day is bright and filled with joy. And I might not get to experience those here today, right now, but I will one day. And if I cling to that cross, God's promised that I matter, that there will be days where this will let up, where I will see joy, where I will live in the fullness of life, but even if it doesn't come, there's an eternity where I'll see that every day. We sang a few minutes ago that you're fighting a battle that I've already won. I'm fighting a battle that you've already won. This is the battle, and it was won on the cross. So let God strengthen you today. Let him whisper to you today. And hear me say that you matter to your God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your son. Thank you for who he is. We thank you for loving us. Lord, I lift up those that feel sad or depressed or insignificant or unwanted or unwarranted. God, it is my fervent prayer that they would be strengthened today. That they would get enough from today to keep clinging to you. God, for those we love who live in a cloud of darkness from time to time, we pray that you would use us to help them brighten it. God, we pray for the days ahead that you promised through your son, that you won through his death on the cross. Where in your presence we finally at long last experience fullness of joy. God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who are sad and who are downtrodden and ask that you would pick them up, that they would know today that you love them, that you care for them, that more than anything, they matter deeply to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. We've been moving through a series called Big Emotions. This is part six of the series. And within this series, as we kind of planned it, I realized that we needed to have a morning like this morning where we talk about some of the heavier, harder emotions that we can experience in life. In the past just few months, I had a lunch with a young man who was and is a recovering alcoholic, and actually today is his one-year sober anniversary, so we're excited for him today. Yeah, he's not here. That's okay. He didn't hear how much you didn't, how tepid that was. If he were here, I would have. But we're thrilled about that. And he shared with me as I talked with him about a story that part of what led him down that path is dealing with a depression. This creeping sense that he wasn't going to be who everyone expected him to be and who he was. And it was this feeling of not mattering anymore, of not living up to things that sent him into a depression that caused him to seek out some help for that from chemicals. In the past couple months, I've talked with two different dads in our community whose daughters are struggling mightily with depression. You could even call it a crippling depression. And one of them even shared with me that he's learned through her struggle that that's what he's always dealt with. He just never had the words to put around what he was feeling, or it's entirely possible because men are stupid, that he just didn't allow himself to admit that he was sad because we're too manly for that. I've sat with people in the wake of great loss. Sat with a family, and I won't detail the struggles, but they just kind of, life just keeps running them ashore, man. Life just keeps beating them up. I get texts from them, and I'm like, God, you've got to be kidding me with what they're having to walk through, and I'm certain. As a matter of fact, I know for a fact that some of them are staving off bouts of depression and anxiety and deep grief and deep sadness. In my own family, on both my side and Jen's side, Jen's my wife, on both my side and Jen's side, we have depression in our family. We're walking through it. Sometimes it's harder than other times. Sometimes it's more extreme than other cases, but it touches us and it touches our lives too. And I know that each of us deals with or loves someone who deals with depression, grief, melancholy, sadness from time to time, these seasons in life that just feel dark and heavy. And I also know that many more of us deal with feelings of insignificance, like we don't matter. I know firsthand that being, because of walking through it with my wife, that being a stay-at-home mom can make you feel very small. It can make your world feel very inconsequential, that all you are is the nursemaid for a toddler or a shuttle service for your kids or whatever it might be. Being a parent can sometimes make your world feel very small. As you age, sometimes your world can start to feel smaller and smaller and the things you do less and less significant. And some of us have gone from seasons of mattering a great deal to mattering not very much. Some of us have gone from having great identities that we are proud of to these small identities that we kind of wander in and aren't used to yet. And so I know that in our family of faith, in our congregation, in this room, and the people watching online, the people who will hear this later, all of us have dealt with personally or love someone dearly who struggles with bouts of depression, with grief, with sadness, with loss, or even insignificance. And so I thought it was absolutely appropriate to take a Sunday while we talk about big emotions and talk about these. And I thought it would be really helpful for us as we identify with that sadness, with that grief, with that inadequacy, to look at someone in the Bible who also dealt with that and to see how God meets him in this place. So we're going to look at just a part of the story of a prophet named Elijah. Now, many of you were not here years ago when I did a whole series in the summer on Elijah, or if you were here, you were probably at the beach and didn't hear it. So some of this stuff will be reviewed, but maybe not much. I'm not going to tell you the whole story of the life of the prophet of Elijah, but he is one of God's, as Aaron said in the announcements, one of God's great servants. Elijah was so great. In fact, I'm not sure I need to tell you anything else about his life, but at the end of his life, as he was aging and the end was near, he's walking with his disciple, Elisha, and on the west bank of the Jordan River and Elijah decides that he needs to go to the eastern bank of the Jordan River and so he just parts the waters and walks across it like this miracle of convenience. Like the ark stopped the Jordan River so that God himself could move into the promised land with his people and then Moses parted the waters so that God's people could escape from the Pharaoh. And Elijah parted the water so that his sandals wouldn't get wet. That's just okay. He just puts his cloak in the water, parts it, walks through, come on, Elisha, and then they go through. And when they get on the other side, a chariot descends down out of heaven. An angelic chariot comes down and scoops Elijah up and takes him to heaven. Dude was so righteous, he caught an Uber ride to the pearly gates because God didn't want him to experience death. We see Elijah again in the New Testament at the Mount of Transfiguration when he appears along with Moses to Jesus to strengthen him and encourage him. He's a major figure in the Old Testament and a hero of the faith. And when I say it's difficult for anyone to get closer to God than Elijah was, I mean it literally because all of us in here are very likely going to experience death. He did not have to. And yet, in his life, we see pretty convincing evidence that at least in this season, Elijah was low. He struggled mightily with depression and insignificance. And so I think it's worth looking at this part of his story and seeing how God responds there. The part of the story that I'm going to present to you is somewhere, I would guess, about 45 to 50 days of his life. So I'm not even sure you could call it a season. It was just a time of his life when he was low. We don't know if there were other times or not. One would assume that there were. But here we get just a snippet or a snapshot of Elijah's, what I believe to be, depression, at least in this season. We're going to be looking, and not yet, but if you have a Bible, you can turn there. 1 Kings chapter 19. If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Unless you're watching from home, I don't know what's in your seat backs. But in 1 Kings chapter 18 is the big showdown, the big thing that Elijah's famous for, the showdown with the prophets of Baal. And I don't have time to give the full treatment to the story. I wish I did because it's a fantastic story and you should really read it. But the predominant religion at this time was worshiping this God named Baal. The king was Ahab, the queen was Jezebel. They were evil and they supported this idol worship. The followers of God were pressed into the margins and the fringes. And Elijah was by all accounts, essentially the chief priest for God at the time and the head prophet. And so he goes to Mount Carmel and he has this showdown with the prophets of Baal. There's 450 prophets of Baal. And they make this deal that they're each going to build an altar. And whichever God from heaven itself lights the altars on fire first, that's the best God. And the other one has to take his ball and go home. And so they start this competition. And Elijah, I just have to point out, he says one of the best lines in the Bible. He is a sarcastic jerk, which breathed life into me from God himself. And Baal is not responding and lighting the altar on fire. And he's making fun of them. Maybe you should yell louder, yada, yada. And at. And at one point, he's like, maybe he can't hear you because he's in his heavenly bathroom taking a Tuesdays. Maybe that's what's going on, which is phenomenal. It's the kind of stuff you get here at Grace Riley. And after they give up, Elijah prays this humble prayer. God, it's time. God sends fire from heaven, lights the altar on fire, and Elijah has all 450 prophets arrested and put to death. After this, the beginning of chapter 19, Elijah's praying. There had been a drought for three years in Israel, and God told Elijah that the drought's going to be over. Get ready for rain. And then swept Elijah with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God sweeps Elijah to Jerusalem. So he beats Ahab's chariot back to Jerusalem. When Ahab, the king, gets to Jerusalem, he goes to Jezebel, the queen, and he tells Jezebel all that Elijah has done. She responds by sending a messenger to Elijah that says, everything that you did to my prophets, I'm going to do to you, and it's going to be worse. I'm going to kill you. And this is interesting because a couple chapters later in 2 Kings chapter 1, she tries to send soldiers to kill Elijah. And Elijah says, I'm a man of God, and if you try to arrest me, then he's going to send fire and kill you. And then they do, and then he does. Three times. Dude has nothing to be scared of. He has the protection of God on his head. He has the hand of God on him. But when the messenger reaches Elijah this time and says, Jezebel's wants to kill him. And in fear, he flees a day into the wilderness. He gets done with that day and he sits down and he prays a prayer that I hope none of us have prayed, but I bet some of us have. God, it would be better if I were dead. Please take my life. I'm done. I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give. I'm exhausted. I did this great miracle in your name, won a great victory, and it's like it doesn't matter. She's going to kill me. Do you understand that he was despaired to his point of death? He was despairing for his life. Do you understand that he went to sleep under that broom tree, that he closed his eyes praying, God, please don't let me wake up? You understand that when Elijah's eyes were opened that he was disappointed? I don't know if you have ever gone to sleep and before you went to sleep, you prayed, God, please don't let me wake up on this side of eternity. But I bet some of you have. I bet we know people who have felt what Elijah felt. God, I'm going to sleep and I don't want to wake up. This world has nothing left for me. I don't want to be here. No one cares about me. I don't matter. This needs to be over. It would be better off if I were in eternity than here any longer. Please don't let me wake up when I go to sleep, God. Elijah is despairing unto death. And is at, by all estimations, a very low point. But God wakes him up. He wakes him up with an angel who feeds him, gives him food. I love that that's God's response to the dark night of the soul. Like a loving divine grandma. Here, just eat a little something. You'll feel better after some cookies. Elijah goes back to sleep. The angel wakes him up again. Says, you're going to need this for your journey. You're going to Mount Horeb. So he eats and he travels 40 days to Mount Horeb. And God tells him when he gets there, go up into this cave. I'm going to talk to you there. And when he gets up to the cave, God speaks to him and he says, Elijah, what are you doing? And Elijah says, my part. I've served you well. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. And they've killed all my friends. They've killed all my companions. I, even I, only am left. There is no one left in Israel like me. I am totally alone, God. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. I have no love. I have no camaraderie. I'm alone and I'm destitute and nobody cares about me anymore, God. This time when I go to sleep, can I please just not wake up? I'm done. This is an articulation of the lowest of lows in his life. I, even I only, am left. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. It's just me, and I'm tired. And God says, I'm going to speak to you again. And it's this remarkable passage where Elijah is sitting in the cave on the side of this mountain. And the text tells us that there's this great earthquake and the ground shakes and the stones tremble and the trees shake. And you think surely that God's voice is in the earthquake, but he's not in the earthquake. And then God sends this fire by the mouth of the cave that consumes everything in its path, and you think, surely God is in the fire, and he's not in the fire. And he sends a mighty wind that shakes and vibrates and stirs and scares, and you think, surely God is in the wind, and he's not in the wind. And then scripture says there's a gentle whisper and God is in the whisper. And Elijah goes out to the mouth of the cave and God says, what are you doing, Elijah? And Elijah gives the exact same response in verses 14, in verse 14 that he did in verse 10. I've been very jealous for you. I've served you well. And I've put all my friends to the sword, and I, even I only, am left. And God hears him. And he says, I want you to go do something for me. I want you to go appoint this man and this man kings of their different areas. I've still got stuff for you to do. Go make them kings. And when you do, here's what's going to happen. Now go. And on his way to go do that, he comes across a man plowing in his field named Elisha. And he grabs Elisha and he says, I'm going to essentially make you my disciple. Come and follow me. I'm going to teach you to be a prophet like I'm a prophet. And Elisha goes and tells his parents that he's leaving and he leaves and he goes with Elijah. And he spends the rest of his life following Elijah. And when Elijah goes up into heaven on the chariot, his cloak wafts back down to Elisha, and Elisha receives a double portion of the Holy Spirit that Elijah had, and outperforms Elijah in miracles and in all the other things, has a greater ministry than Elijah did. And it can be argued that Elisha is probably the greater impact than defeating the prophets of Baal, that Elisha may have been Elijah's greatest work. But without question, in this 45 to 50 day period, we see one of the great servants of God at a low point in his life. We see him despair unto death. We see him go to sleep and not want to wake up. We see him express solitude and isolation, feeling completely alone and wanting to die. We see him despairing. What we see, I think, at least for this season, is a depression. And if you look at what he says, and if we think about what we've experienced when we've been low, then what we understand is that depression silently screams, you don't matter. Depression silently screams at you that you don't matter, that nothing you do matters. Look at what Elijah says the first time. I'm the only one left. I did everything you wanted me to do. Now they're going to kill me, and I'd rather just die I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give God. My best days are behind me. I have no bigger miracles to work. I've done everything I can do. All that's left is waiting for death. Please just go ahead and take me. And it occurs to me as I reflect on Elijah voicing in that way that he felt like he no longer mattered. That one of the great strengths of grace is having a generationally diverse congregation. I love that about our church. And what I'm about to say is in no way a joke. This is not a time for stupid jokes. I'm not doing that. It occurs to me that a large portion of us, a large portion of you, you've reached the end of your career, the last portions of your career. You've ended your career and you're in retirement. You've raised your kids. Maybe you've even helped raise your grandkids. In your mind, you've shifted. I've seen the shift in men and women that I love. From wanting to build a name for yourself to thinking about what kind of name you're leaving behind. You've shifted from establishment to legacy. And you've accepted that you are in the twilight of your life. And I think it would be very easy to become convinced in that season that your best days are behind you, that you've done the great work that you're going to do. You've climbed the biggest mountain that you're going to climb. You've defeated more prophets then than you ever will in the future. I think it would be very difficult to have lived a life where in one setting you were important. Your voice mattered. People came to you for your opinion. They paid a fair amount of money for your time to a place where people don't come as much anymore and they don't ask as much anymore and your voice isn't as weighty as it used to be and you become convinced that my best days are behind me and if we're not careful, we can slip into, as Elijah did, just kind of waiting for the last day to get here because I have nothing left to give. And so I think in that way, even if we're not people who are depressed, we can hear that message of the world and that message of depression creeping into our hearts. Hey, you don't matter. Your best days are behind you. Or we can feel insignificant for other reasons. Our role in life right now reduces us. We have a thankless job and a somewhat thankless marriage with thankless kids, and we just feel small, and no one tells us that we're good enough, and no one tells us that they respect us, and no one tells us that they're grateful for us. We can move through seasons of life where we just feel like we're going through the motions, and we feel so insignificant and small. I know firsthand that when I preach sermons about God having a purpose for us, God having a use for us, when I quote one of my favorite verses, Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we might walk in them. And I encourage you guys, identify your good works and walk in them. I know that there's a large portion of you that hear that and go, yes, that's good. I have no idea what my good works are. I have no idea how God gifted me. God's gifted other people to do other things, but he has not gifted me in any significant way. So the best thing I can do is just keep my head down and be nice because I don't really matter that much in God's kingdom. That's what Elijah was saying. I, even I only, am left. I don't matter. There's nothing around me that's important. And I talked with some friends of mine who deal with depression more than I do. Candidly, this is not something that I'm given to struggle with. I have other struggles, and I'm pretty transparent with you about those. For this one, I had to outsource a lot of it. So this idea that depression silently screams at us that we don't matter, that's not my idea. That came from someone who walks it. And then I called someone else who probably deals with depression in a little bit more profound way, and I said, hey, does this check out with you? If I say that depression insists that we don't matter, does that resonate? And he said, yeah, but it's worse than that. He says, my depression tells me that it doesn't matter, that nothing matters, let alone me. And so if you've ever sat in that place, or you've loved someone who sits in that place, when we start to listen to the voices that tell us that we don't matter, I think God's response to Elijah when he was giving into those voices should breathe some fresh air into our lungs. And here's what God does to Elijah. We go back through the story. Here's what we see him doing. God strengthens, whispers to, sends, and encourages Elijah. And I think all of those things are important. He strengthens Elijah. He whispers to Elijah. He sends Elijah. And then he finally encourages Elijah. He strengthens him. He literally wakes him up and gives him food. You're going to need this for your journey. He literally wakes him up again and gives him some food. You're going to need this for your journey. Eat up. He strengthens him. He gives him enough to get through the day. Whatever you need to get through today, God gives that to you to sustain you. That's the daily bread. That's the manna. That's the daily sustenance of God showing up and sustaining you for today. I shared with you a few weeks back that I was reading the Beth Moore biography, and she encountered her mother-in-law had walked through a tremendous trial, and she said, how do you do it? How did you giving me strength for that day. I'm reminded of this famous passage in Isaiah Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. God will sustain us if we trust him to do it. He will strengthen us in the darkest of days when it's so dark and so heavy and so cloudy that we can't see a glimmer of light or a glimmer of hope. God, if we have within us one ounce that is willing to reach out to God and ask him for that day, he will sustain you that day. He will whisper to you. I love that we have a God that speaks to us in the whisper. In the most unexpected places, in the most unexpected ways, God shows up with his presence. A few weeks ago in men's Bible study, one of the guys shared his story. He's a little bit older now, late 50s, early 60s, than he was when this happened. But at some point in his life, I'm not sure when, but he lost his wife. Lost his wife to breast cancer. I can't imagine the pain of losing a spouse or a child. Losing a parent is hard. But I bet losing a spouse or a child is harder. I used to work at a school years ago and there was this woman named Emmeline McKinnon who founded the school. Wonderful lady, everybody loved her. A few years ago, she passed away from cancer, and her husband, in his grief, took his own life too, a few days later. And to anyone with a heart, when they hear that story, I think they say, I get that. They loved each other for 60 years. How do you keep opening up your eyes after that? So understand it. I empathize with it. And I don't condemn it. And my friend was walking through that grief. Did not have kids. No one was relying on him. He was in the depths of sadness. And so he made the decision that he was going to go to heaven to be with her because he didn't want to be here. He went and acquired whatever it was he needed to acquire to put together a cocktail so that when he drank it, he would be in heaven with his wife. He went home, put it in the blender, started to mix it up. As the blender was going, the phone rang. So he stops it. He answers the phone. The person on the other end says, hey, is this so-and-so? He says, yeah, who's this? And he says, well, I'm Dr. So-and-so. I was your wife's optometrist. And my buddy said, I haven't heard from you in years. How you doing? And he said, I'm doing good. I just wanted to call you and tell you how special your wife was and how sorry I am for your loss. And my buddy said, well, thanks. I appreciate that. He said, how are you doing with it? And he lied, and he said, I'm doing fine. The way you're supposed to lie in polite society. And the doctor said, hey, I don't know if you're a religious man, but I am. And I feel like I need to tell you that God has been really pressing on me to call you. He's been doing it for a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry, I'm the worst. I've been putting it off. Every time he presses on me to call you, I kind of have something else pressing, and I think, yep, I need to do that, and I set it aside, and I mean to do it later. He said, but about five minutes ago, I felt the press again. And I was in the middle of doing paperwork, and I tried to put it off, but God would not let me put it off. He would not relent, and I just really felt like I needed to call you. So how are you doing? And my buddy really told him how he was doing and what he was up to that day. And they cried together and prayed together. And my buddy dumped it down the drain. Lived to remarry, to love nieces and nephews, and to sit in that circle and tell us that story. God whispered to him that day. So not only will God whisper to you, but sometimes he'll use you to whisper as well. When he's prompting you to do it. Do it. And then, God doesn't just whisper to Elijah. He sends him. And I love the matter-of-factness of God sending him. Because it's like, Elijah, listen, I can see that you're clearly bummed out, but I've got some things I need to do. There's some guys who need to be named king. They don't have kings right now. They need to be anointed. So I need you to get back to work. Go appoint these kings. He sends them. He says, I'm not done with you yet. I know you feel like you're done because you finished this thing with the prophets of Baal, and now there's nothing left to do. There's stuff to do, Elijah, and I need you to get to it. And I was actually talking with my dad this week. I wouldn't call it arguing. We weren't arguing. We were just kind of going back and forth, as we are wont to do, about what the greatest work was in Elijah's life. Was it the prophets of Baal? Or was it the training and developing of Elisha and leaving him behind as a legacy? Which one was bigger? And in the middle of the discussion, I said, Dad, this is really a stupid conversation. Which usually he's the one that gets to do that. So I was happy to be the one that got to do it this time. This is a really stupid conversation. And I just pointed out to him, the size of our works don't matter nearly as much as the faithfulness of our works. Who cares if the miracle with Baal was the bigger deal than anointing a king or naming a successor or raising someone's son from the dead? Who cares what the bigger miracle was, the size of the work, the grandeur of the work, the import of the work? Who cares if that's bigger than what's left? For those of us who maybe our best years are behind us, maybe the biggest thing we've done is behind us. Maybe the most important thing you think you'll do from a human perspective is already in your past and not as big of things are waiting on you in your future. I think that's silly. God could care less about the size of our work. Like God's impressed with the size of any work. What matters is our faithfulness within the works that he gives us for as many years as he gives us. Here's how I know it's true. I know that you guys would support me in this. Right now, there's probably about 200 people here this Sunday morning. If next week you snapped your fingers and you made grace 2,000 people? Would my work next week in preaching be any more impactful, any more great, any more important to God? Would I somehow be more spiritual next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am this week preaching to 200? Would I somehow be more faithful or more loved next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am faithful or loved in preaching to you today? No! It's stupid. The size of our work is irrelevant. It's our faithfulness within what he gives us. What lies ahead of you is not insignificant if God has placed it there. What's significant is your faithfulness as you are obedient to that. And after he sends Elijah, he encourages him. He peels back the curtain a little bit. And he says, hey, I know you think you're the last one here. There's 7,000 more just like you. I've kept them for myself. They have not been the need of bail. You're not alone. You have companions. You have friends. And I see you. And I'm not expecting you to carry all this weight. Now go do what I've asked you to do. What we see in the story of Elijah. If depression says, you don't matter, and if Elijah's expressing, God, I don't matter, and I am alone, then what God says in the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the encouraging from a megaphone is, Elijah, you matter, you matter, you matter, you matter. I see you. I know you. I love you. What you're doing is important. And what he says to us and what he says to you and what I hope you hear is that you matter. Look, the love of God drowns out other voices and gently reminds you of how much you matter. The love of God and the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the purposing and in the encouraging remind you in these subtle ways, I know life is hard. You matter. I know you feel insignificant. You matter. I know the world is trying to convince you that you don't matter, but I'm telling you that you do. Sorry, it's been an emotional week for me. One of the people I reached out to shared with me that he'll walk through really dark depression for months and sometimes a year at a time. And as I was walking through with him what I wanted to share, I admitted my own feelings of inadequacy to even address what it's like to actually be deeply depressed. Because I know that there's some depression that words don't touch. It just doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what I pray. It doesn't matter how I encourage. There's just some depression that you walk through that's so dark and so difficult that words don't touch it and arrest you from it. And so I said, in your greatest times of trial, what helped you? And as I even admit the own inadequacy of my words to you, what can I say to help you? And he said, let me write you an email because I'm better with my thoughts like that. And he responded with some very helpful things, but one thing he said was so profound that I thought I wanted to share it with you this morning. He wrote me this. Solitude and isolation are freedom. They're the ability to define you as you wish because there's no consequence to any decision you can make. If you decide to surrender, there's no consequence. Your story ends and nobody else is there to see. Nobody else is there to care. Nobody else is there to respond. The profundity of that struck me as I read it in my office. That when you are deeply depressed and you are convinced that it doesn't matter and that you don't matter, that you are all alone and no one sees you. That you're isolated. In your solitude. But then that is freedom because you can do whatever you want and no one's going to care. And I thought, my gosh. That's a low place. But then he said, but it's because of, and this is a paraphrase, we have a conversation preceding this to help me understand that what he meant in our language is that because of the cross, because I know Jesus died for me, because I know God made promises to me. Because I know I matter enough to God for him to send his son. He said this, because it means, because of the cross, it means that there is no way not to be seen. There is no situation in which you are finally, truly, absolutely alone. You understand the cross stands eternally reminding you of how much you matter, that in the depths of not mattering, in the depths of despair, in the depths of I'm not important and I don't matter to anyone and no one sees me and no one cares about me and it might just be better if I weren't here, that even in the depths of that, that God sent his son to die for you, to claim you back to him. And before you say, no, he did that for other people. No, no, he did that for you. If you're the only person on this earth, he still would have sent his son to die for you, to reclaim you to the heaven that he created for you. And if we will cling to the cross, to the glimmer of light that shines through the millennia, we can take hope and solace in the fact that there's going to be a day where depression doesn't exist and where the darkness goes away and every day is bright and filled with joy. And I might not get to experience those here today, right now, but I will one day. And if I cling to that cross, God's promised that I matter, that there will be days where this will let up, where I will see joy, where I will live in the fullness of life, but even if it doesn't come, there's an eternity where I'll see that every day. We sang a few minutes ago that you're fighting a battle that I've already won. I'm fighting a battle that you've already won. This is the battle, and it was won on the cross. So let God strengthen you today. Let him whisper to you today. And hear me say that you matter to your God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your son. Thank you for who he is. We thank you for loving us. Lord, I lift up those that feel sad or depressed or insignificant or unwanted or unwarranted. God, it is my fervent prayer that they would be strengthened today. That they would get enough from today to keep clinging to you. God, for those we love who live in a cloud of darkness from time to time, we pray that you would use us to help them brighten it. God, we pray for the days ahead that you promised through your son, that you won through his death on the cross. Where in your presence we finally at long last experience fullness of joy. God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who are sad and who are downtrodden and ask that you would pick them up, that they would know today that you love them, that you care for them, that more than anything, they matter deeply to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. We've been moving through a series called Big Emotions. This is part six of the series. And within this series, as we kind of planned it, I realized that we needed to have a morning like this morning where we talk about some of the heavier, harder emotions that we can experience in life. In the past just few months, I had a lunch with a young man who was and is a recovering alcoholic, and actually today is his one-year sober anniversary, so we're excited for him today. Yeah, he's not here. That's okay. He didn't hear how much you didn't, how tepid that was. If he were here, I would have. But we're thrilled about that. And he shared with me as I talked with him about a story that part of what led him down that path is dealing with a depression. This creeping sense that he wasn't going to be who everyone expected him to be and who he was. And it was this feeling of not mattering anymore, of not living up to things that sent him into a depression that caused him to seek out some help for that from chemicals. In the past couple months, I've talked with two different dads in our community whose daughters are struggling mightily with depression. You could even call it a crippling depression. And one of them even shared with me that he's learned through her struggle that that's what he's always dealt with. He just never had the words to put around what he was feeling, or it's entirely possible because men are stupid, that he just didn't allow himself to admit that he was sad because we're too manly for that. I've sat with people in the wake of great loss. Sat with a family, and I won't detail the struggles, but they just kind of, life just keeps running them ashore, man. Life just keeps beating them up. I get texts from them, and I'm like, God, you've got to be kidding me with what they're having to walk through, and I'm certain. As a matter of fact, I know for a fact that some of them are staving off bouts of depression and anxiety and deep grief and deep sadness. In my own family, on both my side and Jen's side, Jen's my wife, on both my side and Jen's side, we have depression in our family. We're walking through it. Sometimes it's harder than other times. Sometimes it's more extreme than other cases, but it touches us and it touches our lives too. And I know that each of us deals with or loves someone who deals with depression, grief, melancholy, sadness from time to time, these seasons in life that just feel dark and heavy. And I also know that many more of us deal with feelings of insignificance, like we don't matter. I know firsthand that being, because of walking through it with my wife, that being a stay-at-home mom can make you feel very small. It can make your world feel very inconsequential, that all you are is the nursemaid for a toddler or a shuttle service for your kids or whatever it might be. Being a parent can sometimes make your world feel very small. As you age, sometimes your world can start to feel smaller and smaller and the things you do less and less significant. And some of us have gone from seasons of mattering a great deal to mattering not very much. Some of us have gone from having great identities that we are proud of to these small identities that we kind of wander in and aren't used to yet. And so I know that in our family of faith, in our congregation, in this room, and the people watching online, the people who will hear this later, all of us have dealt with personally or love someone dearly who struggles with bouts of depression, with grief, with sadness, with loss, or even insignificance. And so I thought it was absolutely appropriate to take a Sunday while we talk about big emotions and talk about these. And I thought it would be really helpful for us as we identify with that sadness, with that grief, with that inadequacy, to look at someone in the Bible who also dealt with that and to see how God meets him in this place. So we're going to look at just a part of the story of a prophet named Elijah. Now, many of you were not here years ago when I did a whole series in the summer on Elijah, or if you were here, you were probably at the beach and didn't hear it. So some of this stuff will be reviewed, but maybe not much. I'm not going to tell you the whole story of the life of the prophet of Elijah, but he is one of God's, as Aaron said in the announcements, one of God's great servants. Elijah was so great. In fact, I'm not sure I need to tell you anything else about his life, but at the end of his life, as he was aging and the end was near, he's walking with his disciple, Elisha, and on the west bank of the Jordan River and Elijah decides that he needs to go to the eastern bank of the Jordan River and so he just parts the waters and walks across it like this miracle of convenience. Like the ark stopped the Jordan River so that God himself could move into the promised land with his people and then Moses parted the waters so that God's people could escape from the Pharaoh. And Elijah parted the water so that his sandals wouldn't get wet. That's just okay. He just puts his cloak in the water, parts it, walks through, come on, Elisha, and then they go through. And when they get on the other side, a chariot descends down out of heaven. An angelic chariot comes down and scoops Elijah up and takes him to heaven. Dude was so righteous, he caught an Uber ride to the pearly gates because God didn't want him to experience death. We see Elijah again in the New Testament at the Mount of Transfiguration when he appears along with Moses to Jesus to strengthen him and encourage him. He's a major figure in the Old Testament and a hero of the faith. And when I say it's difficult for anyone to get closer to God than Elijah was, I mean it literally because all of us in here are very likely going to experience death. He did not have to. And yet, in his life, we see pretty convincing evidence that at least in this season, Elijah was low. He struggled mightily with depression and insignificance. And so I think it's worth looking at this part of his story and seeing how God responds there. The part of the story that I'm going to present to you is somewhere, I would guess, about 45 to 50 days of his life. So I'm not even sure you could call it a season. It was just a time of his life when he was low. We don't know if there were other times or not. One would assume that there were. But here we get just a snippet or a snapshot of Elijah's, what I believe to be, depression, at least in this season. We're going to be looking, and not yet, but if you have a Bible, you can turn there. 1 Kings chapter 19. If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Unless you're watching from home, I don't know what's in your seat backs. But in 1 Kings chapter 18 is the big showdown, the big thing that Elijah's famous for, the showdown with the prophets of Baal. And I don't have time to give the full treatment to the story. I wish I did because it's a fantastic story and you should really read it. But the predominant religion at this time was worshiping this God named Baal. The king was Ahab, the queen was Jezebel. They were evil and they supported this idol worship. The followers of God were pressed into the margins and the fringes. And Elijah was by all accounts, essentially the chief priest for God at the time and the head prophet. And so he goes to Mount Carmel and he has this showdown with the prophets of Baal. There's 450 prophets of Baal. And they make this deal that they're each going to build an altar. And whichever God from heaven itself lights the altars on fire first, that's the best God. And the other one has to take his ball and go home. And so they start this competition. And Elijah, I just have to point out, he says one of the best lines in the Bible. He is a sarcastic jerk, which breathed life into me from God himself. And Baal is not responding and lighting the altar on fire. And he's making fun of them. Maybe you should yell louder, yada, yada. And at. And at one point, he's like, maybe he can't hear you because he's in his heavenly bathroom taking a Tuesdays. Maybe that's what's going on, which is phenomenal. It's the kind of stuff you get here at Grace Riley. And after they give up, Elijah prays this humble prayer. God, it's time. God sends fire from heaven, lights the altar on fire, and Elijah has all 450 prophets arrested and put to death. After this, the beginning of chapter 19, Elijah's praying. There had been a drought for three years in Israel, and God told Elijah that the drought's going to be over. Get ready for rain. And then swept Elijah with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God sweeps Elijah to Jerusalem. So he beats Ahab's chariot back to Jerusalem. When Ahab, the king, gets to Jerusalem, he goes to Jezebel, the queen, and he tells Jezebel all that Elijah has done. She responds by sending a messenger to Elijah that says, everything that you did to my prophets, I'm going to do to you, and it's going to be worse. I'm going to kill you. And this is interesting because a couple chapters later in 2 Kings chapter 1, she tries to send soldiers to kill Elijah. And Elijah says, I'm a man of God, and if you try to arrest me, then he's going to send fire and kill you. And then they do, and then he does. Three times. Dude has nothing to be scared of. He has the protection of God on his head. He has the hand of God on him. But when the messenger reaches Elijah this time and says, Jezebel's wants to kill him. And in fear, he flees a day into the wilderness. He gets done with that day and he sits down and he prays a prayer that I hope none of us have prayed, but I bet some of us have. God, it would be better if I were dead. Please take my life. I'm done. I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give. I'm exhausted. I did this great miracle in your name, won a great victory, and it's like it doesn't matter. She's going to kill me. Do you understand that he was despaired to his point of death? He was despairing for his life. Do you understand that he went to sleep under that broom tree, that he closed his eyes praying, God, please don't let me wake up? You understand that when Elijah's eyes were opened that he was disappointed? I don't know if you have ever gone to sleep and before you went to sleep, you prayed, God, please don't let me wake up on this side of eternity. But I bet some of you have. I bet we know people who have felt what Elijah felt. God, I'm going to sleep and I don't want to wake up. This world has nothing left for me. I don't want to be here. No one cares about me. I don't matter. This needs to be over. It would be better off if I were in eternity than here any longer. Please don't let me wake up when I go to sleep, God. Elijah is despairing unto death. And is at, by all estimations, a very low point. But God wakes him up. He wakes him up with an angel who feeds him, gives him food. I love that that's God's response to the dark night of the soul. Like a loving divine grandma. Here, just eat a little something. You'll feel better after some cookies. Elijah goes back to sleep. The angel wakes him up again. Says, you're going to need this for your journey. You're going to Mount Horeb. So he eats and he travels 40 days to Mount Horeb. And God tells him when he gets there, go up into this cave. I'm going to talk to you there. And when he gets up to the cave, God speaks to him and he says, Elijah, what are you doing? And Elijah says, my part. I've served you well. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. And they've killed all my friends. They've killed all my companions. I, even I, only am left. There is no one left in Israel like me. I am totally alone, God. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. I have no love. I have no camaraderie. I'm alone and I'm destitute and nobody cares about me anymore, God. This time when I go to sleep, can I please just not wake up? I'm done. This is an articulation of the lowest of lows in his life. I, even I only, am left. I have no friends. I have no family. I have no companions. It's just me, and I'm tired. And God says, I'm going to speak to you again. And it's this remarkable passage where Elijah is sitting in the cave on the side of this mountain. And the text tells us that there's this great earthquake and the ground shakes and the stones tremble and the trees shake. And you think surely that God's voice is in the earthquake, but he's not in the earthquake. And then God sends this fire by the mouth of the cave that consumes everything in its path, and you think, surely God is in the fire, and he's not in the fire. And he sends a mighty wind that shakes and vibrates and stirs and scares, and you think, surely God is in the wind, and he's not in the wind. And then scripture says there's a gentle whisper and God is in the whisper. And Elijah goes out to the mouth of the cave and God says, what are you doing, Elijah? And Elijah gives the exact same response in verses 14, in verse 14 that he did in verse 10. I've been very jealous for you. I've served you well. And I've put all my friends to the sword, and I, even I only, am left. And God hears him. And he says, I want you to go do something for me. I want you to go appoint this man and this man kings of their different areas. I've still got stuff for you to do. Go make them kings. And when you do, here's what's going to happen. Now go. And on his way to go do that, he comes across a man plowing in his field named Elisha. And he grabs Elisha and he says, I'm going to essentially make you my disciple. Come and follow me. I'm going to teach you to be a prophet like I'm a prophet. And Elisha goes and tells his parents that he's leaving and he leaves and he goes with Elijah. And he spends the rest of his life following Elijah. And when Elijah goes up into heaven on the chariot, his cloak wafts back down to Elisha, and Elisha receives a double portion of the Holy Spirit that Elijah had, and outperforms Elijah in miracles and in all the other things, has a greater ministry than Elijah did. And it can be argued that Elisha is probably the greater impact than defeating the prophets of Baal, that Elisha may have been Elijah's greatest work. But without question, in this 45 to 50 day period, we see one of the great servants of God at a low point in his life. We see him despair unto death. We see him go to sleep and not want to wake up. We see him express solitude and isolation, feeling completely alone and wanting to die. We see him despairing. What we see, I think, at least for this season, is a depression. And if you look at what he says, and if we think about what we've experienced when we've been low, then what we understand is that depression silently screams, you don't matter. Depression silently screams at you that you don't matter, that nothing you do matters. Look at what Elijah says the first time. I'm the only one left. I did everything you wanted me to do. Now they're going to kill me, and I'd rather just die I'm no better than my father's. I have nothing left to give God. My best days are behind me. I have no bigger miracles to work. I've done everything I can do. All that's left is waiting for death. Please just go ahead and take me. And it occurs to me as I reflect on Elijah voicing in that way that he felt like he no longer mattered. That one of the great strengths of grace is having a generationally diverse congregation. I love that about our church. And what I'm about to say is in no way a joke. This is not a time for stupid jokes. I'm not doing that. It occurs to me that a large portion of us, a large portion of you, you've reached the end of your career, the last portions of your career. You've ended your career and you're in retirement. You've raised your kids. Maybe you've even helped raise your grandkids. In your mind, you've shifted. I've seen the shift in men and women that I love. From wanting to build a name for yourself to thinking about what kind of name you're leaving behind. You've shifted from establishment to legacy. And you've accepted that you are in the twilight of your life. And I think it would be very easy to become convinced in that season that your best days are behind you, that you've done the great work that you're going to do. You've climbed the biggest mountain that you're going to climb. You've defeated more prophets then than you ever will in the future. I think it would be very difficult to have lived a life where in one setting you were important. Your voice mattered. People came to you for your opinion. They paid a fair amount of money for your time to a place where people don't come as much anymore and they don't ask as much anymore and your voice isn't as weighty as it used to be and you become convinced that my best days are behind me and if we're not careful, we can slip into, as Elijah did, just kind of waiting for the last day to get here because I have nothing left to give. And so I think in that way, even if we're not people who are depressed, we can hear that message of the world and that message of depression creeping into our hearts. Hey, you don't matter. Your best days are behind you. Or we can feel insignificant for other reasons. Our role in life right now reduces us. We have a thankless job and a somewhat thankless marriage with thankless kids, and we just feel small, and no one tells us that we're good enough, and no one tells us that they respect us, and no one tells us that they're grateful for us. We can move through seasons of life where we just feel like we're going through the motions, and we feel so insignificant and small. I know firsthand that when I preach sermons about God having a purpose for us, God having a use for us, when I quote one of my favorite verses, Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we might walk in them. And I encourage you guys, identify your good works and walk in them. I know that there's a large portion of you that hear that and go, yes, that's good. I have no idea what my good works are. I have no idea how God gifted me. God's gifted other people to do other things, but he has not gifted me in any significant way. So the best thing I can do is just keep my head down and be nice because I don't really matter that much in God's kingdom. That's what Elijah was saying. I, even I only, am left. I don't matter. There's nothing around me that's important. And I talked with some friends of mine who deal with depression more than I do. Candidly, this is not something that I'm given to struggle with. I have other struggles, and I'm pretty transparent with you about those. For this one, I had to outsource a lot of it. So this idea that depression silently screams at us that we don't matter, that's not my idea. That came from someone who walks it. And then I called someone else who probably deals with depression in a little bit more profound way, and I said, hey, does this check out with you? If I say that depression insists that we don't matter, does that resonate? And he said, yeah, but it's worse than that. He says, my depression tells me that it doesn't matter, that nothing matters, let alone me. And so if you've ever sat in that place, or you've loved someone who sits in that place, when we start to listen to the voices that tell us that we don't matter, I think God's response to Elijah when he was giving into those voices should breathe some fresh air into our lungs. And here's what God does to Elijah. We go back through the story. Here's what we see him doing. God strengthens, whispers to, sends, and encourages Elijah. And I think all of those things are important. He strengthens Elijah. He whispers to Elijah. He sends Elijah. And then he finally encourages Elijah. He strengthens him. He literally wakes him up and gives him food. You're going to need this for your journey. He literally wakes him up again and gives him some food. You're going to need this for your journey. Eat up. He strengthens him. He gives him enough to get through the day. Whatever you need to get through today, God gives that to you to sustain you. That's the daily bread. That's the manna. That's the daily sustenance of God showing up and sustaining you for today. I shared with you a few weeks back that I was reading the Beth Moore biography, and she encountered her mother-in-law had walked through a tremendous trial, and she said, how do you do it? How did you giving me strength for that day. I'm reminded of this famous passage in Isaiah Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. God will sustain us if we trust him to do it. He will strengthen us in the darkest of days when it's so dark and so heavy and so cloudy that we can't see a glimmer of light or a glimmer of hope. God, if we have within us one ounce that is willing to reach out to God and ask him for that day, he will sustain you that day. He will whisper to you. I love that we have a God that speaks to us in the whisper. In the most unexpected places, in the most unexpected ways, God shows up with his presence. A few weeks ago in men's Bible study, one of the guys shared his story. He's a little bit older now, late 50s, early 60s, than he was when this happened. But at some point in his life, I'm not sure when, but he lost his wife. Lost his wife to breast cancer. I can't imagine the pain of losing a spouse or a child. Losing a parent is hard. But I bet losing a spouse or a child is harder. I used to work at a school years ago and there was this woman named Emmeline McKinnon who founded the school. Wonderful lady, everybody loved her. A few years ago, she passed away from cancer, and her husband, in his grief, took his own life too, a few days later. And to anyone with a heart, when they hear that story, I think they say, I get that. They loved each other for 60 years. How do you keep opening up your eyes after that? So understand it. I empathize with it. And I don't condemn it. And my friend was walking through that grief. Did not have kids. No one was relying on him. He was in the depths of sadness. And so he made the decision that he was going to go to heaven to be with her because he didn't want to be here. He went and acquired whatever it was he needed to acquire to put together a cocktail so that when he drank it, he would be in heaven with his wife. He went home, put it in the blender, started to mix it up. As the blender was going, the phone rang. So he stops it. He answers the phone. The person on the other end says, hey, is this so-and-so? He says, yeah, who's this? And he says, well, I'm Dr. So-and-so. I was your wife's optometrist. And my buddy said, I haven't heard from you in years. How you doing? And he said, I'm doing good. I just wanted to call you and tell you how special your wife was and how sorry I am for your loss. And my buddy said, well, thanks. I appreciate that. He said, how are you doing with it? And he lied, and he said, I'm doing fine. The way you're supposed to lie in polite society. And the doctor said, hey, I don't know if you're a religious man, but I am. And I feel like I need to tell you that God has been really pressing on me to call you. He's been doing it for a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry, I'm the worst. I've been putting it off. Every time he presses on me to call you, I kind of have something else pressing, and I think, yep, I need to do that, and I set it aside, and I mean to do it later. He said, but about five minutes ago, I felt the press again. And I was in the middle of doing paperwork, and I tried to put it off, but God would not let me put it off. He would not relent, and I just really felt like I needed to call you. So how are you doing? And my buddy really told him how he was doing and what he was up to that day. And they cried together and prayed together. And my buddy dumped it down the drain. Lived to remarry, to love nieces and nephews, and to sit in that circle and tell us that story. God whispered to him that day. So not only will God whisper to you, but sometimes he'll use you to whisper as well. When he's prompting you to do it. Do it. And then, God doesn't just whisper to Elijah. He sends him. And I love the matter-of-factness of God sending him. Because it's like, Elijah, listen, I can see that you're clearly bummed out, but I've got some things I need to do. There's some guys who need to be named king. They don't have kings right now. They need to be anointed. So I need you to get back to work. Go appoint these kings. He sends them. He says, I'm not done with you yet. I know you feel like you're done because you finished this thing with the prophets of Baal, and now there's nothing left to do. There's stuff to do, Elijah, and I need you to get to it. And I was actually talking with my dad this week. I wouldn't call it arguing. We weren't arguing. We were just kind of going back and forth, as we are wont to do, about what the greatest work was in Elijah's life. Was it the prophets of Baal? Or was it the training and developing of Elisha and leaving him behind as a legacy? Which one was bigger? And in the middle of the discussion, I said, Dad, this is really a stupid conversation. Which usually he's the one that gets to do that. So I was happy to be the one that got to do it this time. This is a really stupid conversation. And I just pointed out to him, the size of our works don't matter nearly as much as the faithfulness of our works. Who cares if the miracle with Baal was the bigger deal than anointing a king or naming a successor or raising someone's son from the dead? Who cares what the bigger miracle was, the size of the work, the grandeur of the work, the import of the work? Who cares if that's bigger than what's left? For those of us who maybe our best years are behind us, maybe the biggest thing we've done is behind us. Maybe the most important thing you think you'll do from a human perspective is already in your past and not as big of things are waiting on you in your future. I think that's silly. God could care less about the size of our work. Like God's impressed with the size of any work. What matters is our faithfulness within the works that he gives us for as many years as he gives us. Here's how I know it's true. I know that you guys would support me in this. Right now, there's probably about 200 people here this Sunday morning. If next week you snapped your fingers and you made grace 2,000 people? Would my work next week in preaching be any more impactful, any more great, any more important to God? Would I somehow be more spiritual next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am this week preaching to 200? Would I somehow be more faithful or more loved next week preaching to 2,000 people than I am faithful or loved in preaching to you today? No! It's stupid. The size of our work is irrelevant. It's our faithfulness within what he gives us. What lies ahead of you is not insignificant if God has placed it there. What's significant is your faithfulness as you are obedient to that. And after he sends Elijah, he encourages him. He peels back the curtain a little bit. And he says, hey, I know you think you're the last one here. There's 7,000 more just like you. I've kept them for myself. They have not been the need of bail. You're not alone. You have companions. You have friends. And I see you. And I'm not expecting you to carry all this weight. Now go do what I've asked you to do. What we see in the story of Elijah. If depression says, you don't matter, and if Elijah's expressing, God, I don't matter, and I am alone, then what God says in the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the encouraging from a megaphone is, Elijah, you matter, you matter, you matter, you matter. I see you. I know you. I love you. What you're doing is important. And what he says to us and what he says to you and what I hope you hear is that you matter. Look, the love of God drowns out other voices and gently reminds you of how much you matter. The love of God and the strengthening and in the whispering and in the sending and the purposing and in the encouraging remind you in these subtle ways, I know life is hard. You matter. I know you feel insignificant. You matter. I know the world is trying to convince you that you don't matter, but I'm telling you that you do. Sorry, it's been an emotional week for me. One of the people I reached out to shared with me that he'll walk through really dark depression for months and sometimes a year at a time. And as I was walking through with him what I wanted to share, I admitted my own feelings of inadequacy to even address what it's like to actually be deeply depressed. Because I know that there's some depression that words don't touch. It just doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what I pray. It doesn't matter how I encourage. There's just some depression that you walk through that's so dark and so difficult that words don't touch it and arrest you from it. And so I said, in your greatest times of trial, what helped you? And as I even admit the own inadequacy of my words to you, what can I say to help you? And he said, let me write you an email because I'm better with my thoughts like that. And he responded with some very helpful things, but one thing he said was so profound that I thought I wanted to share it with you this morning. He wrote me this. Solitude and isolation are freedom. They're the ability to define you as you wish because there's no consequence to any decision you can make. If you decide to surrender, there's no consequence. Your story ends and nobody else is there to see. Nobody else is there to care. Nobody else is there to respond. The profundity of that struck me as I read it in my office. That when you are deeply depressed and you are convinced that it doesn't matter and that you don't matter, that you are all alone and no one sees you. That you're isolated. In your solitude. But then that is freedom because you can do whatever you want and no one's going to care. And I thought, my gosh. That's a low place. But then he said, but it's because of, and this is a paraphrase, we have a conversation preceding this to help me understand that what he meant in our language is that because of the cross, because I know Jesus died for me, because I know God made promises to me. Because I know I matter enough to God for him to send his son. He said this, because it means, because of the cross, it means that there is no way not to be seen. There is no situation in which you are finally, truly, absolutely alone. You understand the cross stands eternally reminding you of how much you matter, that in the depths of not mattering, in the depths of despair, in the depths of I'm not important and I don't matter to anyone and no one sees me and no one cares about me and it might just be better if I weren't here, that even in the depths of that, that God sent his son to die for you, to claim you back to him. And before you say, no, he did that for other people. No, no, he did that for you. If you're the only person on this earth, he still would have sent his son to die for you, to reclaim you to the heaven that he created for you. And if we will cling to the cross, to the glimmer of light that shines through the millennia, we can take hope and solace in the fact that there's going to be a day where depression doesn't exist and where the darkness goes away and every day is bright and filled with joy. And I might not get to experience those here today, right now, but I will one day. And if I cling to that cross, God's promised that I matter, that there will be days where this will let up, where I will see joy, where I will live in the fullness of life, but even if it doesn't come, there's an eternity where I'll see that every day. We sang a few minutes ago that you're fighting a battle that I've already won. I'm fighting a battle that you've already won. This is the battle, and it was won on the cross. So let God strengthen you today. Let him whisper to you today. And hear me say that you matter to your God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your son. Thank you for who he is. We thank you for loving us. Lord, I lift up those that feel sad or depressed or insignificant or unwanted or unwarranted. God, it is my fervent prayer that they would be strengthened today. That they would get enough from today to keep clinging to you. God, for those we love who live in a cloud of darkness from time to time, we pray that you would use us to help them brighten it. God, we pray for the days ahead that you promised through your son, that you won through his death on the cross. Where in your presence we finally at long last experience fullness of joy. God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who are sad and who are downtrodden and ask that you would pick them up, that they would know today that you love them, that you care for them, that more than anything, they matter deeply to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
