Acts 2

Good morning, Grace. While you guys are watching this video, I'll be on a plane to Ethiopia with some other people from Grace to support our team working in Addis Jamari over there. This morning, we have a special guest, Sarah Prince. She and her husband, Casey, have come over with Kieran and Keller, their children. They're based in Cape Town, South Africa. Years ago, Casey and Sarah were on staff here at Grace back in the old days, and then we had the privilege of sending them over there to be missionaries in South Africa, where they work with a football team called Ubuntu and are involved in their community in many other ways. So this morning, Sarah is going to come share with us a really important message from her heart, and I'm excited for all of us to get to hear from her. Good morning. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It's so good to be here. It's so good to see your faces. Many of you I know, and it's such a privilege to be here again. We were a part of Grace when it was over there. There, there, there, there. Yep, that way. And for many years, we served at Grace. I was an associate pastor. My husband was a youth pastor. And then this church community sent us 14 years ago, almost 15, if you can believe it, out into South Africa to do ministry. I have a picture of our family, if you haven't seen them walking around. My daughter, Kieran, is in kids ministry now because she loves the kids. That's Keller. And that's my handsome husband, Casey. Behind us is the street where we live. And we will be going back there tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the other stuff that we do. But I did bring a few copies of my book. And I also have a few postcards. If you don't know us, I'm so excited to meet you. And we have some postcards and some... Can you help me put these out, Casey? He's already on his phone. Can you help me just set... Oh, he's taking notes. Okay. There's four points. That's all you have to know. But then can you just set those out? When you're done. Before, in the next 30 minutes. So we have some postcards and some info about our family if you don't know anything about us, but many of you do. And I just want to say, I was just chatting with someone outside and they were saying, I can't remember when you guys met and I can't believe this is happening. And you know, it's so crazy that you did this. And we always say the reason that we could risk what we do in South Africa is because we have this community to come back to. We've kind of like played, I don't know, poker, but like played all the cards or the chips or the things. And I'm a big gambler. So we gambled all the gambling stuff and we've just put it into South Africa. But we always know we have this community here that loves us, that supports us. And then we can always come home to. So we thank you for your love and support. But that's not what I want to talk about today. So I've been wrestling with something lately. This is the first time in a very long time that I have something that God is showing me, and then I'm like, okay, but God, where is that in Scripture? Usually I'm like really big into the Bible, and I'm like digging, and then that's the thing I want to focus on. But today with this topic, I've come to God curious. God, what is this thing that you've done in our world? Because in 14 years in South Africa, we have built a ministry called Ubuntu Football, where now we've sent 24 young men to America to study, one of who's here, hey-o. And we have a bunch of young men who are playing professionally, a bunch of young men who are studying in South Africa, a bunch of young men who are beginning their lives as incredible men. One of them is my son's soccer coach at his school. It's really beautiful. But as we've done all these other things, God has given us this very rich and vibrant community. This very unique group of people. Kind of different pockets of people that are very strange and very unique and very fun and very sacred. And so I've started to ask God, what is that? One story that highlights the weirdness of our community comes with a cake. So I have a cake here. Our son was diagnosed with autism how many years ago now? He is 12, so about 10 years ago. And we're in the community of South Africa as this happens, not even knowing what autism is about. That's what my book is about, Anguish to Awakening, our journey with Keller, my journey. And I have this group of friends. And I think we got a diagnosis. And maybe the next day, I was at the gym. And I ran into Kate. And she's like, oh, how are you? And I was like, I'm, you know, and I just cried at the gym and told her what happened, and we had this group of women friends, and so she sat with me, she prayed with me, and then maybe a week or two later, she said, we want to get together with you. Come over this night. I show up at her house, and this is the cake for me, and she said, we can do hard things together, and so we're celebrating that. We're at the beginning of a very hard thing, and we will do it together with you. And they had this like key chain thing with quotes and cards, and they just sat with me and cried with me. And I look back at that, think that is so unique to enter into a really difficult time and have people come and just say, we're here in the hard. We're not here for the highlights. We're not here for the good times. We're here now, today, in the hard. And it struck me as so unique. And we've had these kinds of times, these kinds of instances over and over again. And I need to admit that it's not because we're so great at friendship or that we're so great at bringing people around. I think it's a God-given gift. And I think there are some things that God has taught us along the way to help cultivate that community. That's the title today. I can't have a simple, I kept, community doesn't work, initiating community, it's not rich enough. So today's title is Cultivating Koinonia and Orating as Oracles. Because sometimes American or English words don't do it justice. And I want to talk about this. What does it mean to cultivate not just community, not just friends, koinonia, I'll explain that, and how do we operate as oracles? Because I think that's where something happens. You know, I grew up all over the country. I moved a lot. And so only when I became a young adult, I got married, like right after college, three weeks. Don't recommend it, young people. It's worked out, 22 years. But it was crazy. So I jumped into adulthood, went to seminary to become a pastor, and all of a sudden realized many things. Another sermon. But one of them was that I had no idea how to make friends. But I thought I didn't need them. I thought I was like, fine. I was just happy. I was just doing my thing. I was just bebopping around. And I started to realize I needed friends. And it was in this church that I learned the power of friendship and koinonia. We used to have a retreat. Anyone go to koinonia? Koinonia. Yeah. See? We had this retreat and I was dragged to it. Okay, fine. I'll go because I'm like a pastor or whatever. And it was this beautiful time of friendship and connection. And through this place, I learned the importance, the need of koinonia. But you know, a lot of people have never learned this. They've never been in environments where this is pushed, where this is elevated, where this is celebrated. There's lots of statistics on this, but three decades ago, there was a poll that said 3% of Americans had no close friends. 2021, 12% had no close friends. Into the pandemic, 13% of women, 8% of men had lost touch with most of their friends. This is something happening a lot more. Nowadays, some 8% will say they have no friends at all. This is something that's been talked about here. I didn't hear about this because we're in Africa, and in Africa things are done a bit differently. But there's actually a pandemic, an epidemic of loneliness. It's everywhere. And that's a word that just means you're disconnected. You don't have people. You're not anchored. You're not moored by others. And you're just kind of wandering. And it's actually celebrated here. It's just kind of how we do things here. And actually, this epidemic, the Surgeon General says that it affects one out of two adults. And it doesn't just help your mood. It's about your entire body, your entire health. It actually predicts the longevity of your life if you're lonely or if you have people around you. And so when the Surgeon General went around the states, some of the things that he heard were people would tell me all again and again. They felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. And they said, if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. Now, if this doesn't feel a bit familiar, I'm glad you're here because I have a job for you. Some of us just have people around and we don't know how we did it or why it was given to us. For us, we were just super needy and having a child with autism was one of the big things. We just kind of were like, we're broken, help us. And people came around us, which is what I talk about in the book. But I think most people don't display their need in the way that our family did. We were very vocal about it. But if you feel like you have close community, if you don't know what loneliness feels like, then great. I have a job for you. Because many people feel very, very lonely. Many people feel very, very isolated. All over the world, people are saying that they want community. They want friendship. They want that in their world, but they don't know how to find it. All community is is a sense of belonging, support, shared purpose. And it's a place where the church should be leading. We've got this whole book that is people that did it. I mean, they fought a lot, and they killed each other some, and it was messy, but like they did it. This is the book about it, and yet we are doing it poorly at times. We have a friend who grew up, he grew up doing, his family was doing missions, their South African family, and he is South African, but has moved to New Zealand. He just recently flew from New Zealand to Amsterdam for what? Does anyone know who was in Amsterdam recently? Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. He has a beautiful family. He's very connected. But people all over the globe have been traveling in the, I don't even know, the millions, the trillions, to see this woman sing songs. Now, I hear, I know every song because of my daughter. I know every word. I know every syllable. They're good. They're fine. They're good. They're good. They're good. They're good. Did I say they were good? That is not why people are going to this concert. They are going because people have over and over and over said something like this. Entering the Erez tour was like stepping into an alternate universe where everyone was bursting with joy. I've never encountered such a warm, friendly, and kind crowd. People have called it transcendental. And it embodies love to people all over the world. It's not about the songs. It's this feeling thousands of people have when they're together. They're connected. They're a community. They're being seen and known. Now, I'm not asking any of you to be Taylor Swift, the next one, although my daughter might be. But I don't think we need a concert to create the sacred art of connection. It can happen anywhere. And God shows us how to do it. And it is a word that's more than community. It is that word koinonia in the New Testament. It's roughly translated fellowship, but it means to share together, to take part. And the same idea is found in another Greek word. That's metakos. And it means to have with or to have together. Now, I'm using sacred New Testament words to describe what those people are saying about Taylor Swift. And what I know God is desperate for people to describe about us. And again, if you don't know the feeling of loneliness, then it is your time. If you do, then I'm here to give you hope. Because it is possible among every single one of us. Being here in South Africa has highlighted to me not how special we are as a family to do what we do, but how God is really great because this group of idiots is running this incredible organization in South Africa because it's God's mission, it's God's dream, it's God's plan, and even we can't stop it with all of our fumbles and our foils and our missteps. When God has a plan, he will use the best of us and the worst of us. His plan is to be together. So I have four, I don't have a pamphlet, I'm from Africa. I don't have a pamphlet, but I do have four very simple points. If you're saying, I don't have that. I have people around, but I don't have a deep connection. Or if you're saying, I have it. This is for you. Because it's time to step into something sacred, something real. And none of my examples, I'm going to tell some stories, not a single one is a Bible study. I have the best Bible study. I want to start there. I have the best Bible study. There are these women, and my sister was just in South Africa, and she was with them. There are these beautiful women that I've known for years and years, and we get together, and we cry, and we laugh, and we pray, and we scream out to God, and it is holy. None of these examples are going to be a church or a Bible study because I want to inspire you to dream of where the church could go beyond this. This is holy, but that world needs this sacred thing. So I want you to dream. Okay, so step one. Step one of creating, cultivating koinonia. We'll end with orating as oracles, but cultivating koinonia. And actually cultivating is step three. So you're not ready for the first letter of this sermon. You ready? Step one, introspection. This sounds so simple, but it is so profound. We went to South Africa to help everyone and to save everyone and to do all the great things for Jesus. And then a few years in, we had a son who was diagnosed with autism. And we were like, no, God, not the plan. We're doing some other stuff. We have a lot to do. We have a big plan. We have a big mission. We're going to serve for Jesus. This has happened time and time again to me. It even happened recently where we have a plan and then God says, no, this is a plan. But we were in desperate need. We didn't even know what autism meant. We had to Google it as we started our journey. But this is the first step of community. It isn't creating a Bible study. It isn't finding people to play pickleball with. The first step is introspection. The first step is what is my need? What is happening in here? Number one, introspection. This came through hardship for us. But as we've walked through that hardship, we've had to be really honest. What is it that we need in a community? Who do we need around us? What does it mean to raise kids and to do this life with people in our world? What does that look like? And we've had to be very introspective. This is something people are talking about, not just Taylor Swift people, but all over the world. I recently heard an interview with this woman, Priya Parker. She wrote this book called The Art of Gathering. So I would have thought, I would never picked up this book. I would have thought it's been about like dinner parties, which I love, or like how to host something cute or how to find the Pinterest board. But for her, The Art of Gathering starts with assessing your needs. Because you cannot create a gathering of people where you are authentically a part if you don't know what it is you need in that group. Creating community begins with your own needs. What is my need here? How am I actually feeling? What do I need from other people? That sounds selfish, sounds maybe anti-Christian, but it's true because if I'm going to authentically show up, that means my needs are going to show up. My desires are going to show up. My dreams are going to show up. My brokenness is going to show up. So I need to show up first with my true self, not who I think I should be, not who I want to be, not how I want to save the world. Again, read Sarah and Casey's whole story. Me, just me. And so that starts with being honest. And as I've wrestled with this idea and asked God, where is this in scripture? I've gone to the early church, but I want to start with what I believe maybe the early church was praying. So in Acts, you see the early church and they are wrestling. There are these, talk about misfits. They were running around with Jesus, getting it all wrong, being on the top, being on the bottom, just being a mess. I love them. And then Jesus got killed on the cross. They all went in hiding. They were scared. They were confused. They were doubting. They were a mess. And then he comes back. He rises and boom, everything changes. What's fun about studying the Bible, this part of the Bible, is there is no proof that he rose. You have an empty grave. You have someone who people said they saw, and then he was gone. But here's the proof. Is this group of people something happened in? I love what Kyle was sharing about what is going to happen now with the youth. We don't need to know what happened at Infuge, although I was ready for like a video of like, Infuge, it was so cool, and here's the water slide, and here's when they raised their hands. I was ready for a video. We don't need a video of what happened in Infuge. We need young people who are radically different and on fire for Jesus. That's all the proof we need. We don't need to see the pictures. We don't need to, the dirty clothes, I'm sure, were also proof when you parents washed them. The proof is in the people, and I believe we'll see that. The princes will be praying for the revival here for the young people. And I pray that you adults will come along with them. That's the proof that something happened. So this early church, something happened. Something happened. And they were radically different. And they're walking around just being wild for Jesus Christ. But I wondered, were they introspective? Because you don't really see it. You kind of just see them like, boom, out there, you know, changing the world. What they would have been doing is reading the Old Testament scriptures. I love that. They would have been wrestling and thinking and praying and talking and saying, God, what is my part in building this new world? And so that would have started with introspection. And so we have a simple scripture that you've heard a million times, but I'm going to highlight a couple light. It says here, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The first step for revival is introspection. And the two words to focus on here are search. And it was a word that was used if miners were searching for gold or if Israelites were searching for new territory. They were searching like their life depended on it. Like not a little devotion in the morning, not 101.5 Christian music as they came through on a Sunday morning, not that kind of searching. I mean, searching like your life depends on it. If you don't show up, I have nothing else. That kind of searching is what the first church was doing. And then they were saying, test me. Test me. What needs to be let go? What needs to come out? What needs to rise? What is my place? What is my message? What is my calling? They were saying, test me, show me, reveal in me anything that is going to keep me from you. And then reveal in me how you want to use me. Test me. Do heart surgery on me as you take me out into this mission. You better believe that that early church was on their knees looking at those Old Testament scriptures, begging God, because the Psalms are the Psalms of that. that's the prayers. That's the way they really prayed. Begging God, search me, test me, and lead me to where you have me. So the first step is very simple. Search me and test me. I have a really great quote about this and what we need to do. There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. If the revival stays in here, it will die with me. It might go my whole life. But if revival stays here, then it's not done its job. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for everyone else. But it takes vulnerability. And it takes risk. And so we start there, which is hard, but important. Step two, take initiative. This is a step also. I'm not talking about church, but I love church. Keep going to small group. Keep going to Bible study. Keep going to youth. But start going out into this world. Because this world has an epidemic of loneliness. This world is on fire. This world is in pain. This world is in need. And there are tons of places for you to go into this world and bring the love of God and create a place of belonging. This year, as I wrote my book, I finished my book last year, I was just praying, God, how can I be your hands and feet? How can I go out? What do I have to give? What have I learned that I could share? And at the end of last year, I started at Keller School, this support group of just parents who had kids with special needs or extra needs. And I just said, come once a month, just come and show up. It wasn't Christian. It was just come. We've had it now for almost a year. Every single time people risk, they're vulnerable, they cry out in need every single time. And every single time people risk they're vulnerable they cry out in need every single time and every single time someone shares faith someone shares hope in a real spiritual way because they're sharing what where they are and we're together meeting that need all of us have something to offer someplace Some place we can step out. Some place where we can open up a hand, open up a place where someone can feel not alone. And it takes us going out. And again, the early church did this. Religion was there. The buildings were there. And the early church went out. And you've read this before, but I'm going to highlight one very simple thing. So Acts 2, 41 through 47. You've heard this before so many times. Those who accepted Jesus' message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to the number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And it continues. I'm scared I have a different version. I'll keep going. 47 is all we have. I'll keep going. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I love the early church. And I mean, in COVID, I found myself just, when we couldn't meet, just like, okay, well, what did that look like when they first started gathering? And what they did was they just went. They would gather and they would pray and then they would go and they would gather and they would eat and they would go and they would gather and they would sing and they would go. They were just going and going and going. And as they were going, there were numbers added daily, weekly, monthly, because they were going. I think God is calling us to go. We all have something in our hand. We all have something we've learned. We all have something we care about. Let's go into the world. It could be as simple as my husband this year, he started doing paddle. You don't do that here. It's like squash and tennis together. And we have this cool paddle place near our house. And he's decided I'm going to be a paddle person. This is a place where Casey is bringing the love of Christ, the light of Christ. He's creating community in this place. But it calls us to go and to create something new. A quote here is by a guy named Bell Hooks. One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. I hope you come here and you know that you're not alone, but just know that there are a lot of people that might need to come somewhere else to know they're not alone before they can come here to know that they're not alone. And so God is asking us to go and to create that. Step three, cultivate. Here we go. So now we've been introspective. We know what's in our hand. We know we're going to go out. Now we begin to cultivate koinonia. So this is where we nurture connections. We have places of connection and we nurture, we care for each other, we ask how are you doing, how are you really doing, what do you really need? We really reach out to the people around us, to the people in our community. Through our story with Keller we saw this time and time and time again where people would go out of their way and come into our life in radical ways to love us, to serve us, to care for us. And again, it wasn't because we were deserving of that. It was just what people felt on their heart from God to do. Sometimes I didn't even remember that it happened. People would tell me later as I was writing my book that they came and they served us and they loved us. And this is what was happening in Acts also. As they're continuing to go out, God was beginning to cultivate something really special. Let's look at Acts 4 now. It's continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, bought the money from the sales, and put it to the apostles' feet and was distributed to those who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, would be son of encouragement, I'm going to talk about him later, sold a field he owned and bought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. I love this because it is action. It is the church going out. It is the church that starts in here going out in radical ways, in ways no one expected, in ways they weren't being asked to do, and just saying, what can we do? Who can we bring in? Who can we serve? How can we do this differently? That is what church is, and that is cultivating a koinonia that is different and deeper than I think people are used to seeing for the church. I have another verse that I think really highlights this, and this is in Ephesians 4. So this is when Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and he's trying to effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. For one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the God that we are seeking, and this is the places we are invited to cultivate. And over and over again in our world, we saw people come into our lives and just cultivate this oneness, cultivate this spirituality, just to say, we are with you. We are walking with you. We believe in you. We are coming alongside. They built church all over our world outside of church. Just one little way that this happened was on Keller's first day of school. So we'd walk a long journey with Keller and we get to his first day of school. I was terrified. I think he was okay, but I was terrified. And I reached out to our good friends who had kids at the school and said, Keller's starting school. Can you just meet us at the gate? And can we just all walk in together? And so his brother and sister, not from us, and his sister all met him there. And we walked into his school together. And it was a sacred moment of koinonia, of shared space, where we knew we were not alone, where Keller knew he was not alone. And he continued then building that throughout his life there. We need action to build koinonia. We need action to go into the world and build what God is asking us to build. I'm going to end this part and then finish with step four with this quote. Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and to know the other. We have to enter in and create sacred places everywhere we are. From a very needy family, I can tell you it's life-changing to know that everywhere you step, when you feel alone, when you feel scared, when you feel uncertain, when people show up as the church around you in a terrifying world, it buoys you with a hope that God is with you. I want to finish with just a fourth question. And that is, who isn't here yet? Who isn't here yet? I used to have dreams before I became a pastor of what the church could look like, more than just the church I had experienced, more than just the people I knew. I wanted diversity, and I wanted different religions, and I wanted people who saw the world differently. I've always been just kind of drawn to that. I've always been drawn to just go as far as I could go and see if something sacred is there. And again, I find that in the New Testament. You know, we know now Paul wrote 14 of the books of the New Testament. When he first came on the scene, everyone knew who he was because he was the one who was persecuting Christians. He was the one speaking out against Christians. He was the one who was the dangerous guy. And even though we have this new religion, we're not too sure about this Paul guy. But there was one person who gave him a chance, and that was Barnabas. In the early church, Barnabas gave Paul a chance and created space for Paul to come in. I want to look at this scripture in Acts 9. It's saying Saul here, Acts 9, starting at the end of 17, at the end of 19, sorry. Saul spent several days with his disciples in Damascus. That's Paul. And once he began to preach in synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't that that crazy guy who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful in baffling the Jews, the religious in Damascus, by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. After many days he had gone by, there was a conspiracy against the Jews to kill him. But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watching the city gates in order to kill him. So it wasn't just a weird guy. It was someone they thought was dangerous to their faith. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Good friends. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. This person who had to be given a place at the table because religion didn't accept him, didn't understand him, but he had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. This person was given a space by Barnabas and went to the farthest places, the craziest spaces in all of the world to tell people about Jesus Christ. And I want us to ask, as we dream about Koinonia, who is not here yet? Who is not here yet? I love being here and seeing so many familiar faces, but God has churned in my heart this question over and over again, especially being in South Africa. Who is not at the table yet? Who is not in the doors yet? Who has not heard of Jesus yet? That is where we really begin to cultivate koinonia and the second part, where we begin to operate as oracles. And it's simply in this verse of Peter 4.11. This is my last verse. And it says in Peter 4 11, if anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ to him be the glory and the power forever and ever. In other versions, it says that, as they, it says they should speak. It speaks of being an oracle. So if Jesus was the word, he then asked us to be the words of God. That's what an oracle means. That we would live as the words of God. And I want to encourage you that the way that we do this is go into places, exist in places where God isn't as clear yet, where God isn't always present in the way we're used to seeing him. As I said, I always prayed about this idea of being around people of other faiths, of other nations, of other backgrounds. And through Keller, who this book is about, he has brought us these friends who are the weirdest people you have ever met. And they are every religion. We say that we're a big joke because it's me, I'm a pastor, and they call me Pastor Prince, and then there's a Wiccan, and there's a Jew, and there is a Buddhist, and there's an agnostic, and there's just our friend Lisa. And so we are like this tribe. And we have a WhatsApp group, and it's called Pastor Prince's Free Range Women. And we are this weird tribe of people. And within this tribe, something holy happens. learned years ago this this idea called holy envy that you go to other people not to tell them what's right and they're wrong not to just change them but you just talk you just open up and you see where something holy is within them something sacred is within them and so now with this group of women, we have had many, many, many holy places. Even in just this past year, the agnostic couple, I married them in December and they were very happy for me to talk about Jesus as I was there officiant. My Jewish friend Emma, her mom died also in December. She asked me to spread the ashes and do a ceremony for her. And my Wiccan friend, her mom has Alzheimer's and she's slowly leaving this earth. And she has asked me to pastor her mom and to pastor her and to do the sermon and the service when her mom passes. And they asked me to tell their kids about Jesus because there's something about that Jesus and there's something about you guys and there's something here. And I ask about Buddhism. And I ask about the Wiccan faith. And I ask about the Jewish faith. But I know that within me is an oracle. And coming from me is an oracle. Not because I'm special. But because God is within me. And the scripture says we have the hope of glory within us. So we can go anywhere. We don't have to fear that our light will be diluted. We don't have to fear that our God will be tamed. We don't have to wonder if he will fully reign because he will forever and ever reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are invited to go into the world as oracles and bring that light to all the places that are needed, and that's everywhere. God is saying go into the schools as oracles. Go into your workplace as oracles. Go into your home and your family as oracles. Be a light from within with what God has done within your heart. Nothing can diminish that. That's what I love again about the early church, and I'll finish here. The early church went into all these places, and they kept saying, you're wrong. We're going to kill you. That can't be. This Jesus can't be. And they said it again and again, all I can say is this Jesus who I've met is my king, and he's my Lord. And nothing could diminish that. One of my heroes in life is Desmond Tutu, and he says this, that we must be ready to learn from one another, not pretending that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. Because here's what I'm learning. God is bigger and he's greater and he's more profound than what we think. And we have a broken world that's in desperate need of this God and this light and this community. But we need to dream differently and we need to see differently. We need to go differently. We need to cultivate koinonia and we need to operate as oracles. So I want to end here. What do you dream? Coming to America, people are always asking us like, what do you think? And what's your perspective? And what do you think's going on? I don't want to look at what I see. I want to look at what God still needs and what God still wants to do and what God wants to create. And again, that's what Kyle did this morning in just a few moments. We could have left after that. God is ready for us to dream about places of koinonia and us operating as oracles in a world that is in desperate need of his light and his love. So I want to invite us to dream what that could look like and see that revival that Kyle's talking about in all the places that need it most. Let's pray. God, I thank you that you are a great God, that you are not limited to our words or our songs or our prayers or how we've seen you before. God, you are greater. And I pray, God, that you would move within us to help us to dream of a new community, of new closeness, of a new connection, of new light, of new love. And help us to be your oracles. Help us to be as the early church who was pushing farther and farther to tell people of the love of you, Jesus Christ. May we not hold back in what we know you can do and how we know we can shine your light all over the world. We love you, God. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. While you guys are watching this video, I'll be on a plane to Ethiopia with some other people from Grace to support our team working in Addis Jamari over there. This morning, we have a special guest, Sarah Prince. She and her husband, Casey, have come over with Kieran and Keller, their children. They're based in Cape Town, South Africa. Years ago, Casey and Sarah were on staff here at Grace back in the old days, and then we had the privilege of sending them over there to be missionaries in South Africa, where they work with a football team called Ubuntu and are involved in their community in many other ways. So this morning, Sarah is going to come share with us a really important message from her heart, and I'm excited for all of us to get to hear from her. Good morning. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It's so good to be here. It's so good to see your faces. Many of you I know, and it's such a privilege to be here again. We were a part of Grace when it was over there. There, there, there, there. Yep, that way. And for many years, we served at Grace. I was an associate pastor. My husband was a youth pastor. And then this church community sent us 14 years ago, almost 15, if you can believe it, out into South Africa to do ministry. I have a picture of our family, if you haven't seen them walking around. My daughter, Kieran, is in kids ministry now because she loves the kids. That's Keller. And that's my handsome husband, Casey. Behind us is the street where we live. And we will be going back there tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the other stuff that we do. But I did bring a few copies of my book. And I also have a few postcards. If you don't know us, I'm so excited to meet you. And we have some postcards and some... Can you help me put these out, Casey? He's already on his phone. Can you help me just set... Oh, he's taking notes. Okay. There's four points. That's all you have to know. But then can you just set those out? When you're done. Before, in the next 30 minutes. So we have some postcards and some info about our family if you don't know anything about us, but many of you do. And I just want to say, I was just chatting with someone outside and they were saying, I can't remember when you guys met and I can't believe this is happening. And you know, it's so crazy that you did this. And we always say the reason that we could risk what we do in South Africa is because we have this community to come back to. We've kind of like played, I don't know, poker, but like played all the cards or the chips or the things. And I'm a big gambler. So we gambled all the gambling stuff and we've just put it into South Africa. But we always know we have this community here that loves us, that supports us. And then we can always come home to. So we thank you for your love and support. But that's not what I want to talk about today. So I've been wrestling with something lately. This is the first time in a very long time that I have something that God is showing me, and then I'm like, okay, but God, where is that in Scripture? Usually I'm like really big into the Bible, and I'm like digging, and then that's the thing I want to focus on. But today with this topic, I've come to God curious. God, what is this thing that you've done in our world? Because in 14 years in South Africa, we have built a ministry called Ubuntu Football, where now we've sent 24 young men to America to study, one of who's here, hey-o. And we have a bunch of young men who are playing professionally, a bunch of young men who are studying in South Africa, a bunch of young men who are beginning their lives as incredible men. One of them is my son's soccer coach at his school. It's really beautiful. But as we've done all these other things, God has given us this very rich and vibrant community. This very unique group of people. Kind of different pockets of people that are very strange and very unique and very fun and very sacred. And so I've started to ask God, what is that? One story that highlights the weirdness of our community comes with a cake. So I have a cake here. Our son was diagnosed with autism how many years ago now? He is 12, so about 10 years ago. And we're in the community of South Africa as this happens, not even knowing what autism is about. That's what my book is about, Anguish to Awakening, our journey with Keller, my journey. And I have this group of friends. And I think we got a diagnosis. And maybe the next day, I was at the gym. And I ran into Kate. And she's like, oh, how are you? And I was like, I'm, you know, and I just cried at the gym and told her what happened, and we had this group of women friends, and so she sat with me, she prayed with me, and then maybe a week or two later, she said, we want to get together with you. Come over this night. I show up at her house, and this is the cake for me, and she said, we can do hard things together, and so we're celebrating that. We're at the beginning of a very hard thing, and we will do it together with you. And they had this like key chain thing with quotes and cards, and they just sat with me and cried with me. And I look back at that, think that is so unique to enter into a really difficult time and have people come and just say, we're here in the hard. We're not here for the highlights. We're not here for the good times. We're here now, today, in the hard. And it struck me as so unique. And we've had these kinds of times, these kinds of instances over and over again. And I need to admit that it's not because we're so great at friendship or that we're so great at bringing people around. I think it's a God-given gift. And I think there are some things that God has taught us along the way to help cultivate that community. That's the title today. I can't have a simple, I kept, community doesn't work, initiating community, it's not rich enough. So today's title is Cultivating Koinonia and Orating as Oracles. Because sometimes American or English words don't do it justice. And I want to talk about this. What does it mean to cultivate not just community, not just friends, koinonia, I'll explain that, and how do we operate as oracles? Because I think that's where something happens. You know, I grew up all over the country. I moved a lot. And so only when I became a young adult, I got married, like right after college, three weeks. Don't recommend it, young people. It's worked out, 22 years. But it was crazy. So I jumped into adulthood, went to seminary to become a pastor, and all of a sudden realized many things. Another sermon. But one of them was that I had no idea how to make friends. But I thought I didn't need them. I thought I was like, fine. I was just happy. I was just doing my thing. I was just bebopping around. And I started to realize I needed friends. And it was in this church that I learned the power of friendship and koinonia. We used to have a retreat. Anyone go to koinonia? Koinonia. Yeah. See? We had this retreat and I was dragged to it. Okay, fine. I'll go because I'm like a pastor or whatever. And it was this beautiful time of friendship and connection. And through this place, I learned the importance, the need of koinonia. But you know, a lot of people have never learned this. They've never been in environments where this is pushed, where this is elevated, where this is celebrated. There's lots of statistics on this, but three decades ago, there was a poll that said 3% of Americans had no close friends. 2021, 12% had no close friends. Into the pandemic, 13% of women, 8% of men had lost touch with most of their friends. This is something happening a lot more. Nowadays, some 8% will say they have no friends at all. This is something that's been talked about here. I didn't hear about this because we're in Africa, and in Africa things are done a bit differently. But there's actually a pandemic, an epidemic of loneliness. It's everywhere. And that's a word that just means you're disconnected. You don't have people. You're not anchored. You're not moored by others. And you're just kind of wandering. And it's actually celebrated here. It's just kind of how we do things here. And actually, this epidemic, the Surgeon General says that it affects one out of two adults. And it doesn't just help your mood. It's about your entire body, your entire health. It actually predicts the longevity of your life if you're lonely or if you have people around you. And so when the Surgeon General went around the states, some of the things that he heard were people would tell me all again and again. They felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. And they said, if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. Now, if this doesn't feel a bit familiar, I'm glad you're here because I have a job for you. Some of us just have people around and we don't know how we did it or why it was given to us. For us, we were just super needy and having a child with autism was one of the big things. We just kind of were like, we're broken, help us. And people came around us, which is what I talk about in the book. But I think most people don't display their need in the way that our family did. We were very vocal about it. But if you feel like you have close community, if you don't know what loneliness feels like, then great. I have a job for you. Because many people feel very, very lonely. Many people feel very, very isolated. All over the world, people are saying that they want community. They want friendship. They want that in their world, but they don't know how to find it. All community is is a sense of belonging, support, shared purpose. And it's a place where the church should be leading. We've got this whole book that is people that did it. I mean, they fought a lot, and they killed each other some, and it was messy, but like they did it. This is the book about it, and yet we are doing it poorly at times. We have a friend who grew up, he grew up doing, his family was doing missions, their South African family, and he is South African, but has moved to New Zealand. He just recently flew from New Zealand to Amsterdam for what? Does anyone know who was in Amsterdam recently? Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. He has a beautiful family. He's very connected. But people all over the globe have been traveling in the, I don't even know, the millions, the trillions, to see this woman sing songs. Now, I hear, I know every song because of my daughter. I know every word. I know every syllable. They're good. They're fine. They're good. They're good. They're good. They're good. Did I say they were good? That is not why people are going to this concert. They are going because people have over and over and over said something like this. Entering the Erez tour was like stepping into an alternate universe where everyone was bursting with joy. I've never encountered such a warm, friendly, and kind crowd. People have called it transcendental. And it embodies love to people all over the world. It's not about the songs. It's this feeling thousands of people have when they're together. They're connected. They're a community. They're being seen and known. Now, I'm not asking any of you to be Taylor Swift, the next one, although my daughter might be. But I don't think we need a concert to create the sacred art of connection. It can happen anywhere. And God shows us how to do it. And it is a word that's more than community. It is that word koinonia in the New Testament. It's roughly translated fellowship, but it means to share together, to take part. And the same idea is found in another Greek word. That's metakos. And it means to have with or to have together. Now, I'm using sacred New Testament words to describe what those people are saying about Taylor Swift. And what I know God is desperate for people to describe about us. And again, if you don't know the feeling of loneliness, then it is your time. If you do, then I'm here to give you hope. Because it is possible among every single one of us. Being here in South Africa has highlighted to me not how special we are as a family to do what we do, but how God is really great because this group of idiots is running this incredible organization in South Africa because it's God's mission, it's God's dream, it's God's plan, and even we can't stop it with all of our fumbles and our foils and our missteps. When God has a plan, he will use the best of us and the worst of us. His plan is to be together. So I have four, I don't have a pamphlet, I'm from Africa. I don't have a pamphlet, but I do have four very simple points. If you're saying, I don't have that. I have people around, but I don't have a deep connection. Or if you're saying, I have it. This is for you. Because it's time to step into something sacred, something real. And none of my examples, I'm going to tell some stories, not a single one is a Bible study. I have the best Bible study. I want to start there. I have the best Bible study. There are these women, and my sister was just in South Africa, and she was with them. There are these beautiful women that I've known for years and years, and we get together, and we cry, and we laugh, and we pray, and we scream out to God, and it is holy. None of these examples are going to be a church or a Bible study because I want to inspire you to dream of where the church could go beyond this. This is holy, but that world needs this sacred thing. So I want you to dream. Okay, so step one. Step one of creating, cultivating koinonia. We'll end with orating as oracles, but cultivating koinonia. And actually cultivating is step three. So you're not ready for the first letter of this sermon. You ready? Step one, introspection. This sounds so simple, but it is so profound. We went to South Africa to help everyone and to save everyone and to do all the great things for Jesus. And then a few years in, we had a son who was diagnosed with autism. And we were like, no, God, not the plan. We're doing some other stuff. We have a lot to do. We have a big plan. We have a big mission. We're going to serve for Jesus. This has happened time and time again to me. It even happened recently where we have a plan and then God says, no, this is a plan. But we were in desperate need. We didn't even know what autism meant. We had to Google it as we started our journey. But this is the first step of community. It isn't creating a Bible study. It isn't finding people to play pickleball with. The first step is introspection. The first step is what is my need? What is happening in here? Number one, introspection. This came through hardship for us. But as we've walked through that hardship, we've had to be really honest. What is it that we need in a community? Who do we need around us? What does it mean to raise kids and to do this life with people in our world? What does that look like? And we've had to be very introspective. This is something people are talking about, not just Taylor Swift people, but all over the world. I recently heard an interview with this woman, Priya Parker. She wrote this book called The Art of Gathering. So I would have thought, I would never picked up this book. I would have thought it's been about like dinner parties, which I love, or like how to host something cute or how to find the Pinterest board. But for her, The Art of Gathering starts with assessing your needs. Because you cannot create a gathering of people where you are authentically a part if you don't know what it is you need in that group. Creating community begins with your own needs. What is my need here? How am I actually feeling? What do I need from other people? That sounds selfish, sounds maybe anti-Christian, but it's true because if I'm going to authentically show up, that means my needs are going to show up. My desires are going to show up. My dreams are going to show up. My brokenness is going to show up. So I need to show up first with my true self, not who I think I should be, not who I want to be, not how I want to save the world. Again, read Sarah and Casey's whole story. Me, just me. And so that starts with being honest. And as I've wrestled with this idea and asked God, where is this in scripture? I've gone to the early church, but I want to start with what I believe maybe the early church was praying. So in Acts, you see the early church and they are wrestling. There are these, talk about misfits. They were running around with Jesus, getting it all wrong, being on the top, being on the bottom, just being a mess. I love them. And then Jesus got killed on the cross. They all went in hiding. They were scared. They were confused. They were doubting. They were a mess. And then he comes back. He rises and boom, everything changes. What's fun about studying the Bible, this part of the Bible, is there is no proof that he rose. You have an empty grave. You have someone who people said they saw, and then he was gone. But here's the proof. Is this group of people something happened in? I love what Kyle was sharing about what is going to happen now with the youth. We don't need to know what happened at Infuge, although I was ready for like a video of like, Infuge, it was so cool, and here's the water slide, and here's when they raised their hands. I was ready for a video. We don't need a video of what happened in Infuge. We need young people who are radically different and on fire for Jesus. That's all the proof we need. We don't need to see the pictures. We don't need to, the dirty clothes, I'm sure, were also proof when you parents washed them. The proof is in the people, and I believe we'll see that. The princes will be praying for the revival here for the young people. And I pray that you adults will come along with them. That's the proof that something happened. So this early church, something happened. Something happened. And they were radically different. And they're walking around just being wild for Jesus Christ. But I wondered, were they introspective? Because you don't really see it. You kind of just see them like, boom, out there, you know, changing the world. What they would have been doing is reading the Old Testament scriptures. I love that. They would have been wrestling and thinking and praying and talking and saying, God, what is my part in building this new world? And so that would have started with introspection. And so we have a simple scripture that you've heard a million times, but I'm going to highlight a couple light. It says here, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The first step for revival is introspection. And the two words to focus on here are search. And it was a word that was used if miners were searching for gold or if Israelites were searching for new territory. They were searching like their life depended on it. Like not a little devotion in the morning, not 101.5 Christian music as they came through on a Sunday morning, not that kind of searching. I mean, searching like your life depends on it. If you don't show up, I have nothing else. That kind of searching is what the first church was doing. And then they were saying, test me. Test me. What needs to be let go? What needs to come out? What needs to rise? What is my place? What is my message? What is my calling? They were saying, test me, show me, reveal in me anything that is going to keep me from you. And then reveal in me how you want to use me. Test me. Do heart surgery on me as you take me out into this mission. You better believe that that early church was on their knees looking at those Old Testament scriptures, begging God, because the Psalms are the Psalms of that. that's the prayers. That's the way they really prayed. Begging God, search me, test me, and lead me to where you have me. So the first step is very simple. Search me and test me. I have a really great quote about this and what we need to do. There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. If the revival stays in here, it will die with me. It might go my whole life. But if revival stays here, then it's not done its job. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for everyone else. But it takes vulnerability. And it takes risk. And so we start there, which is hard, but important. Step two, take initiative. This is a step also. I'm not talking about church, but I love church. Keep going to small group. Keep going to Bible study. Keep going to youth. But start going out into this world. Because this world has an epidemic of loneliness. This world is on fire. This world is in pain. This world is in need. And there are tons of places for you to go into this world and bring the love of God and create a place of belonging. This year, as I wrote my book, I finished my book last year, I was just praying, God, how can I be your hands and feet? How can I go out? What do I have to give? What have I learned that I could share? And at the end of last year, I started at Keller School, this support group of just parents who had kids with special needs or extra needs. And I just said, come once a month, just come and show up. It wasn't Christian. It was just come. We've had it now for almost a year. Every single time people risk, they're vulnerable, they cry out in need every single time. And every single time people risk they're vulnerable they cry out in need every single time and every single time someone shares faith someone shares hope in a real spiritual way because they're sharing what where they are and we're together meeting that need all of us have something to offer someplace Some place we can step out. Some place where we can open up a hand, open up a place where someone can feel not alone. And it takes us going out. And again, the early church did this. Religion was there. The buildings were there. And the early church went out. And you've read this before, but I'm going to highlight one very simple thing. So Acts 2, 41 through 47. You've heard this before so many times. Those who accepted Jesus' message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to the number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And it continues. I'm scared I have a different version. I'll keep going. 47 is all we have. I'll keep going. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I love the early church. And I mean, in COVID, I found myself just, when we couldn't meet, just like, okay, well, what did that look like when they first started gathering? And what they did was they just went. They would gather and they would pray and then they would go and they would gather and they would eat and they would go and they would gather and they would sing and they would go. They were just going and going and going. And as they were going, there were numbers added daily, weekly, monthly, because they were going. I think God is calling us to go. We all have something in our hand. We all have something we've learned. We all have something we care about. Let's go into the world. It could be as simple as my husband this year, he started doing paddle. You don't do that here. It's like squash and tennis together. And we have this cool paddle place near our house. And he's decided I'm going to be a paddle person. This is a place where Casey is bringing the love of Christ, the light of Christ. He's creating community in this place. But it calls us to go and to create something new. A quote here is by a guy named Bell Hooks. One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. I hope you come here and you know that you're not alone, but just know that there are a lot of people that might need to come somewhere else to know they're not alone before they can come here to know that they're not alone. And so God is asking us to go and to create that. Step three, cultivate. Here we go. So now we've been introspective. We know what's in our hand. We know we're going to go out. Now we begin to cultivate koinonia. So this is where we nurture connections. We have places of connection and we nurture, we care for each other, we ask how are you doing, how are you really doing, what do you really need? We really reach out to the people around us, to the people in our community. Through our story with Keller we saw this time and time and time again where people would go out of their way and come into our life in radical ways to love us, to serve us, to care for us. And again, it wasn't because we were deserving of that. It was just what people felt on their heart from God to do. Sometimes I didn't even remember that it happened. People would tell me later as I was writing my book that they came and they served us and they loved us. And this is what was happening in Acts also. As they're continuing to go out, God was beginning to cultivate something really special. Let's look at Acts 4 now. It's continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, bought the money from the sales, and put it to the apostles' feet and was distributed to those who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, would be son of encouragement, I'm going to talk about him later, sold a field he owned and bought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. I love this because it is action. It is the church going out. It is the church that starts in here going out in radical ways, in ways no one expected, in ways they weren't being asked to do, and just saying, what can we do? Who can we bring in? Who can we serve? How can we do this differently? That is what church is, and that is cultivating a koinonia that is different and deeper than I think people are used to seeing for the church. I have another verse that I think really highlights this, and this is in Ephesians 4. So this is when Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and he's trying to effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. For one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the God that we are seeking, and this is the places we are invited to cultivate. And over and over again in our world, we saw people come into our lives and just cultivate this oneness, cultivate this spirituality, just to say, we are with you. We are walking with you. We believe in you. We are coming alongside. They built church all over our world outside of church. Just one little way that this happened was on Keller's first day of school. So we'd walk a long journey with Keller and we get to his first day of school. I was terrified. I think he was okay, but I was terrified. And I reached out to our good friends who had kids at the school and said, Keller's starting school. Can you just meet us at the gate? And can we just all walk in together? And so his brother and sister, not from us, and his sister all met him there. And we walked into his school together. And it was a sacred moment of koinonia, of shared space, where we knew we were not alone, where Keller knew he was not alone. And he continued then building that throughout his life there. We need action to build koinonia. We need action to go into the world and build what God is asking us to build. I'm going to end this part and then finish with step four with this quote. Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and to know the other. We have to enter in and create sacred places everywhere we are. From a very needy family, I can tell you it's life-changing to know that everywhere you step, when you feel alone, when you feel scared, when you feel uncertain, when people show up as the church around you in a terrifying world, it buoys you with a hope that God is with you. I want to finish with just a fourth question. And that is, who isn't here yet? Who isn't here yet? I used to have dreams before I became a pastor of what the church could look like, more than just the church I had experienced, more than just the people I knew. I wanted diversity, and I wanted different religions, and I wanted people who saw the world differently. I've always been just kind of drawn to that. I've always been drawn to just go as far as I could go and see if something sacred is there. And again, I find that in the New Testament. You know, we know now Paul wrote 14 of the books of the New Testament. When he first came on the scene, everyone knew who he was because he was the one who was persecuting Christians. He was the one speaking out against Christians. He was the one who was the dangerous guy. And even though we have this new religion, we're not too sure about this Paul guy. But there was one person who gave him a chance, and that was Barnabas. In the early church, Barnabas gave Paul a chance and created space for Paul to come in. I want to look at this scripture in Acts 9. It's saying Saul here, Acts 9, starting at the end of 17, at the end of 19, sorry. Saul spent several days with his disciples in Damascus. That's Paul. And once he began to preach in synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't that that crazy guy who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful in baffling the Jews, the religious in Damascus, by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. After many days he had gone by, there was a conspiracy against the Jews to kill him. But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watching the city gates in order to kill him. So it wasn't just a weird guy. It was someone they thought was dangerous to their faith. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Good friends. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. This person who had to be given a place at the table because religion didn't accept him, didn't understand him, but he had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. This person was given a space by Barnabas and went to the farthest places, the craziest spaces in all of the world to tell people about Jesus Christ. And I want us to ask, as we dream about Koinonia, who is not here yet? Who is not here yet? I love being here and seeing so many familiar faces, but God has churned in my heart this question over and over again, especially being in South Africa. Who is not at the table yet? Who is not in the doors yet? Who has not heard of Jesus yet? That is where we really begin to cultivate koinonia and the second part, where we begin to operate as oracles. And it's simply in this verse of Peter 4.11. This is my last verse. And it says in Peter 4 11, if anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ to him be the glory and the power forever and ever. In other versions, it says that, as they, it says they should speak. It speaks of being an oracle. So if Jesus was the word, he then asked us to be the words of God. That's what an oracle means. That we would live as the words of God. And I want to encourage you that the way that we do this is go into places, exist in places where God isn't as clear yet, where God isn't always present in the way we're used to seeing him. As I said, I always prayed about this idea of being around people of other faiths, of other nations, of other backgrounds. And through Keller, who this book is about, he has brought us these friends who are the weirdest people you have ever met. And they are every religion. We say that we're a big joke because it's me, I'm a pastor, and they call me Pastor Prince, and then there's a Wiccan, and there's a Jew, and there is a Buddhist, and there's an agnostic, and there's just our friend Lisa. And so we are like this tribe. And we have a WhatsApp group, and it's called Pastor Prince's Free Range Women. And we are this weird tribe of people. And within this tribe, something holy happens. learned years ago this this idea called holy envy that you go to other people not to tell them what's right and they're wrong not to just change them but you just talk you just open up and you see where something holy is within them something sacred is within them and so now with this group of women, we have had many, many, many holy places. Even in just this past year, the agnostic couple, I married them in December and they were very happy for me to talk about Jesus as I was there officiant. My Jewish friend Emma, her mom died also in December. She asked me to spread the ashes and do a ceremony for her. And my Wiccan friend, her mom has Alzheimer's and she's slowly leaving this earth. And she has asked me to pastor her mom and to pastor her and to do the sermon and the service when her mom passes. And they asked me to tell their kids about Jesus because there's something about that Jesus and there's something about you guys and there's something here. And I ask about Buddhism. And I ask about the Wiccan faith. And I ask about the Jewish faith. But I know that within me is an oracle. And coming from me is an oracle. Not because I'm special. But because God is within me. And the scripture says we have the hope of glory within us. So we can go anywhere. We don't have to fear that our light will be diluted. We don't have to fear that our God will be tamed. We don't have to wonder if he will fully reign because he will forever and ever reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are invited to go into the world as oracles and bring that light to all the places that are needed, and that's everywhere. God is saying go into the schools as oracles. Go into your workplace as oracles. Go into your home and your family as oracles. Be a light from within with what God has done within your heart. Nothing can diminish that. That's what I love again about the early church, and I'll finish here. The early church went into all these places, and they kept saying, you're wrong. We're going to kill you. That can't be. This Jesus can't be. And they said it again and again, all I can say is this Jesus who I've met is my king, and he's my Lord. And nothing could diminish that. One of my heroes in life is Desmond Tutu, and he says this, that we must be ready to learn from one another, not pretending that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. Because here's what I'm learning. God is bigger and he's greater and he's more profound than what we think. And we have a broken world that's in desperate need of this God and this light and this community. But we need to dream differently and we need to see differently. We need to go differently. We need to cultivate koinonia and we need to operate as oracles. So I want to end here. What do you dream? Coming to America, people are always asking us like, what do you think? And what's your perspective? And what do you think's going on? I don't want to look at what I see. I want to look at what God still needs and what God still wants to do and what God wants to create. And again, that's what Kyle did this morning in just a few moments. We could have left after that. God is ready for us to dream about places of koinonia and us operating as oracles in a world that is in desperate need of his light and his love. So I want to invite us to dream what that could look like and see that revival that Kyle's talking about in all the places that need it most. Let's pray. God, I thank you that you are a great God, that you are not limited to our words or our songs or our prayers or how we've seen you before. God, you are greater. And I pray, God, that you would move within us to help us to dream of a new community, of new closeness, of a new connection, of new light, of new love. And help us to be your oracles. Help us to be as the early church who was pushing farther and farther to tell people of the love of you, Jesus Christ. May we not hold back in what we know you can do and how we know we can shine your light all over the world. We love you, God. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. While you guys are watching this video, I'll be on a plane to Ethiopia with some other people from Grace to support our team working in Addis Jamari over there. This morning, we have a special guest, Sarah Prince. She and her husband, Casey, have come over with Kieran and Keller, their children. They're based in Cape Town, South Africa. Years ago, Casey and Sarah were on staff here at Grace back in the old days, and then we had the privilege of sending them over there to be missionaries in South Africa, where they work with a football team called Ubuntu and are involved in their community in many other ways. So this morning, Sarah is going to come share with us a really important message from her heart, and I'm excited for all of us to get to hear from her. Good morning. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It's so good to be here. It's so good to see your faces. Many of you I know, and it's such a privilege to be here again. We were a part of Grace when it was over there. There, there, there, there. Yep, that way. And for many years, we served at Grace. I was an associate pastor. My husband was a youth pastor. And then this church community sent us 14 years ago, almost 15, if you can believe it, out into South Africa to do ministry. I have a picture of our family, if you haven't seen them walking around. My daughter, Kieran, is in kids ministry now because she loves the kids. That's Keller. And that's my handsome husband, Casey. Behind us is the street where we live. And we will be going back there tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the other stuff that we do. But I did bring a few copies of my book. And I also have a few postcards. If you don't know us, I'm so excited to meet you. And we have some postcards and some... Can you help me put these out, Casey? He's already on his phone. Can you help me just set... Oh, he's taking notes. Okay. There's four points. That's all you have to know. But then can you just set those out? When you're done. Before, in the next 30 minutes. So we have some postcards and some info about our family if you don't know anything about us, but many of you do. And I just want to say, I was just chatting with someone outside and they were saying, I can't remember when you guys met and I can't believe this is happening. And you know, it's so crazy that you did this. And we always say the reason that we could risk what we do in South Africa is because we have this community to come back to. We've kind of like played, I don't know, poker, but like played all the cards or the chips or the things. And I'm a big gambler. So we gambled all the gambling stuff and we've just put it into South Africa. But we always know we have this community here that loves us, that supports us. And then we can always come home to. So we thank you for your love and support. But that's not what I want to talk about today. So I've been wrestling with something lately. This is the first time in a very long time that I have something that God is showing me, and then I'm like, okay, but God, where is that in Scripture? Usually I'm like really big into the Bible, and I'm like digging, and then that's the thing I want to focus on. But today with this topic, I've come to God curious. God, what is this thing that you've done in our world? Because in 14 years in South Africa, we have built a ministry called Ubuntu Football, where now we've sent 24 young men to America to study, one of who's here, hey-o. And we have a bunch of young men who are playing professionally, a bunch of young men who are studying in South Africa, a bunch of young men who are beginning their lives as incredible men. One of them is my son's soccer coach at his school. It's really beautiful. But as we've done all these other things, God has given us this very rich and vibrant community. This very unique group of people. Kind of different pockets of people that are very strange and very unique and very fun and very sacred. And so I've started to ask God, what is that? One story that highlights the weirdness of our community comes with a cake. So I have a cake here. Our son was diagnosed with autism how many years ago now? He is 12, so about 10 years ago. And we're in the community of South Africa as this happens, not even knowing what autism is about. That's what my book is about, Anguish to Awakening, our journey with Keller, my journey. And I have this group of friends. And I think we got a diagnosis. And maybe the next day, I was at the gym. And I ran into Kate. And she's like, oh, how are you? And I was like, I'm, you know, and I just cried at the gym and told her what happened, and we had this group of women friends, and so she sat with me, she prayed with me, and then maybe a week or two later, she said, we want to get together with you. Come over this night. I show up at her house, and this is the cake for me, and she said, we can do hard things together, and so we're celebrating that. We're at the beginning of a very hard thing, and we will do it together with you. And they had this like key chain thing with quotes and cards, and they just sat with me and cried with me. And I look back at that, think that is so unique to enter into a really difficult time and have people come and just say, we're here in the hard. We're not here for the highlights. We're not here for the good times. We're here now, today, in the hard. And it struck me as so unique. And we've had these kinds of times, these kinds of instances over and over again. And I need to admit that it's not because we're so great at friendship or that we're so great at bringing people around. I think it's a God-given gift. And I think there are some things that God has taught us along the way to help cultivate that community. That's the title today. I can't have a simple, I kept, community doesn't work, initiating community, it's not rich enough. So today's title is Cultivating Koinonia and Orating as Oracles. Because sometimes American or English words don't do it justice. And I want to talk about this. What does it mean to cultivate not just community, not just friends, koinonia, I'll explain that, and how do we operate as oracles? Because I think that's where something happens. You know, I grew up all over the country. I moved a lot. And so only when I became a young adult, I got married, like right after college, three weeks. Don't recommend it, young people. It's worked out, 22 years. But it was crazy. So I jumped into adulthood, went to seminary to become a pastor, and all of a sudden realized many things. Another sermon. But one of them was that I had no idea how to make friends. But I thought I didn't need them. I thought I was like, fine. I was just happy. I was just doing my thing. I was just bebopping around. And I started to realize I needed friends. And it was in this church that I learned the power of friendship and koinonia. We used to have a retreat. Anyone go to koinonia? Koinonia. Yeah. See? We had this retreat and I was dragged to it. Okay, fine. I'll go because I'm like a pastor or whatever. And it was this beautiful time of friendship and connection. And through this place, I learned the importance, the need of koinonia. But you know, a lot of people have never learned this. They've never been in environments where this is pushed, where this is elevated, where this is celebrated. There's lots of statistics on this, but three decades ago, there was a poll that said 3% of Americans had no close friends. 2021, 12% had no close friends. Into the pandemic, 13% of women, 8% of men had lost touch with most of their friends. This is something happening a lot more. Nowadays, some 8% will say they have no friends at all. This is something that's been talked about here. I didn't hear about this because we're in Africa, and in Africa things are done a bit differently. But there's actually a pandemic, an epidemic of loneliness. It's everywhere. And that's a word that just means you're disconnected. You don't have people. You're not anchored. You're not moored by others. And you're just kind of wandering. And it's actually celebrated here. It's just kind of how we do things here. And actually, this epidemic, the Surgeon General says that it affects one out of two adults. And it doesn't just help your mood. It's about your entire body, your entire health. It actually predicts the longevity of your life if you're lonely or if you have people around you. And so when the Surgeon General went around the states, some of the things that he heard were people would tell me all again and again. They felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. And they said, if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. Now, if this doesn't feel a bit familiar, I'm glad you're here because I have a job for you. Some of us just have people around and we don't know how we did it or why it was given to us. For us, we were just super needy and having a child with autism was one of the big things. We just kind of were like, we're broken, help us. And people came around us, which is what I talk about in the book. But I think most people don't display their need in the way that our family did. We were very vocal about it. But if you feel like you have close community, if you don't know what loneliness feels like, then great. I have a job for you. Because many people feel very, very lonely. Many people feel very, very isolated. All over the world, people are saying that they want community. They want friendship. They want that in their world, but they don't know how to find it. All community is is a sense of belonging, support, shared purpose. And it's a place where the church should be leading. We've got this whole book that is people that did it. I mean, they fought a lot, and they killed each other some, and it was messy, but like they did it. This is the book about it, and yet we are doing it poorly at times. We have a friend who grew up, he grew up doing, his family was doing missions, their South African family, and he is South African, but has moved to New Zealand. He just recently flew from New Zealand to Amsterdam for what? Does anyone know who was in Amsterdam recently? Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. He has a beautiful family. He's very connected. But people all over the globe have been traveling in the, I don't even know, the millions, the trillions, to see this woman sing songs. Now, I hear, I know every song because of my daughter. I know every word. I know every syllable. They're good. They're fine. They're good. They're good. They're good. They're good. Did I say they were good? That is not why people are going to this concert. They are going because people have over and over and over said something like this. Entering the Erez tour was like stepping into an alternate universe where everyone was bursting with joy. I've never encountered such a warm, friendly, and kind crowd. People have called it transcendental. And it embodies love to people all over the world. It's not about the songs. It's this feeling thousands of people have when they're together. They're connected. They're a community. They're being seen and known. Now, I'm not asking any of you to be Taylor Swift, the next one, although my daughter might be. But I don't think we need a concert to create the sacred art of connection. It can happen anywhere. And God shows us how to do it. And it is a word that's more than community. It is that word koinonia in the New Testament. It's roughly translated fellowship, but it means to share together, to take part. And the same idea is found in another Greek word. That's metakos. And it means to have with or to have together. Now, I'm using sacred New Testament words to describe what those people are saying about Taylor Swift. And what I know God is desperate for people to describe about us. And again, if you don't know the feeling of loneliness, then it is your time. If you do, then I'm here to give you hope. Because it is possible among every single one of us. Being here in South Africa has highlighted to me not how special we are as a family to do what we do, but how God is really great because this group of idiots is running this incredible organization in South Africa because it's God's mission, it's God's dream, it's God's plan, and even we can't stop it with all of our fumbles and our foils and our missteps. When God has a plan, he will use the best of us and the worst of us. His plan is to be together. So I have four, I don't have a pamphlet, I'm from Africa. I don't have a pamphlet, but I do have four very simple points. If you're saying, I don't have that. I have people around, but I don't have a deep connection. Or if you're saying, I have it. This is for you. Because it's time to step into something sacred, something real. And none of my examples, I'm going to tell some stories, not a single one is a Bible study. I have the best Bible study. I want to start there. I have the best Bible study. There are these women, and my sister was just in South Africa, and she was with them. There are these beautiful women that I've known for years and years, and we get together, and we cry, and we laugh, and we pray, and we scream out to God, and it is holy. None of these examples are going to be a church or a Bible study because I want to inspire you to dream of where the church could go beyond this. This is holy, but that world needs this sacred thing. So I want you to dream. Okay, so step one. Step one of creating, cultivating koinonia. We'll end with orating as oracles, but cultivating koinonia. And actually cultivating is step three. So you're not ready for the first letter of this sermon. You ready? Step one, introspection. This sounds so simple, but it is so profound. We went to South Africa to help everyone and to save everyone and to do all the great things for Jesus. And then a few years in, we had a son who was diagnosed with autism. And we were like, no, God, not the plan. We're doing some other stuff. We have a lot to do. We have a big plan. We have a big mission. We're going to serve for Jesus. This has happened time and time again to me. It even happened recently where we have a plan and then God says, no, this is a plan. But we were in desperate need. We didn't even know what autism meant. We had to Google it as we started our journey. But this is the first step of community. It isn't creating a Bible study. It isn't finding people to play pickleball with. The first step is introspection. The first step is what is my need? What is happening in here? Number one, introspection. This came through hardship for us. But as we've walked through that hardship, we've had to be really honest. What is it that we need in a community? Who do we need around us? What does it mean to raise kids and to do this life with people in our world? What does that look like? And we've had to be very introspective. This is something people are talking about, not just Taylor Swift people, but all over the world. I recently heard an interview with this woman, Priya Parker. She wrote this book called The Art of Gathering. So I would have thought, I would never picked up this book. I would have thought it's been about like dinner parties, which I love, or like how to host something cute or how to find the Pinterest board. But for her, The Art of Gathering starts with assessing your needs. Because you cannot create a gathering of people where you are authentically a part if you don't know what it is you need in that group. Creating community begins with your own needs. What is my need here? How am I actually feeling? What do I need from other people? That sounds selfish, sounds maybe anti-Christian, but it's true because if I'm going to authentically show up, that means my needs are going to show up. My desires are going to show up. My dreams are going to show up. My brokenness is going to show up. So I need to show up first with my true self, not who I think I should be, not who I want to be, not how I want to save the world. Again, read Sarah and Casey's whole story. Me, just me. And so that starts with being honest. And as I've wrestled with this idea and asked God, where is this in scripture? I've gone to the early church, but I want to start with what I believe maybe the early church was praying. So in Acts, you see the early church and they are wrestling. There are these, talk about misfits. They were running around with Jesus, getting it all wrong, being on the top, being on the bottom, just being a mess. I love them. And then Jesus got killed on the cross. They all went in hiding. They were scared. They were confused. They were doubting. They were a mess. And then he comes back. He rises and boom, everything changes. What's fun about studying the Bible, this part of the Bible, is there is no proof that he rose. You have an empty grave. You have someone who people said they saw, and then he was gone. But here's the proof. Is this group of people something happened in? I love what Kyle was sharing about what is going to happen now with the youth. We don't need to know what happened at Infuge, although I was ready for like a video of like, Infuge, it was so cool, and here's the water slide, and here's when they raised their hands. I was ready for a video. We don't need a video of what happened in Infuge. We need young people who are radically different and on fire for Jesus. That's all the proof we need. We don't need to see the pictures. We don't need to, the dirty clothes, I'm sure, were also proof when you parents washed them. The proof is in the people, and I believe we'll see that. The princes will be praying for the revival here for the young people. And I pray that you adults will come along with them. That's the proof that something happened. So this early church, something happened. Something happened. And they were radically different. And they're walking around just being wild for Jesus Christ. But I wondered, were they introspective? Because you don't really see it. You kind of just see them like, boom, out there, you know, changing the world. What they would have been doing is reading the Old Testament scriptures. I love that. They would have been wrestling and thinking and praying and talking and saying, God, what is my part in building this new world? And so that would have started with introspection. And so we have a simple scripture that you've heard a million times, but I'm going to highlight a couple light. It says here, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The first step for revival is introspection. And the two words to focus on here are search. And it was a word that was used if miners were searching for gold or if Israelites were searching for new territory. They were searching like their life depended on it. Like not a little devotion in the morning, not 101.5 Christian music as they came through on a Sunday morning, not that kind of searching. I mean, searching like your life depends on it. If you don't show up, I have nothing else. That kind of searching is what the first church was doing. And then they were saying, test me. Test me. What needs to be let go? What needs to come out? What needs to rise? What is my place? What is my message? What is my calling? They were saying, test me, show me, reveal in me anything that is going to keep me from you. And then reveal in me how you want to use me. Test me. Do heart surgery on me as you take me out into this mission. You better believe that that early church was on their knees looking at those Old Testament scriptures, begging God, because the Psalms are the Psalms of that. that's the prayers. That's the way they really prayed. Begging God, search me, test me, and lead me to where you have me. So the first step is very simple. Search me and test me. I have a really great quote about this and what we need to do. There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. If the revival stays in here, it will die with me. It might go my whole life. But if revival stays here, then it's not done its job. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for everyone else. But it takes vulnerability. And it takes risk. And so we start there, which is hard, but important. Step two, take initiative. This is a step also. I'm not talking about church, but I love church. Keep going to small group. Keep going to Bible study. Keep going to youth. But start going out into this world. Because this world has an epidemic of loneliness. This world is on fire. This world is in pain. This world is in need. And there are tons of places for you to go into this world and bring the love of God and create a place of belonging. This year, as I wrote my book, I finished my book last year, I was just praying, God, how can I be your hands and feet? How can I go out? What do I have to give? What have I learned that I could share? And at the end of last year, I started at Keller School, this support group of just parents who had kids with special needs or extra needs. And I just said, come once a month, just come and show up. It wasn't Christian. It was just come. We've had it now for almost a year. Every single time people risk, they're vulnerable, they cry out in need every single time. And every single time people risk they're vulnerable they cry out in need every single time and every single time someone shares faith someone shares hope in a real spiritual way because they're sharing what where they are and we're together meeting that need all of us have something to offer someplace Some place we can step out. Some place where we can open up a hand, open up a place where someone can feel not alone. And it takes us going out. And again, the early church did this. Religion was there. The buildings were there. And the early church went out. And you've read this before, but I'm going to highlight one very simple thing. So Acts 2, 41 through 47. You've heard this before so many times. Those who accepted Jesus' message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to the number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And it continues. I'm scared I have a different version. I'll keep going. 47 is all we have. I'll keep going. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I love the early church. And I mean, in COVID, I found myself just, when we couldn't meet, just like, okay, well, what did that look like when they first started gathering? And what they did was they just went. They would gather and they would pray and then they would go and they would gather and they would eat and they would go and they would gather and they would sing and they would go. They were just going and going and going. And as they were going, there were numbers added daily, weekly, monthly, because they were going. I think God is calling us to go. We all have something in our hand. We all have something we've learned. We all have something we care about. Let's go into the world. It could be as simple as my husband this year, he started doing paddle. You don't do that here. It's like squash and tennis together. And we have this cool paddle place near our house. And he's decided I'm going to be a paddle person. This is a place where Casey is bringing the love of Christ, the light of Christ. He's creating community in this place. But it calls us to go and to create something new. A quote here is by a guy named Bell Hooks. One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. I hope you come here and you know that you're not alone, but just know that there are a lot of people that might need to come somewhere else to know they're not alone before they can come here to know that they're not alone. And so God is asking us to go and to create that. Step three, cultivate. Here we go. So now we've been introspective. We know what's in our hand. We know we're going to go out. Now we begin to cultivate koinonia. So this is where we nurture connections. We have places of connection and we nurture, we care for each other, we ask how are you doing, how are you really doing, what do you really need? We really reach out to the people around us, to the people in our community. Through our story with Keller we saw this time and time and time again where people would go out of their way and come into our life in radical ways to love us, to serve us, to care for us. And again, it wasn't because we were deserving of that. It was just what people felt on their heart from God to do. Sometimes I didn't even remember that it happened. People would tell me later as I was writing my book that they came and they served us and they loved us. And this is what was happening in Acts also. As they're continuing to go out, God was beginning to cultivate something really special. Let's look at Acts 4 now. It's continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, bought the money from the sales, and put it to the apostles' feet and was distributed to those who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, would be son of encouragement, I'm going to talk about him later, sold a field he owned and bought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. I love this because it is action. It is the church going out. It is the church that starts in here going out in radical ways, in ways no one expected, in ways they weren't being asked to do, and just saying, what can we do? Who can we bring in? Who can we serve? How can we do this differently? That is what church is, and that is cultivating a koinonia that is different and deeper than I think people are used to seeing for the church. I have another verse that I think really highlights this, and this is in Ephesians 4. So this is when Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and he's trying to effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. For one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the God that we are seeking, and this is the places we are invited to cultivate. And over and over again in our world, we saw people come into our lives and just cultivate this oneness, cultivate this spirituality, just to say, we are with you. We are walking with you. We believe in you. We are coming alongside. They built church all over our world outside of church. Just one little way that this happened was on Keller's first day of school. So we'd walk a long journey with Keller and we get to his first day of school. I was terrified. I think he was okay, but I was terrified. And I reached out to our good friends who had kids at the school and said, Keller's starting school. Can you just meet us at the gate? And can we just all walk in together? And so his brother and sister, not from us, and his sister all met him there. And we walked into his school together. And it was a sacred moment of koinonia, of shared space, where we knew we were not alone, where Keller knew he was not alone. And he continued then building that throughout his life there. We need action to build koinonia. We need action to go into the world and build what God is asking us to build. I'm going to end this part and then finish with step four with this quote. Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and to know the other. We have to enter in and create sacred places everywhere we are. From a very needy family, I can tell you it's life-changing to know that everywhere you step, when you feel alone, when you feel scared, when you feel uncertain, when people show up as the church around you in a terrifying world, it buoys you with a hope that God is with you. I want to finish with just a fourth question. And that is, who isn't here yet? Who isn't here yet? I used to have dreams before I became a pastor of what the church could look like, more than just the church I had experienced, more than just the people I knew. I wanted diversity, and I wanted different religions, and I wanted people who saw the world differently. I've always been just kind of drawn to that. I've always been drawn to just go as far as I could go and see if something sacred is there. And again, I find that in the New Testament. You know, we know now Paul wrote 14 of the books of the New Testament. When he first came on the scene, everyone knew who he was because he was the one who was persecuting Christians. He was the one speaking out against Christians. He was the one who was the dangerous guy. And even though we have this new religion, we're not too sure about this Paul guy. But there was one person who gave him a chance, and that was Barnabas. In the early church, Barnabas gave Paul a chance and created space for Paul to come in. I want to look at this scripture in Acts 9. It's saying Saul here, Acts 9, starting at the end of 17, at the end of 19, sorry. Saul spent several days with his disciples in Damascus. That's Paul. And once he began to preach in synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't that that crazy guy who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful in baffling the Jews, the religious in Damascus, by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. After many days he had gone by, there was a conspiracy against the Jews to kill him. But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watching the city gates in order to kill him. So it wasn't just a weird guy. It was someone they thought was dangerous to their faith. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Good friends. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. This person who had to be given a place at the table because religion didn't accept him, didn't understand him, but he had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. This person was given a space by Barnabas and went to the farthest places, the craziest spaces in all of the world to tell people about Jesus Christ. And I want us to ask, as we dream about Koinonia, who is not here yet? Who is not here yet? I love being here and seeing so many familiar faces, but God has churned in my heart this question over and over again, especially being in South Africa. Who is not at the table yet? Who is not in the doors yet? Who has not heard of Jesus yet? That is where we really begin to cultivate koinonia and the second part, where we begin to operate as oracles. And it's simply in this verse of Peter 4.11. This is my last verse. And it says in Peter 4 11, if anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ to him be the glory and the power forever and ever. In other versions, it says that, as they, it says they should speak. It speaks of being an oracle. So if Jesus was the word, he then asked us to be the words of God. That's what an oracle means. That we would live as the words of God. And I want to encourage you that the way that we do this is go into places, exist in places where God isn't as clear yet, where God isn't always present in the way we're used to seeing him. As I said, I always prayed about this idea of being around people of other faiths, of other nations, of other backgrounds. And through Keller, who this book is about, he has brought us these friends who are the weirdest people you have ever met. And they are every religion. We say that we're a big joke because it's me, I'm a pastor, and they call me Pastor Prince, and then there's a Wiccan, and there's a Jew, and there is a Buddhist, and there's an agnostic, and there's just our friend Lisa. And so we are like this tribe. And we have a WhatsApp group, and it's called Pastor Prince's Free Range Women. And we are this weird tribe of people. And within this tribe, something holy happens. learned years ago this this idea called holy envy that you go to other people not to tell them what's right and they're wrong not to just change them but you just talk you just open up and you see where something holy is within them something sacred is within them and so now with this group of women, we have had many, many, many holy places. Even in just this past year, the agnostic couple, I married them in December and they were very happy for me to talk about Jesus as I was there officiant. My Jewish friend Emma, her mom died also in December. She asked me to spread the ashes and do a ceremony for her. And my Wiccan friend, her mom has Alzheimer's and she's slowly leaving this earth. And she has asked me to pastor her mom and to pastor her and to do the sermon and the service when her mom passes. And they asked me to tell their kids about Jesus because there's something about that Jesus and there's something about you guys and there's something here. And I ask about Buddhism. And I ask about the Wiccan faith. And I ask about the Jewish faith. But I know that within me is an oracle. And coming from me is an oracle. Not because I'm special. But because God is within me. And the scripture says we have the hope of glory within us. So we can go anywhere. We don't have to fear that our light will be diluted. We don't have to fear that our God will be tamed. We don't have to wonder if he will fully reign because he will forever and ever reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are invited to go into the world as oracles and bring that light to all the places that are needed, and that's everywhere. God is saying go into the schools as oracles. Go into your workplace as oracles. Go into your home and your family as oracles. Be a light from within with what God has done within your heart. Nothing can diminish that. That's what I love again about the early church, and I'll finish here. The early church went into all these places, and they kept saying, you're wrong. We're going to kill you. That can't be. This Jesus can't be. And they said it again and again, all I can say is this Jesus who I've met is my king, and he's my Lord. And nothing could diminish that. One of my heroes in life is Desmond Tutu, and he says this, that we must be ready to learn from one another, not pretending that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. Because here's what I'm learning. God is bigger and he's greater and he's more profound than what we think. And we have a broken world that's in desperate need of this God and this light and this community. But we need to dream differently and we need to see differently. We need to go differently. We need to cultivate koinonia and we need to operate as oracles. So I want to end here. What do you dream? Coming to America, people are always asking us like, what do you think? And what's your perspective? And what do you think's going on? I don't want to look at what I see. I want to look at what God still needs and what God still wants to do and what God wants to create. And again, that's what Kyle did this morning in just a few moments. We could have left after that. God is ready for us to dream about places of koinonia and us operating as oracles in a world that is in desperate need of his light and his love. So I want to invite us to dream what that could look like and see that revival that Kyle's talking about in all the places that need it most. Let's pray. God, I thank you that you are a great God, that you are not limited to our words or our songs or our prayers or how we've seen you before. God, you are greater. And I pray, God, that you would move within us to help us to dream of a new community, of new closeness, of a new connection, of new light, of new love. And help us to be your oracles. Help us to be as the early church who was pushing farther and farther to tell people of the love of you, Jesus Christ. May we not hold back in what we know you can do and how we know we can shine your light all over the world. We love you, God. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. While you guys are watching this video, I'll be on a plane to Ethiopia with some other people from Grace to support our team working in Addis Jamari over there. This morning, we have a special guest, Sarah Prince. She and her husband, Casey, have come over with Kieran and Keller, their children. They're based in Cape Town, South Africa. Years ago, Casey and Sarah were on staff here at Grace back in the old days, and then we had the privilege of sending them over there to be missionaries in South Africa, where they work with a football team called Ubuntu and are involved in their community in many other ways. So this morning, Sarah is going to come share with us a really important message from her heart, and I'm excited for all of us to get to hear from her. Good morning. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It's so good to be here. It's so good to see your faces. Many of you I know, and it's such a privilege to be here again. We were a part of Grace when it was over there. There, there, there, there. Yep, that way. And for many years, we served at Grace. I was an associate pastor. My husband was a youth pastor. And then this church community sent us 14 years ago, almost 15, if you can believe it, out into South Africa to do ministry. I have a picture of our family, if you haven't seen them walking around. My daughter, Kieran, is in kids ministry now because she loves the kids. That's Keller. And that's my handsome husband, Casey. Behind us is the street where we live. And we will be going back there tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the other stuff that we do. But I did bring a few copies of my book. And I also have a few postcards. If you don't know us, I'm so excited to meet you. And we have some postcards and some... Can you help me put these out, Casey? He's already on his phone. Can you help me just set... Oh, he's taking notes. Okay. There's four points. That's all you have to know. But then can you just set those out? When you're done. Before, in the next 30 minutes. So we have some postcards and some info about our family if you don't know anything about us, but many of you do. And I just want to say, I was just chatting with someone outside and they were saying, I can't remember when you guys met and I can't believe this is happening. And you know, it's so crazy that you did this. And we always say the reason that we could risk what we do in South Africa is because we have this community to come back to. We've kind of like played, I don't know, poker, but like played all the cards or the chips or the things. And I'm a big gambler. So we gambled all the gambling stuff and we've just put it into South Africa. But we always know we have this community here that loves us, that supports us. And then we can always come home to. So we thank you for your love and support. But that's not what I want to talk about today. So I've been wrestling with something lately. This is the first time in a very long time that I have something that God is showing me, and then I'm like, okay, but God, where is that in Scripture? Usually I'm like really big into the Bible, and I'm like digging, and then that's the thing I want to focus on. But today with this topic, I've come to God curious. God, what is this thing that you've done in our world? Because in 14 years in South Africa, we have built a ministry called Ubuntu Football, where now we've sent 24 young men to America to study, one of who's here, hey-o. And we have a bunch of young men who are playing professionally, a bunch of young men who are studying in South Africa, a bunch of young men who are beginning their lives as incredible men. One of them is my son's soccer coach at his school. It's really beautiful. But as we've done all these other things, God has given us this very rich and vibrant community. This very unique group of people. Kind of different pockets of people that are very strange and very unique and very fun and very sacred. And so I've started to ask God, what is that? One story that highlights the weirdness of our community comes with a cake. So I have a cake here. Our son was diagnosed with autism how many years ago now? He is 12, so about 10 years ago. And we're in the community of South Africa as this happens, not even knowing what autism is about. That's what my book is about, Anguish to Awakening, our journey with Keller, my journey. And I have this group of friends. And I think we got a diagnosis. And maybe the next day, I was at the gym. And I ran into Kate. And she's like, oh, how are you? And I was like, I'm, you know, and I just cried at the gym and told her what happened, and we had this group of women friends, and so she sat with me, she prayed with me, and then maybe a week or two later, she said, we want to get together with you. Come over this night. I show up at her house, and this is the cake for me, and she said, we can do hard things together, and so we're celebrating that. We're at the beginning of a very hard thing, and we will do it together with you. And they had this like key chain thing with quotes and cards, and they just sat with me and cried with me. And I look back at that, think that is so unique to enter into a really difficult time and have people come and just say, we're here in the hard. We're not here for the highlights. We're not here for the good times. We're here now, today, in the hard. And it struck me as so unique. And we've had these kinds of times, these kinds of instances over and over again. And I need to admit that it's not because we're so great at friendship or that we're so great at bringing people around. I think it's a God-given gift. And I think there are some things that God has taught us along the way to help cultivate that community. That's the title today. I can't have a simple, I kept, community doesn't work, initiating community, it's not rich enough. So today's title is Cultivating Koinonia and Orating as Oracles. Because sometimes American or English words don't do it justice. And I want to talk about this. What does it mean to cultivate not just community, not just friends, koinonia, I'll explain that, and how do we operate as oracles? Because I think that's where something happens. You know, I grew up all over the country. I moved a lot. And so only when I became a young adult, I got married, like right after college, three weeks. Don't recommend it, young people. It's worked out, 22 years. But it was crazy. So I jumped into adulthood, went to seminary to become a pastor, and all of a sudden realized many things. Another sermon. But one of them was that I had no idea how to make friends. But I thought I didn't need them. I thought I was like, fine. I was just happy. I was just doing my thing. I was just bebopping around. And I started to realize I needed friends. And it was in this church that I learned the power of friendship and koinonia. We used to have a retreat. Anyone go to koinonia? Koinonia. Yeah. See? We had this retreat and I was dragged to it. Okay, fine. I'll go because I'm like a pastor or whatever. And it was this beautiful time of friendship and connection. And through this place, I learned the importance, the need of koinonia. But you know, a lot of people have never learned this. They've never been in environments where this is pushed, where this is elevated, where this is celebrated. There's lots of statistics on this, but three decades ago, there was a poll that said 3% of Americans had no close friends. 2021, 12% had no close friends. Into the pandemic, 13% of women, 8% of men had lost touch with most of their friends. This is something happening a lot more. Nowadays, some 8% will say they have no friends at all. This is something that's been talked about here. I didn't hear about this because we're in Africa, and in Africa things are done a bit differently. But there's actually a pandemic, an epidemic of loneliness. It's everywhere. And that's a word that just means you're disconnected. You don't have people. You're not anchored. You're not moored by others. And you're just kind of wandering. And it's actually celebrated here. It's just kind of how we do things here. And actually, this epidemic, the Surgeon General says that it affects one out of two adults. And it doesn't just help your mood. It's about your entire body, your entire health. It actually predicts the longevity of your life if you're lonely or if you have people around you. And so when the Surgeon General went around the states, some of the things that he heard were people would tell me all again and again. They felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. And they said, if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. Now, if this doesn't feel a bit familiar, I'm glad you're here because I have a job for you. Some of us just have people around and we don't know how we did it or why it was given to us. For us, we were just super needy and having a child with autism was one of the big things. We just kind of were like, we're broken, help us. And people came around us, which is what I talk about in the book. But I think most people don't display their need in the way that our family did. We were very vocal about it. But if you feel like you have close community, if you don't know what loneliness feels like, then great. I have a job for you. Because many people feel very, very lonely. Many people feel very, very isolated. All over the world, people are saying that they want community. They want friendship. They want that in their world, but they don't know how to find it. All community is is a sense of belonging, support, shared purpose. And it's a place where the church should be leading. We've got this whole book that is people that did it. I mean, they fought a lot, and they killed each other some, and it was messy, but like they did it. This is the book about it, and yet we are doing it poorly at times. We have a friend who grew up, he grew up doing, his family was doing missions, their South African family, and he is South African, but has moved to New Zealand. He just recently flew from New Zealand to Amsterdam for what? Does anyone know who was in Amsterdam recently? Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. He has a beautiful family. He's very connected. But people all over the globe have been traveling in the, I don't even know, the millions, the trillions, to see this woman sing songs. Now, I hear, I know every song because of my daughter. I know every word. I know every syllable. They're good. They're fine. They're good. They're good. They're good. They're good. Did I say they were good? That is not why people are going to this concert. They are going because people have over and over and over said something like this. Entering the Erez tour was like stepping into an alternate universe where everyone was bursting with joy. I've never encountered such a warm, friendly, and kind crowd. People have called it transcendental. And it embodies love to people all over the world. It's not about the songs. It's this feeling thousands of people have when they're together. They're connected. They're a community. They're being seen and known. Now, I'm not asking any of you to be Taylor Swift, the next one, although my daughter might be. But I don't think we need a concert to create the sacred art of connection. It can happen anywhere. And God shows us how to do it. And it is a word that's more than community. It is that word koinonia in the New Testament. It's roughly translated fellowship, but it means to share together, to take part. And the same idea is found in another Greek word. That's metakos. And it means to have with or to have together. Now, I'm using sacred New Testament words to describe what those people are saying about Taylor Swift. And what I know God is desperate for people to describe about us. And again, if you don't know the feeling of loneliness, then it is your time. If you do, then I'm here to give you hope. Because it is possible among every single one of us. Being here in South Africa has highlighted to me not how special we are as a family to do what we do, but how God is really great because this group of idiots is running this incredible organization in South Africa because it's God's mission, it's God's dream, it's God's plan, and even we can't stop it with all of our fumbles and our foils and our missteps. When God has a plan, he will use the best of us and the worst of us. His plan is to be together. So I have four, I don't have a pamphlet, I'm from Africa. I don't have a pamphlet, but I do have four very simple points. If you're saying, I don't have that. I have people around, but I don't have a deep connection. Or if you're saying, I have it. This is for you. Because it's time to step into something sacred, something real. And none of my examples, I'm going to tell some stories, not a single one is a Bible study. I have the best Bible study. I want to start there. I have the best Bible study. There are these women, and my sister was just in South Africa, and she was with them. There are these beautiful women that I've known for years and years, and we get together, and we cry, and we laugh, and we pray, and we scream out to God, and it is holy. None of these examples are going to be a church or a Bible study because I want to inspire you to dream of where the church could go beyond this. This is holy, but that world needs this sacred thing. So I want you to dream. Okay, so step one. Step one of creating, cultivating koinonia. We'll end with orating as oracles, but cultivating koinonia. And actually cultivating is step three. So you're not ready for the first letter of this sermon. You ready? Step one, introspection. This sounds so simple, but it is so profound. We went to South Africa to help everyone and to save everyone and to do all the great things for Jesus. And then a few years in, we had a son who was diagnosed with autism. And we were like, no, God, not the plan. We're doing some other stuff. We have a lot to do. We have a big plan. We have a big mission. We're going to serve for Jesus. This has happened time and time again to me. It even happened recently where we have a plan and then God says, no, this is a plan. But we were in desperate need. We didn't even know what autism meant. We had to Google it as we started our journey. But this is the first step of community. It isn't creating a Bible study. It isn't finding people to play pickleball with. The first step is introspection. The first step is what is my need? What is happening in here? Number one, introspection. This came through hardship for us. But as we've walked through that hardship, we've had to be really honest. What is it that we need in a community? Who do we need around us? What does it mean to raise kids and to do this life with people in our world? What does that look like? And we've had to be very introspective. This is something people are talking about, not just Taylor Swift people, but all over the world. I recently heard an interview with this woman, Priya Parker. She wrote this book called The Art of Gathering. So I would have thought, I would never picked up this book. I would have thought it's been about like dinner parties, which I love, or like how to host something cute or how to find the Pinterest board. But for her, The Art of Gathering starts with assessing your needs. Because you cannot create a gathering of people where you are authentically a part if you don't know what it is you need in that group. Creating community begins with your own needs. What is my need here? How am I actually feeling? What do I need from other people? That sounds selfish, sounds maybe anti-Christian, but it's true because if I'm going to authentically show up, that means my needs are going to show up. My desires are going to show up. My dreams are going to show up. My brokenness is going to show up. So I need to show up first with my true self, not who I think I should be, not who I want to be, not how I want to save the world. Again, read Sarah and Casey's whole story. Me, just me. And so that starts with being honest. And as I've wrestled with this idea and asked God, where is this in scripture? I've gone to the early church, but I want to start with what I believe maybe the early church was praying. So in Acts, you see the early church and they are wrestling. There are these, talk about misfits. They were running around with Jesus, getting it all wrong, being on the top, being on the bottom, just being a mess. I love them. And then Jesus got killed on the cross. They all went in hiding. They were scared. They were confused. They were doubting. They were a mess. And then he comes back. He rises and boom, everything changes. What's fun about studying the Bible, this part of the Bible, is there is no proof that he rose. You have an empty grave. You have someone who people said they saw, and then he was gone. But here's the proof. Is this group of people something happened in? I love what Kyle was sharing about what is going to happen now with the youth. We don't need to know what happened at Infuge, although I was ready for like a video of like, Infuge, it was so cool, and here's the water slide, and here's when they raised their hands. I was ready for a video. We don't need a video of what happened in Infuge. We need young people who are radically different and on fire for Jesus. That's all the proof we need. We don't need to see the pictures. We don't need to, the dirty clothes, I'm sure, were also proof when you parents washed them. The proof is in the people, and I believe we'll see that. The princes will be praying for the revival here for the young people. And I pray that you adults will come along with them. That's the proof that something happened. So this early church, something happened. Something happened. And they were radically different. And they're walking around just being wild for Jesus Christ. But I wondered, were they introspective? Because you don't really see it. You kind of just see them like, boom, out there, you know, changing the world. What they would have been doing is reading the Old Testament scriptures. I love that. They would have been wrestling and thinking and praying and talking and saying, God, what is my part in building this new world? And so that would have started with introspection. And so we have a simple scripture that you've heard a million times, but I'm going to highlight a couple light. It says here, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The first step for revival is introspection. And the two words to focus on here are search. And it was a word that was used if miners were searching for gold or if Israelites were searching for new territory. They were searching like their life depended on it. Like not a little devotion in the morning, not 101.5 Christian music as they came through on a Sunday morning, not that kind of searching. I mean, searching like your life depends on it. If you don't show up, I have nothing else. That kind of searching is what the first church was doing. And then they were saying, test me. Test me. What needs to be let go? What needs to come out? What needs to rise? What is my place? What is my message? What is my calling? They were saying, test me, show me, reveal in me anything that is going to keep me from you. And then reveal in me how you want to use me. Test me. Do heart surgery on me as you take me out into this mission. You better believe that that early church was on their knees looking at those Old Testament scriptures, begging God, because the Psalms are the Psalms of that. that's the prayers. That's the way they really prayed. Begging God, search me, test me, and lead me to where you have me. So the first step is very simple. Search me and test me. I have a really great quote about this and what we need to do. There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. If the revival stays in here, it will die with me. It might go my whole life. But if revival stays here, then it's not done its job. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for everyone else. But it takes vulnerability. And it takes risk. And so we start there, which is hard, but important. Step two, take initiative. This is a step also. I'm not talking about church, but I love church. Keep going to small group. Keep going to Bible study. Keep going to youth. But start going out into this world. Because this world has an epidemic of loneliness. This world is on fire. This world is in pain. This world is in need. And there are tons of places for you to go into this world and bring the love of God and create a place of belonging. This year, as I wrote my book, I finished my book last year, I was just praying, God, how can I be your hands and feet? How can I go out? What do I have to give? What have I learned that I could share? And at the end of last year, I started at Keller School, this support group of just parents who had kids with special needs or extra needs. And I just said, come once a month, just come and show up. It wasn't Christian. It was just come. We've had it now for almost a year. Every single time people risk, they're vulnerable, they cry out in need every single time. And every single time people risk they're vulnerable they cry out in need every single time and every single time someone shares faith someone shares hope in a real spiritual way because they're sharing what where they are and we're together meeting that need all of us have something to offer someplace Some place we can step out. Some place where we can open up a hand, open up a place where someone can feel not alone. And it takes us going out. And again, the early church did this. Religion was there. The buildings were there. And the early church went out. And you've read this before, but I'm going to highlight one very simple thing. So Acts 2, 41 through 47. You've heard this before so many times. Those who accepted Jesus' message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to the number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And it continues. I'm scared I have a different version. I'll keep going. 47 is all we have. I'll keep going. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I love the early church. And I mean, in COVID, I found myself just, when we couldn't meet, just like, okay, well, what did that look like when they first started gathering? And what they did was they just went. They would gather and they would pray and then they would go and they would gather and they would eat and they would go and they would gather and they would sing and they would go. They were just going and going and going. And as they were going, there were numbers added daily, weekly, monthly, because they were going. I think God is calling us to go. We all have something in our hand. We all have something we've learned. We all have something we care about. Let's go into the world. It could be as simple as my husband this year, he started doing paddle. You don't do that here. It's like squash and tennis together. And we have this cool paddle place near our house. And he's decided I'm going to be a paddle person. This is a place where Casey is bringing the love of Christ, the light of Christ. He's creating community in this place. But it calls us to go and to create something new. A quote here is by a guy named Bell Hooks. One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. I hope you come here and you know that you're not alone, but just know that there are a lot of people that might need to come somewhere else to know they're not alone before they can come here to know that they're not alone. And so God is asking us to go and to create that. Step three, cultivate. Here we go. So now we've been introspective. We know what's in our hand. We know we're going to go out. Now we begin to cultivate koinonia. So this is where we nurture connections. We have places of connection and we nurture, we care for each other, we ask how are you doing, how are you really doing, what do you really need? We really reach out to the people around us, to the people in our community. Through our story with Keller we saw this time and time and time again where people would go out of their way and come into our life in radical ways to love us, to serve us, to care for us. And again, it wasn't because we were deserving of that. It was just what people felt on their heart from God to do. Sometimes I didn't even remember that it happened. People would tell me later as I was writing my book that they came and they served us and they loved us. And this is what was happening in Acts also. As they're continuing to go out, God was beginning to cultivate something really special. Let's look at Acts 4 now. It's continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, bought the money from the sales, and put it to the apostles' feet and was distributed to those who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, would be son of encouragement, I'm going to talk about him later, sold a field he owned and bought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. I love this because it is action. It is the church going out. It is the church that starts in here going out in radical ways, in ways no one expected, in ways they weren't being asked to do, and just saying, what can we do? Who can we bring in? Who can we serve? How can we do this differently? That is what church is, and that is cultivating a koinonia that is different and deeper than I think people are used to seeing for the church. I have another verse that I think really highlights this, and this is in Ephesians 4. So this is when Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and he's trying to effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. For one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the God that we are seeking, and this is the places we are invited to cultivate. And over and over again in our world, we saw people come into our lives and just cultivate this oneness, cultivate this spirituality, just to say, we are with you. We are walking with you. We believe in you. We are coming alongside. They built church all over our world outside of church. Just one little way that this happened was on Keller's first day of school. So we'd walk a long journey with Keller and we get to his first day of school. I was terrified. I think he was okay, but I was terrified. And I reached out to our good friends who had kids at the school and said, Keller's starting school. Can you just meet us at the gate? And can we just all walk in together? And so his brother and sister, not from us, and his sister all met him there. And we walked into his school together. And it was a sacred moment of koinonia, of shared space, where we knew we were not alone, where Keller knew he was not alone. And he continued then building that throughout his life there. We need action to build koinonia. We need action to go into the world and build what God is asking us to build. I'm going to end this part and then finish with step four with this quote. Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and to know the other. We have to enter in and create sacred places everywhere we are. From a very needy family, I can tell you it's life-changing to know that everywhere you step, when you feel alone, when you feel scared, when you feel uncertain, when people show up as the church around you in a terrifying world, it buoys you with a hope that God is with you. I want to finish with just a fourth question. And that is, who isn't here yet? Who isn't here yet? I used to have dreams before I became a pastor of what the church could look like, more than just the church I had experienced, more than just the people I knew. I wanted diversity, and I wanted different religions, and I wanted people who saw the world differently. I've always been just kind of drawn to that. I've always been drawn to just go as far as I could go and see if something sacred is there. And again, I find that in the New Testament. You know, we know now Paul wrote 14 of the books of the New Testament. When he first came on the scene, everyone knew who he was because he was the one who was persecuting Christians. He was the one speaking out against Christians. He was the one who was the dangerous guy. And even though we have this new religion, we're not too sure about this Paul guy. But there was one person who gave him a chance, and that was Barnabas. In the early church, Barnabas gave Paul a chance and created space for Paul to come in. I want to look at this scripture in Acts 9. It's saying Saul here, Acts 9, starting at the end of 17, at the end of 19, sorry. Saul spent several days with his disciples in Damascus. That's Paul. And once he began to preach in synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't that that crazy guy who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful in baffling the Jews, the religious in Damascus, by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. After many days he had gone by, there was a conspiracy against the Jews to kill him. But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watching the city gates in order to kill him. So it wasn't just a weird guy. It was someone they thought was dangerous to their faith. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Good friends. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. This person who had to be given a place at the table because religion didn't accept him, didn't understand him, but he had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. This person was given a space by Barnabas and went to the farthest places, the craziest spaces in all of the world to tell people about Jesus Christ. And I want us to ask, as we dream about Koinonia, who is not here yet? Who is not here yet? I love being here and seeing so many familiar faces, but God has churned in my heart this question over and over again, especially being in South Africa. Who is not at the table yet? Who is not in the doors yet? Who has not heard of Jesus yet? That is where we really begin to cultivate koinonia and the second part, where we begin to operate as oracles. And it's simply in this verse of Peter 4.11. This is my last verse. And it says in Peter 4 11, if anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ to him be the glory and the power forever and ever. In other versions, it says that, as they, it says they should speak. It speaks of being an oracle. So if Jesus was the word, he then asked us to be the words of God. That's what an oracle means. That we would live as the words of God. And I want to encourage you that the way that we do this is go into places, exist in places where God isn't as clear yet, where God isn't always present in the way we're used to seeing him. As I said, I always prayed about this idea of being around people of other faiths, of other nations, of other backgrounds. And through Keller, who this book is about, he has brought us these friends who are the weirdest people you have ever met. And they are every religion. We say that we're a big joke because it's me, I'm a pastor, and they call me Pastor Prince, and then there's a Wiccan, and there's a Jew, and there is a Buddhist, and there's an agnostic, and there's just our friend Lisa. And so we are like this tribe. And we have a WhatsApp group, and it's called Pastor Prince's Free Range Women. And we are this weird tribe of people. And within this tribe, something holy happens. learned years ago this this idea called holy envy that you go to other people not to tell them what's right and they're wrong not to just change them but you just talk you just open up and you see where something holy is within them something sacred is within them and so now with this group of women, we have had many, many, many holy places. Even in just this past year, the agnostic couple, I married them in December and they were very happy for me to talk about Jesus as I was there officiant. My Jewish friend Emma, her mom died also in December. She asked me to spread the ashes and do a ceremony for her. And my Wiccan friend, her mom has Alzheimer's and she's slowly leaving this earth. And she has asked me to pastor her mom and to pastor her and to do the sermon and the service when her mom passes. And they asked me to tell their kids about Jesus because there's something about that Jesus and there's something about you guys and there's something here. And I ask about Buddhism. And I ask about the Wiccan faith. And I ask about the Jewish faith. But I know that within me is an oracle. And coming from me is an oracle. Not because I'm special. But because God is within me. And the scripture says we have the hope of glory within us. So we can go anywhere. We don't have to fear that our light will be diluted. We don't have to fear that our God will be tamed. We don't have to wonder if he will fully reign because he will forever and ever reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are invited to go into the world as oracles and bring that light to all the places that are needed, and that's everywhere. God is saying go into the schools as oracles. Go into your workplace as oracles. Go into your home and your family as oracles. Be a light from within with what God has done within your heart. Nothing can diminish that. That's what I love again about the early church, and I'll finish here. The early church went into all these places, and they kept saying, you're wrong. We're going to kill you. That can't be. This Jesus can't be. And they said it again and again, all I can say is this Jesus who I've met is my king, and he's my Lord. And nothing could diminish that. One of my heroes in life is Desmond Tutu, and he says this, that we must be ready to learn from one another, not pretending that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. Because here's what I'm learning. God is bigger and he's greater and he's more profound than what we think. And we have a broken world that's in desperate need of this God and this light and this community. But we need to dream differently and we need to see differently. We need to go differently. We need to cultivate koinonia and we need to operate as oracles. So I want to end here. What do you dream? Coming to America, people are always asking us like, what do you think? And what's your perspective? And what do you think's going on? I don't want to look at what I see. I want to look at what God still needs and what God still wants to do and what God wants to create. And again, that's what Kyle did this morning in just a few moments. We could have left after that. God is ready for us to dream about places of koinonia and us operating as oracles in a world that is in desperate need of his light and his love. So I want to invite us to dream what that could look like and see that revival that Kyle's talking about in all the places that need it most. Let's pray. God, I thank you that you are a great God, that you are not limited to our words or our songs or our prayers or how we've seen you before. God, you are greater. And I pray, God, that you would move within us to help us to dream of a new community, of new closeness, of a new connection, of new light, of new love. And help us to be your oracles. Help us to be as the early church who was pushing farther and farther to tell people of the love of you, Jesus Christ. May we not hold back in what we know you can do and how we know we can shine your light all over the world. We love you, God. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. Thanks for joining us online. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us in person here on this Palm Sunday. As we anticipate Easter, I'm already seeing some Easter colors sneak out of the closets and into the church. This is fantastic. I see a Master's shirt over here. That is where my heart is at. The heart in the spring is with the Masters and is on Easter. So all things good are heading our way. This is the fourth part in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For some context, you'll remember that Hebrews is written to the Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel. So it's written to a group of people who grew up outside of Israel in a Greek context in one of the different surrounding cities and the surrounding countries. And they grew up as practicing Jews. They practiced Judaism and somewhere in their adult life, likely, converted to Christianity, heard the good news of Jesus, heard of the recent crucifixion and resurrection of this man who was the Messiah, the Savior, and then converted to this new faith later in life. And in this new faith, they're facing tremendous persecution from without and within, right? I've reminded you of that every week. They're facing persecution from the Roman government, who is violently opposing their faith. And so they're putting their safety and the safety of their family at risk by publicly professing their faith. And they're tempted to kind of fade away or shy back from that. And then they're facing persecution from within the Jewish community that's ostracizing them in their new faith and trying to woo or coax them back to their old faith of Judaism, not yet understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. So it's in the face of that that the author of Hebrews writes this letter. And in this letter, he makes these comparisons between Jesus and figures in the Jewish faith to make the point that Jesus is greater. He's greater than the greatest messenger. He's greater than the angels. We looked at that in week one when we looked at that profound statement where Jesus is the personification of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. And we kind of marveled at that thought and Jesus as messenger. And then the next week we compared Jesus to Moses and we compared the generation of Moses to the generation of Hebrews and then looked at for us. And we said, Jesus is greater than Moses and the law that he brings. Jesus' grace is greater than Moses' law. And then last week, we looked at Jesus being our high priest, and our absolute need for our high priest Jesus to be in heaven advocating for us at the right hand of God. He is completing the redemptive work of salvation in heaven on our behalf, on your behalf. After that, in the flow of Hebrews, if you'll allow me this editorial comment, we discuss how he is the greatest sacrifice. Jesus is the greatest sacrifice once and for all. But as we were planning the series, I looked at that and I thought, gosh, that's the perfect Easter message as we get to Easter and focus on the sacrifice of Christ and the miracle of his resurrection. So let's save that one for Easter, which means that we're skipping forward in the text a little bit this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. And in Hebrews chapter 10, and the verses that we're going to read, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. We're going to sink into that passage this morning and really work through that passage. I'm going to read it once, and then we're going to go back and look at kind of verse by verse and answer this overarching question. I think the question that this text is answering is this, and I would encourage you, this is not in the notes, and it should be. If you're a note taker, write this down at the top of them. If you're writing things down at home, I'll repeat it twice. But really, the question as we approach the text is this. In light of all that we've learned about Jesus, so he's the greatest messenger, priest, and all the things. You don't have to write that down. It would be awkward to write down all the things in your notes. But in light of what we know about Jesus, how should we then approach Jesus and others? That's the predominant question as we enter into the text this morning. In light of what we've learned about Jesus, in light of what Hebrews has said about Jesus, how then should we approach Jesus and approach others? That's the question that this text sets about answering. As a matter of fact, this text starts with the word therefore. And I've told you guys this before, that a little biblical interpretation trick is whenever you see the word therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for? All right, what's the therefore there for? And in this situation, the therefore is there for this. How fun is that? The therefore is there to say, because of all the arguments that I've made, because of all the things I've taught you about Christ, because of this lofty view that we have of him, because he's greater than these things in the Jewish faith, because he's the summation. And last week we learned the culmination of these two streams that run through the Old Testament. Because Jesus is those things, now this is true. So he's kind of reaching the conclusion point of the narrative of the letter. And from here, we have the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11, which is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. And I'm not going to get to cover it in this series, so you definitely need to read that on your own. It chronicles the heroes of the Old Testament and then concludes with the beginning of chapter 12 and this encouragement that he gives us to run our race. And that's where we're going to conclude the series two weeks from now. But this morning we kind of settle in to his conclusionary statements, which are this. This is a good summation of what he's been driving to over the course of the book. He writes this in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. Read along with me. That is, through his flesh. So this is kind of the great conclusionary statement of Hebrews after he makes the comparisons. When I was growing up, my dad would teach me about preaching. He would always, and as I was learning to teach, he would, I would say this point or this great thing about God, this thing that I learned, and dad would always look at me and go, so what? Like, now what do we do? Like, okay, that's great. So now what do we do? And this is kind of the so what of Hebrews. We've learned this about Jesus, so what do we do? Well, how do we approach Jesus and how do we approach others? And so this passage answers that question. And at first, I want to draw our attention to this verse because this is a verse that some of us may instantly understand, and that's great. We know exactly all the context that goes into this sentence, but for others of us, it's a bit mysterious. Or maybe we have no idea, and we would freely raise our hand and be like, yeah, you got me on that one. Or maybe we'd keep our hand down and think that we should understand it, but maybe we don't. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we just continue through the passage together. But it's this sentence in Hebrews 10 verse 20 where the author writes, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. Okay, so Jesus has united us with the Father through this curtain that is through his flesh. So what are we talking about with the curtain? Why bring that up? And again, some of you guys know this, but for those that don't, all the way back in the days of Moses, as they're wandering through the desert towards the promised land, the Hebrew people, God gave Moses and Aaron, the priests, some instructions to set up a tabernacle. Tabernacle is a series of tents that made this holy space. And in the middle of the tabernacle was this place called the Holy of Holies. And in the Holy of Holies rested the very presence of God. And only one person was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and it was once a year on the Day of Atonement. The only person allowed to go into the presence of God was the high priest of all of Israel, and it was to make sacrifices for the sins of Israel for the previous year. The high priest was the only one invited into direct contact with the presence of God. And then later on, so it's important to note, so if you wanted to get a message across to God, you had to go to the priest who would then go to the high priest who would then go relay that all the prayers of Israel to God, right? You did not have a direct connection to him. You had to go between. And actually several in the way that it was in the hierarchy was the way that that was established. And that stayed the same for millennia. Hundreds of years later, Solomon, they're in the promised land, and God allows Solomon to build the temple. And the center of the temple, sure enough, you guys know this, is the Holy of Holies. It's where the presence of God rested. Only one person could go into the presence of God, the high priest, once a year to atone for your sins, to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And the thing that separated the holy of holies, where the presence of God rested, from the rest of Israel and from the rest of the temple complex was this curtain. It was said to be so thick that two teams of oxen pulling against each other could not rip it apart. And it was, it was this physical, visible barrier between God's people and God's presence. And when Jesus died on the cross and fulfilled everything in the Old Testament and ushered in a new law of grace, in the moment that he died, the curtain in the temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, almost as if God himself was reaching down and tearing it. And when that curtain tore open because of the death of Christ, the presence of God rushed out in the form now we know of the Holy Spirit and made itself ubiquitous among us so that we are now invited into the constant presence of God. Totally different than the Hebrew people would have approached God in the Old Testament where they had to go through all these intermediaries who would then go into the presence of God and pray. But what we learned last week is that we go directly into the presence of God. Anytime we want to, no matter where we are, we say in our head or in our hearts, dear God, or we begin to speak to him, we fall to our knees, or we say in the car, we speak to God, we are ushered, Scripture teaches us, into the very throne room of God before the Father, where Jesus our Savior sits at his right hand and leans over to God and says, they're good, I got them covered. And so a New Testament believer, because that curtain is torn down, is invited into the very presence of God. And in this way, in that moment, what this verse is indicating is that communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. Communication with God went from telegrams to cell phones. I did zero research on telegrams to know how they work, but I've seen enough movies that I feel confident in using this as an illustration. I think in the Old West, if you wanted to get a telegram to someone out east, you wanted to get a message to someone out east, you couldn't just call them. You had to go into town. You had to go to the one telegram guy. You had to hope he was working that day, and you had to tell him your message. Then you had to trust that guy to write it down and type it out in whatever way it was supposed to be presented. And then they would send that across the cables and then someone else would get it and that person would come and they would get their message from the person on the other end. All these go-betweens to get this message and there's a physical place you had to go to to try to communicate with others, right? And then we had cell phones. Cell phones keep everybody connected all the time. We can talk to anybody we want to in the whole world whenever we want to talk to them. The thing that really drove this home for me when I realized just how connected cell phones make us was in 2008, I'm on an island off the northeast coast of Honduras called Fifi. Fifi Island off the coast of Trujillo. It was called Fifi Island because a year or two earlier, Hurricane Fifi had swept through and flooded an area so badly that it actually separated a whole mass of land from the mainland and created a new island called Fifi Island. And there was a village of people living on this island, and it was only reachable by boat. We literally, we drove, we parked in some gravel, we get in a John boat, and they take us out. In Miami, it's intercoastal waterways. In Honduras, it's just floodplains. They take us out there, and they take us to this dock, and we get out, and there's this village. Dirt and sticks, thatched roofs, no electricity, no running water. And we camped there overnight. And we were there to help the folks dig wells and dig trenches. And I could tell you stories about that and the way that they did it. It was just amazing. Those people are incredible. They're just ingenious in the way that they solve problems out there. But I'll never forget, they put a shovel in my hand and they put the shovel in the hand of this Honduran man. I don't know how old he was. He was older than me by, he could have looked like he was old enough to be my dad. And they sent us out to like this far-flung area in the village. And our job was to dig a trench from this high point to this house down here. And so we just start digging. And this poor man saddled with the American who can't keep up with him. He must have been so frustrated at me as he just like waits for me to keep up. But we're just digging together. And I'm telling you, I just want to paint a picture for you. The dude was dirty. Showers had been a while. Had a tattered button-up shirt. The edges of it were tattered. He had frayed, tattered jeans. He's wearing those cheap, flimsy, like rubbery 1980s flip-flops, and he is digging away. And we're just going to town. Pretty much in silence. There's a language barrier, but, you know, whatever. We're working. And then I hear one of those ancient old Nokia brick cell phone rings, right? That one that if the instant we heard it, I'm tempted to make the noise with my mouth, but I'm not going to do that. But if we heard it, we would know what it was. And I'm like, where in the world? And the dude drops his shovel, pulls a Nokia brick out of his pocket in the corner of a continent on an island that was created with no electricity. Hola, como estas? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Cell phones work out here? And this guy's found out a way to charge, like it blew my mind that that's how connected we are, that we can be on a newly created island on the corner of a continent, and yet if you have a cell phone, you're connected with the whole world. This is now how our communication with God works. Wherever we are, no matter how far from God we feel, no matter how far out we've wandered, no matter what's happening in our life, no matter how surprising it would be in that moment, we can stop and we can talk to God. And to the Jewish mind, this was shocking. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that this idea of constant communication with God, that just instant prayer and communication with God was as shocking to the Jewish mind as a cell phone would be to the mind of Wyatt Earp. I think it was that kind of a gap. Like, you mean I can just talk to him whenever I want? Yeah. Whenever I want? Yes. No matter where I am? Yes. I think it would floor them. And see, we're used to this kind of constant communication. And it's funny to think of the older generation, even my generation, I look at kids now and I'm like, you don't know what it was to call your girlfriend and hope her dad didn't answer the house phone. You just don't know. You'll never know that pain, right? Like now we have cell phones. Now we have direct communication with one another. And some people older than me, like you remember when it was more difficult to place phone calls. And so now we just assume that we have constant access to God and we have constant access to all the people that we want. And we never stop to think and marvel at the miracle of just being able to talk to the creator of the universe whenever we want. The second I shut my eyes and say, dear God, I'm ushered into the very throne room of God. And this is what the death of Christ won for us. It's worth us to stop and slow down and reflect on that miracle this morning. And that's what he's talking about in verse 20 when he says that he opened this channel of communication for us through the curtain. He tore it down and God's presence rushed out to all of us. So then he says this. Once we understand that, this is how we approach Christ. This is the answer to the question. This is in Hebrewsvering, for he who promised is faithful. I love this first sentence. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. I've said this before, and I'm going to continue to beat this drum. I think as Christians, now some of us are there, but for most of us, if we were to think about approaching God, I know for me, there would be this degree of guilt and shame. There would be a degree of timidity. I don't deserve to be here. There would be a part of me that would want to approach God like the prodigal son approaches his father with a speech, with an explanation. I'm sorry for who I am. I'm sorry for the decisions that I've made. I'm sorry for my seasons of wandering. I'm sorry for allowing myself to become this version that you didn't intend. I'm sorry for all the regrets and the ways that I know that I've disappointed you. And so we would kind of approach God hat in hand. I'm sorry for who I am. I think if we're being honest that many of us would approach God with timidity and shame. Because I think to be a Christian is to hear about the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, to hear things like our hearts have been sprinkled with the pure blood of Christ, to hear that we've been washed in the waters of Jesus' baptism and think, yeah, they have, but I know better. And so we continue to approach the throne of God with fear. And what Scripture tells us over and over and over again is that we need not do that. Earlier in Hebrews, we're told that because of Christ, we can approach the throne with boldness. And here it says, we go with the true heart and full assurance that we just walk right in, expecting that God is excited to see us, expecting that he is excited for us to walk into his presence. And this, for so many, is such a foreign concept. We know intellectually it's true, but in our heart, we can't seem to master it. As a matter of fact, I came across a quote this week, and I'm going to butcher it. This is not word for word, but this is the gist from a Franciscan monk. And he said, God, your standards are not good enough for me. I'm going to create my own standards and my own will. To that God whom we have offended with our actions. Jesus covers us with his blood, washes us clean with his baptism, and now we go to God whenever we want to, as righteous as we will ever be, as loved as we will ever be, as innocent and pure as we will ever be. And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can enjoy the presence of God. The sooner we can accept that about ourselves, the better we'll be able to love other people towards our loving God as we are overwhelmed by his acceptance of us. The sooner we can accept God's acceptance of us, the sooner we'll stop trying to prove to everyone else around us that we're good enough to be accepted. When we bask in the fact that our God values us, we no longer need everyone around us to value us near as much. There's something incredible about being able to accept the fact that God loves you. He loves you as much as he ever will. He does not see all the things you did in your past or the things you will do in your future. He sees the righteousness of Christ's clothing you, and you have been washed pure in the waters of his baptism, raised to walk in a newness of life. Speaking of baptism, next week in our Easter service, I get to baptize someone who has become a good friend of mine, and I hope that we will show up and celebrate that and all that Easter is. But this is what the death of Christ wins for us. Rather than approaching God with timidity and shame and fear, we approach him with the boldness of faith and assurance. And scripture says we do not shrink back because Jesus has won that for us. And then at the end, he says that let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. So as we think about how do we approach Jesus? Well, first we approach him with boldness. We approach him with full assurance. And then we approach him with the knowledge that we can hold fast to God because he who promised it is faithful, which means we don't have to waver because God never does. We don't have to waver in our faith because God never does. We all know what it is, all too well and sometimes all too painfully, to hitch our wagons to the wrong thing. We know what it is to place our hope in someone or something that is going to disappoint us. I'm from Atlanta. I'm a sports fan. I live in the land of disappointment, okay? I know what it is to hitch my wagons to something and to look foolish. I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally gonna win this series, or the Falcons are finally gonna win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally gonna make it to the next round of the playoffs, and then I know what it is to believe that the Braves are finally going to win this series, that the Falcons are finally going to win the Super Bowl, or that the Hawks are finally going to make it to the next round of the playoffs. And then I know what it is to have those hopes dashed and for me to feel like a dummy for not just rooting for Alabama and New England all the time. If you don't get that, I'm sorry. I'll come back to the reservation now and quit talking sports. But I know what it is to be disappointed. And more than that, we know what it is to put our faith in a spouse, to put our faith in a father or a mother or a friendship or an institution and to be let down by that. We know what it is to put our faith in pastors and then to watch them fail and for that to shipwreck our own faith. We know what it is to hitch our wagons to imperfect beasts and then watch them fail and drag us down with them. And so it engenders in us rightly and wisely a hesitancy to put our full and reckless faith in anything. But God says that he who promised is faithful and that we can put our full and reckless hope in Jesus to keep his promises. It's interesting to me, and I read it one time, and it has never left me. There's a theologian from Scotland named N.T. Wright. If you're bored one day, YouTube him. His accent is great, and he's super smart. And he wrote a whole book called Justification, a whole book on just that word, justification, in the book of Romans. And at the beginning of the book, he defines the righteousness of God. And a lot of y'all have been Christians for a long time, and if I asked you how to define the righteousness of God, I'm sure that you could do it in a way that would be effective. But he does it like this. He says God's righteousness is his commitment to his promise. God's righteousness is his commitment to keep the promises that he's made. He made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and the Old Testament is a whole testament to the fidelity of God in keeping his promise despite the behavior of everyone. He keeps his promise to Jacob, and Jacob was a jerk. He keeps his promise through David, and David was messed up, man. He keeps his promise through Solomon, and for most of his life, Solomon didn't honor God at all. He keeps his promise to his nation of Israel, even though they rebel and they go against him and they follow after other gods and they get enslaved. God keeps his promise regardless of the behaviors of his people. He always has and he always will. His very nature depends on his keeping of his promises. And now through Christ, he's promised to us eternity with him in paradise. And he's promised that one day Jesus is going to return on that white horse in Revelation 19, and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He's going to make sense of all the pain that we've had to go through while we're on this earth. All the things we talked about in Ecclesiastes, God's going to send Jesus and he's going to clean all that up. That's the promise. And we're told over and over again in scripture that we can cling to that promise. Romans 5 tells us that our hope in Christ will not be put to shame. We can hitch our wagons to that with full assurance. So that's how we answer that question. In light of everything that we've learned in Hebrews, how do we approach Jesus? We approach him with full faith. We approach him with pure hearts, with humility and gratitude for his love. And we approach him with reckless abandon, knowing that he who promised is faithful. So then the question becomes, okay, that's how I approach Christ. How am I then to approach others? How do I treat my Christian brothers and sisters? And he answers that in verses 24 and 25. In verse 24, he writes, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. I love the simplicity of this phrase. You know how you should treat your Christian brothers and sisters? If we think about grace, you know how we should treat the partners of grace? By constantly considering how we should stir up one another to love and good works. And sadly, and I'm speaking of the Christian culture in general, particularly the last year and a half, as things have been so divisive in our country, love and good works is not the, spurring one another on to love and good works is not all the time how we see Christians treating one another in the public forum. So often it's blame or it's condemnation or it's judgment or it's how could you think that way when God clearly wants us to think this way. I have a friend who's a pastor in another state. And he posted, I think earlier in the week, this relatively innocuous like, hey, here's a Christian perspective on the vaccinations. Okay, I'm not gonna get into that on a Sunday morning. I didn't post it on my Facebook feed, but he did, he's brave. And I'm telling you, if you read through the comments, there's like 30 comments of all Christians, all people who go to this church or who claim, if they don't go to the church, they claim in their posts to be Christians, firing back and forth at each other with literally, how can you claim to be a Christian if you think this? Don't you know, yada, yada, yada. And then this person and three of their friends come to their defense. Oh yeah, well, how do you think you're a Christian? Don't you know these things? And then they get sniped by four other people who now want to jump into the conversation. And it's just back and forth. And I read this and I thought, what must a lost world think of this garbage? That Christians are so worked up about whether or not we should get a shot in the arm, that we're sniping at each other in such a way that both sides look terribly unchristian, and it is so far from stirring one another up to good works and to love. It's the exact opposite of that. And so many churches get caught up in that stuff. No grace, all condemnation. If you don't think like me, then you must be wrong and you might not be a believer. And it's happened a lot in the last two years. And it's gross. And I just bring it up to say, let's not have that happen at Grace. And in Grace's defense, I don't see that happening a lot. In Grace's defense, we are gracious. We know good and well that we have people sitting here right now on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of all the issues, and we allow the Spirit of Christ to unify us, and those remain tertiary background issues that we discuss sometimes, but we don't allow those to divide us, and I'm proud to be a part of a church like that. And so, in fact, if I think about how to use this passage, that we should seek to stir one another up towards love and good works, if I think about how to apply that at grace, it's really less about, hey guys, let's avoid judgment and condemnation. It's really more the opposite end of the spectrum. Let's encourage each other on to good works. Because if we're going to default to something in our church, it's going to be to encourage one another towards works. Whatever you're doing is great. Let's just have a small group, talk about the sermon a little bit, talk about what you're learning. Oh, that's going on in your life? That might not be great for you, but I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to love you. I'm not saying we all do that. But I wonder how many of us in our small groups and in our good, like soul-warming, God-earned friendships that we share here, in the deep community that we share here that we're so proud of and that we continue to grow off of, how much do we think about that community as far as our ability to spur on our friends towards love and good works? You know, last February, February of 2020, we were doing our campaign series, right? And one of those weeks, right before the world shut down, we were on the all-time high, but one of those weeks was on discipleship. And we defined discipleship at Grace. We said it's this difficult, nebulous term that we throw out in churches, and it can kind of be confusing and challenging. But for us at grace, discipleship simply means to take your next step of obedience. This is what Jesus modeled with the disciples. He just put in front of them the next thing that he wants us to do. And we contended that all believers have a step of obedience that God has placed before them. And it's our job to simply take it. And in that way, we grow in our relationship with God through obedience. And then once we take that step, he's going to place another one in front of us. And our life is nothing but a series of steps of obedience as we grow closer to God. And that the way that we can help disciple one another is to encourage one another to take that step of obedience, right? Which sounds very much like what he's saying in Hebrews chapter 10. Let us consider how we might love one another, spur one another on to love and good works. Let us consider at grace how we might help those who matter to us the most take their next step of obedience. Let's be intentional with our community and intentional with our friendships. Let's challenge and be bold when it's loving and appropriate. Let's spur one another on to love and good works. And then he closes it out with this. And I think this is just a uniquely appropriate verse right now. He closes it out with this little nugget at the end. He says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another translation says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's the biblical imperative to have church. It's the biblical imperative to come together as a body of Christ and worship him and focus on him and be refueled by him. It's the biblical imperative to be communal in our faith. And it even says, let us not stop meeting together as is the habit of some. And as I read it this week, I just thought, my goodness, has this verse in any of your lifetimes ever been more appropriate and relevant than right now? When for a whole year, we began to meet virtually. And listen, I've been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet virtually. The technology that we have and the expertise of our staff, and we've said big thanks to Steve for doing it, but it's enabled us to continue to meet virtually, to continue to gather when gathering was impossible, and for the church to continue, to persevere. And it's been great. But now, as vaccines become more common, as people become more comfortable, and we've been able to open the church back up and meet with some regulations in place with relative safety, we have the opportunity to gather in person. But yet some of us, and I have to be careful here, I don't say this to condemn anyone, but I'm a bad pastor if I don't address what's in the text here and say it to a church. It says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. And listen, I've heard of people, and I am with you. I would do this if I didn't get paid to show up and run my mouth every Sunday. Some of us have gotten into the habit of wearing sweatpants and eating omelets while we watch church. And I've heard like, yeah, we're going to come back, but this is a pretty good setup. And listen, I get it. And I don't, I have never, and now, next month will be, I will have been here for four years. I have never in four years preached on the importance of attending church. I do not beat that drum because I am of the conviction that if we do things here that are God-honoring enough and valuable enough to your soul, that you'll show up for it. So me asking you to come is really not a good idea. It's a waste of time. But in this instance, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That imperative, that commandment has never been more appropriate. So I would say to you this morning, Grace, come on back. Come on back to church. Now listen, as I say that, and I'm looking directly into the camera on purpose, if you are a family that does not feel comfortable going out in public places, if you're a family who, for whatever reason, protecting yourself, protecting your children, protecting your parents, anybody else, you have your reasons where you don't yet feel comfortable venturing out in public, I would never, ever look you in the eye and say, get over it, come to church. I would never do that. I'm not going to play doctor. I'm not going to tell you where your level of comfort should be, ever. I would never do that. So I'm not talking to you right now. I know you want to come back, and you will just as soon as you feel like it's safe. But for those that do enjoy watching church in your sweatpants eating an omelet, and you've been going out to dinner with your friends, and you've been kind of hanging out with other people, and you've kind of gotten into this rhythm, and maybe it's become your habit to just consume church online, even though you would feel comfortable coming in person, I would say to you, yeah, go ahead and come on back. And I'm saying that because I'm a bad pastor if I don't. In Acts chapter 2, the church is defined and characterized by the gathering of itself together. Here in Hebrews, we are told that we shouldn't forsake assembling ourselves together, that we shouldn't neglect meeting together. And so if I skip over this because I'm scared of it, then I don't love you well. And I also think that it's the right thing to do because there is just, there is a power and an efficacy to the gathering. There is a power in gathering together. There is a power in singing praises together. It became apparent to me really quickly in quarantine that when we reduce church to a message, it's not really church. When it's just me on a screen every week, that's not really church. That doesn't feel as good. But when we show up and we sing together, I've had so many people say to me, man, you know, I was consuming church online, but man, I came back and I sung with everybody and it was just good. There's something good for the soul that happens when we gather together. That's why it's important to God. That's why he insists on it over and over again in Scripture. And so I would just encourage you, if you're comfortable, if you feel safe, if you're venturing out in other ways, then come on back to church too. Because this is how God says we're supposed to approach one another in light of all that Jesus has done. Because we should get together and praise together. We should get together and see that person that we haven't seen in a while. Because there is some unspoken encouragement when you show up, you've gone through your week, you've weathered whatever storm waited for you in the week, and you show up at church and you see that person, and you may not even talk to them, but you kind of know by just seeing them and acknowledging them, or just giving them a little fist bump, like your walk with God matters to you too. You're still in this thing too. You're still committed too. And it inspires one another. It builds one another up. It's a good thing. And I say this because what better time to come on back than Easter next week? We're asking people to register for services so we can make sure it's safe in here. And as Michelle mentioned earlier in the announcements, if you didn't catch it, the early service is filling up fast. So like in the parking lot, get on your phone and register for the early services. That's what you want to do because people at home, they got a beat on you, all right? They're already doing it. But what better week to come back and celebrate than Easter as we celebrate next week as a family of faith? But this, the author of Hebrews writes, is what we do in light of what we've learned. We approach Christ with full assurance of faith, knowing that we are washed clean by his blood, that we are as loved as we ever will be, that we are accepted, and maybe we need to work on the fact of accepting that we are accepted. We approach one another, trying to spur one another on to love and good works, and we commit ourselves to gathering together. Let's pray, and we'll see you next week for Easter. Father, we thank you for the book of Hebrews, for the challenges in it, for the encouragement in it. God, I hope that as we move through this book together that you have enlarged our view of Jesus. That he is more to us now than he was weeks ago. I pray that through your word and through song that you would draw us near to your presence. I pray that you would grow our faith, that we would recklessly count on you, that we would throw everything we have at you. God, for those of us who struggle with the fact, like me, that we are accepted by you, I pray that we would feel that more and more. God, if there's anyone who's listening to me who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. I pray that they would take a step closer to you this morning. And we pray in advance over our Easter services next week that they would be an appropriate and joyful celebration of all that you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.