Acts

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and every now and again, as your pastor, and as a part of Grace, I just kind of get overwhelmed at how good God is to us. So this isn't the sermon, but one of my favorite parts about communion is just getting to see everybody walk by, and I get to know names and stories. And Jen commented to me, we've got about five very pregnant girls in the church right now. And each of those babies was prayed for fervently and is being prayed over. And what a blessing it is to see that happening. Bert, I'm about to start crying. If you could get me some tissues from the coffee bar, that would be great. I'm being serious, Bert. Snap to it, please. We've got folks in the church fighting cancer with relentless faith, recovering from strokes with faith. We've got faces, thank you, sir, that I'm happy to see every week, including birds. We've got tremendous friends and friendships and communities. And we are just tremendously blessed. We are chock full in our children's spaces. We are parking people at big lots. And it's just an exciting time to be a part of grace. And it's also a humbling time to be a part of grace in this community. So I just wanted to express that and hope that you feel it too. I also wanted to pray at the beginning of my sermon, so this kind of works out, because we've got a team going to Mexico Saturday. How many years have we had a relationship with faith ministry? A lot of years, decades. We've got some really sweet relationships down there. Unidos, unidos. Right, Jeff? He's got the t-shirt on. How many people are going this year? Okay. So we're going to pray for them. We're going to express some gratitude for grace. We're going to pray for the families that are about to grow. And we're going to pray for those fighting hard through difficult times. And then I'm going to try to get it together and give you the sermon I'm supposed to give you this morning. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this place and this family. Me, maybe most of all, this morning. We thank you for the love that's represented here. We thank you for the young women who are about to be young mamas and the young men who are about to be fathers. God, we thank you for those in our midst who are fighting hard with faith through challenges that they did not foresee and do not welcome and yet embrace as a part of a journey for you. We thank you for the growth that we see in our children and our children's ministries. And we just pray, God, more than anything, that we would be good stewards of those young souls for the time that they are entrusted to us. And I pray the same thing over everyone else that calls Grace home, that we would take good care of the folks that you have entrusted to us. We lift up our team going to Mexico and we just pray that you would continue to further those relationships and that those who are going would be moved towards you and that those who are going for the first time would be indelibly impacted by what happens there. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, let's try this again. Run the bumper again. Let's just do that for funsies. I'm being serious. Do it. I'm going to mute my mic and blow my nose, and then we're going to have like an actual sermon. All right? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This morning we are finishing up our series called The Traits of Grace where we're answering the question, if you're a partner of grace, which we don't have partners, we have members. We walked through that for a week. So if you're confused, you can listen to that sermon. If you're a partner of grace, this is what we want you to become. This is what we're trying to build you into. If you were to ask what should define someone who's been a partner of grace for many years, it would be these five traits that we've been walking through for the last five weeks. And so this week we arrive at what I believe to be the ultimate trait of a partner of grace. I think all the other traits build to this one. And so I'm just going to come right out the gates with it. If you're taking notes, you can write this down. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. We've got these five traits now emblazoned on the wall over the glass doors and the windows out in the lobby. As you walk out the center door, the one in the dead center on purpose is kingdom builders. This is something that we want every person at Grace to become. And this idea of being kingdom builders began to germinate for me about a decade ago in a staff meeting at my previous church called Greystone Church. Greystone is a church in suburban Atlanta. It's one of these kind of big multi-campus churches where you get simulcast out to multiple campuses when you preach, that kind of deal. And we took a staff retreat down to a lake house. And there's about 25 or 30 of us. And we're sitting in this brainstorming session where the lead pastor, Jonathan, who in many ways has been very gracious with me over the years. We're sitting in this brainstorming meeting where he's asking this question about Greystone. What defines people at our church? What do we want to instill in them? What defines us as people? What's in our DNA? And I kind of broke in and raised my hand and I said, I think we need to build a church of kingdom builders. And I kind of explained why I thought that, which is going to be some of the things that I explain to you in a minute. And Jonathan, like he listened to me. He was kind. He goes, yeah, that's great. That is super important. And then he didn't write it on the whiteboard. And I don't know if you've been in those meetings, those brainstorming meetings where you have an idea, you feel like it's a good idea, you say it, and whoever's in charge of the meeting goes, that is good. That is very good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Does anybody else have any ideas? And it doesn't go on the whiteboard. And when that happens, it's infuriating. And I know because I watch my staff get angry with me when I don't put their ideas on the whiteboard. When you do that, it hurts a little bit. So I thought maybe he didn't understand me right. So a few minutes later, I kind of approach it in a different way. You know, I'm nothing if not persistent. And he's like, yes, that's a good idea. Not right now. And then we move on again. And I thought maybe, I know, I know what'll do it. And so I explained it in a different way and because this is a Mike Tomlin's he's a coach of the Steelers he says that young young people getting involved in their profession have all the ideas and none of the responsibility that was me I had all the ideas and have any of the responsibility of execution so I mentioned it again until finally he said, Nate, we've heard you. It's a great idea. That's not going to work with what we're doing. We don't need to talk about that anymore. Okay. That's kind of what it takes sometimes for me to hear you. So I said, okay. But I couldn't let go of this idea that this seems so clear to me. And then about, I would say, seven years after that, I'm in a meeting at my church with my staff asking the same question. What are the traits of grace? What's important to us? What do we want to produce and who do we want to become? And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but it occurred to me. And so I said, hey, I just want to throw this out there. I think we were meant to be kingdom builders. And I explained why. And the staff responded enthusiastically. Yeah, that's good. Put that up there. And I know that often when there's someone leading a meeting and there's people who work for that person, that they are incented to support the ideas of that person. So that might not be authentic. But I will also tell you, and Aaron Gibson's in here somewhere. He will tell you if I'm lying, that sometimes I present ideas in staff meetings and it's just met with crickets. Just uncomfortable silence because no one wants to tell me it's a bad idea. And I go, okay, that didn't get any traction. We won't do that one. So I do feel like I can trust him. And then I presented it to the elders and the elders liked it too. So that became one of our traits, kingdom builders. Then maybe about a year after that, I was in a conversation that I believe I've told you guys about before with someone who was going to become a very good friend. And this guy was pressing me on grace and on my leadership. And he was saying, what do you want for grace? What do you want grace to be? What do you want to be true of grace in five years, ten years? What's your vision for grace? What's your vision for your leadership? What do you want to be true of you? What do you want to be true of you in five years, ten years? And I answered by saying, well, I've had these experiences in the past and I don't want to replicate those for people who work with me or for people who come to church with me. I've seen church do these things. I don't want to do those things. And after a while, he stopped me and he said, I've heard a lot about what you don't want to be, but I have no idea what you do want to be. And I realized in that moment that I had really never had a greater vision for grace than simply being healthy. And that grace required a greater vision than that. So I chewed on that for months. And finally, I came to this conclusion that this is why this idea has been germinating all along. Because I believe that grace needs to be filled with people who are passionate about building God's kingdom. I believe that the best work that we can do is to produce people who want to spend their lives building the kingdom of God with every ounce of energy that they have. And really what I would say is I want to produce a church full of people who are or are becoming John the Baptist. I want to produce people who have the same mindset that John the Baptist had, who are becoming more and more like John the Baptist in practice. And here's what I mean. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. That's an incredible statement and a remarkable stance, and it's worth wondering why does Jesus think that, and I think, I think that this is why. John the Baptist, about 30 AD, was an elite rabbi that was allowed to have disciples. So I don't know how much you know about Jewish culture and Jewish context, but at this time in history, in Judaism, the rabbis were the pastors. Rabbi simply means teacher. And there was presumably hundreds of rabbis in Jerusalem at the time of John the Baptist, but there was this elite class of rabbis, the best of the best, that were allowed to have disciples, and John the Baptist was one of these elite rabbis because we see him having disciples with him. And he had built, in our words, in our terms, in our context, a very successful ministry. He would not, John the Baptist would not identify this way or with this, but in our context, the way to understand him best is to say that John the Baptist was a very successful pastor. If he were a modern day pastor, he would be invited on all the podcasts. He would speak at all the conferences. He would have a large church with multiple campuses. He would have this huge ministry. He'd be a best-selling author. And listen to me. I don't think that anything that I just said defines true success for a pastor. I have a much deeper respect for men and women who humbly serve their community in the name of God, in the being virtually unknown but faithfully pour their life out into a community and manage to retire as a pastor because they kept it between the ditches the whole time. I have a much greater respect for those people, for those men and women, than I do for people that have skyrocketed into Christian fame. Not that I don't respect that. I just don't think that's how God measures our success as people, how big our ministry is. But by the world's standards, what I want you to see is that by every measure, John the Baptist was a popular pastor with a successful ministry. He was baptizing people. People were following him and listening to him every day by the hundreds. Hugely successful and locally famous. And then Jesus comes on the scene. And John the Baptist actually baptizes him in the Jordan River. And Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. And just so we're clear, John the Baptist is different from John the Apostle. John the Apostle was a disciple of Christ. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wrote John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and Revelation. That's a different John. John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus who paved the way for him and was prophesied about and who was eventually beheaded by Herod. Different Johns. And people started peeling away from John's church, again, crude language, but for us to understand, started peeling away from John's church and going to Jesus' church. And some of his disciples come to him, and they go, hey, you're losing members. People are not following you anymore, they're following Jesus. And this is John's response. And I think the heart of this response is why Jesus thinks John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. Verse 26, chapter 3 in the book of John. And said to him. And they say, John, that guy that you baptized, Jesus, people are following him now. They're leaving you and they're following him. And John the Baptist says, good. That's the way it's supposed to work out. See, John had spent his adult life building a kingdom, amassing a ministry, building a following, establishing a name for himself, becoming successful. He had spent his life building a kingdom. And then Jesus comes on the scene and Jesus begins to peel off portions of that kingdom for himself. And John's disciples come to him and they go, hey, this kingdom that you've been building, it's shrinking. And John says, no, it's not. It's growing. It was never my kingdom. Those were never my people. I was always just holding them for Jesus. I'm part of the bridal party. He's the groom. When he shows up, I don't get disappointed because everyone's paying attention to him and not me. That's dumb. I did a wedding yesterday and I'm in line to walk everybody in and the groomsmen are talking about, is it right over left or left over right? And I looked at them and I said, doesn't matter. No one's looking at you at all. John the Baptist knew his place. He's in the party. He's not the party. And so when Jesus shows up and his disciples say, hey, he's taken your kingdom. John the Baptist says, no. He's just claiming what's his. It was never mine to begin with. They were never following me. I was a conduit to Christ. I was never baptizing them in my name. I was always baptizing them in his name. And then he says that remarkable phrase, he must become greater and I must become less. That rings true in so many different scenarios for so many different reasons. And I would say in our life, one of our great challenges as Christians is to really understand what that means, that he must become greater and I must become less in every situation. So here's what I want you to see this morning. And here's why I believe this idea is so crucial and critical. Because I talk about people trying to build ministries, talk about people trying to build kingdoms, and I know that at least over half of us, if not more of us in here, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to build a big ministry. We're not trying to build a big kingdom. We've got very humble goals in our life. But what I want you to see this morning is this. We are all building a kingdom, all of us. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? We are all building a kingdom. Make no mistake about it. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Even if you're sitting here and you're going, my life is small. I have humble goals. I want to raise a good family. I want my children to love me when they grow up and want to come back home. I want to love my spouse and love and serve them well for the remainder of my days. I want to be a good friend to the people around me. I want to be a good part of the church that I love. We might have humble goals, but make no mistake, that's still our kingdom. It's a kingdom of safety and security and affection and compassion. It's how we leave our mark by leaving children behind us or a family behind us. So even if we have humble goals, we still have goals of building kingdoms. And oftentimes those kingdoms are our own. We're not building those for God's sake. We're building those for our own sake. Others of us are on the other end of the spectrum. I have a friend that I talk to often. He's a couple years older than me. He's like 45. And he talks about how driven he feels all the time. How even if he had the money to retire forever right now, he's like, I don't think I could just do nothing. I don't think I could just bounce from pleasure to pleasure. I have to build something. I have to wake up every day and spend time knowing that I'm building something that matters. He very much struggles with rest. He relentlessly pursues the building of his kingdom. And some of us have big lofty goals. We want to build the company. We want to build the ministry. We want to leave the legacy. We want to climb the ladder. We want to get to this position. We want to do this thing and make these impacts. Whether or not we build a kingdom operates irrespective of our ambition. Do you understand? No matter how ambitious you are or are not, you will spend your life building a kingdom. The question I want to put in front of you is, whose kingdom are you building? I would remind you of what Jesus says in Matthew. Do not put about it. Friendships rarely echo for eternity unless they're intentional. Family in and of itself doesn't echo for eternity. The company that you build doesn't echo for eternity unless you're using it for the kingdom of God. The wealth that you amass, the friends that you get, the power that you hold, the impact that you make doesn't echo for eternity unless it's for the sake of God and his kingdom. So God says, invest your life in things that will ripple throughout eternity. Don't invest your life in things that are buried with you. It's this hugely important principle. And it's important to me that you understand as I hope to compel you to consider what it looks like to build God's kingdom with your life. I don't want to talk about it in vague terms of building God's kingdom. I want us to understand exactly what it means to build it. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally, this isn't in your notes, but you can write it down if you want to. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. It's to actively and intentionally grow the breadth of God's kingdom and grow the depth of God's kingdom. When we grow the breadth of God's kingdom, that's evangelism. When we grow the depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, telling other people about Jesus, bringing them along with us. I tell you all the time, as much as I can, the only reason you are on the planet and not in heaven right now after you became a Christian is so that you can bring as many people with you on your way to God's kingdom as you possibly can as you live your life. So we're constantly looking for ways to expand the breadth and the reach of God's kingdom by sharing our faith. And in the South, this is really easy for us. You might think it's really challenging to share your faith in the South because it's saturated with the gospel. I actually think that makes it easier because I try to tell you, if you have friends or family members who live in the South and don't go to church, they don't claim a faith, I would be willing to bet you lunch that they have a good reason for that. It's not because they've never been invited. It's probably not because they don't have any experience with church. It's because whatever experience they do have with church wasn't good. Whatever experience they do have with pain and struggle has made them move away from the faith, not towards it. But if we went to your neighbors right now who are still at home, have no interest in going to church this morning, it wasn't even a thought for them, should we go? It's a Sunday for them. And you said, why isn't church a priority? They wouldn't be like, why is it what now? Why isn't what a priority? Why don't you know Jesus? Who? They know. They have answers. So in the South, if we want to be effective evangelists, our antenna are always up to have conversations with people about spirituality because here's what's really interesting in the Southern United States. Your explanation for why you're still in church. Your explanation for why you're still here. Your explanation for why you still claim a faith, why you've chosen to prioritize it, and it's important to you. And if we can have conversations not about, here's why you should be a Christian, here's why you should get back in church, but conversations about, here's why I still believe, here's what faith does for me, here's what I see and why I can't walk away. If we can have those conversations, we can start to open people's minds to a different church experience and a different experience of Jesus and their personal lives and maybe move them towards the kingdom of God and grow that kingdom in its breadth. And then as kingdom builders, we grow it in its depth. We grow the depth of the people who are Christians. We make disciples. At Grace, we call this being step-takers. Understanding that discipleship is nothing more than taking the next step of obedience that's been placed in front of you. And so we come alongside young mamas and we say, hey, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a mom. We come alongside young men and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a father. We come alongside young divorcees and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey as a single woman or a single man. We come alongside parents. We come alongside young believers. And we walk them through that area of life and we grow them in their breadth, in their depth. So when I say, what is it, when I talk about building a kingdom and using our life to build God's kingdom, that's what I'm talking about, is using our life to grow it in its breadth and in its depth. We should go through life with our antenna up at all times, looking for opportunities to do just that. And this idea of what it is to build God's kingdom and how devoted we should be to it is really what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is a progressive revelation of this truth. It's a progressive revelation of what it means to build God's kingdom. And really, what the reality of it is, that that's the only reason that we're here. And I'll tell you where this started to occur to me and change the paradigm in a way that I thought about my faith. I was 17 or 18 years old at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge, and the speaker was a guy that really impacted me named Greg Boone. I can't remember if it was my first or second summer there, but at one point he wrote, he drew a circle on a whiteboard, and he said, I want you to tell me the things in your life that matter to you. Tell me about the different parts of your life. What does your life consist of? And so we said family. He draws a family slice. And then we said sports, friends, faith, hobbies, college, education, whatever it was. And so we kind of made this pie chart of all the different areas of our life. And Greg says, it's interesting that you made this sliver of faith. That's your Christianity. That's the part of you that's devoted to God. And we're like, yes. And he goes, okay. God's not interested in your slice. He wants the whole dang pie. And as adults, we do this too. We offer God a slice and he wants the whole pie. I bet if I sat down with you, just like somebody could with me, with no context, and I said, hey, I got a thought exercise for you. Can you draw a circle on a piece of paper? And you did that. And I said, okay, can you just draw up a pie chart of your priorities in your life? And could you try to make the slices proportional to how much you actually feel they're important? You know, we draw a big family slice, right? Some of us would draw a big church slice, big career slice, hobbies, interests, curiosity, whatever else is in there. I'd be interested to know, and only you know this, I've no doubt that virtually everyone in here would have a faith slice. How big would that be? Would it be a sliver? Would it be a huge chunk? Regardless, God's not interested in either of those. He wants the whole pie. He wants all of you. Do you mean God intimately cares about how I conduct myself in business meetings? Yeah, I do. I do because you're his agent in those meetings and through you should spread the fragrance and the knowledge of God. We should be salt in people's saltless lives. We should be lights in darkness. Do you mean that God cares about how I behave in traffic? He actually does. That one stings. Do you mean God cares about how I father? About how much I participate in church? About how much of my finances I give? About how I behave with my friends? About what I watch on TV and whether or not that helps me run my race and build his kingdom? Do you mean to tell me that God cares about what books I read and which people I spend the most time around? Yes, he cares deeply about all of those things. He cares where you live. He cares who your neighbors are. He cares how you carry yourself. He cares about your reputation in your community. He cares about everything, not just your church attendance and not just how much you read his word and not just how much you pray, but he cares about how you treat the person when you're on vacation that you will never interact with again in your life. That interaction matters deeply to God because it is indicative of your character and whether or not your light is shining and the fragrance is spreading. Those things matter to God. That's why I say that this realization of what it is to be a kingdom builder is a progressive revelation throughout your whole life. When I understood the pie chart analogy when I was 18 years old, I thought I got it. Intellectually, I'm there. And every year that goes by, I realize that God is asking me for more, that I've been holding back from him, that I've been considering my piece of the pie. And let me show you how powerful it is when it finally clicks with us, that we are here to build God's kingdom and not our own. I want us to look at Peter, and it's actually Gibson that gave me this point. I thought it was a great one. Think about Peter in the Gospels, what we experience of him. Peter was one of these guys that he was ready, fire, aim, right? Just the first one to speak. My dad likes to say about me, my family calls me Nathan, and he likes to say about me, Nathan having nothing to say, thus said. That's what he says about me. All right. Zach knows what I'm talking about. Nathan having nothing to say, thus says, there are those of us who are just wired, ready, fire, aim. I got it. I'll go. And we see this in Peter, which is why I love him so much. He's the first one. Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is like, okay. Or Peter says, well, I'm walking on the water too. And he walks on the water for a little bit. And then he sinks. And everybody's like, oh, Peter doesn't have any faith. And it's like, you sissies are still in the boat. At least he got out, you know. Jesus says, Peter, I need to wash all of your feet. And Peter goes, you will never wash my feet. And he says, if I don't wash your feet, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, then don't stop at my feet. Go all the way to my head. He requests a sponge bath from Christ. That's the boldness of Peter. Jesus says, you will deny me. Peter says, I will die before I deny you. And then in his weakness, he denies him three times. Whenever Jesus would ask one of those really hard questions, who do you say that I am? And all the disciples would clam up and not make eye contact and please don't look at me. Peter was the first one to be like, you sissies, I got this. And then he'd answer. And sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but he was always the one willing to be out in front. He was always brash. He was always courageous. He was always the leader. And so we see flashes of this giftedness in Peter that's not directed in the right way just yet. And then after Jesus dies and comes back and finds a despondent Peter on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and restores him to ministry. Beautiful. He spends 40 days with the disciples encouraging them. And then he leaves. And he says, I'm going to go to heaven. And I want you to go to the ends of the earth and I want you to baptize them and make disciples. I want you to go. He didn't use this language, but it's our language this morning. I want you, Peter, to go and your job is to grow my kingdom through this thing we call the church in breadth and in depth. Go evangelize to the whole world and go make disciples of them. Grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. And then he sits in the upper room for 40 days waiting for the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, he realizes what his job is. They go out on the porch. They preach. 3,000 people become Christians that day. And then we get this wonderful picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. And day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved. So now this movement is off. Now the kingdom has exploded. And the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel at the time, take notice of this. They're like, we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And so they bring in Peter and John, and they put them on trial. Defend yourself. Two chapters later, they bring in Stephen to defend himself, and he becomes the first Christian martyr, and he's stoned to death. Eighty days prior, Jesus had to defend himself on the same charges, and they crucified him. So make no mistake about it. In this defense for what they are doing, their lives are at stake. They've just healed someone, and the authority of Christ, they are preaching the gospel of Christ, and now they're being put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin, and I want you to see their amazing response. Also, if you're looking at the clock, I'm going long. Suck it up. Acts chapter 4. You're going to see verse 9, and I'm going to start in verse 8. name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He says, it's on you. You want to know whose name it's in? It's in the name of Christ, that guy that you murdered. That's what we're doing this in. Incredibly courageous, speaking truth to power, completely vulnerable to the death penalty. They do not care. They're stepping. He is Peter. He's a leader. He is brash, ready, fire, aim. But now he has purpose and he's speaking with incredible courage. Verse 11, Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When they, the Sanhedrin and the people around them, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. When they saw the courage and the eloquence of Peter that day, they knew we can't touch these guys or we're going to have a riot on our hands. So we've got to step away and try to play this a little bit differently. With his life on the line, Peter boldly proclaims the gospel of Christ and speaks truth to power. And what we see is these flashes of giftedness in the gospels where we get a glimpse into the character of Peter. Now he has a place to put it. Now he has traction in his life. Now he has understanding and context for, oh, that's what these gifts are for. And now he can use them courageously and fearlessly and correctly with efficacy to do his job and grow the kingdom in breadth and in depth. So here's what we see from the example of Peter. And here's what I want you to feel in your life. With the realization of purpose comes the application of our gifts. Each of you, each of you are gifted in some way. I know this to be true because the Bible says it over and over again. Paul talks about in Corinthians that the church is the body of Christ, and everybody is a part of that body, and everybody has a part to play. We're told in Ephesians, I remind you all the time that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. You have a good work to walk in. We're told in Ephesians chapter four that we have the gifts of Christ, of pastor, apostle, shepherd, evangelist, or teacher. Every one of us is one of those five things. We have those gifts. And when we can match those gifts with purpose, we light the world on fire. When we align God's divine purpose for our life with the gifts that God has given us in our life. And we have the narrative traction in our life of a purpose that is larger than ourselves to build God's kingdom. And we look at our gifts and what he's given us and suddenly we have an alignment of purpose and giftedness and we understand for the first time why God made me this way and how we are to use those gifts to build his kingdom. We light the world on fire. That's when magic happens. That's when we add day by day to those who are being saved. That's when you get up in the morning excited about what God has for you. Can I just say to you that if you have noticed in your life that you've been spending your days bouncing from distraction to distraction and from pleasure to pleasure and you're walking listlessly through your days and you're not super motivated for what you're doing, can I just suggest to you that maybe it's because you're living your life, building your own kingdom and you you realize it stinks, and that what you need to realize is that God designed you to build his kingdom, and he's gifted you to do that. And if you can figure out what that means and how your gifts can align with purpose, you will never wake up again wondering how you should spend your day. You will know because you will be directed because when our purpose is revealed, we have an application for a giftedness. So here's my prayer to you. Here's my prayer for you and the prayer that I want you to pray. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. And here's what I really like about this being kind of the apex trait of grace. I'm going to say this and then I'll wrap up. As I was considering what kind of church do we want Grace to be, where do we want to push people, what's our heart, how do we want to grow, what's our focus as a church? You know good and well some churches answer that question and they say missions. We're a missions church. That's what we're going to do. If you're involved with this church, we're going to move your heart towards missions to give and to serve in that way. Some churches say next generation. We're going to focus on the next generation. We're going to invest in our children and in our students. And if you're a part of the church, we're going to move you in that way. Some churches say foster care and adoption. We're going to push everybody in that way. Some churches choose local impact and local ministry. We want to make a big impact in our community. And different churches choose different paths. And I have no critique for any of those paths. but as I thought about this, I didn't want to limit your vision for building God's kingdom to whatever my passion of the day was or whichever direction the wind was blowing in the elder board. We didn't want to limit what people should do with the giftedness that God has given them. If this means you need to leave and start your own church because you've got that fire in you, go and do it. We love you. We support you. If this means you need to move and start a ministry somewhere, go and do it. We support you. But if we can be your home base as you go out into the community and in the world and build God's kingdom, we want to continue to foster that within you and build a church of fierce builders of the kingdom of God. And that can look different ways for different people. For my wonderful father-in-law, they got a lake house. And I remember when they bought this lake house, they were like, we're going to use it to serve the kingdom. And I was like, I bet you are. Sure you are. What, are you going to pray on the boat? But every weekend, while his daughter was in college, 10 or more kids would come and they'd spend the whole weekend being fed and pulled around on the boat by, they called him Professor Benson. He was not a professor, but they were in college, so fit. And they came every weekend. And when those kids graduated, he got invited to weddings. And when they had their first baby, he got texted pictures. And when I had the chance to speak at his funeral, there was a row of about 20 of them that had traveled from all over the country to come pay their respect to John. He used that lake house to build God's kingdom. I know a man who's been successful in business. And he's taken that success and he uses that company to support people who spent their professional years in ministry and now don't have the means to take care of themselves in retirement. They're on the payroll even though they don't do anything because he has a heart for them and how they spent their life. He uses different people in his company to do the finances for nonprofits for free and they give away large portions of their profit, more than 10% to other ministries and he uses his business acumen to sit on the board of nonprofits and help them become effective in their ministries. He has a vision for what it is to use his giftedness to build God's kingdom, not his own. Or maybe, maybe what God has for us to do right now is to build up those children, is to patiently, daily, with consistency and godliness and grace, build the character of our children so that they might enter into the world with a larger vision for what this life can be and simply what they want to do with it. And maybe we can build the kingdom like my mom did. I don't know what it looks like for you to build God's kingdom. But I do know that it's how you should spend the rest of your life. I don't care if you're 85 or 15. Let's pray that we would be a church full of passionate kingdom builders and just see how God lights the world on fire around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for imbuing us with purpose. Thank you for giving us something to live for that's bigger than ourselves. God, I pray that we would each have a passionate vision of what it is to be used by you, no matter how big or how small that vision might be. Lord, show us how we can use the gifts that you've given us to have a metamorphosis like Peter, where we see these flashes of our giftedness and how you've created us. But God, then we get some traction with some purpose, and our gifts align with that. Let us experience what it is to wake up every day excited to be used by you. And God, where we are building our own kingdoms, we repent and we apologize. And we ask you to help us, reorient us towards your kingdom. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and every now and again, as your pastor, and as a part of Grace, I just kind of get overwhelmed at how good God is to us. So this isn't the sermon, but one of my favorite parts about communion is just getting to see everybody walk by, and I get to know names and stories. And Jen commented to me, we've got about five very pregnant girls in the church right now. And each of those babies was prayed for fervently and is being prayed over. And what a blessing it is to see that happening. Bert, I'm about to start crying. If you could get me some tissues from the coffee bar, that would be great. I'm being serious, Bert. Snap to it, please. We've got folks in the church fighting cancer with relentless faith, recovering from strokes with faith. We've got faces, thank you, sir, that I'm happy to see every week, including birds. We've got tremendous friends and friendships and communities. And we are just tremendously blessed. We are chock full in our children's spaces. We are parking people at big lots. And it's just an exciting time to be a part of grace. And it's also a humbling time to be a part of grace in this community. So I just wanted to express that and hope that you feel it too. I also wanted to pray at the beginning of my sermon, so this kind of works out, because we've got a team going to Mexico Saturday. How many years have we had a relationship with faith ministry? A lot of years, decades. We've got some really sweet relationships down there. Unidos, unidos. Right, Jeff? He's got the t-shirt on. How many people are going this year? Okay. So we're going to pray for them. We're going to express some gratitude for grace. We're going to pray for the families that are about to grow. And we're going to pray for those fighting hard through difficult times. And then I'm going to try to get it together and give you the sermon I'm supposed to give you this morning. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this place and this family. Me, maybe most of all, this morning. We thank you for the love that's represented here. We thank you for the young women who are about to be young mamas and the young men who are about to be fathers. God, we thank you for those in our midst who are fighting hard with faith through challenges that they did not foresee and do not welcome and yet embrace as a part of a journey for you. We thank you for the growth that we see in our children and our children's ministries. And we just pray, God, more than anything, that we would be good stewards of those young souls for the time that they are entrusted to us. And I pray the same thing over everyone else that calls Grace home, that we would take good care of the folks that you have entrusted to us. We lift up our team going to Mexico and we just pray that you would continue to further those relationships and that those who are going would be moved towards you and that those who are going for the first time would be indelibly impacted by what happens there. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, let's try this again. Run the bumper again. Let's just do that for funsies. I'm being serious. Do it. I'm going to mute my mic and blow my nose, and then we're going to have like an actual sermon. All right? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This morning we are finishing up our series called The Traits of Grace where we're answering the question, if you're a partner of grace, which we don't have partners, we have members. We walked through that for a week. So if you're confused, you can listen to that sermon. If you're a partner of grace, this is what we want you to become. This is what we're trying to build you into. If you were to ask what should define someone who's been a partner of grace for many years, it would be these five traits that we've been walking through for the last five weeks. And so this week we arrive at what I believe to be the ultimate trait of a partner of grace. I think all the other traits build to this one. And so I'm just going to come right out the gates with it. If you're taking notes, you can write this down. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. We've got these five traits now emblazoned on the wall over the glass doors and the windows out in the lobby. As you walk out the center door, the one in the dead center on purpose is kingdom builders. This is something that we want every person at Grace to become. And this idea of being kingdom builders began to germinate for me about a decade ago in a staff meeting at my previous church called Greystone Church. Greystone is a church in suburban Atlanta. It's one of these kind of big multi-campus churches where you get simulcast out to multiple campuses when you preach, that kind of deal. And we took a staff retreat down to a lake house. And there's about 25 or 30 of us. And we're sitting in this brainstorming session where the lead pastor, Jonathan, who in many ways has been very gracious with me over the years. We're sitting in this brainstorming meeting where he's asking this question about Greystone. What defines people at our church? What do we want to instill in them? What defines us as people? What's in our DNA? And I kind of broke in and raised my hand and I said, I think we need to build a church of kingdom builders. And I kind of explained why I thought that, which is going to be some of the things that I explain to you in a minute. And Jonathan, like he listened to me. He was kind. He goes, yeah, that's great. That is super important. And then he didn't write it on the whiteboard. And I don't know if you've been in those meetings, those brainstorming meetings where you have an idea, you feel like it's a good idea, you say it, and whoever's in charge of the meeting goes, that is good. That is very good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Does anybody else have any ideas? And it doesn't go on the whiteboard. And when that happens, it's infuriating. And I know because I watch my staff get angry with me when I don't put their ideas on the whiteboard. When you do that, it hurts a little bit. So I thought maybe he didn't understand me right. So a few minutes later, I kind of approach it in a different way. You know, I'm nothing if not persistent. And he's like, yes, that's a good idea. Not right now. And then we move on again. And I thought maybe, I know, I know what'll do it. And so I explained it in a different way and because this is a Mike Tomlin's he's a coach of the Steelers he says that young young people getting involved in their profession have all the ideas and none of the responsibility that was me I had all the ideas and have any of the responsibility of execution so I mentioned it again until finally he said, Nate, we've heard you. It's a great idea. That's not going to work with what we're doing. We don't need to talk about that anymore. Okay. That's kind of what it takes sometimes for me to hear you. So I said, okay. But I couldn't let go of this idea that this seems so clear to me. And then about, I would say, seven years after that, I'm in a meeting at my church with my staff asking the same question. What are the traits of grace? What's important to us? What do we want to produce and who do we want to become? And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but it occurred to me. And so I said, hey, I just want to throw this out there. I think we were meant to be kingdom builders. And I explained why. And the staff responded enthusiastically. Yeah, that's good. Put that up there. And I know that often when there's someone leading a meeting and there's people who work for that person, that they are incented to support the ideas of that person. So that might not be authentic. But I will also tell you, and Aaron Gibson's in here somewhere. He will tell you if I'm lying, that sometimes I present ideas in staff meetings and it's just met with crickets. Just uncomfortable silence because no one wants to tell me it's a bad idea. And I go, okay, that didn't get any traction. We won't do that one. So I do feel like I can trust him. And then I presented it to the elders and the elders liked it too. So that became one of our traits, kingdom builders. Then maybe about a year after that, I was in a conversation that I believe I've told you guys about before with someone who was going to become a very good friend. And this guy was pressing me on grace and on my leadership. And he was saying, what do you want for grace? What do you want grace to be? What do you want to be true of grace in five years, ten years? What's your vision for grace? What's your vision for your leadership? What do you want to be true of you? What do you want to be true of you in five years, ten years? And I answered by saying, well, I've had these experiences in the past and I don't want to replicate those for people who work with me or for people who come to church with me. I've seen church do these things. I don't want to do those things. And after a while, he stopped me and he said, I've heard a lot about what you don't want to be, but I have no idea what you do want to be. And I realized in that moment that I had really never had a greater vision for grace than simply being healthy. And that grace required a greater vision than that. So I chewed on that for months. And finally, I came to this conclusion that this is why this idea has been germinating all along. Because I believe that grace needs to be filled with people who are passionate about building God's kingdom. I believe that the best work that we can do is to produce people who want to spend their lives building the kingdom of God with every ounce of energy that they have. And really what I would say is I want to produce a church full of people who are or are becoming John the Baptist. I want to produce people who have the same mindset that John the Baptist had, who are becoming more and more like John the Baptist in practice. And here's what I mean. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. That's an incredible statement and a remarkable stance, and it's worth wondering why does Jesus think that, and I think, I think that this is why. John the Baptist, about 30 AD, was an elite rabbi that was allowed to have disciples. So I don't know how much you know about Jewish culture and Jewish context, but at this time in history, in Judaism, the rabbis were the pastors. Rabbi simply means teacher. And there was presumably hundreds of rabbis in Jerusalem at the time of John the Baptist, but there was this elite class of rabbis, the best of the best, that were allowed to have disciples, and John the Baptist was one of these elite rabbis because we see him having disciples with him. And he had built, in our words, in our terms, in our context, a very successful ministry. He would not, John the Baptist would not identify this way or with this, but in our context, the way to understand him best is to say that John the Baptist was a very successful pastor. If he were a modern day pastor, he would be invited on all the podcasts. He would speak at all the conferences. He would have a large church with multiple campuses. He would have this huge ministry. He'd be a best-selling author. And listen to me. I don't think that anything that I just said defines true success for a pastor. I have a much deeper respect for men and women who humbly serve their community in the name of God, in the being virtually unknown but faithfully pour their life out into a community and manage to retire as a pastor because they kept it between the ditches the whole time. I have a much greater respect for those people, for those men and women, than I do for people that have skyrocketed into Christian fame. Not that I don't respect that. I just don't think that's how God measures our success as people, how big our ministry is. But by the world's standards, what I want you to see is that by every measure, John the Baptist was a popular pastor with a successful ministry. He was baptizing people. People were following him and listening to him every day by the hundreds. Hugely successful and locally famous. And then Jesus comes on the scene. And John the Baptist actually baptizes him in the Jordan River. And Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. And just so we're clear, John the Baptist is different from John the Apostle. John the Apostle was a disciple of Christ. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wrote John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and Revelation. That's a different John. John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus who paved the way for him and was prophesied about and who was eventually beheaded by Herod. Different Johns. And people started peeling away from John's church, again, crude language, but for us to understand, started peeling away from John's church and going to Jesus' church. And some of his disciples come to him, and they go, hey, you're losing members. People are not following you anymore, they're following Jesus. And this is John's response. And I think the heart of this response is why Jesus thinks John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. Verse 26, chapter 3 in the book of John. And said to him. And they say, John, that guy that you baptized, Jesus, people are following him now. They're leaving you and they're following him. And John the Baptist says, good. That's the way it's supposed to work out. See, John had spent his adult life building a kingdom, amassing a ministry, building a following, establishing a name for himself, becoming successful. He had spent his life building a kingdom. And then Jesus comes on the scene and Jesus begins to peel off portions of that kingdom for himself. And John's disciples come to him and they go, hey, this kingdom that you've been building, it's shrinking. And John says, no, it's not. It's growing. It was never my kingdom. Those were never my people. I was always just holding them for Jesus. I'm part of the bridal party. He's the groom. When he shows up, I don't get disappointed because everyone's paying attention to him and not me. That's dumb. I did a wedding yesterday and I'm in line to walk everybody in and the groomsmen are talking about, is it right over left or left over right? And I looked at them and I said, doesn't matter. No one's looking at you at all. John the Baptist knew his place. He's in the party. He's not the party. And so when Jesus shows up and his disciples say, hey, he's taken your kingdom. John the Baptist says, no. He's just claiming what's his. It was never mine to begin with. They were never following me. I was a conduit to Christ. I was never baptizing them in my name. I was always baptizing them in his name. And then he says that remarkable phrase, he must become greater and I must become less. That rings true in so many different scenarios for so many different reasons. And I would say in our life, one of our great challenges as Christians is to really understand what that means, that he must become greater and I must become less in every situation. So here's what I want you to see this morning. And here's why I believe this idea is so crucial and critical. Because I talk about people trying to build ministries, talk about people trying to build kingdoms, and I know that at least over half of us, if not more of us in here, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to build a big ministry. We're not trying to build a big kingdom. We've got very humble goals in our life. But what I want you to see this morning is this. We are all building a kingdom, all of us. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? We are all building a kingdom. Make no mistake about it. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Even if you're sitting here and you're going, my life is small. I have humble goals. I want to raise a good family. I want my children to love me when they grow up and want to come back home. I want to love my spouse and love and serve them well for the remainder of my days. I want to be a good friend to the people around me. I want to be a good part of the church that I love. We might have humble goals, but make no mistake, that's still our kingdom. It's a kingdom of safety and security and affection and compassion. It's how we leave our mark by leaving children behind us or a family behind us. So even if we have humble goals, we still have goals of building kingdoms. And oftentimes those kingdoms are our own. We're not building those for God's sake. We're building those for our own sake. Others of us are on the other end of the spectrum. I have a friend that I talk to often. He's a couple years older than me. He's like 45. And he talks about how driven he feels all the time. How even if he had the money to retire forever right now, he's like, I don't think I could just do nothing. I don't think I could just bounce from pleasure to pleasure. I have to build something. I have to wake up every day and spend time knowing that I'm building something that matters. He very much struggles with rest. He relentlessly pursues the building of his kingdom. And some of us have big lofty goals. We want to build the company. We want to build the ministry. We want to leave the legacy. We want to climb the ladder. We want to get to this position. We want to do this thing and make these impacts. Whether or not we build a kingdom operates irrespective of our ambition. Do you understand? No matter how ambitious you are or are not, you will spend your life building a kingdom. The question I want to put in front of you is, whose kingdom are you building? I would remind you of what Jesus says in Matthew. Do not put about it. Friendships rarely echo for eternity unless they're intentional. Family in and of itself doesn't echo for eternity. The company that you build doesn't echo for eternity unless you're using it for the kingdom of God. The wealth that you amass, the friends that you get, the power that you hold, the impact that you make doesn't echo for eternity unless it's for the sake of God and his kingdom. So God says, invest your life in things that will ripple throughout eternity. Don't invest your life in things that are buried with you. It's this hugely important principle. And it's important to me that you understand as I hope to compel you to consider what it looks like to build God's kingdom with your life. I don't want to talk about it in vague terms of building God's kingdom. I want us to understand exactly what it means to build it. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally, this isn't in your notes, but you can write it down if you want to. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. It's to actively and intentionally grow the breadth of God's kingdom and grow the depth of God's kingdom. When we grow the breadth of God's kingdom, that's evangelism. When we grow the depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, telling other people about Jesus, bringing them along with us. I tell you all the time, as much as I can, the only reason you are on the planet and not in heaven right now after you became a Christian is so that you can bring as many people with you on your way to God's kingdom as you possibly can as you live your life. So we're constantly looking for ways to expand the breadth and the reach of God's kingdom by sharing our faith. And in the South, this is really easy for us. You might think it's really challenging to share your faith in the South because it's saturated with the gospel. I actually think that makes it easier because I try to tell you, if you have friends or family members who live in the South and don't go to church, they don't claim a faith, I would be willing to bet you lunch that they have a good reason for that. It's not because they've never been invited. It's probably not because they don't have any experience with church. It's because whatever experience they do have with church wasn't good. Whatever experience they do have with pain and struggle has made them move away from the faith, not towards it. But if we went to your neighbors right now who are still at home, have no interest in going to church this morning, it wasn't even a thought for them, should we go? It's a Sunday for them. And you said, why isn't church a priority? They wouldn't be like, why is it what now? Why isn't what a priority? Why don't you know Jesus? Who? They know. They have answers. So in the South, if we want to be effective evangelists, our antenna are always up to have conversations with people about spirituality because here's what's really interesting in the Southern United States. Your explanation for why you're still in church. Your explanation for why you're still here. Your explanation for why you still claim a faith, why you've chosen to prioritize it, and it's important to you. And if we can have conversations not about, here's why you should be a Christian, here's why you should get back in church, but conversations about, here's why I still believe, here's what faith does for me, here's what I see and why I can't walk away. If we can have those conversations, we can start to open people's minds to a different church experience and a different experience of Jesus and their personal lives and maybe move them towards the kingdom of God and grow that kingdom in its breadth. And then as kingdom builders, we grow it in its depth. We grow the depth of the people who are Christians. We make disciples. At Grace, we call this being step-takers. Understanding that discipleship is nothing more than taking the next step of obedience that's been placed in front of you. And so we come alongside young mamas and we say, hey, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a mom. We come alongside young men and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a father. We come alongside young divorcees and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey as a single woman or a single man. We come alongside parents. We come alongside young believers. And we walk them through that area of life and we grow them in their breadth, in their depth. So when I say, what is it, when I talk about building a kingdom and using our life to build God's kingdom, that's what I'm talking about, is using our life to grow it in its breadth and in its depth. We should go through life with our antenna up at all times, looking for opportunities to do just that. And this idea of what it is to build God's kingdom and how devoted we should be to it is really what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is a progressive revelation of this truth. It's a progressive revelation of what it means to build God's kingdom. And really, what the reality of it is, that that's the only reason that we're here. And I'll tell you where this started to occur to me and change the paradigm in a way that I thought about my faith. I was 17 or 18 years old at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge, and the speaker was a guy that really impacted me named Greg Boone. I can't remember if it was my first or second summer there, but at one point he wrote, he drew a circle on a whiteboard, and he said, I want you to tell me the things in your life that matter to you. Tell me about the different parts of your life. What does your life consist of? And so we said family. He draws a family slice. And then we said sports, friends, faith, hobbies, college, education, whatever it was. And so we kind of made this pie chart of all the different areas of our life. And Greg says, it's interesting that you made this sliver of faith. That's your Christianity. That's the part of you that's devoted to God. And we're like, yes. And he goes, okay. God's not interested in your slice. He wants the whole dang pie. And as adults, we do this too. We offer God a slice and he wants the whole pie. I bet if I sat down with you, just like somebody could with me, with no context, and I said, hey, I got a thought exercise for you. Can you draw a circle on a piece of paper? And you did that. And I said, okay, can you just draw up a pie chart of your priorities in your life? And could you try to make the slices proportional to how much you actually feel they're important? You know, we draw a big family slice, right? Some of us would draw a big church slice, big career slice, hobbies, interests, curiosity, whatever else is in there. I'd be interested to know, and only you know this, I've no doubt that virtually everyone in here would have a faith slice. How big would that be? Would it be a sliver? Would it be a huge chunk? Regardless, God's not interested in either of those. He wants the whole pie. He wants all of you. Do you mean God intimately cares about how I conduct myself in business meetings? Yeah, I do. I do because you're his agent in those meetings and through you should spread the fragrance and the knowledge of God. We should be salt in people's saltless lives. We should be lights in darkness. Do you mean that God cares about how I behave in traffic? He actually does. That one stings. Do you mean God cares about how I father? About how much I participate in church? About how much of my finances I give? About how I behave with my friends? About what I watch on TV and whether or not that helps me run my race and build his kingdom? Do you mean to tell me that God cares about what books I read and which people I spend the most time around? Yes, he cares deeply about all of those things. He cares where you live. He cares who your neighbors are. He cares how you carry yourself. He cares about your reputation in your community. He cares about everything, not just your church attendance and not just how much you read his word and not just how much you pray, but he cares about how you treat the person when you're on vacation that you will never interact with again in your life. That interaction matters deeply to God because it is indicative of your character and whether or not your light is shining and the fragrance is spreading. Those things matter to God. That's why I say that this realization of what it is to be a kingdom builder is a progressive revelation throughout your whole life. When I understood the pie chart analogy when I was 18 years old, I thought I got it. Intellectually, I'm there. And every year that goes by, I realize that God is asking me for more, that I've been holding back from him, that I've been considering my piece of the pie. And let me show you how powerful it is when it finally clicks with us, that we are here to build God's kingdom and not our own. I want us to look at Peter, and it's actually Gibson that gave me this point. I thought it was a great one. Think about Peter in the Gospels, what we experience of him. Peter was one of these guys that he was ready, fire, aim, right? Just the first one to speak. My dad likes to say about me, my family calls me Nathan, and he likes to say about me, Nathan having nothing to say, thus said. That's what he says about me. All right. Zach knows what I'm talking about. Nathan having nothing to say, thus says, there are those of us who are just wired, ready, fire, aim. I got it. I'll go. And we see this in Peter, which is why I love him so much. He's the first one. Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is like, okay. Or Peter says, well, I'm walking on the water too. And he walks on the water for a little bit. And then he sinks. And everybody's like, oh, Peter doesn't have any faith. And it's like, you sissies are still in the boat. At least he got out, you know. Jesus says, Peter, I need to wash all of your feet. And Peter goes, you will never wash my feet. And he says, if I don't wash your feet, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, then don't stop at my feet. Go all the way to my head. He requests a sponge bath from Christ. That's the boldness of Peter. Jesus says, you will deny me. Peter says, I will die before I deny you. And then in his weakness, he denies him three times. Whenever Jesus would ask one of those really hard questions, who do you say that I am? And all the disciples would clam up and not make eye contact and please don't look at me. Peter was the first one to be like, you sissies, I got this. And then he'd answer. And sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but he was always the one willing to be out in front. He was always brash. He was always courageous. He was always the leader. And so we see flashes of this giftedness in Peter that's not directed in the right way just yet. And then after Jesus dies and comes back and finds a despondent Peter on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and restores him to ministry. Beautiful. He spends 40 days with the disciples encouraging them. And then he leaves. And he says, I'm going to go to heaven. And I want you to go to the ends of the earth and I want you to baptize them and make disciples. I want you to go. He didn't use this language, but it's our language this morning. I want you, Peter, to go and your job is to grow my kingdom through this thing we call the church in breadth and in depth. Go evangelize to the whole world and go make disciples of them. Grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. And then he sits in the upper room for 40 days waiting for the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, he realizes what his job is. They go out on the porch. They preach. 3,000 people become Christians that day. And then we get this wonderful picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. And day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved. So now this movement is off. Now the kingdom has exploded. And the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel at the time, take notice of this. They're like, we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And so they bring in Peter and John, and they put them on trial. Defend yourself. Two chapters later, they bring in Stephen to defend himself, and he becomes the first Christian martyr, and he's stoned to death. Eighty days prior, Jesus had to defend himself on the same charges, and they crucified him. So make no mistake about it. In this defense for what they are doing, their lives are at stake. They've just healed someone, and the authority of Christ, they are preaching the gospel of Christ, and now they're being put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin, and I want you to see their amazing response. Also, if you're looking at the clock, I'm going long. Suck it up. Acts chapter 4. You're going to see verse 9, and I'm going to start in verse 8. name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He says, it's on you. You want to know whose name it's in? It's in the name of Christ, that guy that you murdered. That's what we're doing this in. Incredibly courageous, speaking truth to power, completely vulnerable to the death penalty. They do not care. They're stepping. He is Peter. He's a leader. He is brash, ready, fire, aim. But now he has purpose and he's speaking with incredible courage. Verse 11, Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When they, the Sanhedrin and the people around them, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. When they saw the courage and the eloquence of Peter that day, they knew we can't touch these guys or we're going to have a riot on our hands. So we've got to step away and try to play this a little bit differently. With his life on the line, Peter boldly proclaims the gospel of Christ and speaks truth to power. And what we see is these flashes of giftedness in the gospels where we get a glimpse into the character of Peter. Now he has a place to put it. Now he has traction in his life. Now he has understanding and context for, oh, that's what these gifts are for. And now he can use them courageously and fearlessly and correctly with efficacy to do his job and grow the kingdom in breadth and in depth. So here's what we see from the example of Peter. And here's what I want you to feel in your life. With the realization of purpose comes the application of our gifts. Each of you, each of you are gifted in some way. I know this to be true because the Bible says it over and over again. Paul talks about in Corinthians that the church is the body of Christ, and everybody is a part of that body, and everybody has a part to play. We're told in Ephesians, I remind you all the time that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. You have a good work to walk in. We're told in Ephesians chapter four that we have the gifts of Christ, of pastor, apostle, shepherd, evangelist, or teacher. Every one of us is one of those five things. We have those gifts. And when we can match those gifts with purpose, we light the world on fire. When we align God's divine purpose for our life with the gifts that God has given us in our life. And we have the narrative traction in our life of a purpose that is larger than ourselves to build God's kingdom. And we look at our gifts and what he's given us and suddenly we have an alignment of purpose and giftedness and we understand for the first time why God made me this way and how we are to use those gifts to build his kingdom. We light the world on fire. That's when magic happens. That's when we add day by day to those who are being saved. That's when you get up in the morning excited about what God has for you. Can I just say to you that if you have noticed in your life that you've been spending your days bouncing from distraction to distraction and from pleasure to pleasure and you're walking listlessly through your days and you're not super motivated for what you're doing, can I just suggest to you that maybe it's because you're living your life, building your own kingdom and you you realize it stinks, and that what you need to realize is that God designed you to build his kingdom, and he's gifted you to do that. And if you can figure out what that means and how your gifts can align with purpose, you will never wake up again wondering how you should spend your day. You will know because you will be directed because when our purpose is revealed, we have an application for a giftedness. So here's my prayer to you. Here's my prayer for you and the prayer that I want you to pray. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. And here's what I really like about this being kind of the apex trait of grace. I'm going to say this and then I'll wrap up. As I was considering what kind of church do we want Grace to be, where do we want to push people, what's our heart, how do we want to grow, what's our focus as a church? You know good and well some churches answer that question and they say missions. We're a missions church. That's what we're going to do. If you're involved with this church, we're going to move your heart towards missions to give and to serve in that way. Some churches say next generation. We're going to focus on the next generation. We're going to invest in our children and in our students. And if you're a part of the church, we're going to move you in that way. Some churches say foster care and adoption. We're going to push everybody in that way. Some churches choose local impact and local ministry. We want to make a big impact in our community. And different churches choose different paths. And I have no critique for any of those paths. but as I thought about this, I didn't want to limit your vision for building God's kingdom to whatever my passion of the day was or whichever direction the wind was blowing in the elder board. We didn't want to limit what people should do with the giftedness that God has given them. If this means you need to leave and start your own church because you've got that fire in you, go and do it. We love you. We support you. If this means you need to move and start a ministry somewhere, go and do it. We support you. But if we can be your home base as you go out into the community and in the world and build God's kingdom, we want to continue to foster that within you and build a church of fierce builders of the kingdom of God. And that can look different ways for different people. For my wonderful father-in-law, they got a lake house. And I remember when they bought this lake house, they were like, we're going to use it to serve the kingdom. And I was like, I bet you are. Sure you are. What, are you going to pray on the boat? But every weekend, while his daughter was in college, 10 or more kids would come and they'd spend the whole weekend being fed and pulled around on the boat by, they called him Professor Benson. He was not a professor, but they were in college, so fit. And they came every weekend. And when those kids graduated, he got invited to weddings. And when they had their first baby, he got texted pictures. And when I had the chance to speak at his funeral, there was a row of about 20 of them that had traveled from all over the country to come pay their respect to John. He used that lake house to build God's kingdom. I know a man who's been successful in business. And he's taken that success and he uses that company to support people who spent their professional years in ministry and now don't have the means to take care of themselves in retirement. They're on the payroll even though they don't do anything because he has a heart for them and how they spent their life. He uses different people in his company to do the finances for nonprofits for free and they give away large portions of their profit, more than 10% to other ministries and he uses his business acumen to sit on the board of nonprofits and help them become effective in their ministries. He has a vision for what it is to use his giftedness to build God's kingdom, not his own. Or maybe, maybe what God has for us to do right now is to build up those children, is to patiently, daily, with consistency and godliness and grace, build the character of our children so that they might enter into the world with a larger vision for what this life can be and simply what they want to do with it. And maybe we can build the kingdom like my mom did. I don't know what it looks like for you to build God's kingdom. But I do know that it's how you should spend the rest of your life. I don't care if you're 85 or 15. Let's pray that we would be a church full of passionate kingdom builders and just see how God lights the world on fire around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for imbuing us with purpose. Thank you for giving us something to live for that's bigger than ourselves. God, I pray that we would each have a passionate vision of what it is to be used by you, no matter how big or how small that vision might be. Lord, show us how we can use the gifts that you've given us to have a metamorphosis like Peter, where we see these flashes of our giftedness and how you've created us. But God, then we get some traction with some purpose, and our gifts align with that. Let us experience what it is to wake up every day excited to be used by you. And God, where we are building our own kingdoms, we repent and we apologize. And we ask you to help us, reorient us towards your kingdom. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and every now and again, as your pastor, and as a part of Grace, I just kind of get overwhelmed at how good God is to us. So this isn't the sermon, but one of my favorite parts about communion is just getting to see everybody walk by, and I get to know names and stories. And Jen commented to me, we've got about five very pregnant girls in the church right now. And each of those babies was prayed for fervently and is being prayed over. And what a blessing it is to see that happening. Bert, I'm about to start crying. If you could get me some tissues from the coffee bar, that would be great. I'm being serious, Bert. Snap to it, please. We've got folks in the church fighting cancer with relentless faith, recovering from strokes with faith. We've got faces, thank you, sir, that I'm happy to see every week, including birds. We've got tremendous friends and friendships and communities. And we are just tremendously blessed. We are chock full in our children's spaces. We are parking people at big lots. And it's just an exciting time to be a part of grace. And it's also a humbling time to be a part of grace in this community. So I just wanted to express that and hope that you feel it too. I also wanted to pray at the beginning of my sermon, so this kind of works out, because we've got a team going to Mexico Saturday. How many years have we had a relationship with faith ministry? A lot of years, decades. We've got some really sweet relationships down there. Unidos, unidos. Right, Jeff? He's got the t-shirt on. How many people are going this year? Okay. So we're going to pray for them. We're going to express some gratitude for grace. We're going to pray for the families that are about to grow. And we're going to pray for those fighting hard through difficult times. And then I'm going to try to get it together and give you the sermon I'm supposed to give you this morning. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this place and this family. Me, maybe most of all, this morning. We thank you for the love that's represented here. We thank you for the young women who are about to be young mamas and the young men who are about to be fathers. God, we thank you for those in our midst who are fighting hard with faith through challenges that they did not foresee and do not welcome and yet embrace as a part of a journey for you. We thank you for the growth that we see in our children and our children's ministries. And we just pray, God, more than anything, that we would be good stewards of those young souls for the time that they are entrusted to us. And I pray the same thing over everyone else that calls Grace home, that we would take good care of the folks that you have entrusted to us. We lift up our team going to Mexico and we just pray that you would continue to further those relationships and that those who are going would be moved towards you and that those who are going for the first time would be indelibly impacted by what happens there. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, let's try this again. Run the bumper again. Let's just do that for funsies. I'm being serious. Do it. I'm going to mute my mic and blow my nose, and then we're going to have like an actual sermon. All right? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This morning we are finishing up our series called The Traits of Grace where we're answering the question, if you're a partner of grace, which we don't have partners, we have members. We walked through that for a week. So if you're confused, you can listen to that sermon. If you're a partner of grace, this is what we want you to become. This is what we're trying to build you into. If you were to ask what should define someone who's been a partner of grace for many years, it would be these five traits that we've been walking through for the last five weeks. And so this week we arrive at what I believe to be the ultimate trait of a partner of grace. I think all the other traits build to this one. And so I'm just going to come right out the gates with it. If you're taking notes, you can write this down. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. We've got these five traits now emblazoned on the wall over the glass doors and the windows out in the lobby. As you walk out the center door, the one in the dead center on purpose is kingdom builders. This is something that we want every person at Grace to become. And this idea of being kingdom builders began to germinate for me about a decade ago in a staff meeting at my previous church called Greystone Church. Greystone is a church in suburban Atlanta. It's one of these kind of big multi-campus churches where you get simulcast out to multiple campuses when you preach, that kind of deal. And we took a staff retreat down to a lake house. And there's about 25 or 30 of us. And we're sitting in this brainstorming session where the lead pastor, Jonathan, who in many ways has been very gracious with me over the years. We're sitting in this brainstorming meeting where he's asking this question about Greystone. What defines people at our church? What do we want to instill in them? What defines us as people? What's in our DNA? And I kind of broke in and raised my hand and I said, I think we need to build a church of kingdom builders. And I kind of explained why I thought that, which is going to be some of the things that I explain to you in a minute. And Jonathan, like he listened to me. He was kind. He goes, yeah, that's great. That is super important. And then he didn't write it on the whiteboard. And I don't know if you've been in those meetings, those brainstorming meetings where you have an idea, you feel like it's a good idea, you say it, and whoever's in charge of the meeting goes, that is good. That is very good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Does anybody else have any ideas? And it doesn't go on the whiteboard. And when that happens, it's infuriating. And I know because I watch my staff get angry with me when I don't put their ideas on the whiteboard. When you do that, it hurts a little bit. So I thought maybe he didn't understand me right. So a few minutes later, I kind of approach it in a different way. You know, I'm nothing if not persistent. And he's like, yes, that's a good idea. Not right now. And then we move on again. And I thought maybe, I know, I know what'll do it. And so I explained it in a different way and because this is a Mike Tomlin's he's a coach of the Steelers he says that young young people getting involved in their profession have all the ideas and none of the responsibility that was me I had all the ideas and have any of the responsibility of execution so I mentioned it again until finally he said, Nate, we've heard you. It's a great idea. That's not going to work with what we're doing. We don't need to talk about that anymore. Okay. That's kind of what it takes sometimes for me to hear you. So I said, okay. But I couldn't let go of this idea that this seems so clear to me. And then about, I would say, seven years after that, I'm in a meeting at my church with my staff asking the same question. What are the traits of grace? What's important to us? What do we want to produce and who do we want to become? And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but it occurred to me. And so I said, hey, I just want to throw this out there. I think we were meant to be kingdom builders. And I explained why. And the staff responded enthusiastically. Yeah, that's good. Put that up there. And I know that often when there's someone leading a meeting and there's people who work for that person, that they are incented to support the ideas of that person. So that might not be authentic. But I will also tell you, and Aaron Gibson's in here somewhere. He will tell you if I'm lying, that sometimes I present ideas in staff meetings and it's just met with crickets. Just uncomfortable silence because no one wants to tell me it's a bad idea. And I go, okay, that didn't get any traction. We won't do that one. So I do feel like I can trust him. And then I presented it to the elders and the elders liked it too. So that became one of our traits, kingdom builders. Then maybe about a year after that, I was in a conversation that I believe I've told you guys about before with someone who was going to become a very good friend. And this guy was pressing me on grace and on my leadership. And he was saying, what do you want for grace? What do you want grace to be? What do you want to be true of grace in five years, ten years? What's your vision for grace? What's your vision for your leadership? What do you want to be true of you? What do you want to be true of you in five years, ten years? And I answered by saying, well, I've had these experiences in the past and I don't want to replicate those for people who work with me or for people who come to church with me. I've seen church do these things. I don't want to do those things. And after a while, he stopped me and he said, I've heard a lot about what you don't want to be, but I have no idea what you do want to be. And I realized in that moment that I had really never had a greater vision for grace than simply being healthy. And that grace required a greater vision than that. So I chewed on that for months. And finally, I came to this conclusion that this is why this idea has been germinating all along. Because I believe that grace needs to be filled with people who are passionate about building God's kingdom. I believe that the best work that we can do is to produce people who want to spend their lives building the kingdom of God with every ounce of energy that they have. And really what I would say is I want to produce a church full of people who are or are becoming John the Baptist. I want to produce people who have the same mindset that John the Baptist had, who are becoming more and more like John the Baptist in practice. And here's what I mean. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. That's an incredible statement and a remarkable stance, and it's worth wondering why does Jesus think that, and I think, I think that this is why. John the Baptist, about 30 AD, was an elite rabbi that was allowed to have disciples. So I don't know how much you know about Jewish culture and Jewish context, but at this time in history, in Judaism, the rabbis were the pastors. Rabbi simply means teacher. And there was presumably hundreds of rabbis in Jerusalem at the time of John the Baptist, but there was this elite class of rabbis, the best of the best, that were allowed to have disciples, and John the Baptist was one of these elite rabbis because we see him having disciples with him. And he had built, in our words, in our terms, in our context, a very successful ministry. He would not, John the Baptist would not identify this way or with this, but in our context, the way to understand him best is to say that John the Baptist was a very successful pastor. If he were a modern day pastor, he would be invited on all the podcasts. He would speak at all the conferences. He would have a large church with multiple campuses. He would have this huge ministry. He'd be a best-selling author. And listen to me. I don't think that anything that I just said defines true success for a pastor. I have a much deeper respect for men and women who humbly serve their community in the name of God, in the being virtually unknown but faithfully pour their life out into a community and manage to retire as a pastor because they kept it between the ditches the whole time. I have a much greater respect for those people, for those men and women, than I do for people that have skyrocketed into Christian fame. Not that I don't respect that. I just don't think that's how God measures our success as people, how big our ministry is. But by the world's standards, what I want you to see is that by every measure, John the Baptist was a popular pastor with a successful ministry. He was baptizing people. People were following him and listening to him every day by the hundreds. Hugely successful and locally famous. And then Jesus comes on the scene. And John the Baptist actually baptizes him in the Jordan River. And Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. And just so we're clear, John the Baptist is different from John the Apostle. John the Apostle was a disciple of Christ. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wrote John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and Revelation. That's a different John. John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus who paved the way for him and was prophesied about and who was eventually beheaded by Herod. Different Johns. And people started peeling away from John's church, again, crude language, but for us to understand, started peeling away from John's church and going to Jesus' church. And some of his disciples come to him, and they go, hey, you're losing members. People are not following you anymore, they're following Jesus. And this is John's response. And I think the heart of this response is why Jesus thinks John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. Verse 26, chapter 3 in the book of John. And said to him. And they say, John, that guy that you baptized, Jesus, people are following him now. They're leaving you and they're following him. And John the Baptist says, good. That's the way it's supposed to work out. See, John had spent his adult life building a kingdom, amassing a ministry, building a following, establishing a name for himself, becoming successful. He had spent his life building a kingdom. And then Jesus comes on the scene and Jesus begins to peel off portions of that kingdom for himself. And John's disciples come to him and they go, hey, this kingdom that you've been building, it's shrinking. And John says, no, it's not. It's growing. It was never my kingdom. Those were never my people. I was always just holding them for Jesus. I'm part of the bridal party. He's the groom. When he shows up, I don't get disappointed because everyone's paying attention to him and not me. That's dumb. I did a wedding yesterday and I'm in line to walk everybody in and the groomsmen are talking about, is it right over left or left over right? And I looked at them and I said, doesn't matter. No one's looking at you at all. John the Baptist knew his place. He's in the party. He's not the party. And so when Jesus shows up and his disciples say, hey, he's taken your kingdom. John the Baptist says, no. He's just claiming what's his. It was never mine to begin with. They were never following me. I was a conduit to Christ. I was never baptizing them in my name. I was always baptizing them in his name. And then he says that remarkable phrase, he must become greater and I must become less. That rings true in so many different scenarios for so many different reasons. And I would say in our life, one of our great challenges as Christians is to really understand what that means, that he must become greater and I must become less in every situation. So here's what I want you to see this morning. And here's why I believe this idea is so crucial and critical. Because I talk about people trying to build ministries, talk about people trying to build kingdoms, and I know that at least over half of us, if not more of us in here, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to build a big ministry. We're not trying to build a big kingdom. We've got very humble goals in our life. But what I want you to see this morning is this. We are all building a kingdom, all of us. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? We are all building a kingdom. Make no mistake about it. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Even if you're sitting here and you're going, my life is small. I have humble goals. I want to raise a good family. I want my children to love me when they grow up and want to come back home. I want to love my spouse and love and serve them well for the remainder of my days. I want to be a good friend to the people around me. I want to be a good part of the church that I love. We might have humble goals, but make no mistake, that's still our kingdom. It's a kingdom of safety and security and affection and compassion. It's how we leave our mark by leaving children behind us or a family behind us. So even if we have humble goals, we still have goals of building kingdoms. And oftentimes those kingdoms are our own. We're not building those for God's sake. We're building those for our own sake. Others of us are on the other end of the spectrum. I have a friend that I talk to often. He's a couple years older than me. He's like 45. And he talks about how driven he feels all the time. How even if he had the money to retire forever right now, he's like, I don't think I could just do nothing. I don't think I could just bounce from pleasure to pleasure. I have to build something. I have to wake up every day and spend time knowing that I'm building something that matters. He very much struggles with rest. He relentlessly pursues the building of his kingdom. And some of us have big lofty goals. We want to build the company. We want to build the ministry. We want to leave the legacy. We want to climb the ladder. We want to get to this position. We want to do this thing and make these impacts. Whether or not we build a kingdom operates irrespective of our ambition. Do you understand? No matter how ambitious you are or are not, you will spend your life building a kingdom. The question I want to put in front of you is, whose kingdom are you building? I would remind you of what Jesus says in Matthew. Do not put about it. Friendships rarely echo for eternity unless they're intentional. Family in and of itself doesn't echo for eternity. The company that you build doesn't echo for eternity unless you're using it for the kingdom of God. The wealth that you amass, the friends that you get, the power that you hold, the impact that you make doesn't echo for eternity unless it's for the sake of God and his kingdom. So God says, invest your life in things that will ripple throughout eternity. Don't invest your life in things that are buried with you. It's this hugely important principle. And it's important to me that you understand as I hope to compel you to consider what it looks like to build God's kingdom with your life. I don't want to talk about it in vague terms of building God's kingdom. I want us to understand exactly what it means to build it. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally, this isn't in your notes, but you can write it down if you want to. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. It's to actively and intentionally grow the breadth of God's kingdom and grow the depth of God's kingdom. When we grow the breadth of God's kingdom, that's evangelism. When we grow the depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, telling other people about Jesus, bringing them along with us. I tell you all the time, as much as I can, the only reason you are on the planet and not in heaven right now after you became a Christian is so that you can bring as many people with you on your way to God's kingdom as you possibly can as you live your life. So we're constantly looking for ways to expand the breadth and the reach of God's kingdom by sharing our faith. And in the South, this is really easy for us. You might think it's really challenging to share your faith in the South because it's saturated with the gospel. I actually think that makes it easier because I try to tell you, if you have friends or family members who live in the South and don't go to church, they don't claim a faith, I would be willing to bet you lunch that they have a good reason for that. It's not because they've never been invited. It's probably not because they don't have any experience with church. It's because whatever experience they do have with church wasn't good. Whatever experience they do have with pain and struggle has made them move away from the faith, not towards it. But if we went to your neighbors right now who are still at home, have no interest in going to church this morning, it wasn't even a thought for them, should we go? It's a Sunday for them. And you said, why isn't church a priority? They wouldn't be like, why is it what now? Why isn't what a priority? Why don't you know Jesus? Who? They know. They have answers. So in the South, if we want to be effective evangelists, our antenna are always up to have conversations with people about spirituality because here's what's really interesting in the Southern United States. Your explanation for why you're still in church. Your explanation for why you're still here. Your explanation for why you still claim a faith, why you've chosen to prioritize it, and it's important to you. And if we can have conversations not about, here's why you should be a Christian, here's why you should get back in church, but conversations about, here's why I still believe, here's what faith does for me, here's what I see and why I can't walk away. If we can have those conversations, we can start to open people's minds to a different church experience and a different experience of Jesus and their personal lives and maybe move them towards the kingdom of God and grow that kingdom in its breadth. And then as kingdom builders, we grow it in its depth. We grow the depth of the people who are Christians. We make disciples. At Grace, we call this being step-takers. Understanding that discipleship is nothing more than taking the next step of obedience that's been placed in front of you. And so we come alongside young mamas and we say, hey, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a mom. We come alongside young men and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a father. We come alongside young divorcees and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey as a single woman or a single man. We come alongside parents. We come alongside young believers. And we walk them through that area of life and we grow them in their breadth, in their depth. So when I say, what is it, when I talk about building a kingdom and using our life to build God's kingdom, that's what I'm talking about, is using our life to grow it in its breadth and in its depth. We should go through life with our antenna up at all times, looking for opportunities to do just that. And this idea of what it is to build God's kingdom and how devoted we should be to it is really what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is a progressive revelation of this truth. It's a progressive revelation of what it means to build God's kingdom. And really, what the reality of it is, that that's the only reason that we're here. And I'll tell you where this started to occur to me and change the paradigm in a way that I thought about my faith. I was 17 or 18 years old at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge, and the speaker was a guy that really impacted me named Greg Boone. I can't remember if it was my first or second summer there, but at one point he wrote, he drew a circle on a whiteboard, and he said, I want you to tell me the things in your life that matter to you. Tell me about the different parts of your life. What does your life consist of? And so we said family. He draws a family slice. And then we said sports, friends, faith, hobbies, college, education, whatever it was. And so we kind of made this pie chart of all the different areas of our life. And Greg says, it's interesting that you made this sliver of faith. That's your Christianity. That's the part of you that's devoted to God. And we're like, yes. And he goes, okay. God's not interested in your slice. He wants the whole dang pie. And as adults, we do this too. We offer God a slice and he wants the whole pie. I bet if I sat down with you, just like somebody could with me, with no context, and I said, hey, I got a thought exercise for you. Can you draw a circle on a piece of paper? And you did that. And I said, okay, can you just draw up a pie chart of your priorities in your life? And could you try to make the slices proportional to how much you actually feel they're important? You know, we draw a big family slice, right? Some of us would draw a big church slice, big career slice, hobbies, interests, curiosity, whatever else is in there. I'd be interested to know, and only you know this, I've no doubt that virtually everyone in here would have a faith slice. How big would that be? Would it be a sliver? Would it be a huge chunk? Regardless, God's not interested in either of those. He wants the whole pie. He wants all of you. Do you mean God intimately cares about how I conduct myself in business meetings? Yeah, I do. I do because you're his agent in those meetings and through you should spread the fragrance and the knowledge of God. We should be salt in people's saltless lives. We should be lights in darkness. Do you mean that God cares about how I behave in traffic? He actually does. That one stings. Do you mean God cares about how I father? About how much I participate in church? About how much of my finances I give? About how I behave with my friends? About what I watch on TV and whether or not that helps me run my race and build his kingdom? Do you mean to tell me that God cares about what books I read and which people I spend the most time around? Yes, he cares deeply about all of those things. He cares where you live. He cares who your neighbors are. He cares how you carry yourself. He cares about your reputation in your community. He cares about everything, not just your church attendance and not just how much you read his word and not just how much you pray, but he cares about how you treat the person when you're on vacation that you will never interact with again in your life. That interaction matters deeply to God because it is indicative of your character and whether or not your light is shining and the fragrance is spreading. Those things matter to God. That's why I say that this realization of what it is to be a kingdom builder is a progressive revelation throughout your whole life. When I understood the pie chart analogy when I was 18 years old, I thought I got it. Intellectually, I'm there. And every year that goes by, I realize that God is asking me for more, that I've been holding back from him, that I've been considering my piece of the pie. And let me show you how powerful it is when it finally clicks with us, that we are here to build God's kingdom and not our own. I want us to look at Peter, and it's actually Gibson that gave me this point. I thought it was a great one. Think about Peter in the Gospels, what we experience of him. Peter was one of these guys that he was ready, fire, aim, right? Just the first one to speak. My dad likes to say about me, my family calls me Nathan, and he likes to say about me, Nathan having nothing to say, thus said. That's what he says about me. All right. Zach knows what I'm talking about. Nathan having nothing to say, thus says, there are those of us who are just wired, ready, fire, aim. I got it. I'll go. And we see this in Peter, which is why I love him so much. He's the first one. Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is like, okay. Or Peter says, well, I'm walking on the water too. And he walks on the water for a little bit. And then he sinks. And everybody's like, oh, Peter doesn't have any faith. And it's like, you sissies are still in the boat. At least he got out, you know. Jesus says, Peter, I need to wash all of your feet. And Peter goes, you will never wash my feet. And he says, if I don't wash your feet, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, then don't stop at my feet. Go all the way to my head. He requests a sponge bath from Christ. That's the boldness of Peter. Jesus says, you will deny me. Peter says, I will die before I deny you. And then in his weakness, he denies him three times. Whenever Jesus would ask one of those really hard questions, who do you say that I am? And all the disciples would clam up and not make eye contact and please don't look at me. Peter was the first one to be like, you sissies, I got this. And then he'd answer. And sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but he was always the one willing to be out in front. He was always brash. He was always courageous. He was always the leader. And so we see flashes of this giftedness in Peter that's not directed in the right way just yet. And then after Jesus dies and comes back and finds a despondent Peter on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and restores him to ministry. Beautiful. He spends 40 days with the disciples encouraging them. And then he leaves. And he says, I'm going to go to heaven. And I want you to go to the ends of the earth and I want you to baptize them and make disciples. I want you to go. He didn't use this language, but it's our language this morning. I want you, Peter, to go and your job is to grow my kingdom through this thing we call the church in breadth and in depth. Go evangelize to the whole world and go make disciples of them. Grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. And then he sits in the upper room for 40 days waiting for the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, he realizes what his job is. They go out on the porch. They preach. 3,000 people become Christians that day. And then we get this wonderful picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. And day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved. So now this movement is off. Now the kingdom has exploded. And the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel at the time, take notice of this. They're like, we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And so they bring in Peter and John, and they put them on trial. Defend yourself. Two chapters later, they bring in Stephen to defend himself, and he becomes the first Christian martyr, and he's stoned to death. Eighty days prior, Jesus had to defend himself on the same charges, and they crucified him. So make no mistake about it. In this defense for what they are doing, their lives are at stake. They've just healed someone, and the authority of Christ, they are preaching the gospel of Christ, and now they're being put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin, and I want you to see their amazing response. Also, if you're looking at the clock, I'm going long. Suck it up. Acts chapter 4. You're going to see verse 9, and I'm going to start in verse 8. name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He says, it's on you. You want to know whose name it's in? It's in the name of Christ, that guy that you murdered. That's what we're doing this in. Incredibly courageous, speaking truth to power, completely vulnerable to the death penalty. They do not care. They're stepping. He is Peter. He's a leader. He is brash, ready, fire, aim. But now he has purpose and he's speaking with incredible courage. Verse 11, Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When they, the Sanhedrin and the people around them, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. When they saw the courage and the eloquence of Peter that day, they knew we can't touch these guys or we're going to have a riot on our hands. So we've got to step away and try to play this a little bit differently. With his life on the line, Peter boldly proclaims the gospel of Christ and speaks truth to power. And what we see is these flashes of giftedness in the gospels where we get a glimpse into the character of Peter. Now he has a place to put it. Now he has traction in his life. Now he has understanding and context for, oh, that's what these gifts are for. And now he can use them courageously and fearlessly and correctly with efficacy to do his job and grow the kingdom in breadth and in depth. So here's what we see from the example of Peter. And here's what I want you to feel in your life. With the realization of purpose comes the application of our gifts. Each of you, each of you are gifted in some way. I know this to be true because the Bible says it over and over again. Paul talks about in Corinthians that the church is the body of Christ, and everybody is a part of that body, and everybody has a part to play. We're told in Ephesians, I remind you all the time that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. You have a good work to walk in. We're told in Ephesians chapter four that we have the gifts of Christ, of pastor, apostle, shepherd, evangelist, or teacher. Every one of us is one of those five things. We have those gifts. And when we can match those gifts with purpose, we light the world on fire. When we align God's divine purpose for our life with the gifts that God has given us in our life. And we have the narrative traction in our life of a purpose that is larger than ourselves to build God's kingdom. And we look at our gifts and what he's given us and suddenly we have an alignment of purpose and giftedness and we understand for the first time why God made me this way and how we are to use those gifts to build his kingdom. We light the world on fire. That's when magic happens. That's when we add day by day to those who are being saved. That's when you get up in the morning excited about what God has for you. Can I just say to you that if you have noticed in your life that you've been spending your days bouncing from distraction to distraction and from pleasure to pleasure and you're walking listlessly through your days and you're not super motivated for what you're doing, can I just suggest to you that maybe it's because you're living your life, building your own kingdom and you you realize it stinks, and that what you need to realize is that God designed you to build his kingdom, and he's gifted you to do that. And if you can figure out what that means and how your gifts can align with purpose, you will never wake up again wondering how you should spend your day. You will know because you will be directed because when our purpose is revealed, we have an application for a giftedness. So here's my prayer to you. Here's my prayer for you and the prayer that I want you to pray. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. And here's what I really like about this being kind of the apex trait of grace. I'm going to say this and then I'll wrap up. As I was considering what kind of church do we want Grace to be, where do we want to push people, what's our heart, how do we want to grow, what's our focus as a church? You know good and well some churches answer that question and they say missions. We're a missions church. That's what we're going to do. If you're involved with this church, we're going to move your heart towards missions to give and to serve in that way. Some churches say next generation. We're going to focus on the next generation. We're going to invest in our children and in our students. And if you're a part of the church, we're going to move you in that way. Some churches say foster care and adoption. We're going to push everybody in that way. Some churches choose local impact and local ministry. We want to make a big impact in our community. And different churches choose different paths. And I have no critique for any of those paths. but as I thought about this, I didn't want to limit your vision for building God's kingdom to whatever my passion of the day was or whichever direction the wind was blowing in the elder board. We didn't want to limit what people should do with the giftedness that God has given them. If this means you need to leave and start your own church because you've got that fire in you, go and do it. We love you. We support you. If this means you need to move and start a ministry somewhere, go and do it. We support you. But if we can be your home base as you go out into the community and in the world and build God's kingdom, we want to continue to foster that within you and build a church of fierce builders of the kingdom of God. And that can look different ways for different people. For my wonderful father-in-law, they got a lake house. And I remember when they bought this lake house, they were like, we're going to use it to serve the kingdom. And I was like, I bet you are. Sure you are. What, are you going to pray on the boat? But every weekend, while his daughter was in college, 10 or more kids would come and they'd spend the whole weekend being fed and pulled around on the boat by, they called him Professor Benson. He was not a professor, but they were in college, so fit. And they came every weekend. And when those kids graduated, he got invited to weddings. And when they had their first baby, he got texted pictures. And when I had the chance to speak at his funeral, there was a row of about 20 of them that had traveled from all over the country to come pay their respect to John. He used that lake house to build God's kingdom. I know a man who's been successful in business. And he's taken that success and he uses that company to support people who spent their professional years in ministry and now don't have the means to take care of themselves in retirement. They're on the payroll even though they don't do anything because he has a heart for them and how they spent their life. He uses different people in his company to do the finances for nonprofits for free and they give away large portions of their profit, more than 10% to other ministries and he uses his business acumen to sit on the board of nonprofits and help them become effective in their ministries. He has a vision for what it is to use his giftedness to build God's kingdom, not his own. Or maybe, maybe what God has for us to do right now is to build up those children, is to patiently, daily, with consistency and godliness and grace, build the character of our children so that they might enter into the world with a larger vision for what this life can be and simply what they want to do with it. And maybe we can build the kingdom like my mom did. I don't know what it looks like for you to build God's kingdom. But I do know that it's how you should spend the rest of your life. I don't care if you're 85 or 15. Let's pray that we would be a church full of passionate kingdom builders and just see how God lights the world on fire around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for imbuing us with purpose. Thank you for giving us something to live for that's bigger than ourselves. God, I pray that we would each have a passionate vision of what it is to be used by you, no matter how big or how small that vision might be. Lord, show us how we can use the gifts that you've given us to have a metamorphosis like Peter, where we see these flashes of our giftedness and how you've created us. But God, then we get some traction with some purpose, and our gifts align with that. Let us experience what it is to wake up every day excited to be used by you. And God, where we are building our own kingdoms, we repent and we apologize. And we ask you to help us, reorient us towards your kingdom. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. How are we, Jay? Everybody good? Good, good. Off to a great start. I'm really excited. Thanks, Jacob, my man. Nate, as Nate mentioned earlier, my name is Aaron. I am one of the pastors out here, and I'm excited to be talking with you today. We've been in a series called 27. We started it last summer and continuing it this summer, and essentially we're just taking a book, pulling a theme or the overall theme of the letter, and talking about it on Sunday morning. This week, we're talking about... Not that one. We're talking about Galatians. So gotcha, right? But we're talking about the book of Galatians. And if I can be honest, like a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this, I got a little bit nervous because last year in the summer, I used the book of Colossians. And as I was preparing this message, I was like, man, there's some very similar tones that Paul is using in both of these letters. Man, I really hope they don't think I just kind of pulled last year's sermon out like he's doing this one again. Like, look at the one trick pony guy, right? But then last Sunday, Doug told us he had no clue that I did Colossians. So I'm like, I'm in the clear. So this was really the easiest sermon I've ever prepared because I did take last year's and I just did a find and replace with Galatians and Colossians. And you guys won't even know it. So that's not true. I am excited to be talking with us about Galatians today. Again, not Ephesians. To kind of get our minds moving in that direction. Some of you know a little bit about my story. But in case you don't, I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. And if you've ever heard the saying that pastors' kids are the worst, it's true. Just not on Sundays, right? So that's one of the things I learned very early on is that people are looking at my behavior. Like there was an added weight to looking the part, right? Because it seemed like there was people, um, they would assess not just how good I was, but how good of a parent my father was based on how good of a boy I was. And so I learned Monday through Saturday, I can do whatever because I don't hang out in Christian circles on Sunday, Christian circle be good. And so that's what I was. I learned how to say the right things and do the right things. There was all this extra emphasis just on the way that I behaved. But when I did give my life to Jesus, I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I was a night auditor in a hotel. I was an assistant high school basketball coaching going to school full time. And I can remember as a night auditor, you work about one hour a week. If I ever got fired from the church, I would go be a night auditor because you work one hour a night and the rest of the time just hide from the camera and nap and you were okay. But no, I remember whenever I would open my Bible, my prayer every single time was, God, help me forget everything that I learned about you as a child growing up, and you teach me who you are from your word. I wouldn't be able to articulate to you then why, or I had no clue what the, that was my, that may have been a very bad thing to pray. I have no clue, but what I knew was there was a difference in what I was feeling in that moment and what I felt as a child growing up. There was a very big difference in the unconditional love that I was currently sitting in, the unconditional love that I felt, the total and complete forgiveness that I felt that I had received from God, and the love that I felt growing up. Like the love that I felt growing up very much had to be earned. It had to be good enough. I had to do the right thing. I had to look the right way and say the right things. Otherwise, that love, it was kind of like God was just dangling it and ready to take it away at any point in time. And it didn't take long in my adulthood, or I guess if you can call 20 adult, in my almost formed brain, like it didn't take long before I started to question. I started to question my salvation. And it was always because, man, I messed up again. Does God still love me? It didn't take long before I started chasing good enough. And it's exhausting. And it didn't take long before I just wrestled with this idea of Christianity and who I'm supposed to be and I'm not good enough, I can't measure up, and just this weight, everything that I experienced as a kid suddenly kind of came back and even still today have struggles with it. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've had the thought and this feeling of not being good enough. Like you just have to be better. Like it's this over-emphasis on the rules and this idea of if you don't do this, then you're really not this. God doesn't love you. God doesn't care for you. God is mad at you. It's almost like when you mess up, you feel like Jesus is stepping back in heaven and saying, hey, God, listen, I didn't know he was going to do that, right? Like, I knew all this other stuff, but that's surprise. And every decision, every action, every mistake has eternal consequences on the other side of it. Every bit of that is as a result of being exposed to legalism as a child. We all have been impacted by legalism on some level. Now, we could sit down and probably share story after story of hurt that has came from the church. Church hurt. And even if we didn't realize, and if we started to dig a little bit, what we would probably uncover is some type of legalism being at the root of all of that. Like everyone has this idea and this overemphasis, we've been exposed to this overemphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity. Even if someone who hasn't been in the church, hasn't grown up in the church, someone who doesn't go to church now, if you ask them, hey, what is a Christian? The majority of them will tell you some variation of, it's got something to do with Jesus, but then there's rules that you kind of have to follow throughout your life. How many times as a kid, like don't raise your hand, but how many times as a kid, maybe you thought this same thing, right? Like, hey, church is good. Christianity is good. I want to do that. I want to be involved in that, but I'm going to do it when I'm older, right? Because right now, I just want to kind of enjoy my life. I want to have fun. I want to do the things that I want to do. When I'm older, a grandpa, like 35 years old or something, like that's when, I don't know what it was for you. Like me, when I was a kid, 35 was ancient. I was dumb, right? It's not ancient. But that's the thought. Like Christianity, when I settle down, when I get to this place and I wonder, I'll start following the rules and the regulations, this emphasis on behavior. When I get older, I'll do that. When I get older, I'll be a part of that. That's legalism. We've all been impacted by it. And it's not something that's new. It's something that has been around the church ever since the church started. At the very beginning, it's the reason that Paul wrote Galatians. I feel like this is falling off of my ear, but it's the reason that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. In the book of the Galatians, it's six short chapters. Paul attacks and disarms legalism. If you've ever been impacted by it, if you've ever been hurt by it, you will absolutely love this book. But when Paul comes in, he comes in hot. Look at chapter one, verse six. This is what he says. This is verse 6. And Paul's like long-winded. He uses a lot of run-ons. This is his third sentence into the letter. This is what he says. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Paul, throughout the entire book of Galatians, the only thing that he's talking about is legalism that has made its way into the churches at Galatia. And he's confronting really two false gospels that come from that. This idea of I have to be good enough, this overemphasis on the rules that I have to be good enough, or this overemphasis on the rules that, hey, I'm a Christian, I've got grace, now I can just do whatever I want and I'm all good. Paul confronts both of that. What's happening in the church in Galatia right now, these are fairly new, actually very new Christians. Christianity in itself is only about 49 to 50 years old at this point. And so Christianity came from Judaism. It came from the Jewish culture. Christianity came out of the Jews. And so the practices, the culture, the traditions have always been a part of it. Early Christians, even before Galatia, most early Christians were Jews. And then they came to know Christ. And then the Gentiles who came to Christ early, usually they became Jews first and then became Christians. And so as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, like the leaders in the church had to answer this very difficult question. Like, what do we do with all of these non-Jews who are becoming Christians now? Do they have to first become Jews? Do they have to follow the traditions set in the Old Testament? Do they have to follow the customs? Do they have to do the things that we have been doing for years and years and years in order to first become Jews? And there were two camps that set up. The Hellenistic Jews were like, no, they don't have to do that. You can actually read about a conversation in Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the statement that came out of that was, we should not make it more difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians. But who is Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians is the Judaizers. And the Judaizers came in behind Paul to teach the Galatian Christians, hey, your faith has only just begun. Actually, your faith is not yet complete. Faith in Jesus is good, but now you actually have to become a Jew as well. You have to practice the Jewish customs and traditions, and you also have to become or get circumcised. Could you imagine that as an altar call, right? Like, lights come down, band comes up. Hey, if you want to give your life to Jesus, just go into this room on the right. You're going to be introduced to the 613 laws in the adjoining room in the back. That's our circumcision room. Go through there, and you are a Christian. You thought raising your hand when the pastor asked was hard? Like, no, that's a different kind of level, right? But that's what was happening. The Judaizers were coming in behind Paul and saying, hey, your faith isn't complete yet. You are not quite yet a Christian. You haven't yet attained the salvation that you're hoping for. Jesus is a start, but you also have to do this. It was Jesus plus something. It was Jesus and you have to look a certain way. Jesus and you have to live a certain way. Jesus and you have to believe additional things. Legalism is when we contribute identity as a Christian to anything other than faith in Christ alone. Jesus plus believing these things. Jesus plus living this way. Jesus plus this rule. Jesus plus this law. Jesus plus this command. This is what was happening in the church in Galatia, and it's what Paul is writing about. And if we can be honest, that doesn't sound incredibly different than the church today. Like, it's pretty mind-blowing to me that a faith that is based off of a singular event can have so many variations. It's pretty incredible to me that a faith based off the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting your hope and trust in this one man, can have so many different trends, so many different variations. And the thing that we have to realize is Paul wasn't writing and condemning the practices. He probably participated in a lot of the practices. What Paul was condemning was elevating the practices to the status of gospel, elevating the tradition to the status of gospel. Your faith isn't complete. Your salvation isn't complete. You need faith in Jesus and isn't that what we see today? Like you could line 10 different people up and ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? And you're likely going to get several different answers. But not just about faith in Jesus and like what to believe, but about the way things you should do, the things you shouldn't do. This is what makes someone a Christian, or this is what makes someone a Christian. And this is what Paul was writing and correcting, was this confusion beginning to happen within the church. Like, how do you become a Christian? Well, you have to be this. And that's when you begin to see and you begin to hear statements like a Christian would never do this. A Christian could never say this. A Christian could never believe these things. A Christian could never be a part of these things. I have been in a place before, and I heard, I wasn't serving a church, but it was an area that I was at, and I heard pastors start to teach, hey, listen, if you want to be a good Christian, it has to be the King James Version. If you're reading anything other than the King James Version, you're a bad Christian. How ludicrous is that? Elevating something like that to the status of gospel. It's not that those things and those ideas and those beliefs may be wrong, but that is not what defines someone as a Christian. That's not what makes you a Christian. We have these ideas. You could never be a Christian and be baptized without full immersion. You can never be a Christian and believe or go to these places. You can never be a Christian. And you know what we're going to experience a lot of in 2024? We're going to experience a lot of promotion of Christian politics. You can't be a Christian and vote this way. You can't be a Christian and be for these things. Somehow, at some point, politics has came in and kind of hijacked what it means to be a Christian. And we've fallen for this false dichotomy that's presented. Like Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. And you know what's crazy? Oftentimes they're using the same scripture to argue different perspectives. But this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to be this. There's this growing group of people called the nuns. Not like the little hat ladies with the black dress, right? It's a category on the censuses to go around. There's a question on there that says religious affiliation. And there's a box that says nun. That category. There's a book, I think it's called The Nuns. I would check it out. It's a good read, but there was a lot of political scientists who went in and did a lot of research. And what they found is this growing group of people, this growing group of folks who want nothing to do with the church, are standing in that place because of political affiliation. Because Christianity is not Jesus. Christianity is not faith in Jesus. It's faith in Jesus and this political alignment. It's faith in Jesus and this political belief. I don't want anything to do with that. And that's what Paul is writing. And that's what Paul is addressing. There is this Alistair Brigg, as I was kind of preparing this message, Nate actually brought him up to me. I went back and I watched the video and he does this incredible illustration. And he says, when he gets to heaven, what he wants to do is he wants to go and find the thief on the cross. And he wants to say, he just wants to experience, hey, what was it like? Like when you, when you got to the gate, what was it like? Like, what did they they say to you? Like he didn't even know where he was. He just kind of showed up and he ended up at this gate. And then the guy came up to him, Peter or whatever you want to call him. Peter came up and he said, so can you tell me about the doctrine of justification? He's like, the what? Well, tell me what you think about the scripture. Like give me your thoughts on it. He's like, man, I don't have any idea about any of this. Okay, well, I need to go get my supervisor. So let's go get this guy. And he's like, so can you tell me exactly why you're here? And he's like, I have no clue. Except this one guy right over here, the guy on the middle cross, said that I could come. This is what Paul is correcting throughout the entire book of Galatians. It's this convoluted confusion that has crept its way in to the Christian belief. Paul is writing and he's telling them, hey, you are, you became, and you remain a Christian because of your faith in Jesus. In Galatians 1, he says this. He says, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So I ask you again, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard. Paul reminded them. Hey, you know that justification, salvation through the law is not possible. Its sole purpose is to point you towards a savior that you are in need of. And I love his reminder. He said, do you remember your faith? Like, do you remember when you came to faith? Do you remember whenever you were saved? Before you knew all the right things? Before you did all the right things? Before you lived in the right way? Do you remember who you were? Do you now have to maintain and earn that love that was freely given? He reminded them of their faith in Jesus. He reminded them that a Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus. The way we say it at Grace is that you become a Christian by believing Jesus was who he said he was. He did the things he said he would do, and he will do the things that he promised. Like, that's the faith that Paul is defending. That's the faith that Paul is arguing for. And when I first read this, like, I read the, you foolish Galatians with the exclamation point, like, still kind of get that vibe, like Paul's really going in hard. Like he's still, you fools, how could you dare? But the more that I read it, I started to hear a different tone. It's an exclamation, just like you would shout to a child running towards the middle of a busy intersection. When a fear and pleading, like you have to correct course. You can't go down this path. And in verse five, he points out, like, are you still equating God's love for you by the rightness of your life? Are you still equating God's love for you and faithfulness by the blessings around you? Are you not having the things happen to you and suddenly God doesn't love you anymore? Because that's the result, isn't it? Like, haven't you been there? Or have you been there before? It's exhausting. This pursuit and this treadmill of trying to run towards awesome enough for God to save you. This over-emphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity and perfect adherence towards all of those is what's necessary for God to give you the love that he gave you when you first began. And it creates, it can create this judgmentalism that comes inside us. We can become the older brother in the story of the parable or the prodigal son. Like we can see the blessings in other people's lives and be like, I'm doing better than they are. Like what's going on, God? Like why is this not happening for me? Why am I suffering in these different ways? Why am I not having these good things happen to me? Look how awesome I behaved. And the moment things start going down here, suddenly, okay, it's where prosperity gospel kind of gets its momentum from, right? Like, I have to be good enough, and then all these awesome things will begin to happen to me. I have to be good enough, and then God's love will shower down on me. I have to be all of these things. And Paul says that is foolishness and we have to correct course. Like every bit of legalism really does get its leverage by its offering of direction. Like it tells you where to go. It tells you how to live your life. It tells you the things you should and should not be a part of, which there are things that should not be a part of the Christian's life. And I don't believe, I don't believe the Judaizers were malicious. I don't believe that when they came and they were teaching the Christians in Galatia, I don't think they were trying to lead them astray. I think they were trying to lead them. There have been thousands of years of tradition, and it is all that they knew. And what Paul says as a result of legalism is exhaustion, this feeling like a rejected child instead of an adopted heir with Christ. This feeling in the sense of judgmentalism, this feeling in the sense of not good enough and we begin chasing it. That is what naturally comes from legalism. And he says, anytime that we move Christ to the periphery, anytime we make him not the main thing, that's the fruit. This is what begins to pop up in our life. But there are things that should not be a part of your life. There are things that you should pursue and there are things that you should try to do. But what you need to do is keep Christ at the center of your faith. The beginning and end of what it means to be a Christian and that moves you towards something different. In Galatians 5, I'm going to read 16 and then jump down to verse 22. Galatians 5, 16 says this. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I call it mountain biking Christianity. I don't know if you've ever been mountain biking before. I did whenever I was in Georgia. Well, I was in Georgia, so it would be more hill riding than anything. But if you ever go, what they will tell you is the very first rule, other than like knowing how to ride a bike, the very first rule is you're going to have a tendency to want to look at the things you want to avoid. As you're going down the hill, you're going to want to stare at the stone. You're going to want to stare at the tree. You're going to want to stare at these things because that's how you're going to avoid them. And I learned, actually, I learned that the guy was not lying to me when he told me after I was going down the hill and I saw a rock. And so I'm like, I've got to know where I'm supposed to avoid. I've got to know what I'm supposed to kind of veer towards and all of this. So your eyes and your body move towards the very thing that you're focused on. That's the entire role. That's where it all comes from, which is the same principle in life. Like Paul says it in Romans 12, he says that you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's this idea that you will always move towards the direction of your most powerful thought. The thing that you're thinking, whatever you are focused on, that will be the direction that your life moves. Mountain Viking Christianity says this, that yes, there are things that you want to avoid. There are things that you need to avoid. There are things in your life that shouldn't be there. What you need to focus on is the path. Is the journey that you're going on that the Holy Spirit is leading you towards. Keeping Christ at the center. Not moving him towards the periphery. What starts to happen is love develops. It's a fruit of the gospel. Patience starts to form. It's a fruit of the gospel. Kindness, gentleness, self-control. Like these things start to develop in your world, not in order to attain salvation, not in order to attain God's love, God's forgiveness, God's freedom, but as a result from it. It says that the spirit and the flesh are at work against one another. And any time we move what should be avoided, we move what should be in the periphery to the center, our body, our life will move towards those things. And what develops is exhaustion, fatigue, judgmentalism. But if we can stay focused in Christ, do you want a check mark? Do you want to know the marker along the way? Are you moving down the path? Are you growing in those things? Are you growing in love? Are you growing in peace? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in kindness? Are you growing in self-control? Like if you want a marker that you're moving in the right direction, it's not by an overemphasis on the rules and regulations. Those kind of take care of themselves when you're focusing on becoming who Christ has created you to be, walking and riding in the path that he has called you to walk on. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians is simply a reminder that a Christian is from a life of faith defined itself by a life of love. Are you moving down that path? Are you moving towards greater patience? What's popping up in your life? The band is going to come here in one second and we're going to sing the song Living Hope. It's simply a reminder and a focus that we were separated and it's only through the saving work of Jesus. It's keeping Christ the path. We pray for us. God, thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your grace, and your kindness. We thank you for all that you've done in us and through us because of the grace that we've received in Jesus. And Father, we just ask you as it's going to be a natural tendency. Legalism isn't a new thing that's happening and the effects of it have been felt for thousands of years, God. And we just ask you to point us toward the path you're asking us to follow with the grace of your spirit, and even if it means reminding ourselves of the gospel we came to know daily, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to live the life you have asked us to live by trusting in Jesus. We need you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. How are we, Jay? Everybody good? Good, good. Off to a great start. I'm really excited. Thanks, Jacob, my man. Nate, as Nate mentioned earlier, my name is Aaron. I am one of the pastors out here, and I'm excited to be talking with you today. We've been in a series called 27. We started it last summer and continuing it this summer, and essentially we're just taking a book, pulling a theme or the overall theme of the letter, and talking about it on Sunday morning. This week, we're talking about... Not that one. We're talking about Galatians. So gotcha, right? But we're talking about the book of Galatians. And if I can be honest, like a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this, I got a little bit nervous because last year in the summer, I used the book of Colossians. And as I was preparing this message, I was like, man, there's some very similar tones that Paul is using in both of these letters. Man, I really hope they don't think I just kind of pulled last year's sermon out like he's doing this one again. Like, look at the one trick pony guy, right? But then last Sunday, Doug told us he had no clue that I did Colossians. So I'm like, I'm in the clear. So this was really the easiest sermon I've ever prepared because I did take last year's and I just did a find and replace with Galatians and Colossians. And you guys won't even know it. So that's not true. I am excited to be talking with us about Galatians today. Again, not Ephesians. To kind of get our minds moving in that direction. Some of you know a little bit about my story. But in case you don't, I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. And if you've ever heard the saying that pastors' kids are the worst, it's true. Just not on Sundays, right? So that's one of the things I learned very early on is that people are looking at my behavior. Like there was an added weight to looking the part, right? Because it seemed like there was people, um, they would assess not just how good I was, but how good of a parent my father was based on how good of a boy I was. And so I learned Monday through Saturday, I can do whatever because I don't hang out in Christian circles on Sunday, Christian circle be good. And so that's what I was. I learned how to say the right things and do the right things. There was all this extra emphasis just on the way that I behaved. But when I did give my life to Jesus, I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I was a night auditor in a hotel. I was an assistant high school basketball coaching going to school full time. And I can remember as a night auditor, you work about one hour a week. If I ever got fired from the church, I would go be a night auditor because you work one hour a night and the rest of the time just hide from the camera and nap and you were okay. But no, I remember whenever I would open my Bible, my prayer every single time was, God, help me forget everything that I learned about you as a child growing up, and you teach me who you are from your word. I wouldn't be able to articulate to you then why, or I had no clue what the, that was my, that may have been a very bad thing to pray. I have no clue, but what I knew was there was a difference in what I was feeling in that moment and what I felt as a child growing up. There was a very big difference in the unconditional love that I was currently sitting in, the unconditional love that I felt, the total and complete forgiveness that I felt that I had received from God, and the love that I felt growing up. Like the love that I felt growing up very much had to be earned. It had to be good enough. I had to do the right thing. I had to look the right way and say the right things. Otherwise, that love, it was kind of like God was just dangling it and ready to take it away at any point in time. And it didn't take long in my adulthood, or I guess if you can call 20 adult, in my almost formed brain, like it didn't take long before I started to question. I started to question my salvation. And it was always because, man, I messed up again. Does God still love me? It didn't take long before I started chasing good enough. And it's exhausting. And it didn't take long before I just wrestled with this idea of Christianity and who I'm supposed to be and I'm not good enough, I can't measure up, and just this weight, everything that I experienced as a kid suddenly kind of came back and even still today have struggles with it. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've had the thought and this feeling of not being good enough. Like you just have to be better. Like it's this over-emphasis on the rules and this idea of if you don't do this, then you're really not this. God doesn't love you. God doesn't care for you. God is mad at you. It's almost like when you mess up, you feel like Jesus is stepping back in heaven and saying, hey, God, listen, I didn't know he was going to do that, right? Like, I knew all this other stuff, but that's surprise. And every decision, every action, every mistake has eternal consequences on the other side of it. Every bit of that is as a result of being exposed to legalism as a child. We all have been impacted by legalism on some level. Now, we could sit down and probably share story after story of hurt that has came from the church. Church hurt. And even if we didn't realize, and if we started to dig a little bit, what we would probably uncover is some type of legalism being at the root of all of that. Like everyone has this idea and this overemphasis, we've been exposed to this overemphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity. Even if someone who hasn't been in the church, hasn't grown up in the church, someone who doesn't go to church now, if you ask them, hey, what is a Christian? The majority of them will tell you some variation of, it's got something to do with Jesus, but then there's rules that you kind of have to follow throughout your life. How many times as a kid, like don't raise your hand, but how many times as a kid, maybe you thought this same thing, right? Like, hey, church is good. Christianity is good. I want to do that. I want to be involved in that, but I'm going to do it when I'm older, right? Because right now, I just want to kind of enjoy my life. I want to have fun. I want to do the things that I want to do. When I'm older, a grandpa, like 35 years old or something, like that's when, I don't know what it was for you. Like me, when I was a kid, 35 was ancient. I was dumb, right? It's not ancient. But that's the thought. Like Christianity, when I settle down, when I get to this place and I wonder, I'll start following the rules and the regulations, this emphasis on behavior. When I get older, I'll do that. When I get older, I'll be a part of that. That's legalism. We've all been impacted by it. And it's not something that's new. It's something that has been around the church ever since the church started. At the very beginning, it's the reason that Paul wrote Galatians. I feel like this is falling off of my ear, but it's the reason that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. In the book of the Galatians, it's six short chapters. Paul attacks and disarms legalism. If you've ever been impacted by it, if you've ever been hurt by it, you will absolutely love this book. But when Paul comes in, he comes in hot. Look at chapter one, verse six. This is what he says. This is verse 6. And Paul's like long-winded. He uses a lot of run-ons. This is his third sentence into the letter. This is what he says. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Paul, throughout the entire book of Galatians, the only thing that he's talking about is legalism that has made its way into the churches at Galatia. And he's confronting really two false gospels that come from that. This idea of I have to be good enough, this overemphasis on the rules that I have to be good enough, or this overemphasis on the rules that, hey, I'm a Christian, I've got grace, now I can just do whatever I want and I'm all good. Paul confronts both of that. What's happening in the church in Galatia right now, these are fairly new, actually very new Christians. Christianity in itself is only about 49 to 50 years old at this point. And so Christianity came from Judaism. It came from the Jewish culture. Christianity came out of the Jews. And so the practices, the culture, the traditions have always been a part of it. Early Christians, even before Galatia, most early Christians were Jews. And then they came to know Christ. And then the Gentiles who came to Christ early, usually they became Jews first and then became Christians. And so as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, like the leaders in the church had to answer this very difficult question. Like, what do we do with all of these non-Jews who are becoming Christians now? Do they have to first become Jews? Do they have to follow the traditions set in the Old Testament? Do they have to follow the customs? Do they have to do the things that we have been doing for years and years and years in order to first become Jews? And there were two camps that set up. The Hellenistic Jews were like, no, they don't have to do that. You can actually read about a conversation in Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the statement that came out of that was, we should not make it more difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians. But who is Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians is the Judaizers. And the Judaizers came in behind Paul to teach the Galatian Christians, hey, your faith has only just begun. Actually, your faith is not yet complete. Faith in Jesus is good, but now you actually have to become a Jew as well. You have to practice the Jewish customs and traditions, and you also have to become or get circumcised. Could you imagine that as an altar call, right? Like, lights come down, band comes up. Hey, if you want to give your life to Jesus, just go into this room on the right. You're going to be introduced to the 613 laws in the adjoining room in the back. That's our circumcision room. Go through there, and you are a Christian. You thought raising your hand when the pastor asked was hard? Like, no, that's a different kind of level, right? But that's what was happening. The Judaizers were coming in behind Paul and saying, hey, your faith isn't complete yet. You are not quite yet a Christian. You haven't yet attained the salvation that you're hoping for. Jesus is a start, but you also have to do this. It was Jesus plus something. It was Jesus and you have to look a certain way. Jesus and you have to live a certain way. Jesus and you have to believe additional things. Legalism is when we contribute identity as a Christian to anything other than faith in Christ alone. Jesus plus believing these things. Jesus plus living this way. Jesus plus this rule. Jesus plus this law. Jesus plus this command. This is what was happening in the church in Galatia, and it's what Paul is writing about. And if we can be honest, that doesn't sound incredibly different than the church today. Like, it's pretty mind-blowing to me that a faith that is based off of a singular event can have so many variations. It's pretty incredible to me that a faith based off the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting your hope and trust in this one man, can have so many different trends, so many different variations. And the thing that we have to realize is Paul wasn't writing and condemning the practices. He probably participated in a lot of the practices. What Paul was condemning was elevating the practices to the status of gospel, elevating the tradition to the status of gospel. Your faith isn't complete. Your salvation isn't complete. You need faith in Jesus and isn't that what we see today? Like you could line 10 different people up and ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? And you're likely going to get several different answers. But not just about faith in Jesus and like what to believe, but about the way things you should do, the things you shouldn't do. This is what makes someone a Christian, or this is what makes someone a Christian. And this is what Paul was writing and correcting, was this confusion beginning to happen within the church. Like, how do you become a Christian? Well, you have to be this. And that's when you begin to see and you begin to hear statements like a Christian would never do this. A Christian could never say this. A Christian could never believe these things. A Christian could never be a part of these things. I have been in a place before, and I heard, I wasn't serving a church, but it was an area that I was at, and I heard pastors start to teach, hey, listen, if you want to be a good Christian, it has to be the King James Version. If you're reading anything other than the King James Version, you're a bad Christian. How ludicrous is that? Elevating something like that to the status of gospel. It's not that those things and those ideas and those beliefs may be wrong, but that is not what defines someone as a Christian. That's not what makes you a Christian. We have these ideas. You could never be a Christian and be baptized without full immersion. You can never be a Christian and believe or go to these places. You can never be a Christian. And you know what we're going to experience a lot of in 2024? We're going to experience a lot of promotion of Christian politics. You can't be a Christian and vote this way. You can't be a Christian and be for these things. Somehow, at some point, politics has came in and kind of hijacked what it means to be a Christian. And we've fallen for this false dichotomy that's presented. Like Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. And you know what's crazy? Oftentimes they're using the same scripture to argue different perspectives. But this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to be this. There's this growing group of people called the nuns. Not like the little hat ladies with the black dress, right? It's a category on the censuses to go around. There's a question on there that says religious affiliation. And there's a box that says nun. That category. There's a book, I think it's called The Nuns. I would check it out. It's a good read, but there was a lot of political scientists who went in and did a lot of research. And what they found is this growing group of people, this growing group of folks who want nothing to do with the church, are standing in that place because of political affiliation. Because Christianity is not Jesus. Christianity is not faith in Jesus. It's faith in Jesus and this political alignment. It's faith in Jesus and this political belief. I don't want anything to do with that. And that's what Paul is writing. And that's what Paul is addressing. There is this Alistair Brigg, as I was kind of preparing this message, Nate actually brought him up to me. I went back and I watched the video and he does this incredible illustration. And he says, when he gets to heaven, what he wants to do is he wants to go and find the thief on the cross. And he wants to say, he just wants to experience, hey, what was it like? Like when you, when you got to the gate, what was it like? Like, what did they they say to you? Like he didn't even know where he was. He just kind of showed up and he ended up at this gate. And then the guy came up to him, Peter or whatever you want to call him. Peter came up and he said, so can you tell me about the doctrine of justification? He's like, the what? Well, tell me what you think about the scripture. Like give me your thoughts on it. He's like, man, I don't have any idea about any of this. Okay, well, I need to go get my supervisor. So let's go get this guy. And he's like, so can you tell me exactly why you're here? And he's like, I have no clue. Except this one guy right over here, the guy on the middle cross, said that I could come. This is what Paul is correcting throughout the entire book of Galatians. It's this convoluted confusion that has crept its way in to the Christian belief. Paul is writing and he's telling them, hey, you are, you became, and you remain a Christian because of your faith in Jesus. In Galatians 1, he says this. He says, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So I ask you again, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard. Paul reminded them. Hey, you know that justification, salvation through the law is not possible. Its sole purpose is to point you towards a savior that you are in need of. And I love his reminder. He said, do you remember your faith? Like, do you remember when you came to faith? Do you remember whenever you were saved? Before you knew all the right things? Before you did all the right things? Before you lived in the right way? Do you remember who you were? Do you now have to maintain and earn that love that was freely given? He reminded them of their faith in Jesus. He reminded them that a Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus. The way we say it at Grace is that you become a Christian by believing Jesus was who he said he was. He did the things he said he would do, and he will do the things that he promised. Like, that's the faith that Paul is defending. That's the faith that Paul is arguing for. And when I first read this, like, I read the, you foolish Galatians with the exclamation point, like, still kind of get that vibe, like Paul's really going in hard. Like he's still, you fools, how could you dare? But the more that I read it, I started to hear a different tone. It's an exclamation, just like you would shout to a child running towards the middle of a busy intersection. When a fear and pleading, like you have to correct course. You can't go down this path. And in verse five, he points out, like, are you still equating God's love for you by the rightness of your life? Are you still equating God's love for you and faithfulness by the blessings around you? Are you not having the things happen to you and suddenly God doesn't love you anymore? Because that's the result, isn't it? Like, haven't you been there? Or have you been there before? It's exhausting. This pursuit and this treadmill of trying to run towards awesome enough for God to save you. This over-emphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity and perfect adherence towards all of those is what's necessary for God to give you the love that he gave you when you first began. And it creates, it can create this judgmentalism that comes inside us. We can become the older brother in the story of the parable or the prodigal son. Like we can see the blessings in other people's lives and be like, I'm doing better than they are. Like what's going on, God? Like why is this not happening for me? Why am I suffering in these different ways? Why am I not having these good things happen to me? Look how awesome I behaved. And the moment things start going down here, suddenly, okay, it's where prosperity gospel kind of gets its momentum from, right? Like, I have to be good enough, and then all these awesome things will begin to happen to me. I have to be good enough, and then God's love will shower down on me. I have to be all of these things. And Paul says that is foolishness and we have to correct course. Like every bit of legalism really does get its leverage by its offering of direction. Like it tells you where to go. It tells you how to live your life. It tells you the things you should and should not be a part of, which there are things that should not be a part of the Christian's life. And I don't believe, I don't believe the Judaizers were malicious. I don't believe that when they came and they were teaching the Christians in Galatia, I don't think they were trying to lead them astray. I think they were trying to lead them. There have been thousands of years of tradition, and it is all that they knew. And what Paul says as a result of legalism is exhaustion, this feeling like a rejected child instead of an adopted heir with Christ. This feeling in the sense of judgmentalism, this feeling in the sense of not good enough and we begin chasing it. That is what naturally comes from legalism. And he says, anytime that we move Christ to the periphery, anytime we make him not the main thing, that's the fruit. This is what begins to pop up in our life. But there are things that should not be a part of your life. There are things that you should pursue and there are things that you should try to do. But what you need to do is keep Christ at the center of your faith. The beginning and end of what it means to be a Christian and that moves you towards something different. In Galatians 5, I'm going to read 16 and then jump down to verse 22. Galatians 5, 16 says this. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I call it mountain biking Christianity. I don't know if you've ever been mountain biking before. I did whenever I was in Georgia. Well, I was in Georgia, so it would be more hill riding than anything. But if you ever go, what they will tell you is the very first rule, other than like knowing how to ride a bike, the very first rule is you're going to have a tendency to want to look at the things you want to avoid. As you're going down the hill, you're going to want to stare at the stone. You're going to want to stare at the tree. You're going to want to stare at these things because that's how you're going to avoid them. And I learned, actually, I learned that the guy was not lying to me when he told me after I was going down the hill and I saw a rock. And so I'm like, I've got to know where I'm supposed to avoid. I've got to know what I'm supposed to kind of veer towards and all of this. So your eyes and your body move towards the very thing that you're focused on. That's the entire role. That's where it all comes from, which is the same principle in life. Like Paul says it in Romans 12, he says that you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's this idea that you will always move towards the direction of your most powerful thought. The thing that you're thinking, whatever you are focused on, that will be the direction that your life moves. Mountain Viking Christianity says this, that yes, there are things that you want to avoid. There are things that you need to avoid. There are things in your life that shouldn't be there. What you need to focus on is the path. Is the journey that you're going on that the Holy Spirit is leading you towards. Keeping Christ at the center. Not moving him towards the periphery. What starts to happen is love develops. It's a fruit of the gospel. Patience starts to form. It's a fruit of the gospel. Kindness, gentleness, self-control. Like these things start to develop in your world, not in order to attain salvation, not in order to attain God's love, God's forgiveness, God's freedom, but as a result from it. It says that the spirit and the flesh are at work against one another. And any time we move what should be avoided, we move what should be in the periphery to the center, our body, our life will move towards those things. And what develops is exhaustion, fatigue, judgmentalism. But if we can stay focused in Christ, do you want a check mark? Do you want to know the marker along the way? Are you moving down the path? Are you growing in those things? Are you growing in love? Are you growing in peace? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in kindness? Are you growing in self-control? Like if you want a marker that you're moving in the right direction, it's not by an overemphasis on the rules and regulations. Those kind of take care of themselves when you're focusing on becoming who Christ has created you to be, walking and riding in the path that he has called you to walk on. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians is simply a reminder that a Christian is from a life of faith defined itself by a life of love. Are you moving down that path? Are you moving towards greater patience? What's popping up in your life? The band is going to come here in one second and we're going to sing the song Living Hope. It's simply a reminder and a focus that we were separated and it's only through the saving work of Jesus. It's keeping Christ the path. We pray for us. God, thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your grace, and your kindness. We thank you for all that you've done in us and through us because of the grace that we've received in Jesus. And Father, we just ask you as it's going to be a natural tendency. Legalism isn't a new thing that's happening and the effects of it have been felt for thousands of years, God. And we just ask you to point us toward the path you're asking us to follow with the grace of your spirit, and even if it means reminding ourselves of the gospel we came to know daily, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to live the life you have asked us to live by trusting in Jesus. We need you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. How are we, Jay? Everybody good? Good, good. Off to a great start. I'm really excited. Thanks, Jacob, my man. Nate, as Nate mentioned earlier, my name is Aaron. I am one of the pastors out here, and I'm excited to be talking with you today. We've been in a series called 27. We started it last summer and continuing it this summer, and essentially we're just taking a book, pulling a theme or the overall theme of the letter, and talking about it on Sunday morning. This week, we're talking about... Not that one. We're talking about Galatians. So gotcha, right? But we're talking about the book of Galatians. And if I can be honest, like a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this, I got a little bit nervous because last year in the summer, I used the book of Colossians. And as I was preparing this message, I was like, man, there's some very similar tones that Paul is using in both of these letters. Man, I really hope they don't think I just kind of pulled last year's sermon out like he's doing this one again. Like, look at the one trick pony guy, right? But then last Sunday, Doug told us he had no clue that I did Colossians. So I'm like, I'm in the clear. So this was really the easiest sermon I've ever prepared because I did take last year's and I just did a find and replace with Galatians and Colossians. And you guys won't even know it. So that's not true. I am excited to be talking with us about Galatians today. Again, not Ephesians. To kind of get our minds moving in that direction. Some of you know a little bit about my story. But in case you don't, I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. And if you've ever heard the saying that pastors' kids are the worst, it's true. Just not on Sundays, right? So that's one of the things I learned very early on is that people are looking at my behavior. Like there was an added weight to looking the part, right? Because it seemed like there was people, um, they would assess not just how good I was, but how good of a parent my father was based on how good of a boy I was. And so I learned Monday through Saturday, I can do whatever because I don't hang out in Christian circles on Sunday, Christian circle be good. And so that's what I was. I learned how to say the right things and do the right things. There was all this extra emphasis just on the way that I behaved. But when I did give my life to Jesus, I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I was a night auditor in a hotel. I was an assistant high school basketball coaching going to school full time. And I can remember as a night auditor, you work about one hour a week. If I ever got fired from the church, I would go be a night auditor because you work one hour a night and the rest of the time just hide from the camera and nap and you were okay. But no, I remember whenever I would open my Bible, my prayer every single time was, God, help me forget everything that I learned about you as a child growing up, and you teach me who you are from your word. I wouldn't be able to articulate to you then why, or I had no clue what the, that was my, that may have been a very bad thing to pray. I have no clue, but what I knew was there was a difference in what I was feeling in that moment and what I felt as a child growing up. There was a very big difference in the unconditional love that I was currently sitting in, the unconditional love that I felt, the total and complete forgiveness that I felt that I had received from God, and the love that I felt growing up. Like the love that I felt growing up very much had to be earned. It had to be good enough. I had to do the right thing. I had to look the right way and say the right things. Otherwise, that love, it was kind of like God was just dangling it and ready to take it away at any point in time. And it didn't take long in my adulthood, or I guess if you can call 20 adult, in my almost formed brain, like it didn't take long before I started to question. I started to question my salvation. And it was always because, man, I messed up again. Does God still love me? It didn't take long before I started chasing good enough. And it's exhausting. And it didn't take long before I just wrestled with this idea of Christianity and who I'm supposed to be and I'm not good enough, I can't measure up, and just this weight, everything that I experienced as a kid suddenly kind of came back and even still today have struggles with it. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've had the thought and this feeling of not being good enough. Like you just have to be better. Like it's this over-emphasis on the rules and this idea of if you don't do this, then you're really not this. God doesn't love you. God doesn't care for you. God is mad at you. It's almost like when you mess up, you feel like Jesus is stepping back in heaven and saying, hey, God, listen, I didn't know he was going to do that, right? Like, I knew all this other stuff, but that's surprise. And every decision, every action, every mistake has eternal consequences on the other side of it. Every bit of that is as a result of being exposed to legalism as a child. We all have been impacted by legalism on some level. Now, we could sit down and probably share story after story of hurt that has came from the church. Church hurt. And even if we didn't realize, and if we started to dig a little bit, what we would probably uncover is some type of legalism being at the root of all of that. Like everyone has this idea and this overemphasis, we've been exposed to this overemphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity. Even if someone who hasn't been in the church, hasn't grown up in the church, someone who doesn't go to church now, if you ask them, hey, what is a Christian? The majority of them will tell you some variation of, it's got something to do with Jesus, but then there's rules that you kind of have to follow throughout your life. How many times as a kid, like don't raise your hand, but how many times as a kid, maybe you thought this same thing, right? Like, hey, church is good. Christianity is good. I want to do that. I want to be involved in that, but I'm going to do it when I'm older, right? Because right now, I just want to kind of enjoy my life. I want to have fun. I want to do the things that I want to do. When I'm older, a grandpa, like 35 years old or something, like that's when, I don't know what it was for you. Like me, when I was a kid, 35 was ancient. I was dumb, right? It's not ancient. But that's the thought. Like Christianity, when I settle down, when I get to this place and I wonder, I'll start following the rules and the regulations, this emphasis on behavior. When I get older, I'll do that. When I get older, I'll be a part of that. That's legalism. We've all been impacted by it. And it's not something that's new. It's something that has been around the church ever since the church started. At the very beginning, it's the reason that Paul wrote Galatians. I feel like this is falling off of my ear, but it's the reason that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. In the book of the Galatians, it's six short chapters. Paul attacks and disarms legalism. If you've ever been impacted by it, if you've ever been hurt by it, you will absolutely love this book. But when Paul comes in, he comes in hot. Look at chapter one, verse six. This is what he says. This is verse 6. And Paul's like long-winded. He uses a lot of run-ons. This is his third sentence into the letter. This is what he says. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Paul, throughout the entire book of Galatians, the only thing that he's talking about is legalism that has made its way into the churches at Galatia. And he's confronting really two false gospels that come from that. This idea of I have to be good enough, this overemphasis on the rules that I have to be good enough, or this overemphasis on the rules that, hey, I'm a Christian, I've got grace, now I can just do whatever I want and I'm all good. Paul confronts both of that. What's happening in the church in Galatia right now, these are fairly new, actually very new Christians. Christianity in itself is only about 49 to 50 years old at this point. And so Christianity came from Judaism. It came from the Jewish culture. Christianity came out of the Jews. And so the practices, the culture, the traditions have always been a part of it. Early Christians, even before Galatia, most early Christians were Jews. And then they came to know Christ. And then the Gentiles who came to Christ early, usually they became Jews first and then became Christians. And so as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, like the leaders in the church had to answer this very difficult question. Like, what do we do with all of these non-Jews who are becoming Christians now? Do they have to first become Jews? Do they have to follow the traditions set in the Old Testament? Do they have to follow the customs? Do they have to do the things that we have been doing for years and years and years in order to first become Jews? And there were two camps that set up. The Hellenistic Jews were like, no, they don't have to do that. You can actually read about a conversation in Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the statement that came out of that was, we should not make it more difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians. But who is Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians is the Judaizers. And the Judaizers came in behind Paul to teach the Galatian Christians, hey, your faith has only just begun. Actually, your faith is not yet complete. Faith in Jesus is good, but now you actually have to become a Jew as well. You have to practice the Jewish customs and traditions, and you also have to become or get circumcised. Could you imagine that as an altar call, right? Like, lights come down, band comes up. Hey, if you want to give your life to Jesus, just go into this room on the right. You're going to be introduced to the 613 laws in the adjoining room in the back. That's our circumcision room. Go through there, and you are a Christian. You thought raising your hand when the pastor asked was hard? Like, no, that's a different kind of level, right? But that's what was happening. The Judaizers were coming in behind Paul and saying, hey, your faith isn't complete yet. You are not quite yet a Christian. You haven't yet attained the salvation that you're hoping for. Jesus is a start, but you also have to do this. It was Jesus plus something. It was Jesus and you have to look a certain way. Jesus and you have to live a certain way. Jesus and you have to believe additional things. Legalism is when we contribute identity as a Christian to anything other than faith in Christ alone. Jesus plus believing these things. Jesus plus living this way. Jesus plus this rule. Jesus plus this law. Jesus plus this command. This is what was happening in the church in Galatia, and it's what Paul is writing about. And if we can be honest, that doesn't sound incredibly different than the church today. Like, it's pretty mind-blowing to me that a faith that is based off of a singular event can have so many variations. It's pretty incredible to me that a faith based off the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting your hope and trust in this one man, can have so many different trends, so many different variations. And the thing that we have to realize is Paul wasn't writing and condemning the practices. He probably participated in a lot of the practices. What Paul was condemning was elevating the practices to the status of gospel, elevating the tradition to the status of gospel. Your faith isn't complete. Your salvation isn't complete. You need faith in Jesus and isn't that what we see today? Like you could line 10 different people up and ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? And you're likely going to get several different answers. But not just about faith in Jesus and like what to believe, but about the way things you should do, the things you shouldn't do. This is what makes someone a Christian, or this is what makes someone a Christian. And this is what Paul was writing and correcting, was this confusion beginning to happen within the church. Like, how do you become a Christian? Well, you have to be this. And that's when you begin to see and you begin to hear statements like a Christian would never do this. A Christian could never say this. A Christian could never believe these things. A Christian could never be a part of these things. I have been in a place before, and I heard, I wasn't serving a church, but it was an area that I was at, and I heard pastors start to teach, hey, listen, if you want to be a good Christian, it has to be the King James Version. If you're reading anything other than the King James Version, you're a bad Christian. How ludicrous is that? Elevating something like that to the status of gospel. It's not that those things and those ideas and those beliefs may be wrong, but that is not what defines someone as a Christian. That's not what makes you a Christian. We have these ideas. You could never be a Christian and be baptized without full immersion. You can never be a Christian and believe or go to these places. You can never be a Christian. And you know what we're going to experience a lot of in 2024? We're going to experience a lot of promotion of Christian politics. You can't be a Christian and vote this way. You can't be a Christian and be for these things. Somehow, at some point, politics has came in and kind of hijacked what it means to be a Christian. And we've fallen for this false dichotomy that's presented. Like Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. And you know what's crazy? Oftentimes they're using the same scripture to argue different perspectives. But this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to be this. There's this growing group of people called the nuns. Not like the little hat ladies with the black dress, right? It's a category on the censuses to go around. There's a question on there that says religious affiliation. And there's a box that says nun. That category. There's a book, I think it's called The Nuns. I would check it out. It's a good read, but there was a lot of political scientists who went in and did a lot of research. And what they found is this growing group of people, this growing group of folks who want nothing to do with the church, are standing in that place because of political affiliation. Because Christianity is not Jesus. Christianity is not faith in Jesus. It's faith in Jesus and this political alignment. It's faith in Jesus and this political belief. I don't want anything to do with that. And that's what Paul is writing. And that's what Paul is addressing. There is this Alistair Brigg, as I was kind of preparing this message, Nate actually brought him up to me. I went back and I watched the video and he does this incredible illustration. And he says, when he gets to heaven, what he wants to do is he wants to go and find the thief on the cross. And he wants to say, he just wants to experience, hey, what was it like? Like when you, when you got to the gate, what was it like? Like, what did they they say to you? Like he didn't even know where he was. He just kind of showed up and he ended up at this gate. And then the guy came up to him, Peter or whatever you want to call him. Peter came up and he said, so can you tell me about the doctrine of justification? He's like, the what? Well, tell me what you think about the scripture. Like give me your thoughts on it. He's like, man, I don't have any idea about any of this. Okay, well, I need to go get my supervisor. So let's go get this guy. And he's like, so can you tell me exactly why you're here? And he's like, I have no clue. Except this one guy right over here, the guy on the middle cross, said that I could come. This is what Paul is correcting throughout the entire book of Galatians. It's this convoluted confusion that has crept its way in to the Christian belief. Paul is writing and he's telling them, hey, you are, you became, and you remain a Christian because of your faith in Jesus. In Galatians 1, he says this. He says, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So I ask you again, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard. Paul reminded them. Hey, you know that justification, salvation through the law is not possible. Its sole purpose is to point you towards a savior that you are in need of. And I love his reminder. He said, do you remember your faith? Like, do you remember when you came to faith? Do you remember whenever you were saved? Before you knew all the right things? Before you did all the right things? Before you lived in the right way? Do you remember who you were? Do you now have to maintain and earn that love that was freely given? He reminded them of their faith in Jesus. He reminded them that a Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus. The way we say it at Grace is that you become a Christian by believing Jesus was who he said he was. He did the things he said he would do, and he will do the things that he promised. Like, that's the faith that Paul is defending. That's the faith that Paul is arguing for. And when I first read this, like, I read the, you foolish Galatians with the exclamation point, like, still kind of get that vibe, like Paul's really going in hard. Like he's still, you fools, how could you dare? But the more that I read it, I started to hear a different tone. It's an exclamation, just like you would shout to a child running towards the middle of a busy intersection. When a fear and pleading, like you have to correct course. You can't go down this path. And in verse five, he points out, like, are you still equating God's love for you by the rightness of your life? Are you still equating God's love for you and faithfulness by the blessings around you? Are you not having the things happen to you and suddenly God doesn't love you anymore? Because that's the result, isn't it? Like, haven't you been there? Or have you been there before? It's exhausting. This pursuit and this treadmill of trying to run towards awesome enough for God to save you. This over-emphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity and perfect adherence towards all of those is what's necessary for God to give you the love that he gave you when you first began. And it creates, it can create this judgmentalism that comes inside us. We can become the older brother in the story of the parable or the prodigal son. Like we can see the blessings in other people's lives and be like, I'm doing better than they are. Like what's going on, God? Like why is this not happening for me? Why am I suffering in these different ways? Why am I not having these good things happen to me? Look how awesome I behaved. And the moment things start going down here, suddenly, okay, it's where prosperity gospel kind of gets its momentum from, right? Like, I have to be good enough, and then all these awesome things will begin to happen to me. I have to be good enough, and then God's love will shower down on me. I have to be all of these things. And Paul says that is foolishness and we have to correct course. Like every bit of legalism really does get its leverage by its offering of direction. Like it tells you where to go. It tells you how to live your life. It tells you the things you should and should not be a part of, which there are things that should not be a part of the Christian's life. And I don't believe, I don't believe the Judaizers were malicious. I don't believe that when they came and they were teaching the Christians in Galatia, I don't think they were trying to lead them astray. I think they were trying to lead them. There have been thousands of years of tradition, and it is all that they knew. And what Paul says as a result of legalism is exhaustion, this feeling like a rejected child instead of an adopted heir with Christ. This feeling in the sense of judgmentalism, this feeling in the sense of not good enough and we begin chasing it. That is what naturally comes from legalism. And he says, anytime that we move Christ to the periphery, anytime we make him not the main thing, that's the fruit. This is what begins to pop up in our life. But there are things that should not be a part of your life. There are things that you should pursue and there are things that you should try to do. But what you need to do is keep Christ at the center of your faith. The beginning and end of what it means to be a Christian and that moves you towards something different. In Galatians 5, I'm going to read 16 and then jump down to verse 22. Galatians 5, 16 says this. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I call it mountain biking Christianity. I don't know if you've ever been mountain biking before. I did whenever I was in Georgia. Well, I was in Georgia, so it would be more hill riding than anything. But if you ever go, what they will tell you is the very first rule, other than like knowing how to ride a bike, the very first rule is you're going to have a tendency to want to look at the things you want to avoid. As you're going down the hill, you're going to want to stare at the stone. You're going to want to stare at the tree. You're going to want to stare at these things because that's how you're going to avoid them. And I learned, actually, I learned that the guy was not lying to me when he told me after I was going down the hill and I saw a rock. And so I'm like, I've got to know where I'm supposed to avoid. I've got to know what I'm supposed to kind of veer towards and all of this. So your eyes and your body move towards the very thing that you're focused on. That's the entire role. That's where it all comes from, which is the same principle in life. Like Paul says it in Romans 12, he says that you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's this idea that you will always move towards the direction of your most powerful thought. The thing that you're thinking, whatever you are focused on, that will be the direction that your life moves. Mountain Viking Christianity says this, that yes, there are things that you want to avoid. There are things that you need to avoid. There are things in your life that shouldn't be there. What you need to focus on is the path. Is the journey that you're going on that the Holy Spirit is leading you towards. Keeping Christ at the center. Not moving him towards the periphery. What starts to happen is love develops. It's a fruit of the gospel. Patience starts to form. It's a fruit of the gospel. Kindness, gentleness, self-control. Like these things start to develop in your world, not in order to attain salvation, not in order to attain God's love, God's forgiveness, God's freedom, but as a result from it. It says that the spirit and the flesh are at work against one another. And any time we move what should be avoided, we move what should be in the periphery to the center, our body, our life will move towards those things. And what develops is exhaustion, fatigue, judgmentalism. But if we can stay focused in Christ, do you want a check mark? Do you want to know the marker along the way? Are you moving down the path? Are you growing in those things? Are you growing in love? Are you growing in peace? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in kindness? Are you growing in self-control? Like if you want a marker that you're moving in the right direction, it's not by an overemphasis on the rules and regulations. Those kind of take care of themselves when you're focusing on becoming who Christ has created you to be, walking and riding in the path that he has called you to walk on. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians is simply a reminder that a Christian is from a life of faith defined itself by a life of love. Are you moving down that path? Are you moving towards greater patience? What's popping up in your life? The band is going to come here in one second and we're going to sing the song Living Hope. It's simply a reminder and a focus that we were separated and it's only through the saving work of Jesus. It's keeping Christ the path. We pray for us. God, thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your grace, and your kindness. We thank you for all that you've done in us and through us because of the grace that we've received in Jesus. And Father, we just ask you as it's going to be a natural tendency. Legalism isn't a new thing that's happening and the effects of it have been felt for thousands of years, God. And we just ask you to point us toward the path you're asking us to follow with the grace of your spirit, and even if it means reminding ourselves of the gospel we came to know daily, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to live the life you have asked us to live by trusting in Jesus. We need you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.