Galatians 5

All right. Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So good to see you. Thanks for spending your Sunday with us. If you're new here and I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. Before I just dive in, I just want to acknowledge that second song that we did today. That was Holly's first time leading a song by herself. She did fantastic. The biggest loser in the room is Mike, who's doing the announcements today. The disparity of talent in your union is on stark display this morning, as was mine last week when Jen made her announcement. I was joking with her before the service. If you were here last week, Jen, my wife made an announcement at the end of my sermon. I said, I'm looking forward to what you have to share at the end of this week's sermon. And she's like, I'll get in the car right now. We are in the third part of our series called the traits of grace, where we're going through what makes grace, grace. When we call ourselves partners, what does it mean to be a partner? And what do we expect of our partners? And the first week we said, we're step takers. We take steps of obedience, and that way we allow God to make disciples of us. And I've challenged each of us here to consider what step of obedience God might be pushing us to take. I believe everybody has one, and I've been pressing on you guys to take seriously, take more seriously, lean into with a greater level of depth and intent into your spiritual growth, into your personal holiness. Let's pursue that as a church. And we've given you guys a tool to do that in the discipleship pathways. And more of those are out on the information table and they're also online if you're interested. This week, we arrive at one that's not readily apparent when you read it. It's called Conduits of Grace, and it's kind of like, well, what is that? Conduits of Grace is the way that we think about the word authenticity. Authenticity is kind of the white whale of all organizations. All churches want to be authentic. Organizations want to be authentic. We want authenticity in our politics. We like candidates that seem authentic, that seem like what you see is what you get. We like this trustworthiness that I don't have to second guess you. I just believe that you're authentic and that this organization is authentic. And that's certainly something that we strive for here at Grace is to be an authentic group of people. And one of the things I hear most every now and again, God does me the favor of allowing me to hear positive feedback from other people. It's not often, but sometimes God buoys me by letting me hear it. And the first thing obviously is the depth of scholarship and wisdom that I offer on Sunday mornings. But right after that is humility. Thank you, Brad. Yeah, that's number two. What I hear more often than not is that if you like Nate, Nate's real. I'm just a real person, just a real human. Jen had lunch with a friend last week or week before last. And it was the first time they got the chance to kind of sit down together, no kids around, whatever. And one of the things her friend said is we enjoy Nate because Nate's real. He just seems to be himself. And I try my best to do that. But when people tell that to me, dude, you're just, you're, you're, you're real. You just seem like a, like a real dude. What you see is what you get. You're not trying to put on airs, you know, yada, yada, yada. I always say it is my, it's my spiritual gift to you to behave in such a way that it's very easy to not put me on a pedestal. I'm doing that to minister to you guys. So, but what I, what I really do say is, because sometimes I'll say, you seem authentic and you've done a good job of establishing that authentic nature and culture at your church. And I always correct them. I say the church is not authentic and comfortable in its own skin because I somehow brought that culture to grace. That culture existed long before my arrival and is one of the main reasons I chose to come to grace is because of how well the people of grace love one another, because of how accepting the people of grace are. I get to be my real self, my real person, because the people of grace who were here long before I am and who continue to come now insist on that from me. You guys would not put up with a pastor who tried to act like he was better than you all the time, who preached in such a way that says, I've achieved this level. You guys get on my level. We don't do that. That doesn't fly around here. No one walks around grace thinking they're any better than any other person. No one walks around grace thinking that they've got it all figured out, that they're nailing it. They've got their act together. They are really pursuing holiness well. And if everyone else would just be like me, they'd be better off for it. We don't put up with that kind of thing. And so here's the thing, if you're new, and I saw some new faces this morning as we were gathering in the lobby and coming in. If you're new, here's what I would tell you about grace that you should know, is we all of us know that we're screw-ups. Okay, we know that. We know that we don't have our act together. We know that we mess up. We offer grace for that. We love each other in spite of it. There's space for humanity here because none of us have our act together. And here's what we know about you, new people. You don't have your act together either. Okay, we already know you're messed up. We already know that. You don't have to pretend like you're not. We know, and it's cool. Come on. That's who we are, right? We are a church, I believe, of grace, and we are a church of unusual authenticity. And because of that, I think when we talk about this topic, the question really becomes, what is the source of grace's grace? What is the source of grace's grace? What makes us who we are? I mean, just last night, I was at a retirement party for one of our great partners, longtime partners of grace, and there was a bunch of people there, 60 or 70 people there, and I happened to be sitting in the living room in a circle of other folks watching the ball game, eating a little bit of food. And there was a younger lady sitting next to me who did not fit in with the old people that were there. And so I looked at her and I said, how do you know the person we're celebrating? And she said, well, I'm her niece. And I go, okay. And so we started talking. She goes, how do you know her? And I said, well, I go to church with her. And she goes, yeah, that's the answer that I'm getting the most. There's a bunch of people here from your church. I said, yeah, it's a good church. We show up for our people. We really love each other. And I said, well, one of my favorite things is the way that everyone's acting now is the same way we're going to act in the lobby tomorrow morning. We're just the same people wherever we go. And she goes, you know, I've been to a couple things, and your church always shows up well and always seems to support. You've got a pretty special thing going on. And I thought, yeah, yeah. Whenever I have anybody come in from out of town and they come to church with us, they always tell us, man, you've got some special people. You've got some people who seem to love well. And it's true, and we do. And so I think it's important to acknowledge why that's the case. So what's the source of grace's grace? As I was thinking about this question, I've told you guys that I preached this exact series two years ago in September and October of 2022. And so when it comes time to do the next sermon, I just go see what I preached about last time, tweak it, listen to it, what I want to take out, what I want to put in. What seems important. What doesn't. It's honestly kind of fun to get a second crack at trying to do a good sermon on these things. And I uncovered this stanza that I wrote to answer this question. And I'm really thinking about it as a confession. And I've been talking with Gibson about it. And I think we're going to try to put it up somewhere, maybe in here or in the lobby, so that we can see it and be reminded of it regularly, because it's one of those things that I want us to bring to the forefront of our attention with some degree of regularity. But if I'm seeking to answer the question, what is the source of grace's grace, here's what I would say, and I think this statement's in your notes. At grace, we understand. We are guilty, yet forgiven. We are broken, yet restored. We are deeply flawed, yet deeply loved. We are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. We are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. That's who grace is. That's who we are. And if there's any bit of authenticity in us, it's because we believe those things. If there's any bit of authenticity and acceptance and grace amongst the people of grace, it's because we start from this approach, from this posture of being guilty yet being forgiven, of being broken yet being restored, of being deeply flawed and yet deeply loved. We know that we're broken people. We know that we've messed up. We know that we have stories. We know that we are humans. And because we know that, we begin each day in our life with this posture of being overwhelmed by the goodness of God that he chose to save us and love us, that we are deeply flawed and God sees every single one of the crevices and cracks in our armor and in our character, and he fills them with love and he lifts us up. So we know what's the source of grace is grace. Well, the first thing is we start from this position of humility, knowing that we are broken and undeserving of God's love. And yet he lavishes it on us anyways. Then we acknowledge these things about the father, the son, and the spirit that we are only good because of the father. We know the scripture tells us that our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. We know that Jesus tells us in John 15 that we should abide in him and he in us. And if we do, we will bear much fruit. But apart from him, we can do nothing. So we know that it's God alone, God the Father who makes us good. And so we know if there's any goodness in us, if there's any progress in us, if there's any closeness to God that we're experiencing, if there's any spiritual maturation process happening in our life, if we are increasingly displaying the fruits of the Spirit that we find in Galatians 5.22, if we are progressively growing closer to God and developing character closer to that of Christ in the sanctification process, If there is any good in us, we know it is not because we white knuckled our way there. We know it is not because we are more disciplined than the next person over. We know it's not because we are smarter or more righteous or better prayers than any of the people around us or in the other churches around us. We know that anything good in us is from the Father and is a result of the love of the Father, most specifically through sending His Son to die for us, to suffer on our behalf so that we might spend eternity with Him and begin to experience heaven now on this side of eternity. That's why we say that we are not righteous except through Christ. We are only righteous because of Christ. Scripture teaches us that when God looks at us, once we become a Christian, once we confess and believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. Once we do that, God says that the Bible says that when God sees us, he does not see our sin and our unrighteous actions. He looks at us and it says that we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. It's that wonderful passage in Isaiah 1, verse 18, where we feel God put his arm around us. And he says, come now, let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. That word righteous is best understood as right standing before God. We think of a court of law. We are in the right standing before God, not on our own merit, not because we deserved it, not because we've behaved our way to it, but because we are glad recipients of the grace and mercy of Jesus and his death on the cross. So we are only righteous through Christ. And then finally, we understand we are only wise because of the spirit. We are only wise because of the spirit. I think in the first couple chapters of Proverbs, when Solomon's talking about whatever you do, get wisdom. Whatever you do, pursue wisdom. I think that goes hand in hand with the Spirit, and that is the Spirit. The Spirit is the illuminator. The Spirit helps us understand what God is saying in the Scriptures. The Spirit helps us hear the voices in our life that we need to listen to. The Spirit gently convicts. The Spirit compels into obedience. The Spirit guides and illuminates and unlocks different things about Scripture and about the spiritual life. And so we understand, Grace, this is who we are, that if we have gained any biblical knowledge at all, if we feel like we have a deeper understanding of God now than we did five years ago, if we feel like we're walking more deeply with him, if we feel like we're able to teach a little bit, if we feel like we're able to lead a little bit, if we've made any progress in wisdom in the last three to five years of our lives, we readily acknowledge that is not our work, that is not our doing, that is not our effort. All we did is get out of the way so the spirit could grow us in wisdom. So when you ask what is the source of grace's grace, I believe it's this confession. That we are guilty yet forgiven. That we are broken yet restored. That we are deeply flawed and yet deeply loved. And that we carry with us every day an acute awareness. That we are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. And we are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. All of those things are God's grace. And so when we walk in light of that, when we spend every day aware of God's goodness in our lives, we spend every day aware of his grace, aware of our forgiveness in light of our brokenness. When we spend every day in light of that, we become these gleeful recipients of the grace of God. and that's what allows us to turn it out onto other people and make them recipients of the grace of God as well. I think it works like this. Follow along if you can. Being a gleeful recipient of freely given grace allows us to gleefully give the grace we freely get. The more gladly we receive the grace that God offers us, we acknowledge all the good things in our life as grace. Grace is something that we get that we do not deserve. Then the easier it is to pour that grace out to other people. I think of it in terms of this verse. I love this verse. I mention it with some regularity, John 1, 16. And from his goodness, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I see this verse every day. It's over my couch in between a picture of Lily and John. We have another frame that has this verse in it, Lily and John are our children. And it says, It's not a verse that I remind myself of enough. But it carries with it this idea of God so full of grace, he's overflowing with it. And if we'll position ourselves properly, we can be the gleeful recipients of that grace. And before you know it, it's going to fill us up so much that we're going to start spilling it on the people around us from his fullness, not from his, not from his dearth, not from his lack, not from his scarcity, not from his limited supply from his fullness. We receive, you could even put in that word, never ending, unending, unyielding grace upon grace. And it allows us to spill that out to other people in our lives as well. Think about this. And maybe you get nothing else out of the sermon, but to potentially do this in your life? What do you think might change in your mindset if you were to write that verse down and put it somewhere where you saw it every day? What if this week, this month, you said, you know what, I'm going to make sure that I allow God to bring that verse to my attention every day. And every day you saw somewhere, sometime, and from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. If you went into work aware of that verse, how much more gracious would it make you with your employees and with your employer and with your coworkers? How much more patient would it make you in traffic? Now, some of you would overcome and you'd still get mad and cuss in traffic, but it'd be harder, right? How much more patient would you be with your children, with your spouse? How much more gratitude would you walk in if you simply made yourself aware every day that from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I don't think it could possibly be a bad habit to commit to doing that for a little while. And allowing God to bring that to the forefront of your thought every day. And see how he uses this gratitude for his grace to springboard into other people and be a conduit of grace to others. This is why at Grace We Say, we are conduits of grace. We are conduits of grace. And this is something we mulled over, workshopped a little bit, but here's what I like about this word conduit, even though it can be a little bit confusing. A conduit is nothing except a pathway from a source to a recipient. That's all it is. It's just a pathway. It's only job. The only job of a conduit is to stay plugged into the source and to stay plugged into a recipient so that the energy of the source can get to the recipient, so that the grace of God can get to the people who need it most. When I wrote this sermon a few years ago, Lily was six and didn't understand how electricity worked. Now I think she'd probably do better than this, although I've not quizzed her on it recently. We were in the playroom, and the vacuum cleaner was in there, and the cord was just kind of lazily on the ground, because you guys, I don't know how that goes in your house. But in our house, vacuuming is one activity. Winding the cord up is another activity that could take three to five business days. So it's sitting there. And Lily goes to step on it or around it. And she stops. And she freezes up. And she's trying to figure out how to get around. And I go, what's wrong, baby? And she goes, well, I don't want to get electrified. And I said, no, no, sweetheart. You're fine. That's not plugged into the wall. That cord's not plugged into the wall. There's no electricity in that cord. You don't have to worry about it at all. And it occurs to me that that's what a conduit is. If we're not plugged into God, if we're not receiving his grace, if we're not abiding in Christ, we're as good as a limp cord laying on the ground doing absolutely nothing. That cord has to be plugged into the wall before it matters at all, before it's remotely doing its job. And it's really only any good if it's also connected to the vacuum cleaner. If it's connected to nothing, then it's just an extension cord. And all we did is move the source of grace from there to here, but we're not doing anything with it if it's not plugged into a recipient. So it's our job as conduits of grace to remain connected to Christ. And we're going to talk about this next week. We talk about abiding in Christ and being people of devotion and then connected to the source where we are to spill out the grace that we are getting. And progressively in the Christian life, listen to me, progressively in the Christian life, and this is what we're going to talk about in two weeks when we talk about kingdom builders, which I think is the apex trait for us. Increasingly in the Christian life, we come to acknowledge ourselves as mere conduits. Nothing that we have is for us. All the gifts and all the grace and all the goodness that we're given is not for us. It's coming from the source and is intended to go to the recipients in our life, not sit here. If we just sit there and sponge it up, we do nothing. We don't turn it out at all. If we don't stay connected to the wall, if we don't stay connected to the source, we're useless no matter how many relationships we have, no matter how many people we're plugged into. It doesn't matter. So our job is to remain plugged into Christ, abide in Him. We'll talk about that next week. And plugged into our communities and the people around us so that we can be a conduit of the grace that God gives us walking in this humility. Now as we think about our job as conduits of grace, something I didn't talk about last time that upon thinking about it and talking with Gibson, he pointed this out to me. I think there's kind of two applications as I wrap up here on how we offer grace. And I think the way that we do that is we transfer productive and passive grace. As conduits of grace, people who stay connected to Jesus so that we might connect him to others, connecting people to Jesus, people to people. As we do that, there's really two ways to transfer that grace. We do it productively and we do it passively. Productive grace requires selfless sharing. Productive grace requires selfless sharing. Here's a verse that Gibson pointed out to me in 1 Peter chapter 4 that I love and I thought fit in perfectly well. 1 Peter chapter four, verse 10. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. I'll read it again. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. In this verse, there's this idea that each of us have been given gifts. Some of us have hospitality. Some of us have leadership. Some of us are speaking. Some of us are just being generally attractive, charismatic people that draw others in, whatever your gifts are. We've all been given different gifts. And the longer we go in this Christian life, the more we realize that we were given those as acts of grace. If you're talented at something, that's God's grace on you. And he made you talented at that so that you might bring other people into the kingdom with you, so that you might be a conduit of that grace. And the grace is the gift. And so we ought to be looking for ways to apply our gifts to forward God's kingdom. That's why, again, we're going to spend a whole week on this, but it's that verse in Ephesians 2.10, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared for us that we might walk in them. We have all received different gifts, and we proactively exercise that grace and be conduits of that grace by looking for places to use those gifts. He's made some of us, especially in this church, incredibly hospitable. I've always said, I started saying the last couple of years that at Grace, we lead the league in church ladies. We got the best church ladies of any church out there. And last night, they were on full display. We had this party going. Where we went was a house that some friends of ours bought in retirement. And the whole point was to host people. And then there was other people over there helping out with their gift of hospitality. And there was 60 or 70 people there. Half of them are from grace. And what that does is the other half of the people there get to experience grace, get to be around our community and see our love and see our camaraderie. And it pushes the needle towards Jesus. It absolutely does. Some of you, I mentioned Holly already, so I can pick on her again. She's been given a gift of raising her voice. God created that gift. So she's up here sharing it with us so that she ushers us to the kingdom together. She's also apparently got heck of a gift with muffins because they're out there on the information table and they're delicious. She shared those with us this morning. Some of you are excellent small group leaders. Some of you are excellent with the children. Some of you have hidden talents for announcements. We all have different things that we're good at. Those things are God's grace to us that we might exercise them in his kingdom. So that's how we pursue being a conduit of grace productively and intentionally is to use our gifts to transfer that grace. But we are also passive conduits of grace. And passive grace requires humble gratitude. Passive grace requires humble gratitude. And here's what I mean when I say passive grace. There's a verse in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 2 or 3, that I found years ago. And for whatever reason, recently, I feel like God has just kind of been bringing it back up. It's just something that I've been thinking about, chewing on. It feels so relevant. But in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that we are led by Christ in triumphal procession. And that's a reference to Roman Empire. I'm not going to get into it and nerd out on history. But what a general would accomplish, would achieve a great victory in the field. They would come back to the threshold of Rome and they would wait with their army outside the city and the city would throw them what's called a triumphal procession. And the conquering general would enter first with all the conquered people and his armies behind him. It was this great thing of honor. You didn't get very many in your life, if any. And so Paul is hearkening to that when he said, Jesus leads us in triumphal procession. We are the ones he's conquered and claimed. And then he says this great phrase at the end of the verse, we are led by triumphal procession by Christ and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You catch that? We are led by Christ in this triumphal procession through life. And as we go through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. And I love that imagery because fragrance is passive. It's just there. It just emanates. It just is. And it means that when someone moves into your presence, they're going to smell that. It's going to waft. When someone moves out of our presence, it's not there anymore. When someone moves into our presence, we don't have to say, hey, I showered and put on cologne today. They can just tell. You don't have to announce it. It doesn't have to be forceful. It doesn't have to be in your face. It doesn't have to be intentional. It's just passively. This is made aware to you. And I just think about this idea and how beautiful it is that it's possible for us to be walking in so much humility and so much grace and walking in lockstep with God so closely that when people move into and out of our life, that our knowledge of God is like a fragrance that passively passes on to them that they just experience as good. That's being a passive conduit of grace. And how do we do that? How do we live our lives so that through us spreads the fragrance and the knowledge of God so that we are passive conduits of grace to all the people that we meet and interact with and influence? I think it's by remembering this. Remembering this confession. At grace, we understand. We are guilty, yet forgiven. We are broken, yet restored. We are deeply flawed, and yet deeply loved. We are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. We are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for a church full of people who love you, who are full of forgiveness and grace for one another. God, I pray that if there are people here who are visiting grace or might not consider themselves a part of us yet, that they would feel some of that. That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of you. That this would feel like a place that's a little bit different, not because we're better in any way, but just because we love each other well and we walk in humility. God, would you please bring to our mind every day this week that from your fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Please help us walk in the humility of the realization that everything we have from you is good and undeserved. And God, would we spring forward in glad humility at your overwhelming generosity. God, be with us as we go. Him ascend behind and before. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. I'm Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. You guys, it's a holiday weekend. I mean, for the love of Peter, you're supposed to be out doing fun stuff. You chose to come to church. I am so thrilled about that. So it's good to see all of you, and thank you for coming on this Sunday morning. This is the third part of our series, Lessons from the Gym. As a disclaimer in that video, I've had a lot of people asking me, like, why do you think you're too good for turn lanes? Okay, here's what was happening in that video, is the shot was supposed to be, Nate, let me, this is, Steve was filming this, he says, Nate, let me get a shot of you exiting the gym, like pulling away, like that's the shot that we need to get. So I'm like, okay, good. So I pull out of the gym, and then I let him get a shot of that for as long as he could, driving down the road, and then just cut into the parking lot real quick to go pick him back up and not strand him. And what does he do but put that in the video and make me look like a degenerate? So thanks, Steve. But that's the story. I do actually abide by some, not all, but some traffic laws that make sense. All right. For the first couple of weeks that we've been in this series, we've been looking at what we're calling lessons from the gym and talking about getting spiritually healthy, right? Pursuing spiritual health in our lives. And as I've thought about it, what we've really been doing and what I've really been bringing to you is as you pursue spiritual health in your life, here are some things that I'd like for you to consider or to be aware of. And so the first week we said, here's five things that I want to tell you on your first day as you begin to pursue spiritual health. And then the next week, what I said was, listen, you can't do this alone. So those were things that were really descriptive to you of what does it take to be spiritual, like what do I need to know to be spiritually healthy? And so for the next two weeks, for this week and next week, I want to begin to answer the question, okay, what does it really mean to pursue spiritual health? What does it really require of me? What does it take to get there? And this whole time, I've been doing a parallel between pursuing physical health at the gym or working out or whatever it is we do to care for ourselves physically and paralleling that with our pursuit of spiritual health. And so as I got into the gym and began to pursue this physical health, there's a couple of things that became apparent to me. To go to the gym, to wake up one day and decide to go for a jog, to do push-ups, to buy a Beachbody DVD and try to do that, to do whatever it is you decide to do to get into the physical shape you want to get into, implicit in doing that, implicit in going to the gym, implicit in going for a jog, is this admission that I care about my physical health, right? If you don't care at all about your physical health and you don't go to the gym, you don't do the workout, you don't do the jog. You just eat the cinnamon rolls and sit on the couch. That's what you do. But to do any of those things, implicit in that action is an admission that physical health is important to me. And so when I went to the gym, everybody there is saying being physically healthy matters to me. The other thing is, as you go and you decide you want to be physically healthy, there are myriad goals within physical health, right? Everybody's got the before picture, and then we're all shooting for the after picture. We've got the before with the gut hanging out, we're wearing the t-shirt, we look like an overstuffed sausage. We've got that deal, and then we've got the after picture in our head, whatever it is that we're going for. And to some people, like, get in the gym and some people like they're in it, they're in it for the competitions. Like they are, they like go to competitions, they are lifting weights, they have figured out ways to isolate an exercise to get one strand of their triceps so that when they rub baby oil on it, it's really going to pop at the competition. Like that's their deal and that's their goal, which is also my goal. I'm very close. But that's what they want to do, right? They're in it for the competition. Others just, they just want to, like me, I just wanted to look good in a t-shirt. Like I just wanted to be able to put on a t-shirt, feel confidence without seeing my man gut. I'd love to be able to take Lily swimming and take my shirt off in front of other people and not be embarrassed about myself. Like that's pretty much it for me. Other people, they want to look good, but they want to be built, but not too built, you know. And others, when they start to get healthy, it's really not the way, it's really not about the way they look at all. It's about performance for them. They want to do a marathon or triathlon or whatever it is. And so for them, it's really about getting the body to be disciplined to do what it's supposed to do. And so people can have all kinds of different goals for their physical health, right? But whatever your goal is for your physical health, whatever you want the after picture to look like, there's actually a portion of the scientific community that has defined health for you. Whatever you want to look like, whatever you want your after picture to look like, whatever your reason was for going into the gym, if your goal is to be healthy, the scientific community has actually given you guidelines on what that health looks like, right? They're like, there's guidelines for BMI, for our body mass index, and for fat percentage. There's guidelines for what our cholesterol should be. There's guidelines for what our heart rate should be, our resting heart rate should be, for what our blood pressure should be. And really, whatever's going on outside of those indicators is fine and good, but if we're talking about health, there's actually some guidelines that dictate for us whether or not we are truly healthy. Because we can look fit and not be able to run a mile, and we can be cardiovascularly healthy but have some weakness in some other areas. So it's actually good to have a standard of physical health regardless of what our goals are for it. And in the same way, I think pursuing spiritual health parallels all of that really well. To me, to be in church in January, to be listening to this on a podcast or watching it online, implicit in the decision to do that, implicit in your decision to get up this morning to shower, which I hope you did, and then come here. And if you have kids, the hassle of getting them up and getting them ready for the early service. To do that, implicit in that is, hey, I care about my spiritual health. It could be a lot. It could be a little. But implicit in your attendance here is spiritual health matters to you. Implicit in listening to sermons online is the idea that spiritual health matters to you. And it could have mattered for a very long time. This could be an ongoing thing to you. This January is no different than last January or dozens before that. Or it could be a new initiative. But what I think is true of everyone in the room is that we are saying with our attendance that spiritual health matters to us. Now, there could be a difference in our spiritual goals. If we think about it as a before picture, this is what I looked like last year. This is what I looked like before I began to prioritize my spiritual health. And this is what I'd like to do now. There really is a wide range of goals that we could have. We could say, listen, I just want to be a good mom. I just want to exist in the house with my kids without losing my mind at them. That's what I want to be able to do. I'm just looking for a little bit of peace. Maybe it's my life has just felt so crazy that I just need some peace. I want to feel a connection with God. Maybe it's just things haven't been going my way for a while, and I just want to get some clarity about this. Maybe it's things have been going great and I want to begin to live a life out of this feeling of gratitude. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe we think I want to get plugged into a small group. I want to meet other people. I'd love for God to use me in ways in other people's life. I'd love to be involved in ministry in a volunteer capacity or even in a professional capacity. That's what I want to do. I'd love to be an elder of the church. I see these people that I admire, and I want to do that. Maybe we've got big, huge spiritual goals. Maybe we've got very modest spiritual goals, but we all have them, and I would say they're all good, at least as a starting place. But it got me to thinking, does the Bible, like the scientific community offers to those who are pursuing physical health some guidelines for what it actually looks like to be healthy, does the Bible offer similar guidelines to us for what it means to be spiritually healthy? And if it does, what are they? And I actually think that the Bible does this. Regardless of what your goals are, just to be a good spouse or a good co-worker or a good church partner or beyond that, regardless of what your goals are, does the Bible give to us standards that really define for us what spiritual health looks like, and I think that it does that. In the Bible, Old and New Testament, it talks a lot about this idea of bearing fruit, that if we're healthy, if we're good and we're vibrant, we will bear fruit. The book of Psalms was written by a guy named King David. He was the greatest king that Israel ever had. Jesus is going to sit on his throne one day. The flag flying over Israel now bears his star. He's an important dude. And he wrote the longest book in the Bible, Psalms, which is actually a collection of five different books. And in the Psalms are basically journal entries from David. Worship songs, times when he was sad, times when he was joyful, times when he, blessed are those who do not invest their time with people who don't love Jesus and love them, like what we talked about last week. But if we will delight ourselves in the law of the Lord, if we will pursue him in spiritual health, then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water. We will yield our fruit in season, and all that we do, we will prosper. We will yield fruit if we follow the Lord. So then the question becomes, okay, what does that fruit look like? And I think that answer is twofold, and we find it in the New Testament. If we're going to ask ourselves, what does it look like to bear fruit, to be spiritually healthy to a place where we are bearing fruit, what does that look like? Well, Paul answers this question in the book of Galatians. I talk about Paul a lot. He was a really influential Christian. He planted churches, and then he wrote letters back to the churches. And one of the churches he planted was in Galatia. And he wrote a letter back to them that became the book of Galatians in our New Testament. And in the fifth chapter, there's this really famous, and you will bear the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so, to that question of what does it look like to bear fruit, what does it look like to be spiritually healthy, well, it means that we're going to bear fruit. Well, what kind of fruit are we going to bear? Well, Paul tells us in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think of that as character. So to answer the question first, if we are going to be spiritually healthy, what is an indicator of that? Well, our character is an indicator of that. As a matter of fact, I think this is such a good diagnostic tool that within churches there's always this question, am I really saved? How do I really know if I know Jesus? How do I really know if I'm going to heaven? And I say, well, Ephesians tells us that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a deposit on our salvation, that God's going to make good on this promise. And we can tell if we have the Holy Spirit in our life by whether or not we bear the fruit that Paul lists out in Galatians chapter 5. So I would tell you, if you want to know whether or not you know Jesus, look at the wake of your life over the past three to five years and ask yourself the question, are those things growing in my life? Are those eight, nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those things growing in my life? Are those nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those increasing in my life, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Are those increasing in my life? Am I growing in those areas? If you're not, it doesn't do you any good to lie to yourself about it. I think it does us a lot of good to get on our knees and pray about it. But if we're going to ask that question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? Well, we have to ask ourselves, am I bearing fruit? I think there's twofold ways that we bear that fruit. And the first is to be growing in our character as outlined in Galatians 5.22. The other way we see ourselves bearing fruit based on scripture is found in a lot of places, but I'm going to look at John 15, where Jesus says, and I've talked about this in recent weeks, I am the tree, essentially, I am the tree and you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. And in this instance, he's talking to the disciples. And when he's saying bearing much fruit, what he means is you will produce a lot of ministry. There will be people who are closer to me, closer to Jesus, as a result of you being in their life. And so biblically, to bear fruit means to grow in character and to grow our personal ministries. Does that make sense? And what that means is, can I look at my life, at the wake of my life, and point to individuals who would say, because that person is in my life, because I've been in PTA with them, because I work with them, because I played on the same tennis team as them, because I served in church with them, because I'm in a run group with them, because they are my friend. I am closer to Jesus because of them. If people would look at you and say that, then that is fruit. So when we ask the question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? The answer is, well, it means that we will bear fruit. And what does it look like to bear fruit? Well, it looks like we're growing in our character and we're growing in our ministry, okay? That's what that looks like. So as we define spiritual health this morning and say, what does it mean to pursue spiritual health? That's what we're going after. The after picture before is, I'm not doing that stuff. I need to grow in my character. I need to grow in my ministry. The after picture is I am bearing fruit, both in character and impact. So as I'm at the gym and I'm thinking about this idea of physical health, what it means to pursue physical health, one of the things I realized is I think I had committed at first to go three days a week. That's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to go three days a week. I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do. I'm only going to do the stuff I want to do, and hopefully I get sweaty, and then I'll sit in the steam room, and then I'll go back to the house. That's what I'm going to do. But as I'm looking around at the people there, the people who look really healthy, and I'm thinking, I hope I can look like that. That's good for me. That's what I want to be, right? As I'm looking at those people, one of the things that occurred to me is, and it's really the thought for this week, is my goodness, what I see in them at the gym has a lot more to do with what they do at the gym. It has a lot more to do with what they do outside of the gym than what they do in it. You see? I'm looking at them going, man, their commitment to health is a lot more than 60 to 90 minutes three days a week. Their commitment to health is a lot more than coming into the gym and throwing up some weight and getting on a treadmill. And those of you who have pursued physical health before, you know that this is true. It takes a lot more. There's not just one thing that you can do. You can't just go to the gym three days a week and then do whatever you want to outside of the gym and get physically healthy. It doesn't take very long when you're valuing your physical health to realize that to get physically healthy, it really takes a holistic commitment to this health. If you're going to go to the gym and exercise or run or whatever it is you're going to do, at some point or another, you have to become at least moderately familiar with exercise science. You've got to know what the exercises are doing to your body when you do them. If you just repeat the same ones over and over and over again, you're not going to get physically healthy on a grand scale. You're just not. You're just going to have really big arms from doing curls. That's it. You've got to learn a little bit of exercise science, what it means to mix in some cardio. You have to learn to value that even though you don't want to. You have to learn what it means to eat right, not just healthily, but to eat right so that when you're at the gym, you're actually burning the stuff you want to burn off and not muscle, right? You have to learn that stuff. If you want to get physically healthy, then you have to be committed to eating right. You have to be committed to a diet. I would sometimes go to the gym in the afternoons, and that would impact the way that I ate lunch. I'd have a lunch meeting, and I'd want to eat something big and fun and filling, and realize I can't swim with that in my gut, so I've got to eat a wrap. Darn it. I have to eat fruit right now. But then I would actually feel decent later. So it begins to dictate all the things you do. You begin to think more holistically. You don't just eat to lose weight, but you eat to actually fuel yourself and get healthy. So you have to make a commitment to that. You make a commitment to sleep because you understand that the way that I sleep and the way that I rest really impacts the way that I'm able to perform when I'm trying to get healthy. And then sometimes to get healthy, and this is the hard part, means that you have to let go of something you really love, right? Any of you guys ever been to the doctor and they told you, all right, listen, here's the issue and you need to get better and if you want to get better, you got to chill out on the red meat red meat. That would be a tough one. I know that's coming. Both of my grandfathers on either side of the family had passed away from heart issues. So I'm really cruising for a bruising here if I keep it up with all the meat. I know that. At some point I'm going to have to give that up. I have found I'm a sucker for baked goods. I can be on quite the streak, and then some well-meaning jerk brings some stuff to, I'm just messing around about jerk. It's really sweet, sweet people bring stuff to the office, and I'm like, oh man, I really need to eat that right now. You know, like, and then staff members will mess with me, and they'll come and they'll put it on my desk, because they know that I'm a sucker for it, and I'm going to eat it. Like, I love that stuff, but sometimes getting physically healthy means giving up things that you really love, but it takes a holistic commitment, right? It doesn't just happen in the gym. And I think similarly, when we make a decision in our life and in our hearts that we want to pursue spiritual health, one of the things that we sometimes do is reduce that pursuit to a commitment to things like church and small group. And we don't intentionally reduce it to this, but we just start like anybody else does. Somebody says, I want to get physically healthy, and so they go, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start running and pursuing prioritized physical health there. I'm going to make this important. And so they take a couple steps to make it important, but as you get into it, what you realize is, oh my gosh, this is not going to cut it. I really need to be entirely, like I need to be bought all the way in on this, or I'm never going to actually get healthy. And it works the same way spiritually. I think a lot of us make decisions to pursue spiritual health, and then as a follow-through on that decision, we go, I'm going to attend church more regularly. I'm going to try to listen to worship music in the car. I'm going to try to go to small group. I'm going to get involved in serving at the church. And as I think about those things, those are good things. But I wonder, is that enough? If we're serious about getting spiritually healthy, is that commitment, I'm going to go to church more, I'm going to sign up for a small group, I'm going to take the plunge, I'm going to do that. Is that commitment really enough to bring about holistic spiritual health in our life? And I think there's a passage that actually answers this question. It's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It's in 2 Peter chapter 1. It'll be up on the screen in a minute when I start reading it. There's a Bible in front of you if you'd like to look at it yourself there. But it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Peter was like the leader of the disciples. And 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, as these disciples are popping up all over Asia Minor, Peter writes a letter. And the idea of this letter is for it to be circulated from church to church as he encourages them in their spiritual growth and their pursuit of spiritual health. And in the first chapter of the second letter that he wrote, that we call 2 Peter, he gives us what I think is a roadmap to spiritual health. He says, if you want to be spiritually healthy, then here's what you need to do. So I want us to look at this list together, verses 5, 6, and 7, and understand that this is really a roadmap to spiritual health. Here we go. For this very reason, Peter writes, make every effort. Another translation says, with all diligence. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. And virtue with knowledge. And knowledge with self-control. And self-control with steadfastness or perseverance, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Now, as an aside on this passage, this is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside on this, one of the things I love about the Christian faith is that it is really so simple. Jesus, when he comes on the scene, he boils all the do's and the don'ts and the things that we get worked up about down to two very simple commandments, love God and love others. And so the greatest of these, Paul tells us, of all attributes is love, and that's what we're supposed to pursue. And so part of us goes, okay, this is great. I just have to focus on loving other people and I will fulfill the law. Me and God will be good. And that's true. But what Peter says is you cannot possibly love until you've mastered brotherly affection. You cannot possibly master brotherly affection until you have mastered godliness. And you can't master that until you've mastered what comes before that, perseverance and all the rest, so that there's actually building blocks to even be capable of loving. We don't start at love, we work to it. That's an aside, but I think it's an interesting part about this passage. And so I would ask you, if these, faith, virtue, or integrity, knowledge, learning more about God and the Bible, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love, if those are the characteristics that we should pursue, he says make every effort to add to this characteristic, this characteristic. If those are the characteristics that we are to dedicate our life to pursuing that result in spiritual health, I would ask you, can you pursue those on a Sunday morning? If you just come to church every week, can you pursue these things? If you go to church and you add to that a small group and you add to that serving and that's your Jesus time, that's your God time, that's your spiritual health time during the week, can you build these characteristics in your life? Or as you read through those and think through the mechanics of pursuing them, does it sound like those need to be on your heart and on your mind every day? Do you think it's possible to come to church once a week, to go to our small group on Tuesday night, to serve once a month or twice a month when we're supposed to serve, and then go through the rest of our weeks like God's not a priority, to go through the rest of our weeks like he's almost an afterthought, to just wake up in the morning whenever our job requires us to wake up, to encounter the stress at our job as it comes to us, to maybe every now and again pray for our food before the meal, and then talk about spiritual things when it comes up. And if we're being honest, most of us get into a habit and into a cycle where that is really our spiritual effort. If that is true of us, is it possible to develop these characteristics in increasing measure in our lives? Does it sound like we are being obedient to what Paul tells us to do in Thessalonians where he says rejoice always and pray without ceasing? See, what I think is if we're going to be spiritually healthy, it requires a holistic commitment with our whole life. We can't just go to the gym three days a week and expect to get healthy. Do you see? That's the first step. But if we're actually serious about our spiritual health, and remember, even being here and listening to me, implicit in that action is that to some degree or another, my spiritual health matters to me. And what I want to tell you this morning is, if it really does, and if you really want to bear fruit, and if you really want to be spiritually healthy, then what it requires of you is a holistic spiritual commitment from your whole life to pursue the health that God outlines for you. It requires waking up in the morning and intentionally pursuing the presence of God, spending time in his word and spending time in prayer. It requires putting people around you who love you and who love Jesus. It requires being able to get to a place where you understand God's word and you grow in knowledge so that you can teach it. You at least have some sort of moderate understanding of how the Bible ties together. It is hard work to get spiritually healthy, but I think a lot of us live in this place where we can pursue spiritual health with a minimal commitment. And what I think Peter is telling us is it does not work that way. We have got to be holistically committed to spiritual health. We can't half-heartedly pursue it. And when people do this at the gym, we see what happens, right? I've been at the gym and I've seen these, it's usually dudes who, they can throw up a ton of weight, man. Like they get over there bench pressing and I'm like, yo, don't mess with that guy. Like they can really throw it up there. They're squatting all kinds of stuff. They got thighs the size of my waist. Like they're some big old dudes. But you can also look at them and you can go, but they don't really seem healthy. They had a bigger gut than me. They're strong. They're good at the gym. They're not healthy, right? I think this happens in church too. They're good at church. They know their Bible. But, man, there's some stuff about them. I don't know if they're healthy. They're kind of jerks. I don't know if I see fruit. I mean, they're good at church. Like, man, they are a killer in Bible study. You ask them a question, they know the answer. But I don't know if that's what I want to look like. Right? And so I wonder this. If you're in a place right now in your life where the after picture doesn't look like what you want it to look like, your spiritual health doesn't look like what you'd like it to look like, you would not look at where you are spiritually and say, this is where I wanted to be. And to me, to be a Christian is to have at least multiple seasons in your life where you look at yourself and you think in your heart and you know it. And this is so true of me. This has been true of me more times in my life and for more of a portion of my life than I even want to admit. But when I think about where I am spiritually, what I tend to think is, man, I should be so much further along. I should be past this now. And if you've ever thought that too, and we would sit where we are right now and say, you know what, I'm not spiritually where I'd like to be. I wonder if it's because we've just been going to the gym three days a week. I wonder if it's because we've just tried to half-heart it. And we haven't ever really made a holistic effort to being spiritually healthy. I wonder if it's because we know that there's something that we really like. And we want to be healthy, but we don't want to give that up. Some of us are still hanging on to that red meat. Right? But here's the thing, and this is why I love Peter. And this is why I love this passage. There's a promise at the end of this passage. Do you know what happens if you'll commit yourself to being spiritually healthy? If you'll radically change your priorities and make the holistic commitment to spiritual health? Look at what happens in verse 8, and I love this verse. It says, Isn't that great? If these qualities are yours and are increasing, if you will lean into these qualities, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive. If you lean into these qualities, if you pursue them with your whole heart, if you will commit to holistic spiritual health and do what it takes to allow God to work in your heart, to bring you closer to him, then Peter promises you that you will bear fruit. Your character will change. You will produce the fruit of the Spirit. And even, I think, more importantly than that, more impactful than that, more rewarding than that, is if you pursue these, then he guarantees you that when you get to the twilight of your life and you begin to look back on all the things that God did in you and through you, that what you will see in your wake is people who would point to you and say, I am closer to Jesus because you existed in my life. Isn't that what we want? All the other crap aside that we pursue with our life and that we put effort into, what could matter more than getting to the end of our life and being able to say what Paul said, that I have been poured out like a drink offering? What could possibly matter more than being able to look at the wake of our life over the decades and know in our heart that there are people who would point to us and say, I am closer to the Father because that person existed in my life. What could be more important to pursue than that? And Peter says, if you will make a commitment to pursuing spiritual health by making every effort to make these characteristics true of you, then I will promise you that one day as you look back on your life, you will see a wake of ministry and impact and character there that will lead to a fulfilling life. I promise you it is not wasted effort. I promise you it will not return null and void. I promise you this is the best possible way to invest your life. So I would just challenge you this morning by asking you, is it possible that your spiritual health isn't where you want it to be? Because in whole or in part, we've reduced that pursuit to going to the gym three days a week. And is your spiritual health worth making a life-altering, holistic commitment to the pursuit of it? I've been saying since the beginning of the year, I hope this is the year that you move closer to Jesus than you ever have. And a big part of that is, what are you willing to do to pursue it? Let's pray, and then I'm going to call the ushers forward for the offering. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for the way that you love us. God, we are so grateful that you meet us in our effort, that you meet us in our cry to be closer to you, and that you do the hard work for us. Father, I pray that we would commit, that we wouldn't make a half-hearted effort towards you, but that we would offer our entire selves to you, that we would follow this roadmap that you lay out in 2 Peter. God, I pray that the people of this church would be people who bear fruit in ministry, who grow in their character. Let us not be a church who simply goes to the gym. Whatever stands between us and health, Father, I pray that you would give us the courage to get it out of the way. Let us be people who know you and are fruitful in that knowledge. It's in your Son's name I pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. I'm Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. You guys, it's a holiday weekend. I mean, for the love of Peter, you're supposed to be out doing fun stuff. You chose to come to church. I am so thrilled about that. So it's good to see all of you, and thank you for coming on this Sunday morning. This is the third part of our series, Lessons from the Gym. As a disclaimer in that video, I've had a lot of people asking me, like, why do you think you're too good for turn lanes? Okay, here's what was happening in that video, is the shot was supposed to be, Nate, let me, this is, Steve was filming this, he says, Nate, let me get a shot of you exiting the gym, like pulling away, like that's the shot that we need to get. So I'm like, okay, good. So I pull out of the gym, and then I let him get a shot of that for as long as he could, driving down the road, and then just cut into the parking lot real quick to go pick him back up and not strand him. And what does he do but put that in the video and make me look like a degenerate? So thanks, Steve. But that's the story. I do actually abide by some, not all, but some traffic laws that make sense. All right. For the first couple of weeks that we've been in this series, we've been looking at what we're calling lessons from the gym and talking about getting spiritually healthy, right? Pursuing spiritual health in our lives. And as I've thought about it, what we've really been doing and what I've really been bringing to you is as you pursue spiritual health in your life, here are some things that I'd like for you to consider or to be aware of. And so the first week we said, here's five things that I want to tell you on your first day as you begin to pursue spiritual health. And then the next week, what I said was, listen, you can't do this alone. So those were things that were really descriptive to you of what does it take to be spiritual, like what do I need to know to be spiritually healthy? And so for the next two weeks, for this week and next week, I want to begin to answer the question, okay, what does it really mean to pursue spiritual health? What does it really require of me? What does it take to get there? And this whole time, I've been doing a parallel between pursuing physical health at the gym or working out or whatever it is we do to care for ourselves physically and paralleling that with our pursuit of spiritual health. And so as I got into the gym and began to pursue this physical health, there's a couple of things that became apparent to me. To go to the gym, to wake up one day and decide to go for a jog, to do push-ups, to buy a Beachbody DVD and try to do that, to do whatever it is you decide to do to get into the physical shape you want to get into, implicit in doing that, implicit in going to the gym, implicit in going for a jog, is this admission that I care about my physical health, right? If you don't care at all about your physical health and you don't go to the gym, you don't do the workout, you don't do the jog. You just eat the cinnamon rolls and sit on the couch. That's what you do. But to do any of those things, implicit in that action is an admission that physical health is important to me. And so when I went to the gym, everybody there is saying being physically healthy matters to me. The other thing is, as you go and you decide you want to be physically healthy, there are myriad goals within physical health, right? Everybody's got the before picture, and then we're all shooting for the after picture. We've got the before with the gut hanging out, we're wearing the t-shirt, we look like an overstuffed sausage. We've got that deal, and then we've got the after picture in our head, whatever it is that we're going for. And to some people, like, get in the gym and some people like they're in it, they're in it for the competitions. Like they are, they like go to competitions, they are lifting weights, they have figured out ways to isolate an exercise to get one strand of their triceps so that when they rub baby oil on it, it's really going to pop at the competition. Like that's their deal and that's their goal, which is also my goal. I'm very close. But that's what they want to do, right? They're in it for the competition. Others just, they just want to, like me, I just wanted to look good in a t-shirt. Like I just wanted to be able to put on a t-shirt, feel confidence without seeing my man gut. I'd love to be able to take Lily swimming and take my shirt off in front of other people and not be embarrassed about myself. Like that's pretty much it for me. Other people, they want to look good, but they want to be built, but not too built, you know. And others, when they start to get healthy, it's really not the way, it's really not about the way they look at all. It's about performance for them. They want to do a marathon or triathlon or whatever it is. And so for them, it's really about getting the body to be disciplined to do what it's supposed to do. And so people can have all kinds of different goals for their physical health, right? But whatever your goal is for your physical health, whatever you want the after picture to look like, there's actually a portion of the scientific community that has defined health for you. Whatever you want to look like, whatever you want your after picture to look like, whatever your reason was for going into the gym, if your goal is to be healthy, the scientific community has actually given you guidelines on what that health looks like, right? They're like, there's guidelines for BMI, for our body mass index, and for fat percentage. There's guidelines for what our cholesterol should be. There's guidelines for what our heart rate should be, our resting heart rate should be, for what our blood pressure should be. And really, whatever's going on outside of those indicators is fine and good, but if we're talking about health, there's actually some guidelines that dictate for us whether or not we are truly healthy. Because we can look fit and not be able to run a mile, and we can be cardiovascularly healthy but have some weakness in some other areas. So it's actually good to have a standard of physical health regardless of what our goals are for it. And in the same way, I think pursuing spiritual health parallels all of that really well. To me, to be in church in January, to be listening to this on a podcast or watching it online, implicit in the decision to do that, implicit in your decision to get up this morning to shower, which I hope you did, and then come here. And if you have kids, the hassle of getting them up and getting them ready for the early service. To do that, implicit in that is, hey, I care about my spiritual health. It could be a lot. It could be a little. But implicit in your attendance here is spiritual health matters to you. Implicit in listening to sermons online is the idea that spiritual health matters to you. And it could have mattered for a very long time. This could be an ongoing thing to you. This January is no different than last January or dozens before that. Or it could be a new initiative. But what I think is true of everyone in the room is that we are saying with our attendance that spiritual health matters to us. Now, there could be a difference in our spiritual goals. If we think about it as a before picture, this is what I looked like last year. This is what I looked like before I began to prioritize my spiritual health. And this is what I'd like to do now. There really is a wide range of goals that we could have. We could say, listen, I just want to be a good mom. I just want to exist in the house with my kids without losing my mind at them. That's what I want to be able to do. I'm just looking for a little bit of peace. Maybe it's my life has just felt so crazy that I just need some peace. I want to feel a connection with God. Maybe it's just things haven't been going my way for a while, and I just want to get some clarity about this. Maybe it's things have been going great and I want to begin to live a life out of this feeling of gratitude. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe we think I want to get plugged into a small group. I want to meet other people. I'd love for God to use me in ways in other people's life. I'd love to be involved in ministry in a volunteer capacity or even in a professional capacity. That's what I want to do. I'd love to be an elder of the church. I see these people that I admire, and I want to do that. Maybe we've got big, huge spiritual goals. Maybe we've got very modest spiritual goals, but we all have them, and I would say they're all good, at least as a starting place. But it got me to thinking, does the Bible, like the scientific community offers to those who are pursuing physical health some guidelines for what it actually looks like to be healthy, does the Bible offer similar guidelines to us for what it means to be spiritually healthy? And if it does, what are they? And I actually think that the Bible does this. Regardless of what your goals are, just to be a good spouse or a good co-worker or a good church partner or beyond that, regardless of what your goals are, does the Bible give to us standards that really define for us what spiritual health looks like, and I think that it does that. In the Bible, Old and New Testament, it talks a lot about this idea of bearing fruit, that if we're healthy, if we're good and we're vibrant, we will bear fruit. The book of Psalms was written by a guy named King David. He was the greatest king that Israel ever had. Jesus is going to sit on his throne one day. The flag flying over Israel now bears his star. He's an important dude. And he wrote the longest book in the Bible, Psalms, which is actually a collection of five different books. And in the Psalms are basically journal entries from David. Worship songs, times when he was sad, times when he was joyful, times when he, blessed are those who do not invest their time with people who don't love Jesus and love them, like what we talked about last week. But if we will delight ourselves in the law of the Lord, if we will pursue him in spiritual health, then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water. We will yield our fruit in season, and all that we do, we will prosper. We will yield fruit if we follow the Lord. So then the question becomes, okay, what does that fruit look like? And I think that answer is twofold, and we find it in the New Testament. If we're going to ask ourselves, what does it look like to bear fruit, to be spiritually healthy to a place where we are bearing fruit, what does that look like? Well, Paul answers this question in the book of Galatians. I talk about Paul a lot. He was a really influential Christian. He planted churches, and then he wrote letters back to the churches. And one of the churches he planted was in Galatia. And he wrote a letter back to them that became the book of Galatians in our New Testament. And in the fifth chapter, there's this really famous, and you will bear the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so, to that question of what does it look like to bear fruit, what does it look like to be spiritually healthy, well, it means that we're going to bear fruit. Well, what kind of fruit are we going to bear? Well, Paul tells us in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think of that as character. So to answer the question first, if we are going to be spiritually healthy, what is an indicator of that? Well, our character is an indicator of that. As a matter of fact, I think this is such a good diagnostic tool that within churches there's always this question, am I really saved? How do I really know if I know Jesus? How do I really know if I'm going to heaven? And I say, well, Ephesians tells us that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a deposit on our salvation, that God's going to make good on this promise. And we can tell if we have the Holy Spirit in our life by whether or not we bear the fruit that Paul lists out in Galatians chapter 5. So I would tell you, if you want to know whether or not you know Jesus, look at the wake of your life over the past three to five years and ask yourself the question, are those things growing in my life? Are those eight, nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those things growing in my life? Are those nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those increasing in my life, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Are those increasing in my life? Am I growing in those areas? If you're not, it doesn't do you any good to lie to yourself about it. I think it does us a lot of good to get on our knees and pray about it. But if we're going to ask that question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? Well, we have to ask ourselves, am I bearing fruit? I think there's twofold ways that we bear that fruit. And the first is to be growing in our character as outlined in Galatians 5.22. The other way we see ourselves bearing fruit based on scripture is found in a lot of places, but I'm going to look at John 15, where Jesus says, and I've talked about this in recent weeks, I am the tree, essentially, I am the tree and you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. And in this instance, he's talking to the disciples. And when he's saying bearing much fruit, what he means is you will produce a lot of ministry. There will be people who are closer to me, closer to Jesus, as a result of you being in their life. And so biblically, to bear fruit means to grow in character and to grow our personal ministries. Does that make sense? And what that means is, can I look at my life, at the wake of my life, and point to individuals who would say, because that person is in my life, because I've been in PTA with them, because I work with them, because I played on the same tennis team as them, because I served in church with them, because I'm in a run group with them, because they are my friend. I am closer to Jesus because of them. If people would look at you and say that, then that is fruit. So when we ask the question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? The answer is, well, it means that we will bear fruit. And what does it look like to bear fruit? Well, it looks like we're growing in our character and we're growing in our ministry, okay? That's what that looks like. So as we define spiritual health this morning and say, what does it mean to pursue spiritual health? That's what we're going after. The after picture before is, I'm not doing that stuff. I need to grow in my character. I need to grow in my ministry. The after picture is I am bearing fruit, both in character and impact. So as I'm at the gym and I'm thinking about this idea of physical health, what it means to pursue physical health, one of the things I realized is I think I had committed at first to go three days a week. That's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to go three days a week. I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do. I'm only going to do the stuff I want to do, and hopefully I get sweaty, and then I'll sit in the steam room, and then I'll go back to the house. That's what I'm going to do. But as I'm looking around at the people there, the people who look really healthy, and I'm thinking, I hope I can look like that. That's good for me. That's what I want to be, right? As I'm looking at those people, one of the things that occurred to me is, and it's really the thought for this week, is my goodness, what I see in them at the gym has a lot more to do with what they do at the gym. It has a lot more to do with what they do outside of the gym than what they do in it. You see? I'm looking at them going, man, their commitment to health is a lot more than 60 to 90 minutes three days a week. Their commitment to health is a lot more than coming into the gym and throwing up some weight and getting on a treadmill. And those of you who have pursued physical health before, you know that this is true. It takes a lot more. There's not just one thing that you can do. You can't just go to the gym three days a week and then do whatever you want to outside of the gym and get physically healthy. It doesn't take very long when you're valuing your physical health to realize that to get physically healthy, it really takes a holistic commitment to this health. If you're going to go to the gym and exercise or run or whatever it is you're going to do, at some point or another, you have to become at least moderately familiar with exercise science. You've got to know what the exercises are doing to your body when you do them. If you just repeat the same ones over and over and over again, you're not going to get physically healthy on a grand scale. You're just not. You're just going to have really big arms from doing curls. That's it. You've got to learn a little bit of exercise science, what it means to mix in some cardio. You have to learn to value that even though you don't want to. You have to learn what it means to eat right, not just healthily, but to eat right so that when you're at the gym, you're actually burning the stuff you want to burn off and not muscle, right? You have to learn that stuff. If you want to get physically healthy, then you have to be committed to eating right. You have to be committed to a diet. I would sometimes go to the gym in the afternoons, and that would impact the way that I ate lunch. I'd have a lunch meeting, and I'd want to eat something big and fun and filling, and realize I can't swim with that in my gut, so I've got to eat a wrap. Darn it. I have to eat fruit right now. But then I would actually feel decent later. So it begins to dictate all the things you do. You begin to think more holistically. You don't just eat to lose weight, but you eat to actually fuel yourself and get healthy. So you have to make a commitment to that. You make a commitment to sleep because you understand that the way that I sleep and the way that I rest really impacts the way that I'm able to perform when I'm trying to get healthy. And then sometimes to get healthy, and this is the hard part, means that you have to let go of something you really love, right? Any of you guys ever been to the doctor and they told you, all right, listen, here's the issue and you need to get better and if you want to get better, you got to chill out on the red meat red meat. That would be a tough one. I know that's coming. Both of my grandfathers on either side of the family had passed away from heart issues. So I'm really cruising for a bruising here if I keep it up with all the meat. I know that. At some point I'm going to have to give that up. I have found I'm a sucker for baked goods. I can be on quite the streak, and then some well-meaning jerk brings some stuff to, I'm just messing around about jerk. It's really sweet, sweet people bring stuff to the office, and I'm like, oh man, I really need to eat that right now. You know, like, and then staff members will mess with me, and they'll come and they'll put it on my desk, because they know that I'm a sucker for it, and I'm going to eat it. Like, I love that stuff, but sometimes getting physically healthy means giving up things that you really love, but it takes a holistic commitment, right? It doesn't just happen in the gym. And I think similarly, when we make a decision in our life and in our hearts that we want to pursue spiritual health, one of the things that we sometimes do is reduce that pursuit to a commitment to things like church and small group. And we don't intentionally reduce it to this, but we just start like anybody else does. Somebody says, I want to get physically healthy, and so they go, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start running and pursuing prioritized physical health there. I'm going to make this important. And so they take a couple steps to make it important, but as you get into it, what you realize is, oh my gosh, this is not going to cut it. I really need to be entirely, like I need to be bought all the way in on this, or I'm never going to actually get healthy. And it works the same way spiritually. I think a lot of us make decisions to pursue spiritual health, and then as a follow-through on that decision, we go, I'm going to attend church more regularly. I'm going to try to listen to worship music in the car. I'm going to try to go to small group. I'm going to get involved in serving at the church. And as I think about those things, those are good things. But I wonder, is that enough? If we're serious about getting spiritually healthy, is that commitment, I'm going to go to church more, I'm going to sign up for a small group, I'm going to take the plunge, I'm going to do that. Is that commitment really enough to bring about holistic spiritual health in our life? And I think there's a passage that actually answers this question. It's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It's in 2 Peter chapter 1. It'll be up on the screen in a minute when I start reading it. There's a Bible in front of you if you'd like to look at it yourself there. But it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Peter was like the leader of the disciples. And 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, as these disciples are popping up all over Asia Minor, Peter writes a letter. And the idea of this letter is for it to be circulated from church to church as he encourages them in their spiritual growth and their pursuit of spiritual health. And in the first chapter of the second letter that he wrote, that we call 2 Peter, he gives us what I think is a roadmap to spiritual health. He says, if you want to be spiritually healthy, then here's what you need to do. So I want us to look at this list together, verses 5, 6, and 7, and understand that this is really a roadmap to spiritual health. Here we go. For this very reason, Peter writes, make every effort. Another translation says, with all diligence. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. And virtue with knowledge. And knowledge with self-control. And self-control with steadfastness or perseverance, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Now, as an aside on this passage, this is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside on this, one of the things I love about the Christian faith is that it is really so simple. Jesus, when he comes on the scene, he boils all the do's and the don'ts and the things that we get worked up about down to two very simple commandments, love God and love others. And so the greatest of these, Paul tells us, of all attributes is love, and that's what we're supposed to pursue. And so part of us goes, okay, this is great. I just have to focus on loving other people and I will fulfill the law. Me and God will be good. And that's true. But what Peter says is you cannot possibly love until you've mastered brotherly affection. You cannot possibly master brotherly affection until you have mastered godliness. And you can't master that until you've mastered what comes before that, perseverance and all the rest, so that there's actually building blocks to even be capable of loving. We don't start at love, we work to it. That's an aside, but I think it's an interesting part about this passage. And so I would ask you, if these, faith, virtue, or integrity, knowledge, learning more about God and the Bible, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love, if those are the characteristics that we should pursue, he says make every effort to add to this characteristic, this characteristic. If those are the characteristics that we are to dedicate our life to pursuing that result in spiritual health, I would ask you, can you pursue those on a Sunday morning? If you just come to church every week, can you pursue these things? If you go to church and you add to that a small group and you add to that serving and that's your Jesus time, that's your God time, that's your spiritual health time during the week, can you build these characteristics in your life? Or as you read through those and think through the mechanics of pursuing them, does it sound like those need to be on your heart and on your mind every day? Do you think it's possible to come to church once a week, to go to our small group on Tuesday night, to serve once a month or twice a month when we're supposed to serve, and then go through the rest of our weeks like God's not a priority, to go through the rest of our weeks like he's almost an afterthought, to just wake up in the morning whenever our job requires us to wake up, to encounter the stress at our job as it comes to us, to maybe every now and again pray for our food before the meal, and then talk about spiritual things when it comes up. And if we're being honest, most of us get into a habit and into a cycle where that is really our spiritual effort. If that is true of us, is it possible to develop these characteristics in increasing measure in our lives? Does it sound like we are being obedient to what Paul tells us to do in Thessalonians where he says rejoice always and pray without ceasing? See, what I think is if we're going to be spiritually healthy, it requires a holistic commitment with our whole life. We can't just go to the gym three days a week and expect to get healthy. Do you see? That's the first step. But if we're actually serious about our spiritual health, and remember, even being here and listening to me, implicit in that action is that to some degree or another, my spiritual health matters to me. And what I want to tell you this morning is, if it really does, and if you really want to bear fruit, and if you really want to be spiritually healthy, then what it requires of you is a holistic spiritual commitment from your whole life to pursue the health that God outlines for you. It requires waking up in the morning and intentionally pursuing the presence of God, spending time in his word and spending time in prayer. It requires putting people around you who love you and who love Jesus. It requires being able to get to a place where you understand God's word and you grow in knowledge so that you can teach it. You at least have some sort of moderate understanding of how the Bible ties together. It is hard work to get spiritually healthy, but I think a lot of us live in this place where we can pursue spiritual health with a minimal commitment. And what I think Peter is telling us is it does not work that way. We have got to be holistically committed to spiritual health. We can't half-heartedly pursue it. And when people do this at the gym, we see what happens, right? I've been at the gym and I've seen these, it's usually dudes who, they can throw up a ton of weight, man. Like they get over there bench pressing and I'm like, yo, don't mess with that guy. Like they can really throw it up there. They're squatting all kinds of stuff. They got thighs the size of my waist. Like they're some big old dudes. But you can also look at them and you can go, but they don't really seem healthy. They had a bigger gut than me. They're strong. They're good at the gym. They're not healthy, right? I think this happens in church too. They're good at church. They know their Bible. But, man, there's some stuff about them. I don't know if they're healthy. They're kind of jerks. I don't know if I see fruit. I mean, they're good at church. Like, man, they are a killer in Bible study. You ask them a question, they know the answer. But I don't know if that's what I want to look like. Right? And so I wonder this. If you're in a place right now in your life where the after picture doesn't look like what you want it to look like, your spiritual health doesn't look like what you'd like it to look like, you would not look at where you are spiritually and say, this is where I wanted to be. And to me, to be a Christian is to have at least multiple seasons in your life where you look at yourself and you think in your heart and you know it. And this is so true of me. This has been true of me more times in my life and for more of a portion of my life than I even want to admit. But when I think about where I am spiritually, what I tend to think is, man, I should be so much further along. I should be past this now. And if you've ever thought that too, and we would sit where we are right now and say, you know what, I'm not spiritually where I'd like to be. I wonder if it's because we've just been going to the gym three days a week. I wonder if it's because we've just tried to half-heart it. And we haven't ever really made a holistic effort to being spiritually healthy. I wonder if it's because we know that there's something that we really like. And we want to be healthy, but we don't want to give that up. Some of us are still hanging on to that red meat. Right? But here's the thing, and this is why I love Peter. And this is why I love this passage. There's a promise at the end of this passage. Do you know what happens if you'll commit yourself to being spiritually healthy? If you'll radically change your priorities and make the holistic commitment to spiritual health? Look at what happens in verse 8, and I love this verse. It says, Isn't that great? If these qualities are yours and are increasing, if you will lean into these qualities, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive. If you lean into these qualities, if you pursue them with your whole heart, if you will commit to holistic spiritual health and do what it takes to allow God to work in your heart, to bring you closer to him, then Peter promises you that you will bear fruit. Your character will change. You will produce the fruit of the Spirit. And even, I think, more importantly than that, more impactful than that, more rewarding than that, is if you pursue these, then he guarantees you that when you get to the twilight of your life and you begin to look back on all the things that God did in you and through you, that what you will see in your wake is people who would point to you and say, I am closer to Jesus because you existed in my life. Isn't that what we want? All the other crap aside that we pursue with our life and that we put effort into, what could matter more than getting to the end of our life and being able to say what Paul said, that I have been poured out like a drink offering? What could possibly matter more than being able to look at the wake of our life over the decades and know in our heart that there are people who would point to us and say, I am closer to the Father because that person existed in my life. What could be more important to pursue than that? And Peter says, if you will make a commitment to pursuing spiritual health by making every effort to make these characteristics true of you, then I will promise you that one day as you look back on your life, you will see a wake of ministry and impact and character there that will lead to a fulfilling life. I promise you it is not wasted effort. I promise you it will not return null and void. I promise you this is the best possible way to invest your life. So I would just challenge you this morning by asking you, is it possible that your spiritual health isn't where you want it to be? Because in whole or in part, we've reduced that pursuit to going to the gym three days a week. And is your spiritual health worth making a life-altering, holistic commitment to the pursuit of it? I've been saying since the beginning of the year, I hope this is the year that you move closer to Jesus than you ever have. And a big part of that is, what are you willing to do to pursue it? Let's pray, and then I'm going to call the ushers forward for the offering. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for the way that you love us. God, we are so grateful that you meet us in our effort, that you meet us in our cry to be closer to you, and that you do the hard work for us. Father, I pray that we would commit, that we wouldn't make a half-hearted effort towards you, but that we would offer our entire selves to you, that we would follow this roadmap that you lay out in 2 Peter. God, I pray that the people of this church would be people who bear fruit in ministry, who grow in their character. Let us not be a church who simply goes to the gym. Whatever stands between us and health, Father, I pray that you would give us the courage to get it out of the way. Let us be people who know you and are fruitful in that knowledge. It's in your Son's name I pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. I'm Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. You guys, it's a holiday weekend. I mean, for the love of Peter, you're supposed to be out doing fun stuff. You chose to come to church. I am so thrilled about that. So it's good to see all of you, and thank you for coming on this Sunday morning. This is the third part of our series, Lessons from the Gym. As a disclaimer in that video, I've had a lot of people asking me, like, why do you think you're too good for turn lanes? Okay, here's what was happening in that video, is the shot was supposed to be, Nate, let me, this is, Steve was filming this, he says, Nate, let me get a shot of you exiting the gym, like pulling away, like that's the shot that we need to get. So I'm like, okay, good. So I pull out of the gym, and then I let him get a shot of that for as long as he could, driving down the road, and then just cut into the parking lot real quick to go pick him back up and not strand him. And what does he do but put that in the video and make me look like a degenerate? So thanks, Steve. But that's the story. I do actually abide by some, not all, but some traffic laws that make sense. All right. For the first couple of weeks that we've been in this series, we've been looking at what we're calling lessons from the gym and talking about getting spiritually healthy, right? Pursuing spiritual health in our lives. And as I've thought about it, what we've really been doing and what I've really been bringing to you is as you pursue spiritual health in your life, here are some things that I'd like for you to consider or to be aware of. And so the first week we said, here's five things that I want to tell you on your first day as you begin to pursue spiritual health. And then the next week, what I said was, listen, you can't do this alone. So those were things that were really descriptive to you of what does it take to be spiritual, like what do I need to know to be spiritually healthy? And so for the next two weeks, for this week and next week, I want to begin to answer the question, okay, what does it really mean to pursue spiritual health? What does it really require of me? What does it take to get there? And this whole time, I've been doing a parallel between pursuing physical health at the gym or working out or whatever it is we do to care for ourselves physically and paralleling that with our pursuit of spiritual health. And so as I got into the gym and began to pursue this physical health, there's a couple of things that became apparent to me. To go to the gym, to wake up one day and decide to go for a jog, to do push-ups, to buy a Beachbody DVD and try to do that, to do whatever it is you decide to do to get into the physical shape you want to get into, implicit in doing that, implicit in going to the gym, implicit in going for a jog, is this admission that I care about my physical health, right? If you don't care at all about your physical health and you don't go to the gym, you don't do the workout, you don't do the jog. You just eat the cinnamon rolls and sit on the couch. That's what you do. But to do any of those things, implicit in that action is an admission that physical health is important to me. And so when I went to the gym, everybody there is saying being physically healthy matters to me. The other thing is, as you go and you decide you want to be physically healthy, there are myriad goals within physical health, right? Everybody's got the before picture, and then we're all shooting for the after picture. We've got the before with the gut hanging out, we're wearing the t-shirt, we look like an overstuffed sausage. We've got that deal, and then we've got the after picture in our head, whatever it is that we're going for. And to some people, like, get in the gym and some people like they're in it, they're in it for the competitions. Like they are, they like go to competitions, they are lifting weights, they have figured out ways to isolate an exercise to get one strand of their triceps so that when they rub baby oil on it, it's really going to pop at the competition. Like that's their deal and that's their goal, which is also my goal. I'm very close. But that's what they want to do, right? They're in it for the competition. Others just, they just want to, like me, I just wanted to look good in a t-shirt. Like I just wanted to be able to put on a t-shirt, feel confidence without seeing my man gut. I'd love to be able to take Lily swimming and take my shirt off in front of other people and not be embarrassed about myself. Like that's pretty much it for me. Other people, they want to look good, but they want to be built, but not too built, you know. And others, when they start to get healthy, it's really not the way, it's really not about the way they look at all. It's about performance for them. They want to do a marathon or triathlon or whatever it is. And so for them, it's really about getting the body to be disciplined to do what it's supposed to do. And so people can have all kinds of different goals for their physical health, right? But whatever your goal is for your physical health, whatever you want the after picture to look like, there's actually a portion of the scientific community that has defined health for you. Whatever you want to look like, whatever you want your after picture to look like, whatever your reason was for going into the gym, if your goal is to be healthy, the scientific community has actually given you guidelines on what that health looks like, right? They're like, there's guidelines for BMI, for our body mass index, and for fat percentage. There's guidelines for what our cholesterol should be. There's guidelines for what our heart rate should be, our resting heart rate should be, for what our blood pressure should be. And really, whatever's going on outside of those indicators is fine and good, but if we're talking about health, there's actually some guidelines that dictate for us whether or not we are truly healthy. Because we can look fit and not be able to run a mile, and we can be cardiovascularly healthy but have some weakness in some other areas. So it's actually good to have a standard of physical health regardless of what our goals are for it. And in the same way, I think pursuing spiritual health parallels all of that really well. To me, to be in church in January, to be listening to this on a podcast or watching it online, implicit in the decision to do that, implicit in your decision to get up this morning to shower, which I hope you did, and then come here. And if you have kids, the hassle of getting them up and getting them ready for the early service. To do that, implicit in that is, hey, I care about my spiritual health. It could be a lot. It could be a little. But implicit in your attendance here is spiritual health matters to you. Implicit in listening to sermons online is the idea that spiritual health matters to you. And it could have mattered for a very long time. This could be an ongoing thing to you. This January is no different than last January or dozens before that. Or it could be a new initiative. But what I think is true of everyone in the room is that we are saying with our attendance that spiritual health matters to us. Now, there could be a difference in our spiritual goals. If we think about it as a before picture, this is what I looked like last year. This is what I looked like before I began to prioritize my spiritual health. And this is what I'd like to do now. There really is a wide range of goals that we could have. We could say, listen, I just want to be a good mom. I just want to exist in the house with my kids without losing my mind at them. That's what I want to be able to do. I'm just looking for a little bit of peace. Maybe it's my life has just felt so crazy that I just need some peace. I want to feel a connection with God. Maybe it's just things haven't been going my way for a while, and I just want to get some clarity about this. Maybe it's things have been going great and I want to begin to live a life out of this feeling of gratitude. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe we think I want to get plugged into a small group. I want to meet other people. I'd love for God to use me in ways in other people's life. I'd love to be involved in ministry in a volunteer capacity or even in a professional capacity. That's what I want to do. I'd love to be an elder of the church. I see these people that I admire, and I want to do that. Maybe we've got big, huge spiritual goals. Maybe we've got very modest spiritual goals, but we all have them, and I would say they're all good, at least as a starting place. But it got me to thinking, does the Bible, like the scientific community offers to those who are pursuing physical health some guidelines for what it actually looks like to be healthy, does the Bible offer similar guidelines to us for what it means to be spiritually healthy? And if it does, what are they? And I actually think that the Bible does this. Regardless of what your goals are, just to be a good spouse or a good co-worker or a good church partner or beyond that, regardless of what your goals are, does the Bible give to us standards that really define for us what spiritual health looks like, and I think that it does that. In the Bible, Old and New Testament, it talks a lot about this idea of bearing fruit, that if we're healthy, if we're good and we're vibrant, we will bear fruit. The book of Psalms was written by a guy named King David. He was the greatest king that Israel ever had. Jesus is going to sit on his throne one day. The flag flying over Israel now bears his star. He's an important dude. And he wrote the longest book in the Bible, Psalms, which is actually a collection of five different books. And in the Psalms are basically journal entries from David. Worship songs, times when he was sad, times when he was joyful, times when he, blessed are those who do not invest their time with people who don't love Jesus and love them, like what we talked about last week. But if we will delight ourselves in the law of the Lord, if we will pursue him in spiritual health, then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water. We will yield our fruit in season, and all that we do, we will prosper. We will yield fruit if we follow the Lord. So then the question becomes, okay, what does that fruit look like? And I think that answer is twofold, and we find it in the New Testament. If we're going to ask ourselves, what does it look like to bear fruit, to be spiritually healthy to a place where we are bearing fruit, what does that look like? Well, Paul answers this question in the book of Galatians. I talk about Paul a lot. He was a really influential Christian. He planted churches, and then he wrote letters back to the churches. And one of the churches he planted was in Galatia. And he wrote a letter back to them that became the book of Galatians in our New Testament. And in the fifth chapter, there's this really famous, and you will bear the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so, to that question of what does it look like to bear fruit, what does it look like to be spiritually healthy, well, it means that we're going to bear fruit. Well, what kind of fruit are we going to bear? Well, Paul tells us in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think of that as character. So to answer the question first, if we are going to be spiritually healthy, what is an indicator of that? Well, our character is an indicator of that. As a matter of fact, I think this is such a good diagnostic tool that within churches there's always this question, am I really saved? How do I really know if I know Jesus? How do I really know if I'm going to heaven? And I say, well, Ephesians tells us that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a deposit on our salvation, that God's going to make good on this promise. And we can tell if we have the Holy Spirit in our life by whether or not we bear the fruit that Paul lists out in Galatians chapter 5. So I would tell you, if you want to know whether or not you know Jesus, look at the wake of your life over the past three to five years and ask yourself the question, are those things growing in my life? Are those eight, nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those things growing in my life? Are those nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those increasing in my life, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Are those increasing in my life? Am I growing in those areas? If you're not, it doesn't do you any good to lie to yourself about it. I think it does us a lot of good to get on our knees and pray about it. But if we're going to ask that question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? Well, we have to ask ourselves, am I bearing fruit? I think there's twofold ways that we bear that fruit. And the first is to be growing in our character as outlined in Galatians 5.22. The other way we see ourselves bearing fruit based on scripture is found in a lot of places, but I'm going to look at John 15, where Jesus says, and I've talked about this in recent weeks, I am the tree, essentially, I am the tree and you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. And in this instance, he's talking to the disciples. And when he's saying bearing much fruit, what he means is you will produce a lot of ministry. There will be people who are closer to me, closer to Jesus, as a result of you being in their life. And so biblically, to bear fruit means to grow in character and to grow our personal ministries. Does that make sense? And what that means is, can I look at my life, at the wake of my life, and point to individuals who would say, because that person is in my life, because I've been in PTA with them, because I work with them, because I played on the same tennis team as them, because I served in church with them, because I'm in a run group with them, because they are my friend. I am closer to Jesus because of them. If people would look at you and say that, then that is fruit. So when we ask the question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? The answer is, well, it means that we will bear fruit. And what does it look like to bear fruit? Well, it looks like we're growing in our character and we're growing in our ministry, okay? That's what that looks like. So as we define spiritual health this morning and say, what does it mean to pursue spiritual health? That's what we're going after. The after picture before is, I'm not doing that stuff. I need to grow in my character. I need to grow in my ministry. The after picture is I am bearing fruit, both in character and impact. So as I'm at the gym and I'm thinking about this idea of physical health, what it means to pursue physical health, one of the things I realized is I think I had committed at first to go three days a week. That's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to go three days a week. I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do. I'm only going to do the stuff I want to do, and hopefully I get sweaty, and then I'll sit in the steam room, and then I'll go back to the house. That's what I'm going to do. But as I'm looking around at the people there, the people who look really healthy, and I'm thinking, I hope I can look like that. That's good for me. That's what I want to be, right? As I'm looking at those people, one of the things that occurred to me is, and it's really the thought for this week, is my goodness, what I see in them at the gym has a lot more to do with what they do at the gym. It has a lot more to do with what they do outside of the gym than what they do in it. You see? I'm looking at them going, man, their commitment to health is a lot more than 60 to 90 minutes three days a week. Their commitment to health is a lot more than coming into the gym and throwing up some weight and getting on a treadmill. And those of you who have pursued physical health before, you know that this is true. It takes a lot more. There's not just one thing that you can do. You can't just go to the gym three days a week and then do whatever you want to outside of the gym and get physically healthy. It doesn't take very long when you're valuing your physical health to realize that to get physically healthy, it really takes a holistic commitment to this health. If you're going to go to the gym and exercise or run or whatever it is you're going to do, at some point or another, you have to become at least moderately familiar with exercise science. You've got to know what the exercises are doing to your body when you do them. If you just repeat the same ones over and over and over again, you're not going to get physically healthy on a grand scale. You're just not. You're just going to have really big arms from doing curls. That's it. You've got to learn a little bit of exercise science, what it means to mix in some cardio. You have to learn to value that even though you don't want to. You have to learn what it means to eat right, not just healthily, but to eat right so that when you're at the gym, you're actually burning the stuff you want to burn off and not muscle, right? You have to learn that stuff. If you want to get physically healthy, then you have to be committed to eating right. You have to be committed to a diet. I would sometimes go to the gym in the afternoons, and that would impact the way that I ate lunch. I'd have a lunch meeting, and I'd want to eat something big and fun and filling, and realize I can't swim with that in my gut, so I've got to eat a wrap. Darn it. I have to eat fruit right now. But then I would actually feel decent later. So it begins to dictate all the things you do. You begin to think more holistically. You don't just eat to lose weight, but you eat to actually fuel yourself and get healthy. So you have to make a commitment to that. You make a commitment to sleep because you understand that the way that I sleep and the way that I rest really impacts the way that I'm able to perform when I'm trying to get healthy. And then sometimes to get healthy, and this is the hard part, means that you have to let go of something you really love, right? Any of you guys ever been to the doctor and they told you, all right, listen, here's the issue and you need to get better and if you want to get better, you got to chill out on the red meat red meat. That would be a tough one. I know that's coming. Both of my grandfathers on either side of the family had passed away from heart issues. So I'm really cruising for a bruising here if I keep it up with all the meat. I know that. At some point I'm going to have to give that up. I have found I'm a sucker for baked goods. I can be on quite the streak, and then some well-meaning jerk brings some stuff to, I'm just messing around about jerk. It's really sweet, sweet people bring stuff to the office, and I'm like, oh man, I really need to eat that right now. You know, like, and then staff members will mess with me, and they'll come and they'll put it on my desk, because they know that I'm a sucker for it, and I'm going to eat it. Like, I love that stuff, but sometimes getting physically healthy means giving up things that you really love, but it takes a holistic commitment, right? It doesn't just happen in the gym. And I think similarly, when we make a decision in our life and in our hearts that we want to pursue spiritual health, one of the things that we sometimes do is reduce that pursuit to a commitment to things like church and small group. And we don't intentionally reduce it to this, but we just start like anybody else does. Somebody says, I want to get physically healthy, and so they go, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start running and pursuing prioritized physical health there. I'm going to make this important. And so they take a couple steps to make it important, but as you get into it, what you realize is, oh my gosh, this is not going to cut it. I really need to be entirely, like I need to be bought all the way in on this, or I'm never going to actually get healthy. And it works the same way spiritually. I think a lot of us make decisions to pursue spiritual health, and then as a follow-through on that decision, we go, I'm going to attend church more regularly. I'm going to try to listen to worship music in the car. I'm going to try to go to small group. I'm going to get involved in serving at the church. And as I think about those things, those are good things. But I wonder, is that enough? If we're serious about getting spiritually healthy, is that commitment, I'm going to go to church more, I'm going to sign up for a small group, I'm going to take the plunge, I'm going to do that. Is that commitment really enough to bring about holistic spiritual health in our life? And I think there's a passage that actually answers this question. It's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It's in 2 Peter chapter 1. It'll be up on the screen in a minute when I start reading it. There's a Bible in front of you if you'd like to look at it yourself there. But it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Peter was like the leader of the disciples. And 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, as these disciples are popping up all over Asia Minor, Peter writes a letter. And the idea of this letter is for it to be circulated from church to church as he encourages them in their spiritual growth and their pursuit of spiritual health. And in the first chapter of the second letter that he wrote, that we call 2 Peter, he gives us what I think is a roadmap to spiritual health. He says, if you want to be spiritually healthy, then here's what you need to do. So I want us to look at this list together, verses 5, 6, and 7, and understand that this is really a roadmap to spiritual health. Here we go. For this very reason, Peter writes, make every effort. Another translation says, with all diligence. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. And virtue with knowledge. And knowledge with self-control. And self-control with steadfastness or perseverance, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Now, as an aside on this passage, this is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside on this, one of the things I love about the Christian faith is that it is really so simple. Jesus, when he comes on the scene, he boils all the do's and the don'ts and the things that we get worked up about down to two very simple commandments, love God and love others. And so the greatest of these, Paul tells us, of all attributes is love, and that's what we're supposed to pursue. And so part of us goes, okay, this is great. I just have to focus on loving other people and I will fulfill the law. Me and God will be good. And that's true. But what Peter says is you cannot possibly love until you've mastered brotherly affection. You cannot possibly master brotherly affection until you have mastered godliness. And you can't master that until you've mastered what comes before that, perseverance and all the rest, so that there's actually building blocks to even be capable of loving. We don't start at love, we work to it. That's an aside, but I think it's an interesting part about this passage. And so I would ask you, if these, faith, virtue, or integrity, knowledge, learning more about God and the Bible, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love, if those are the characteristics that we should pursue, he says make every effort to add to this characteristic, this characteristic. If those are the characteristics that we are to dedicate our life to pursuing that result in spiritual health, I would ask you, can you pursue those on a Sunday morning? If you just come to church every week, can you pursue these things? If you go to church and you add to that a small group and you add to that serving and that's your Jesus time, that's your God time, that's your spiritual health time during the week, can you build these characteristics in your life? Or as you read through those and think through the mechanics of pursuing them, does it sound like those need to be on your heart and on your mind every day? Do you think it's possible to come to church once a week, to go to our small group on Tuesday night, to serve once a month or twice a month when we're supposed to serve, and then go through the rest of our weeks like God's not a priority, to go through the rest of our weeks like he's almost an afterthought, to just wake up in the morning whenever our job requires us to wake up, to encounter the stress at our job as it comes to us, to maybe every now and again pray for our food before the meal, and then talk about spiritual things when it comes up. And if we're being honest, most of us get into a habit and into a cycle where that is really our spiritual effort. If that is true of us, is it possible to develop these characteristics in increasing measure in our lives? Does it sound like we are being obedient to what Paul tells us to do in Thessalonians where he says rejoice always and pray without ceasing? See, what I think is if we're going to be spiritually healthy, it requires a holistic commitment with our whole life. We can't just go to the gym three days a week and expect to get healthy. Do you see? That's the first step. But if we're actually serious about our spiritual health, and remember, even being here and listening to me, implicit in that action is that to some degree or another, my spiritual health matters to me. And what I want to tell you this morning is, if it really does, and if you really want to bear fruit, and if you really want to be spiritually healthy, then what it requires of you is a holistic spiritual commitment from your whole life to pursue the health that God outlines for you. It requires waking up in the morning and intentionally pursuing the presence of God, spending time in his word and spending time in prayer. It requires putting people around you who love you and who love Jesus. It requires being able to get to a place where you understand God's word and you grow in knowledge so that you can teach it. You at least have some sort of moderate understanding of how the Bible ties together. It is hard work to get spiritually healthy, but I think a lot of us live in this place where we can pursue spiritual health with a minimal commitment. And what I think Peter is telling us is it does not work that way. We have got to be holistically committed to spiritual health. We can't half-heartedly pursue it. And when people do this at the gym, we see what happens, right? I've been at the gym and I've seen these, it's usually dudes who, they can throw up a ton of weight, man. Like they get over there bench pressing and I'm like, yo, don't mess with that guy. Like they can really throw it up there. They're squatting all kinds of stuff. They got thighs the size of my waist. Like they're some big old dudes. But you can also look at them and you can go, but they don't really seem healthy. They had a bigger gut than me. They're strong. They're good at the gym. They're not healthy, right? I think this happens in church too. They're good at church. They know their Bible. But, man, there's some stuff about them. I don't know if they're healthy. They're kind of jerks. I don't know if I see fruit. I mean, they're good at church. Like, man, they are a killer in Bible study. You ask them a question, they know the answer. But I don't know if that's what I want to look like. Right? And so I wonder this. If you're in a place right now in your life where the after picture doesn't look like what you want it to look like, your spiritual health doesn't look like what you'd like it to look like, you would not look at where you are spiritually and say, this is where I wanted to be. And to me, to be a Christian is to have at least multiple seasons in your life where you look at yourself and you think in your heart and you know it. And this is so true of me. This has been true of me more times in my life and for more of a portion of my life than I even want to admit. But when I think about where I am spiritually, what I tend to think is, man, I should be so much further along. I should be past this now. And if you've ever thought that too, and we would sit where we are right now and say, you know what, I'm not spiritually where I'd like to be. I wonder if it's because we've just been going to the gym three days a week. I wonder if it's because we've just tried to half-heart it. And we haven't ever really made a holistic effort to being spiritually healthy. I wonder if it's because we know that there's something that we really like. And we want to be healthy, but we don't want to give that up. Some of us are still hanging on to that red meat. Right? But here's the thing, and this is why I love Peter. And this is why I love this passage. There's a promise at the end of this passage. Do you know what happens if you'll commit yourself to being spiritually healthy? If you'll radically change your priorities and make the holistic commitment to spiritual health? Look at what happens in verse 8, and I love this verse. It says, Isn't that great? If these qualities are yours and are increasing, if you will lean into these qualities, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive. If you lean into these qualities, if you pursue them with your whole heart, if you will commit to holistic spiritual health and do what it takes to allow God to work in your heart, to bring you closer to him, then Peter promises you that you will bear fruit. Your character will change. You will produce the fruit of the Spirit. And even, I think, more importantly than that, more impactful than that, more rewarding than that, is if you pursue these, then he guarantees you that when you get to the twilight of your life and you begin to look back on all the things that God did in you and through you, that what you will see in your wake is people who would point to you and say, I am closer to Jesus because you existed in my life. Isn't that what we want? All the other crap aside that we pursue with our life and that we put effort into, what could matter more than getting to the end of our life and being able to say what Paul said, that I have been poured out like a drink offering? What could possibly matter more than being able to look at the wake of our life over the decades and know in our heart that there are people who would point to us and say, I am closer to the Father because that person existed in my life. What could be more important to pursue than that? And Peter says, if you will make a commitment to pursuing spiritual health by making every effort to make these characteristics true of you, then I will promise you that one day as you look back on your life, you will see a wake of ministry and impact and character there that will lead to a fulfilling life. I promise you it is not wasted effort. I promise you it will not return null and void. I promise you this is the best possible way to invest your life. So I would just challenge you this morning by asking you, is it possible that your spiritual health isn't where you want it to be? Because in whole or in part, we've reduced that pursuit to going to the gym three days a week. And is your spiritual health worth making a life-altering, holistic commitment to the pursuit of it? I've been saying since the beginning of the year, I hope this is the year that you move closer to Jesus than you ever have. And a big part of that is, what are you willing to do to pursue it? Let's pray, and then I'm going to call the ushers forward for the offering. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for the way that you love us. God, we are so grateful that you meet us in our effort, that you meet us in our cry to be closer to you, and that you do the hard work for us. Father, I pray that we would commit, that we wouldn't make a half-hearted effort towards you, but that we would offer our entire selves to you, that we would follow this roadmap that you lay out in 2 Peter. God, I pray that the people of this church would be people who bear fruit in ministry, who grow in their character. Let us not be a church who simply goes to the gym. Whatever stands between us and health, Father, I pray that you would give us the courage to get it out of the way. Let us be people who know you and are fruitful in that knowledge. It's in your Son's name I pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. I'm Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. You guys, it's a holiday weekend. I mean, for the love of Peter, you're supposed to be out doing fun stuff. You chose to come to church. I am so thrilled about that. So it's good to see all of you, and thank you for coming on this Sunday morning. This is the third part of our series, Lessons from the Gym. As a disclaimer in that video, I've had a lot of people asking me, like, why do you think you're too good for turn lanes? Okay, here's what was happening in that video, is the shot was supposed to be, Nate, let me, this is, Steve was filming this, he says, Nate, let me get a shot of you exiting the gym, like pulling away, like that's the shot that we need to get. So I'm like, okay, good. So I pull out of the gym, and then I let him get a shot of that for as long as he could, driving down the road, and then just cut into the parking lot real quick to go pick him back up and not strand him. And what does he do but put that in the video and make me look like a degenerate? So thanks, Steve. But that's the story. I do actually abide by some, not all, but some traffic laws that make sense. All right. For the first couple of weeks that we've been in this series, we've been looking at what we're calling lessons from the gym and talking about getting spiritually healthy, right? Pursuing spiritual health in our lives. And as I've thought about it, what we've really been doing and what I've really been bringing to you is as you pursue spiritual health in your life, here are some things that I'd like for you to consider or to be aware of. And so the first week we said, here's five things that I want to tell you on your first day as you begin to pursue spiritual health. And then the next week, what I said was, listen, you can't do this alone. So those were things that were really descriptive to you of what does it take to be spiritual, like what do I need to know to be spiritually healthy? And so for the next two weeks, for this week and next week, I want to begin to answer the question, okay, what does it really mean to pursue spiritual health? What does it really require of me? What does it take to get there? And this whole time, I've been doing a parallel between pursuing physical health at the gym or working out or whatever it is we do to care for ourselves physically and paralleling that with our pursuit of spiritual health. And so as I got into the gym and began to pursue this physical health, there's a couple of things that became apparent to me. To go to the gym, to wake up one day and decide to go for a jog, to do push-ups, to buy a Beachbody DVD and try to do that, to do whatever it is you decide to do to get into the physical shape you want to get into, implicit in doing that, implicit in going to the gym, implicit in going for a jog, is this admission that I care about my physical health, right? If you don't care at all about your physical health and you don't go to the gym, you don't do the workout, you don't do the jog. You just eat the cinnamon rolls and sit on the couch. That's what you do. But to do any of those things, implicit in that action is an admission that physical health is important to me. And so when I went to the gym, everybody there is saying being physically healthy matters to me. The other thing is, as you go and you decide you want to be physically healthy, there are myriad goals within physical health, right? Everybody's got the before picture, and then we're all shooting for the after picture. We've got the before with the gut hanging out, we're wearing the t-shirt, we look like an overstuffed sausage. We've got that deal, and then we've got the after picture in our head, whatever it is that we're going for. And to some people, like, get in the gym and some people like they're in it, they're in it for the competitions. Like they are, they like go to competitions, they are lifting weights, they have figured out ways to isolate an exercise to get one strand of their triceps so that when they rub baby oil on it, it's really going to pop at the competition. Like that's their deal and that's their goal, which is also my goal. I'm very close. But that's what they want to do, right? They're in it for the competition. Others just, they just want to, like me, I just wanted to look good in a t-shirt. Like I just wanted to be able to put on a t-shirt, feel confidence without seeing my man gut. I'd love to be able to take Lily swimming and take my shirt off in front of other people and not be embarrassed about myself. Like that's pretty much it for me. Other people, they want to look good, but they want to be built, but not too built, you know. And others, when they start to get healthy, it's really not the way, it's really not about the way they look at all. It's about performance for them. They want to do a marathon or triathlon or whatever it is. And so for them, it's really about getting the body to be disciplined to do what it's supposed to do. And so people can have all kinds of different goals for their physical health, right? But whatever your goal is for your physical health, whatever you want the after picture to look like, there's actually a portion of the scientific community that has defined health for you. Whatever you want to look like, whatever you want your after picture to look like, whatever your reason was for going into the gym, if your goal is to be healthy, the scientific community has actually given you guidelines on what that health looks like, right? They're like, there's guidelines for BMI, for our body mass index, and for fat percentage. There's guidelines for what our cholesterol should be. There's guidelines for what our heart rate should be, our resting heart rate should be, for what our blood pressure should be. And really, whatever's going on outside of those indicators is fine and good, but if we're talking about health, there's actually some guidelines that dictate for us whether or not we are truly healthy. Because we can look fit and not be able to run a mile, and we can be cardiovascularly healthy but have some weakness in some other areas. So it's actually good to have a standard of physical health regardless of what our goals are for it. And in the same way, I think pursuing spiritual health parallels all of that really well. To me, to be in church in January, to be listening to this on a podcast or watching it online, implicit in the decision to do that, implicit in your decision to get up this morning to shower, which I hope you did, and then come here. And if you have kids, the hassle of getting them up and getting them ready for the early service. To do that, implicit in that is, hey, I care about my spiritual health. It could be a lot. It could be a little. But implicit in your attendance here is spiritual health matters to you. Implicit in listening to sermons online is the idea that spiritual health matters to you. And it could have mattered for a very long time. This could be an ongoing thing to you. This January is no different than last January or dozens before that. Or it could be a new initiative. But what I think is true of everyone in the room is that we are saying with our attendance that spiritual health matters to us. Now, there could be a difference in our spiritual goals. If we think about it as a before picture, this is what I looked like last year. This is what I looked like before I began to prioritize my spiritual health. And this is what I'd like to do now. There really is a wide range of goals that we could have. We could say, listen, I just want to be a good mom. I just want to exist in the house with my kids without losing my mind at them. That's what I want to be able to do. I'm just looking for a little bit of peace. Maybe it's my life has just felt so crazy that I just need some peace. I want to feel a connection with God. Maybe it's just things haven't been going my way for a while, and I just want to get some clarity about this. Maybe it's things have been going great and I want to begin to live a life out of this feeling of gratitude. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe we think I want to get plugged into a small group. I want to meet other people. I'd love for God to use me in ways in other people's life. I'd love to be involved in ministry in a volunteer capacity or even in a professional capacity. That's what I want to do. I'd love to be an elder of the church. I see these people that I admire, and I want to do that. Maybe we've got big, huge spiritual goals. Maybe we've got very modest spiritual goals, but we all have them, and I would say they're all good, at least as a starting place. But it got me to thinking, does the Bible, like the scientific community offers to those who are pursuing physical health some guidelines for what it actually looks like to be healthy, does the Bible offer similar guidelines to us for what it means to be spiritually healthy? And if it does, what are they? And I actually think that the Bible does this. Regardless of what your goals are, just to be a good spouse or a good co-worker or a good church partner or beyond that, regardless of what your goals are, does the Bible give to us standards that really define for us what spiritual health looks like, and I think that it does that. In the Bible, Old and New Testament, it talks a lot about this idea of bearing fruit, that if we're healthy, if we're good and we're vibrant, we will bear fruit. The book of Psalms was written by a guy named King David. He was the greatest king that Israel ever had. Jesus is going to sit on his throne one day. The flag flying over Israel now bears his star. He's an important dude. And he wrote the longest book in the Bible, Psalms, which is actually a collection of five different books. And in the Psalms are basically journal entries from David. Worship songs, times when he was sad, times when he was joyful, times when he, blessed are those who do not invest their time with people who don't love Jesus and love them, like what we talked about last week. But if we will delight ourselves in the law of the Lord, if we will pursue him in spiritual health, then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water. We will yield our fruit in season, and all that we do, we will prosper. We will yield fruit if we follow the Lord. So then the question becomes, okay, what does that fruit look like? And I think that answer is twofold, and we find it in the New Testament. If we're going to ask ourselves, what does it look like to bear fruit, to be spiritually healthy to a place where we are bearing fruit, what does that look like? Well, Paul answers this question in the book of Galatians. I talk about Paul a lot. He was a really influential Christian. He planted churches, and then he wrote letters back to the churches. And one of the churches he planted was in Galatia. And he wrote a letter back to them that became the book of Galatians in our New Testament. And in the fifth chapter, there's this really famous, and you will bear the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so, to that question of what does it look like to bear fruit, what does it look like to be spiritually healthy, well, it means that we're going to bear fruit. Well, what kind of fruit are we going to bear? Well, Paul tells us in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think of that as character. So to answer the question first, if we are going to be spiritually healthy, what is an indicator of that? Well, our character is an indicator of that. As a matter of fact, I think this is such a good diagnostic tool that within churches there's always this question, am I really saved? How do I really know if I know Jesus? How do I really know if I'm going to heaven? And I say, well, Ephesians tells us that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a deposit on our salvation, that God's going to make good on this promise. And we can tell if we have the Holy Spirit in our life by whether or not we bear the fruit that Paul lists out in Galatians chapter 5. So I would tell you, if you want to know whether or not you know Jesus, look at the wake of your life over the past three to five years and ask yourself the question, are those things growing in my life? Are those eight, nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those things growing in my life? Are those nine characteristics that are in Galatians 5.22, are those increasing in my life, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Are those increasing in my life? Am I growing in those areas? If you're not, it doesn't do you any good to lie to yourself about it. I think it does us a lot of good to get on our knees and pray about it. But if we're going to ask that question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? Well, we have to ask ourselves, am I bearing fruit? I think there's twofold ways that we bear that fruit. And the first is to be growing in our character as outlined in Galatians 5.22. The other way we see ourselves bearing fruit based on scripture is found in a lot of places, but I'm going to look at John 15, where Jesus says, and I've talked about this in recent weeks, I am the tree, essentially, I am the tree and you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. And in this instance, he's talking to the disciples. And when he's saying bearing much fruit, what he means is you will produce a lot of ministry. There will be people who are closer to me, closer to Jesus, as a result of you being in their life. And so biblically, to bear fruit means to grow in character and to grow our personal ministries. Does that make sense? And what that means is, can I look at my life, at the wake of my life, and point to individuals who would say, because that person is in my life, because I've been in PTA with them, because I work with them, because I played on the same tennis team as them, because I served in church with them, because I'm in a run group with them, because they are my friend. I am closer to Jesus because of them. If people would look at you and say that, then that is fruit. So when we ask the question, what does it mean to be spiritually healthy? The answer is, well, it means that we will bear fruit. And what does it look like to bear fruit? Well, it looks like we're growing in our character and we're growing in our ministry, okay? That's what that looks like. So as we define spiritual health this morning and say, what does it mean to pursue spiritual health? That's what we're going after. The after picture before is, I'm not doing that stuff. I need to grow in my character. I need to grow in my ministry. The after picture is I am bearing fruit, both in character and impact. So as I'm at the gym and I'm thinking about this idea of physical health, what it means to pursue physical health, one of the things I realized is I think I had committed at first to go three days a week. That's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to go three days a week. I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do. I'm only going to do the stuff I want to do, and hopefully I get sweaty, and then I'll sit in the steam room, and then I'll go back to the house. That's what I'm going to do. But as I'm looking around at the people there, the people who look really healthy, and I'm thinking, I hope I can look like that. That's good for me. That's what I want to be, right? As I'm looking at those people, one of the things that occurred to me is, and it's really the thought for this week, is my goodness, what I see in them at the gym has a lot more to do with what they do at the gym. It has a lot more to do with what they do outside of the gym than what they do in it. You see? I'm looking at them going, man, their commitment to health is a lot more than 60 to 90 minutes three days a week. Their commitment to health is a lot more than coming into the gym and throwing up some weight and getting on a treadmill. And those of you who have pursued physical health before, you know that this is true. It takes a lot more. There's not just one thing that you can do. You can't just go to the gym three days a week and then do whatever you want to outside of the gym and get physically healthy. It doesn't take very long when you're valuing your physical health to realize that to get physically healthy, it really takes a holistic commitment to this health. If you're going to go to the gym and exercise or run or whatever it is you're going to do, at some point or another, you have to become at least moderately familiar with exercise science. You've got to know what the exercises are doing to your body when you do them. If you just repeat the same ones over and over and over again, you're not going to get physically healthy on a grand scale. You're just not. You're just going to have really big arms from doing curls. That's it. You've got to learn a little bit of exercise science, what it means to mix in some cardio. You have to learn to value that even though you don't want to. You have to learn what it means to eat right, not just healthily, but to eat right so that when you're at the gym, you're actually burning the stuff you want to burn off and not muscle, right? You have to learn that stuff. If you want to get physically healthy, then you have to be committed to eating right. You have to be committed to a diet. I would sometimes go to the gym in the afternoons, and that would impact the way that I ate lunch. I'd have a lunch meeting, and I'd want to eat something big and fun and filling, and realize I can't swim with that in my gut, so I've got to eat a wrap. Darn it. I have to eat fruit right now. But then I would actually feel decent later. So it begins to dictate all the things you do. You begin to think more holistically. You don't just eat to lose weight, but you eat to actually fuel yourself and get healthy. So you have to make a commitment to that. You make a commitment to sleep because you understand that the way that I sleep and the way that I rest really impacts the way that I'm able to perform when I'm trying to get healthy. And then sometimes to get healthy, and this is the hard part, means that you have to let go of something you really love, right? Any of you guys ever been to the doctor and they told you, all right, listen, here's the issue and you need to get better and if you want to get better, you got to chill out on the red meat red meat. That would be a tough one. I know that's coming. Both of my grandfathers on either side of the family had passed away from heart issues. So I'm really cruising for a bruising here if I keep it up with all the meat. I know that. At some point I'm going to have to give that up. I have found I'm a sucker for baked goods. I can be on quite the streak, and then some well-meaning jerk brings some stuff to, I'm just messing around about jerk. It's really sweet, sweet people bring stuff to the office, and I'm like, oh man, I really need to eat that right now. You know, like, and then staff members will mess with me, and they'll come and they'll put it on my desk, because they know that I'm a sucker for it, and I'm going to eat it. Like, I love that stuff, but sometimes getting physically healthy means giving up things that you really love, but it takes a holistic commitment, right? It doesn't just happen in the gym. And I think similarly, when we make a decision in our life and in our hearts that we want to pursue spiritual health, one of the things that we sometimes do is reduce that pursuit to a commitment to things like church and small group. And we don't intentionally reduce it to this, but we just start like anybody else does. Somebody says, I want to get physically healthy, and so they go, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start running and pursuing prioritized physical health there. I'm going to make this important. And so they take a couple steps to make it important, but as you get into it, what you realize is, oh my gosh, this is not going to cut it. I really need to be entirely, like I need to be bought all the way in on this, or I'm never going to actually get healthy. And it works the same way spiritually. I think a lot of us make decisions to pursue spiritual health, and then as a follow-through on that decision, we go, I'm going to attend church more regularly. I'm going to try to listen to worship music in the car. I'm going to try to go to small group. I'm going to get involved in serving at the church. And as I think about those things, those are good things. But I wonder, is that enough? If we're serious about getting spiritually healthy, is that commitment, I'm going to go to church more, I'm going to sign up for a small group, I'm going to take the plunge, I'm going to do that. Is that commitment really enough to bring about holistic spiritual health in our life? And I think there's a passage that actually answers this question. It's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It's in 2 Peter chapter 1. It'll be up on the screen in a minute when I start reading it. There's a Bible in front of you if you'd like to look at it yourself there. But it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Peter was like the leader of the disciples. And 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, as these disciples are popping up all over Asia Minor, Peter writes a letter. And the idea of this letter is for it to be circulated from church to church as he encourages them in their spiritual growth and their pursuit of spiritual health. And in the first chapter of the second letter that he wrote, that we call 2 Peter, he gives us what I think is a roadmap to spiritual health. He says, if you want to be spiritually healthy, then here's what you need to do. So I want us to look at this list together, verses 5, 6, and 7, and understand that this is really a roadmap to spiritual health. Here we go. For this very reason, Peter writes, make every effort. Another translation says, with all diligence. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. And virtue with knowledge. And knowledge with self-control. And self-control with steadfastness or perseverance, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Now, as an aside on this passage, this is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside on this, one of the things I love about the Christian faith is that it is really so simple. Jesus, when he comes on the scene, he boils all the do's and the don'ts and the things that we get worked up about down to two very simple commandments, love God and love others. And so the greatest of these, Paul tells us, of all attributes is love, and that's what we're supposed to pursue. And so part of us goes, okay, this is great. I just have to focus on loving other people and I will fulfill the law. Me and God will be good. And that's true. But what Peter says is you cannot possibly love until you've mastered brotherly affection. You cannot possibly master brotherly affection until you have mastered godliness. And you can't master that until you've mastered what comes before that, perseverance and all the rest, so that there's actually building blocks to even be capable of loving. We don't start at love, we work to it. That's an aside, but I think it's an interesting part about this passage. And so I would ask you, if these, faith, virtue, or integrity, knowledge, learning more about God and the Bible, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love, if those are the characteristics that we should pursue, he says make every effort to add to this characteristic, this characteristic. If those are the characteristics that we are to dedicate our life to pursuing that result in spiritual health, I would ask you, can you pursue those on a Sunday morning? If you just come to church every week, can you pursue these things? If you go to church and you add to that a small group and you add to that serving and that's your Jesus time, that's your God time, that's your spiritual health time during the week, can you build these characteristics in your life? Or as you read through those and think through the mechanics of pursuing them, does it sound like those need to be on your heart and on your mind every day? Do you think it's possible to come to church once a week, to go to our small group on Tuesday night, to serve once a month or twice a month when we're supposed to serve, and then go through the rest of our weeks like God's not a priority, to go through the rest of our weeks like he's almost an afterthought, to just wake up in the morning whenever our job requires us to wake up, to encounter the stress at our job as it comes to us, to maybe every now and again pray for our food before the meal, and then talk about spiritual things when it comes up. And if we're being honest, most of us get into a habit and into a cycle where that is really our spiritual effort. If that is true of us, is it possible to develop these characteristics in increasing measure in our lives? Does it sound like we are being obedient to what Paul tells us to do in Thessalonians where he says rejoice always and pray without ceasing? See, what I think is if we're going to be spiritually healthy, it requires a holistic commitment with our whole life. We can't just go to the gym three days a week and expect to get healthy. Do you see? That's the first step. But if we're actually serious about our spiritual health, and remember, even being here and listening to me, implicit in that action is that to some degree or another, my spiritual health matters to me. And what I want to tell you this morning is, if it really does, and if you really want to bear fruit, and if you really want to be spiritually healthy, then what it requires of you is a holistic spiritual commitment from your whole life to pursue the health that God outlines for you. It requires waking up in the morning and intentionally pursuing the presence of God, spending time in his word and spending time in prayer. It requires putting people around you who love you and who love Jesus. It requires being able to get to a place where you understand God's word and you grow in knowledge so that you can teach it. You at least have some sort of moderate understanding of how the Bible ties together. It is hard work to get spiritually healthy, but I think a lot of us live in this place where we can pursue spiritual health with a minimal commitment. And what I think Peter is telling us is it does not work that way. We have got to be holistically committed to spiritual health. We can't half-heartedly pursue it. And when people do this at the gym, we see what happens, right? I've been at the gym and I've seen these, it's usually dudes who, they can throw up a ton of weight, man. Like they get over there bench pressing and I'm like, yo, don't mess with that guy. Like they can really throw it up there. They're squatting all kinds of stuff. They got thighs the size of my waist. Like they're some big old dudes. But you can also look at them and you can go, but they don't really seem healthy. They had a bigger gut than me. They're strong. They're good at the gym. They're not healthy, right? I think this happens in church too. They're good at church. They know their Bible. But, man, there's some stuff about them. I don't know if they're healthy. They're kind of jerks. I don't know if I see fruit. I mean, they're good at church. Like, man, they are a killer in Bible study. You ask them a question, they know the answer. But I don't know if that's what I want to look like. Right? And so I wonder this. If you're in a place right now in your life where the after picture doesn't look like what you want it to look like, your spiritual health doesn't look like what you'd like it to look like, you would not look at where you are spiritually and say, this is where I wanted to be. And to me, to be a Christian is to have at least multiple seasons in your life where you look at yourself and you think in your heart and you know it. And this is so true of me. This has been true of me more times in my life and for more of a portion of my life than I even want to admit. But when I think about where I am spiritually, what I tend to think is, man, I should be so much further along. I should be past this now. And if you've ever thought that too, and we would sit where we are right now and say, you know what, I'm not spiritually where I'd like to be. I wonder if it's because we've just been going to the gym three days a week. I wonder if it's because we've just tried to half-heart it. And we haven't ever really made a holistic effort to being spiritually healthy. I wonder if it's because we know that there's something that we really like. And we want to be healthy, but we don't want to give that up. Some of us are still hanging on to that red meat. Right? But here's the thing, and this is why I love Peter. And this is why I love this passage. There's a promise at the end of this passage. Do you know what happens if you'll commit yourself to being spiritually healthy? If you'll radically change your priorities and make the holistic commitment to spiritual health? Look at what happens in verse 8, and I love this verse. It says, Isn't that great? If these qualities are yours and are increasing, if you will lean into these qualities, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive. If you lean into these qualities, if you pursue them with your whole heart, if you will commit to holistic spiritual health and do what it takes to allow God to work in your heart, to bring you closer to him, then Peter promises you that you will bear fruit. Your character will change. You will produce the fruit of the Spirit. And even, I think, more importantly than that, more impactful than that, more rewarding than that, is if you pursue these, then he guarantees you that when you get to the twilight of your life and you begin to look back on all the things that God did in you and through you, that what you will see in your wake is people who would point to you and say, I am closer to Jesus because you existed in my life. Isn't that what we want? All the other crap aside that we pursue with our life and that we put effort into, what could matter more than getting to the end of our life and being able to say what Paul said, that I have been poured out like a drink offering? What could possibly matter more than being able to look at the wake of our life over the decades and know in our heart that there are people who would point to us and say, I am closer to the Father because that person existed in my life. What could be more important to pursue than that? And Peter says, if you will make a commitment to pursuing spiritual health by making every effort to make these characteristics true of you, then I will promise you that one day as you look back on your life, you will see a wake of ministry and impact and character there that will lead to a fulfilling life. I promise you it is not wasted effort. I promise you it will not return null and void. I promise you this is the best possible way to invest your life. So I would just challenge you this morning by asking you, is it possible that your spiritual health isn't where you want it to be? Because in whole or in part, we've reduced that pursuit to going to the gym three days a week. And is your spiritual health worth making a life-altering, holistic commitment to the pursuit of it? I've been saying since the beginning of the year, I hope this is the year that you move closer to Jesus than you ever have. And a big part of that is, what are you willing to do to pursue it? Let's pray, and then I'm going to call the ushers forward for the offering. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for the way that you love us. God, we are so grateful that you meet us in our effort, that you meet us in our cry to be closer to you, and that you do the hard work for us. Father, I pray that we would commit, that we wouldn't make a half-hearted effort towards you, but that we would offer our entire selves to you, that we would follow this roadmap that you lay out in 2 Peter. God, I pray that the people of this church would be people who bear fruit in ministry, who grow in their character. Let us not be a church who simply goes to the gym. Whatever stands between us and health, Father, I pray that you would give us the courage to get it out of the way. Let us be people who know you and are fruitful in that knowledge. It's in your Son's name I pray. Amen.

Good to see everybody. Thank you guys for that. As is often the case these days, when it's time for me to preach, I don't want to. I just want to keep singing. It's so good to get to sing with my church family and to look and see everyone praising. What a blessing that is. I'm actually going to invite you guys back into prayer as I start the sermon this week. I don't know if you guys know this. Tuesday is kind of a big deal for us in this country, and it would probably be wise for churches to pray over it. So join me in doing that. Father, Tuesday is the election, and this is, you know, one of the more contentious ones that we have ever experienced. It is more polarizing and divisive and filled with vitriol than any that I am aware of previously. So Father, I just pray that you'd be with us. Pray that you'd be in the process. May your hand be all over what happens on Tuesday and very likely, Father, in the weeks following. Would we see you in the nooks and crannies and the polling locations in the districts of this election and the results of it. And Father, more than anything, I pray that your people would be peacemakers in the wake of it. I pray that your people would be unifiers in the wake of it. That we wouldn't have a heart to be right. We wouldn't have a heart to gloat or to complain. Or even have a heart towards doomsday scenarios. But that God, your children would seek to make the peace that you have won. Help us to do that no matter what happens on Tuesday. It's in your son's name we pray, and we're able to do that. Amen. All right, this is the third part in our series called James. I take great pride in my creative series titles, and so this one is James. Last week, Kyle carried the torch exceptionally well in talking about taming the tongue. Take it easy, it wasn't that good. It was fine. I assigned that to him because he is better at that than I am. It was less hypocritical coming from Kyle than me, if you know me well. So I'm very glad about that. I would also say just as a general statement so you guys know that it's a big value for me and for the elders and for Grace to have different voices up here speaking into your lives. So we will always look for opportunities for people besides me to continue to share and offer you their perspective, because I think we benefit from that. Scripture tells us that where there is many counselors, that there is wisdom and wise choices. So I think that that's a good thing. This week, we are jumping back into James chapter 2 to one of, some people call it controversial, though I don't really think that it is. It is confusing. A cursory glance at the passage, James 2 verses 14 through 26 is where we're going to be. If you're watching at home today, thank you so much for doing that. I don't blame you on this rainy morning, but I hope everybody will grab a Bible and interact with the text as we move through it, because we're going to go through that whole passage today. Just a cursory glance of the passage, it renders it a little bit confusing, I think, because as you move through the whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very careful to explain that salvation comes through faith. Paul says it most pointedly confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus is Lord, then we will enter into the kingdom. Jesus beckons us to believe in him and to follow him. So we see over and over again through Scripture the miracle and the mystery of the gospel, which is salvation is offered to you free of merit, free of works, completely by faith. It is the greatest gift that could ever be given. God sent his son to die on the cross for you, for everyone, for the sins that you have committed and for the sins that he knows that you will commit. He died for those so that you might be reunited with his Father, with the Father, and with him, and with the Spirit for all of eternity. God loves you so much that he came after your soul by sending his Son to die on the cross for you. And if we place our faith in that death, then Scripture teaches us that we're going to heaven. Scripture teaches us that we will spend eternity in bliss with God. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we don't have to fear death. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we're a new creature. We're no longer a slave to sin as the old creature was. And so all through the Bible, we see salvation by faith. And then we get to James here at the end of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, this peculiar passage, James says, yeah, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. You show me your faith without works and I'll show you a faith that's dead. As a matter of fact, let me show you how Abraham proved his faith by his works. And at a cursory glance, it seems like James is disagreeing with the rest of Scripture. The rest of Scripture is like, I'm good, I'm good, I have faith, I believe. And then James says, yeah, but if you believe you ought to do some stuff. And if you don't do some stuff, then you may not believe. Actually, James is more pointed than that. Remember we said that this was a well-crafted punch in the gut, this book was? James just says if you don't do some stuff, then you don't believe. It's not real. It's not sincere. And so even though it can seem a little bit contradictory, even though it can be challenging, I don't think it's confusing. I think it is crystal clear. So I want to walk us through James chapter 2 this morning and help us understand this passage and let us be appropriately challenged and worried by this passage because it's a tough one. This is what James writes. We'll start off with the first half of it. James 2, verses 14 through 18. So James shares this pretty stark, blunt reality. You can say all day long that you have faith. You can give a mental assent and a lip service to faith. Do you think that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. But what James says is unless actions follow that, it's not sincere. We saw in chapter 1 that one of the things that James says about true religion, the thing that James says about true religion, is that true religion visits the widows and the orphans in their affliction and remains unstained from the world. So what he's saying is, true religion, people who truly have a genuine faith, will care for the poor and the needy. They will care to be a voice to the voiceless. And in continuing to pull that thread here in chapter two, he basically says, you can't call yourself a believer. You can't say that you have a genuine saving faith if you don't help someone who is in need. If someone comes to you and they say, I'm wet and I'm cold and I need a jacket and I live, I'm homeless and I'm in need. And we say, in our double-layered North Face jackets, I will pray for you. Be warm and filled. I hope you find good food. There's a place downtown called Seat at the Table. You should figure out a way to get there. It's great. And then we leave. James is saying, you don't care for the poor and the needy. You just like to say that you do. You're like me this morning. I was watching a woman get out of her car with a baby, and I watched her do it for like 10 minutes. And at the last second, I was like, you want me to come get you an umbrella? And she said, I mean, I'm good by now. And then she walked in. Like, if I really wanted, if I really cared about her, I would have walked out there with an umbrella. I just cared for the perception that I cared, right? What we do shows what we believe. It actually evidences that. So what James is saying here, and it's important not to miss this, is that works are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. Works, good works, and we're going to talk about what those are, are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. It is a natural consequence. If you have a genuine, believing, saving faith, then God will work in your heart to change you. There's a verse in Matthew that says, if you delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord, then he will give you the desires of your heart. And I've always loved that verse because it makes it seem like if I simply just love the Bible, then God will give me all the stuff that I want. I'm going to be a billionaire in no time. But what it means is when we reflect on God's word and we delight ourselves in it, we grow more like the principles in it. We grow more like God in character. And slowly, over time, because we delight in His Word, our heart beats for the same things that God's heart beats for. Our hearts beat with God. This is how the Spirit gets in our life and changes us. And the things that we want slowly become the things that He wants. The things that He delights in are the things that we delight in. And we're told in Romans that when we are saved, when we become a believer, when we have a true saving faith, that the old self, the old version of ourself that was a slave to sin, is buried with Christ and that this new self is resurrected with him on Easter. That's why baptism is a symbol of this rebirth. We go under the water. That's our old self being cast off and we rise as our new selves that God has radically and fundamentally changed. This new self has a Holy Spirit that's given to us as a down payment on our salvation, who speaks into us, who convicts us when we're going wrong, who encourages us when we're doing right. And so everything in Scripture points to the unavoidable reality that when God fundamentally changes our heart, when we have a saving faith and He rushes into our lives, that the unavoidable result is good works. Because we no longer have to choose our good works. They're a natural manifestation of the faith that is going on inside of us. That's what James is saying. And in saying this, this is important, James actually agrees with Jesus. In saying this, James actually agrees with the teachings of Jesus you have in your notes there. And at home, you should have been able to download the notes on the Gracevine. You have in your notes there two references, John 15, 5 and John 13, 35. And he says in those, John 15, 5 is this wonderful passage. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. In our vernacular, I am the trunk and you are the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. I've talked about this before. When a branch is attached to a tree, it doesn't have to worry about when to produce the fruit or what kind of fruit to produce. All it has to worry about is staying attached to that tree. And Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you obey me, if you follow me, if you pursue me, if you walk with me, if you abide in me, then you will bear much fruit. You won't have to try to bear the fruit. You won't have to try to do the good works. You won't have to make a conscious effort to do it. Just abide in me and it will naturally produce a fruit in your life. James is simply agreeing with Jesus. He's saying it another way. He's saying it in a more pointed way so it's easier to understand. Then Jesus says again in John 13 35, he says, I give you a new command to love others as I have loved you. And then he says that the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. The world will know that you are my children by what you do, by how you treat one another, by your actions. Jesus says you can say all day long that you love your brother. This is the exact example that James gives. You can say you love the poor and the needy, but if you walk away with your warm coat, then you don't. You don't really believe. Faith isn't really there. Jesus says, the world will know by your actions who you are. It's not a matter of just saying it. And honestly, we understand this principle. We get it. We've experienced this, that if there is love, there will be evidence, right? If you're not married, I think you can still appreciate the principles of this. When a husband and wife are married, when they get married, they stand at the altar and they make vows to each other. And they promise, I will love you and be faithful to you in sickness and in health and good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow. It's one thing to stand on the altar and say those things. I had no clue what that meant when I was 25 years old. I said them and I meant them with my whole heart. I know what they mean now more than I did then. And those of you who have been married for 30 and 40 years, you know even way more than me what those words mean. And a husband, listen, a husband can tell his wife that he loves her. He can write her a nice card on her birthday, I love you, you're the best, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. Which apparently when people get married, everyone's unrealistic, right? I'm married to the most handsome man ever. Are you? Because we all look pretty average. Anyways, you can say nice things and it's fine to do that. It's fine to give a mental assent to it. But a wife knows if she's loved, right? If a husband loves his wife, he won't just tell her. He'll run interference for her on Saturday morning with the kids to try to let her get a little bit more sleep than she normally does. He'll clean the kitchen without being asked to clean the kitchen. He'll make a big deal over her birthday if she wants a big deal made of it. He'll make a little deal over her birthday if she wants a little deal made of it. He'll say kind things to her. He'll let her watch what she wants to watch. He'll take her car out on the weekend and wash it and fill it up with gas so that she doesn't have to worry about that. He'll learn the little things that let his wife know that she is loved. And she never has to wonder at that. And if a guy just says occasionally, hey, I love you, you know you're the best, and then never does anything, that's not love. That's selfishness. We understand this principle. We know this to be true in our own lives, and it's true of our faith as well. And it's so true of our faith, and James actually takes this, he actually doubles down on this. This idea of faith will produce works. Love will be manifested in how we act. By presenting us with this idea, and this is where it starts to get scary. According to James, mental assent is not the same as faith. Mental assent is not the same as faith. Promising love on the altar is not the same as loving for 30 years. Just agreeing mentally that Jesus is the Son of God is not a saving faith. This is why Jesus says another scary statement in the Gospels, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. That should give you pause. This should give you pause. If what you're clinging to for your salvation is a prayer that you prayed when you were eight, the mental assent that you gave, we need to do some introspection about whether or not we have a saving faith. And I say that mental assent is not the same as faith because look at what James says in verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. In other translations it says, good. Even the demons believe and shudder. You know who else knows that Jesus is the Son of God? Satan. You know who has way better theology than all of us collectively in this room? Demons. They know the Bible inside and out. They know who Jesus is, and they are scared of him. Yet they have not placed their faith in him for eternal life. They're still working towards something else. So a faith that simply gives a mental assent, that simply says, yeah, I think that's probably true, is a demonic faith, according to James. And we don't talk about demons and Satan here a lot, but it's in the passage. This is what he says, and this ought to give us pause that even demons go, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and they're scared of him, yet they don't have faith because it's more than just a mental assent. It's more than just agreeing with the set of facts. It's more than just confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Again, I'll go back to that writing in Paul and Romans. If we confess with our hearts, if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, then we will be saved. Some of us stop at confessing with our mouths. That's where demons stop. And that's a scary, scary thing. James takes it a little bit further as he finishes out the passage. And he says that faith that doesn't provide works isn't even a saving faith. Faith that doesn't produce works isn't even a saving faith. He says it this way at the end of the passage. He says, A faith that is simply claimed and not evidenced and not met out with a series of good works and good deeds and love and grace and kindness, that's a dead faith. That's not a saving faith. A faith that we cling to because of a prayer that we prayed years ago and then nothing in our life changed after that is not a saving faith. That's why I am of the conviction, I've thought this for a long time from where I sit in ministry, that the surest sign that the gospel has taken root in someone's life is a radical change in their priorities. I've watched families come and go from churches. And you see families come and they profess a faith. They confess that they believe. And they come and maybe church attendance gets ramped up for a little bit. Maybe they're excited about it. They're caught up in the moment. But nothing between Sundays really changes. They still roll with the same group of people. And it's great. We ought to roll with the same group of people. We ought to have our friends who are not believers, but they can't be our only friends, and they can't have the only values that we emulate and try to not adopt. And the way that they spend their money doesn't change, and the way they spend their time doesn't change, and the way that they seek joy doesn't change. The only thing that really changes is now they go to church, and it makes them feel a little bit better. But eventually, eventually they'll start to fade away and then a year or two later, it's like that was just a flash in the pan. It was a confession, but it wasn't a sincere belief. Conversely, I've watched families profess a faith, come into church, kind of slowly step their way in, slowly take their next steps of obedience, becoming disciples of Christ, join small group, begin to give. Well, a huge indicator of someone's faith, and I don't talk about giving a lot, so hopefully you'll allow me this, is whether or not they give. I'm not talking about the church. I'm just talking about being generous people. Why else would you give 10% of your income away unless you were in love with a God who allowed you to do that as part of obedience to him? It doesn't make any sense. Why would a family do that unless God had radically changed their priorities? I've watched families come in and they had kids on ball teams and they were gone most weekends during the fall and the spring and every night of the week and it was consuming them. And they said, listen, because of our faith, because we want to be around church people more, we're not doing that. We're going to ratchet back all of our involvement everywhere else so that we can be involved in church. It's a radical change in priorities. I'm not saying that every family has to do that, but I am saying that that family radically changed their priorities. And to me, it's evidence that faith has taken hold. But James is very clear. If your faith is a faith that clings to a confession that you made years ago, and in the wake of your life, there is no difference. You're no different now than you were five years ago, and only you know the answer to that. And let me just twist it a little harder as I say that. Don't let yourself off the hook with this. Don't find pockets and ways to make yourself better when you really know that you're the same. If that's our faith, and there are no works, James says it's dead. So by now, you ought to be asking the question, well, crap, man, what are the works then? Because I'm a little nervous right now. What are the works that I ought to be producing? How do I know that I know that I know? How can I be certain? What kind of works is faith going to manifest in my life? I would point you to three passages to answer this question. The first is James 1.27. We talked about it earlier. I talked about it two weeks ago. It's the true religion passage. James says that, and I've that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So we should ask ourselves, as I look back on the wake of my life, do I have an increasing heart for the needy? Do I have an increasing desire to help those who are facing injustice and to be a voice for the voiceless? Or do I care about them as little now as I always have? Do I have an increased desire for holiness? Is the Holy Spirit in me, speaking into me and encouraging me as I venture into places where I need not be? Is he encouraging me as I venture towards places and people where I do need to be? Do I see that in my life? And then according to Jesus, do I look in my life and I see a wake of love in my life? Are there people who would point to me and say, I'm closer to Jesus because they love me well? Has that been manifesting itself in your life in such a way? And listen, the litmus test for this love, this godly love, this faith-inspired love that Jesus gives us is not loving the people who love us back. That's easy. Everyone does that. It's loving the people who don't love you back. It's loving the people that you don't have to love. It's loving the people when there's no transaction there. I'm not getting anything out of this. I just love you and I care for you. Do you have an increased wake of people that you love in your life that you don't have to love, that are sometimes unlovable? James says, if you have a genuine faith, then the answer to that question will be yes. And finally, Paul says in Galatians, we're told that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment for our salvation, that when we are saved, when we have a genuine faith, that the Holy Spirit rushes into our life, and that the Holy Spirit produces fruit. And the fruit of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So again, look at the wake of your life over the last three to five years. Are you producing? Are you experiencing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you still the cranky grump that you've always been? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same? And now listen. I know this is not a fun sermon. You did not get up and shower and brave the rain and you families, we opened kids ministry today. You didn't get your kids ready so that you could come in here and I could kick you in the teeth. I'm sorry about that. This is a hard one. If you're feeling uncomfortable, you should. If you're doubting your salvation, that's all right. Because Paul tells us in Philippians that we should continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that our understanding of our salvation and our relationship with God will change over the years. And if it's not, and if it's not challenged, and we're just allowed to walk through life clinging to this thing that we said once and not seeing any works and not actually being a genuine believer and not experiencing genuine faith, shame on me if I'm your pastor for years and I never confront you with the truth that James gives us here. I have to. And here's why we need to have these hard conversations with ourselves. Here's why we need to think through this and ask the question, do I have a genuine faith? Do I see that in my life? Am I sure that I'm sure that I'm sure? This week, Jen and I spent the week back home. Jen and Lily are driving back today. I've shared with the church through the journey. Jen's dad, about two years ago, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so we've been walking through that, Jen and I have, as a family and with her family. And this last week, he made the decision to stop treatment and receive hospice care in the home. And so we went home to be with the family. The good news is, it was a really, it was a good, sweet, peaceful, life-giving, gracious week. It was good to be around the family. And we're probably talking about months, not weeks. And so that's good too. And we're looking forward to sweet times with John as a whole family. I would also say for those of you who love Jen, please direct your condolences through me. The last thing she needs is to drive home from Athens, be sad that she is not with her dad right now, and then have to answer emails and texts about how he's doing and thinking and all that stuff. So direct those through me. Thank you. But here's why I bring it up. Because I sat with that man this week who has a genuine faith. We were joking about the multiple jackets that he's given to homeless people and sign spinners on the corner of the road. He just stops his car, gets out of the car, and hands him his jacket. He worked at AT&T for years and years and years. He was the vice president of international real estate, yet he knew the name of the parking attendants, he knew their birthdays, and he gave them gifts. He left gifts for the cleaning people in his office. He had a genuine faith. And now, as he's made the decision to embrace death, he is totally fearless and completely at peace. He is living out the verse that says, oh death, where is your sting? It has none for John because he's not fearful. He's totally at peace and he's going to see his Savior. And he's looking forward to it. I want you to have that peace. I want you to know that peace. I want my church to understand what that is. And that peace doesn't come by avoiding the hard truths in Scripture. It comes by continually working out our salvation with fear and with trembling. It comes with being sure that we know that we know. It comes with a genuine faith that will unavoidably produce works. I want you to have that faith too. I want you to have that peace too. So go home. Be concerned. Be confused. Be fearful. Work it out. Make sense of it. If I've confused you today, email me. Let's have a Zoom call or let's have a lunch and let's talk about it. But it's a good thing to have these conversations. It's a good thing to think through these, because when we do, we can be sure that we're sure that we're sure, and we can live our lives in perfect peace, and that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for my church. Let's pray, and then I think we're going to sing one more song together. Father, you were good. In loss, you are good. In grief, you are present. And in joys, you celebrate. So God, thank you for all of those moments and all the ways that you're with us. Lord, I pray that no one here would unnecessarily doubt that they know you. On the flip side, God, I pray that some of us would very necessarily doubt it and that in that doubt we would find a saving faith for maybe the first time ever. God, if any of us listening to me now needs to cry out to you as we sing this song, would we do that? Would you give us the courage to kneel at our house or in these rows or stand and maybe not sing and maybe just pray and search our hearts for where we are with you? Give us a genuine faith. Give us a faith that's rooted so deeply that we abide in you and you produce fruit in us. Give us the peace that comes when we know that we know you. It's in your son's name that I pray all these things. Amen.

Good to see everybody. Thank you guys for that. As is often the case these days, when it's time for me to preach, I don't want to. I just want to keep singing. It's so good to get to sing with my church family and to look and see everyone praising. What a blessing that is. I'm actually going to invite you guys back into prayer as I start the sermon this week. I don't know if you guys know this. Tuesday is kind of a big deal for us in this country, and it would probably be wise for churches to pray over it. So join me in doing that. Father, Tuesday is the election, and this is, you know, one of the more contentious ones that we have ever experienced. It is more polarizing and divisive and filled with vitriol than any that I am aware of previously. So Father, I just pray that you'd be with us. Pray that you'd be in the process. May your hand be all over what happens on Tuesday and very likely, Father, in the weeks following. Would we see you in the nooks and crannies and the polling locations in the districts of this election and the results of it. And Father, more than anything, I pray that your people would be peacemakers in the wake of it. I pray that your people would be unifiers in the wake of it. That we wouldn't have a heart to be right. We wouldn't have a heart to gloat or to complain. Or even have a heart towards doomsday scenarios. But that God, your children would seek to make the peace that you have won. Help us to do that no matter what happens on Tuesday. It's in your son's name we pray, and we're able to do that. Amen. All right, this is the third part in our series called James. I take great pride in my creative series titles, and so this one is James. Last week, Kyle carried the torch exceptionally well in talking about taming the tongue. Take it easy, it wasn't that good. It was fine. I assigned that to him because he is better at that than I am. It was less hypocritical coming from Kyle than me, if you know me well. So I'm very glad about that. I would also say just as a general statement so you guys know that it's a big value for me and for the elders and for Grace to have different voices up here speaking into your lives. So we will always look for opportunities for people besides me to continue to share and offer you their perspective, because I think we benefit from that. Scripture tells us that where there is many counselors, that there is wisdom and wise choices. So I think that that's a good thing. This week, we are jumping back into James chapter 2 to one of, some people call it controversial, though I don't really think that it is. It is confusing. A cursory glance at the passage, James 2 verses 14 through 26 is where we're going to be. If you're watching at home today, thank you so much for doing that. I don't blame you on this rainy morning, but I hope everybody will grab a Bible and interact with the text as we move through it, because we're going to go through that whole passage today. Just a cursory glance of the passage, it renders it a little bit confusing, I think, because as you move through the whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very careful to explain that salvation comes through faith. Paul says it most pointedly confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus is Lord, then we will enter into the kingdom. Jesus beckons us to believe in him and to follow him. So we see over and over again through Scripture the miracle and the mystery of the gospel, which is salvation is offered to you free of merit, free of works, completely by faith. It is the greatest gift that could ever be given. God sent his son to die on the cross for you, for everyone, for the sins that you have committed and for the sins that he knows that you will commit. He died for those so that you might be reunited with his Father, with the Father, and with him, and with the Spirit for all of eternity. God loves you so much that he came after your soul by sending his Son to die on the cross for you. And if we place our faith in that death, then Scripture teaches us that we're going to heaven. Scripture teaches us that we will spend eternity in bliss with God. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we don't have to fear death. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we're a new creature. We're no longer a slave to sin as the old creature was. And so all through the Bible, we see salvation by faith. And then we get to James here at the end of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, this peculiar passage, James says, yeah, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. You show me your faith without works and I'll show you a faith that's dead. As a matter of fact, let me show you how Abraham proved his faith by his works. And at a cursory glance, it seems like James is disagreeing with the rest of Scripture. The rest of Scripture is like, I'm good, I'm good, I have faith, I believe. And then James says, yeah, but if you believe you ought to do some stuff. And if you don't do some stuff, then you may not believe. Actually, James is more pointed than that. Remember we said that this was a well-crafted punch in the gut, this book was? James just says if you don't do some stuff, then you don't believe. It's not real. It's not sincere. And so even though it can seem a little bit contradictory, even though it can be challenging, I don't think it's confusing. I think it is crystal clear. So I want to walk us through James chapter 2 this morning and help us understand this passage and let us be appropriately challenged and worried by this passage because it's a tough one. This is what James writes. We'll start off with the first half of it. James 2, verses 14 through 18. So James shares this pretty stark, blunt reality. You can say all day long that you have faith. You can give a mental assent and a lip service to faith. Do you think that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. But what James says is unless actions follow that, it's not sincere. We saw in chapter 1 that one of the things that James says about true religion, the thing that James says about true religion, is that true religion visits the widows and the orphans in their affliction and remains unstained from the world. So what he's saying is, true religion, people who truly have a genuine faith, will care for the poor and the needy. They will care to be a voice to the voiceless. And in continuing to pull that thread here in chapter two, he basically says, you can't call yourself a believer. You can't say that you have a genuine saving faith if you don't help someone who is in need. If someone comes to you and they say, I'm wet and I'm cold and I need a jacket and I live, I'm homeless and I'm in need. And we say, in our double-layered North Face jackets, I will pray for you. Be warm and filled. I hope you find good food. There's a place downtown called Seat at the Table. You should figure out a way to get there. It's great. And then we leave. James is saying, you don't care for the poor and the needy. You just like to say that you do. You're like me this morning. I was watching a woman get out of her car with a baby, and I watched her do it for like 10 minutes. And at the last second, I was like, you want me to come get you an umbrella? And she said, I mean, I'm good by now. And then she walked in. Like, if I really wanted, if I really cared about her, I would have walked out there with an umbrella. I just cared for the perception that I cared, right? What we do shows what we believe. It actually evidences that. So what James is saying here, and it's important not to miss this, is that works are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. Works, good works, and we're going to talk about what those are, are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. It is a natural consequence. If you have a genuine, believing, saving faith, then God will work in your heart to change you. There's a verse in Matthew that says, if you delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord, then he will give you the desires of your heart. And I've always loved that verse because it makes it seem like if I simply just love the Bible, then God will give me all the stuff that I want. I'm going to be a billionaire in no time. But what it means is when we reflect on God's word and we delight ourselves in it, we grow more like the principles in it. We grow more like God in character. And slowly, over time, because we delight in His Word, our heart beats for the same things that God's heart beats for. Our hearts beat with God. This is how the Spirit gets in our life and changes us. And the things that we want slowly become the things that He wants. The things that He delights in are the things that we delight in. And we're told in Romans that when we are saved, when we become a believer, when we have a true saving faith, that the old self, the old version of ourself that was a slave to sin, is buried with Christ and that this new self is resurrected with him on Easter. That's why baptism is a symbol of this rebirth. We go under the water. That's our old self being cast off and we rise as our new selves that God has radically and fundamentally changed. This new self has a Holy Spirit that's given to us as a down payment on our salvation, who speaks into us, who convicts us when we're going wrong, who encourages us when we're doing right. And so everything in Scripture points to the unavoidable reality that when God fundamentally changes our heart, when we have a saving faith and He rushes into our lives, that the unavoidable result is good works. Because we no longer have to choose our good works. They're a natural manifestation of the faith that is going on inside of us. That's what James is saying. And in saying this, this is important, James actually agrees with Jesus. In saying this, James actually agrees with the teachings of Jesus you have in your notes there. And at home, you should have been able to download the notes on the Gracevine. You have in your notes there two references, John 15, 5 and John 13, 35. And he says in those, John 15, 5 is this wonderful passage. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. In our vernacular, I am the trunk and you are the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. I've talked about this before. When a branch is attached to a tree, it doesn't have to worry about when to produce the fruit or what kind of fruit to produce. All it has to worry about is staying attached to that tree. And Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you obey me, if you follow me, if you pursue me, if you walk with me, if you abide in me, then you will bear much fruit. You won't have to try to bear the fruit. You won't have to try to do the good works. You won't have to make a conscious effort to do it. Just abide in me and it will naturally produce a fruit in your life. James is simply agreeing with Jesus. He's saying it another way. He's saying it in a more pointed way so it's easier to understand. Then Jesus says again in John 13 35, he says, I give you a new command to love others as I have loved you. And then he says that the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. The world will know that you are my children by what you do, by how you treat one another, by your actions. Jesus says you can say all day long that you love your brother. This is the exact example that James gives. You can say you love the poor and the needy, but if you walk away with your warm coat, then you don't. You don't really believe. Faith isn't really there. Jesus says, the world will know by your actions who you are. It's not a matter of just saying it. And honestly, we understand this principle. We get it. We've experienced this, that if there is love, there will be evidence, right? If you're not married, I think you can still appreciate the principles of this. When a husband and wife are married, when they get married, they stand at the altar and they make vows to each other. And they promise, I will love you and be faithful to you in sickness and in health and good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow. It's one thing to stand on the altar and say those things. I had no clue what that meant when I was 25 years old. I said them and I meant them with my whole heart. I know what they mean now more than I did then. And those of you who have been married for 30 and 40 years, you know even way more than me what those words mean. And a husband, listen, a husband can tell his wife that he loves her. He can write her a nice card on her birthday, I love you, you're the best, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. Which apparently when people get married, everyone's unrealistic, right? I'm married to the most handsome man ever. Are you? Because we all look pretty average. Anyways, you can say nice things and it's fine to do that. It's fine to give a mental assent to it. But a wife knows if she's loved, right? If a husband loves his wife, he won't just tell her. He'll run interference for her on Saturday morning with the kids to try to let her get a little bit more sleep than she normally does. He'll clean the kitchen without being asked to clean the kitchen. He'll make a big deal over her birthday if she wants a big deal made of it. He'll make a little deal over her birthday if she wants a little deal made of it. He'll say kind things to her. He'll let her watch what she wants to watch. He'll take her car out on the weekend and wash it and fill it up with gas so that she doesn't have to worry about that. He'll learn the little things that let his wife know that she is loved. And she never has to wonder at that. And if a guy just says occasionally, hey, I love you, you know you're the best, and then never does anything, that's not love. That's selfishness. We understand this principle. We know this to be true in our own lives, and it's true of our faith as well. And it's so true of our faith, and James actually takes this, he actually doubles down on this. This idea of faith will produce works. Love will be manifested in how we act. By presenting us with this idea, and this is where it starts to get scary. According to James, mental assent is not the same as faith. Mental assent is not the same as faith. Promising love on the altar is not the same as loving for 30 years. Just agreeing mentally that Jesus is the Son of God is not a saving faith. This is why Jesus says another scary statement in the Gospels, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. That should give you pause. This should give you pause. If what you're clinging to for your salvation is a prayer that you prayed when you were eight, the mental assent that you gave, we need to do some introspection about whether or not we have a saving faith. And I say that mental assent is not the same as faith because look at what James says in verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. In other translations it says, good. Even the demons believe and shudder. You know who else knows that Jesus is the Son of God? Satan. You know who has way better theology than all of us collectively in this room? Demons. They know the Bible inside and out. They know who Jesus is, and they are scared of him. Yet they have not placed their faith in him for eternal life. They're still working towards something else. So a faith that simply gives a mental assent, that simply says, yeah, I think that's probably true, is a demonic faith, according to James. And we don't talk about demons and Satan here a lot, but it's in the passage. This is what he says, and this ought to give us pause that even demons go, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and they're scared of him, yet they don't have faith because it's more than just a mental assent. It's more than just agreeing with the set of facts. It's more than just confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Again, I'll go back to that writing in Paul and Romans. If we confess with our hearts, if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, then we will be saved. Some of us stop at confessing with our mouths. That's where demons stop. And that's a scary, scary thing. James takes it a little bit further as he finishes out the passage. And he says that faith that doesn't provide works isn't even a saving faith. Faith that doesn't produce works isn't even a saving faith. He says it this way at the end of the passage. He says, A faith that is simply claimed and not evidenced and not met out with a series of good works and good deeds and love and grace and kindness, that's a dead faith. That's not a saving faith. A faith that we cling to because of a prayer that we prayed years ago and then nothing in our life changed after that is not a saving faith. That's why I am of the conviction, I've thought this for a long time from where I sit in ministry, that the surest sign that the gospel has taken root in someone's life is a radical change in their priorities. I've watched families come and go from churches. And you see families come and they profess a faith. They confess that they believe. And they come and maybe church attendance gets ramped up for a little bit. Maybe they're excited about it. They're caught up in the moment. But nothing between Sundays really changes. They still roll with the same group of people. And it's great. We ought to roll with the same group of people. We ought to have our friends who are not believers, but they can't be our only friends, and they can't have the only values that we emulate and try to not adopt. And the way that they spend their money doesn't change, and the way they spend their time doesn't change, and the way that they seek joy doesn't change. The only thing that really changes is now they go to church, and it makes them feel a little bit better. But eventually, eventually they'll start to fade away and then a year or two later, it's like that was just a flash in the pan. It was a confession, but it wasn't a sincere belief. Conversely, I've watched families profess a faith, come into church, kind of slowly step their way in, slowly take their next steps of obedience, becoming disciples of Christ, join small group, begin to give. Well, a huge indicator of someone's faith, and I don't talk about giving a lot, so hopefully you'll allow me this, is whether or not they give. I'm not talking about the church. I'm just talking about being generous people. Why else would you give 10% of your income away unless you were in love with a God who allowed you to do that as part of obedience to him? It doesn't make any sense. Why would a family do that unless God had radically changed their priorities? I've watched families come in and they had kids on ball teams and they were gone most weekends during the fall and the spring and every night of the week and it was consuming them. And they said, listen, because of our faith, because we want to be around church people more, we're not doing that. We're going to ratchet back all of our involvement everywhere else so that we can be involved in church. It's a radical change in priorities. I'm not saying that every family has to do that, but I am saying that that family radically changed their priorities. And to me, it's evidence that faith has taken hold. But James is very clear. If your faith is a faith that clings to a confession that you made years ago, and in the wake of your life, there is no difference. You're no different now than you were five years ago, and only you know the answer to that. And let me just twist it a little harder as I say that. Don't let yourself off the hook with this. Don't find pockets and ways to make yourself better when you really know that you're the same. If that's our faith, and there are no works, James says it's dead. So by now, you ought to be asking the question, well, crap, man, what are the works then? Because I'm a little nervous right now. What are the works that I ought to be producing? How do I know that I know that I know? How can I be certain? What kind of works is faith going to manifest in my life? I would point you to three passages to answer this question. The first is James 1.27. We talked about it earlier. I talked about it two weeks ago. It's the true religion passage. James says that, and I've that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So we should ask ourselves, as I look back on the wake of my life, do I have an increasing heart for the needy? Do I have an increasing desire to help those who are facing injustice and to be a voice for the voiceless? Or do I care about them as little now as I always have? Do I have an increased desire for holiness? Is the Holy Spirit in me, speaking into me and encouraging me as I venture into places where I need not be? Is he encouraging me as I venture towards places and people where I do need to be? Do I see that in my life? And then according to Jesus, do I look in my life and I see a wake of love in my life? Are there people who would point to me and say, I'm closer to Jesus because they love me well? Has that been manifesting itself in your life in such a way? And listen, the litmus test for this love, this godly love, this faith-inspired love that Jesus gives us is not loving the people who love us back. That's easy. Everyone does that. It's loving the people who don't love you back. It's loving the people that you don't have to love. It's loving the people when there's no transaction there. I'm not getting anything out of this. I just love you and I care for you. Do you have an increased wake of people that you love in your life that you don't have to love, that are sometimes unlovable? James says, if you have a genuine faith, then the answer to that question will be yes. And finally, Paul says in Galatians, we're told that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment for our salvation, that when we are saved, when we have a genuine faith, that the Holy Spirit rushes into our life, and that the Holy Spirit produces fruit. And the fruit of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So again, look at the wake of your life over the last three to five years. Are you producing? Are you experiencing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you still the cranky grump that you've always been? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same? And now listen. I know this is not a fun sermon. You did not get up and shower and brave the rain and you families, we opened kids ministry today. You didn't get your kids ready so that you could come in here and I could kick you in the teeth. I'm sorry about that. This is a hard one. If you're feeling uncomfortable, you should. If you're doubting your salvation, that's all right. Because Paul tells us in Philippians that we should continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that our understanding of our salvation and our relationship with God will change over the years. And if it's not, and if it's not challenged, and we're just allowed to walk through life clinging to this thing that we said once and not seeing any works and not actually being a genuine believer and not experiencing genuine faith, shame on me if I'm your pastor for years and I never confront you with the truth that James gives us here. I have to. And here's why we need to have these hard conversations with ourselves. Here's why we need to think through this and ask the question, do I have a genuine faith? Do I see that in my life? Am I sure that I'm sure that I'm sure? This week, Jen and I spent the week back home. Jen and Lily are driving back today. I've shared with the church through the journey. Jen's dad, about two years ago, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so we've been walking through that, Jen and I have, as a family and with her family. And this last week, he made the decision to stop treatment and receive hospice care in the home. And so we went home to be with the family. The good news is, it was a really, it was a good, sweet, peaceful, life-giving, gracious week. It was good to be around the family. And we're probably talking about months, not weeks. And so that's good too. And we're looking forward to sweet times with John as a whole family. I would also say for those of you who love Jen, please direct your condolences through me. The last thing she needs is to drive home from Athens, be sad that she is not with her dad right now, and then have to answer emails and texts about how he's doing and thinking and all that stuff. So direct those through me. Thank you. But here's why I bring it up. Because I sat with that man this week who has a genuine faith. We were joking about the multiple jackets that he's given to homeless people and sign spinners on the corner of the road. He just stops his car, gets out of the car, and hands him his jacket. He worked at AT&T for years and years and years. He was the vice president of international real estate, yet he knew the name of the parking attendants, he knew their birthdays, and he gave them gifts. He left gifts for the cleaning people in his office. He had a genuine faith. And now, as he's made the decision to embrace death, he is totally fearless and completely at peace. He is living out the verse that says, oh death, where is your sting? It has none for John because he's not fearful. He's totally at peace and he's going to see his Savior. And he's looking forward to it. I want you to have that peace. I want you to know that peace. I want my church to understand what that is. And that peace doesn't come by avoiding the hard truths in Scripture. It comes by continually working out our salvation with fear and with trembling. It comes with being sure that we know that we know. It comes with a genuine faith that will unavoidably produce works. I want you to have that faith too. I want you to have that peace too. So go home. Be concerned. Be confused. Be fearful. Work it out. Make sense of it. If I've confused you today, email me. Let's have a Zoom call or let's have a lunch and let's talk about it. But it's a good thing to have these conversations. It's a good thing to think through these, because when we do, we can be sure that we're sure that we're sure, and we can live our lives in perfect peace, and that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for my church. Let's pray, and then I think we're going to sing one more song together. Father, you were good. In loss, you are good. In grief, you are present. And in joys, you celebrate. So God, thank you for all of those moments and all the ways that you're with us. Lord, I pray that no one here would unnecessarily doubt that they know you. On the flip side, God, I pray that some of us would very necessarily doubt it and that in that doubt we would find a saving faith for maybe the first time ever. God, if any of us listening to me now needs to cry out to you as we sing this song, would we do that? Would you give us the courage to kneel at our house or in these rows or stand and maybe not sing and maybe just pray and search our hearts for where we are with you? Give us a genuine faith. Give us a faith that's rooted so deeply that we abide in you and you produce fruit in us. Give us the peace that comes when we know that we know you. It's in your son's name that I pray all these things. Amen.

Good to see everybody. Thank you guys for that. As is often the case these days, when it's time for me to preach, I don't want to. I just want to keep singing. It's so good to get to sing with my church family and to look and see everyone praising. What a blessing that is. I'm actually going to invite you guys back into prayer as I start the sermon this week. I don't know if you guys know this. Tuesday is kind of a big deal for us in this country, and it would probably be wise for churches to pray over it. So join me in doing that. Father, Tuesday is the election, and this is, you know, one of the more contentious ones that we have ever experienced. It is more polarizing and divisive and filled with vitriol than any that I am aware of previously. So Father, I just pray that you'd be with us. Pray that you'd be in the process. May your hand be all over what happens on Tuesday and very likely, Father, in the weeks following. Would we see you in the nooks and crannies and the polling locations in the districts of this election and the results of it. And Father, more than anything, I pray that your people would be peacemakers in the wake of it. I pray that your people would be unifiers in the wake of it. That we wouldn't have a heart to be right. We wouldn't have a heart to gloat or to complain. Or even have a heart towards doomsday scenarios. But that God, your children would seek to make the peace that you have won. Help us to do that no matter what happens on Tuesday. It's in your son's name we pray, and we're able to do that. Amen. All right, this is the third part in our series called James. I take great pride in my creative series titles, and so this one is James. Last week, Kyle carried the torch exceptionally well in talking about taming the tongue. Take it easy, it wasn't that good. It was fine. I assigned that to him because he is better at that than I am. It was less hypocritical coming from Kyle than me, if you know me well. So I'm very glad about that. I would also say just as a general statement so you guys know that it's a big value for me and for the elders and for Grace to have different voices up here speaking into your lives. So we will always look for opportunities for people besides me to continue to share and offer you their perspective, because I think we benefit from that. Scripture tells us that where there is many counselors, that there is wisdom and wise choices. So I think that that's a good thing. This week, we are jumping back into James chapter 2 to one of, some people call it controversial, though I don't really think that it is. It is confusing. A cursory glance at the passage, James 2 verses 14 through 26 is where we're going to be. If you're watching at home today, thank you so much for doing that. I don't blame you on this rainy morning, but I hope everybody will grab a Bible and interact with the text as we move through it, because we're going to go through that whole passage today. Just a cursory glance of the passage, it renders it a little bit confusing, I think, because as you move through the whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very careful to explain that salvation comes through faith. Paul says it most pointedly confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus is Lord, then we will enter into the kingdom. Jesus beckons us to believe in him and to follow him. So we see over and over again through Scripture the miracle and the mystery of the gospel, which is salvation is offered to you free of merit, free of works, completely by faith. It is the greatest gift that could ever be given. God sent his son to die on the cross for you, for everyone, for the sins that you have committed and for the sins that he knows that you will commit. He died for those so that you might be reunited with his Father, with the Father, and with him, and with the Spirit for all of eternity. God loves you so much that he came after your soul by sending his Son to die on the cross for you. And if we place our faith in that death, then Scripture teaches us that we're going to heaven. Scripture teaches us that we will spend eternity in bliss with God. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we don't have to fear death. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we're a new creature. We're no longer a slave to sin as the old creature was. And so all through the Bible, we see salvation by faith. And then we get to James here at the end of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, this peculiar passage, James says, yeah, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. You show me your faith without works and I'll show you a faith that's dead. As a matter of fact, let me show you how Abraham proved his faith by his works. And at a cursory glance, it seems like James is disagreeing with the rest of Scripture. The rest of Scripture is like, I'm good, I'm good, I have faith, I believe. And then James says, yeah, but if you believe you ought to do some stuff. And if you don't do some stuff, then you may not believe. Actually, James is more pointed than that. Remember we said that this was a well-crafted punch in the gut, this book was? James just says if you don't do some stuff, then you don't believe. It's not real. It's not sincere. And so even though it can seem a little bit contradictory, even though it can be challenging, I don't think it's confusing. I think it is crystal clear. So I want to walk us through James chapter 2 this morning and help us understand this passage and let us be appropriately challenged and worried by this passage because it's a tough one. This is what James writes. We'll start off with the first half of it. James 2, verses 14 through 18. So James shares this pretty stark, blunt reality. You can say all day long that you have faith. You can give a mental assent and a lip service to faith. Do you think that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. But what James says is unless actions follow that, it's not sincere. We saw in chapter 1 that one of the things that James says about true religion, the thing that James says about true religion, is that true religion visits the widows and the orphans in their affliction and remains unstained from the world. So what he's saying is, true religion, people who truly have a genuine faith, will care for the poor and the needy. They will care to be a voice to the voiceless. And in continuing to pull that thread here in chapter two, he basically says, you can't call yourself a believer. You can't say that you have a genuine saving faith if you don't help someone who is in need. If someone comes to you and they say, I'm wet and I'm cold and I need a jacket and I live, I'm homeless and I'm in need. And we say, in our double-layered North Face jackets, I will pray for you. Be warm and filled. I hope you find good food. There's a place downtown called Seat at the Table. You should figure out a way to get there. It's great. And then we leave. James is saying, you don't care for the poor and the needy. You just like to say that you do. You're like me this morning. I was watching a woman get out of her car with a baby, and I watched her do it for like 10 minutes. And at the last second, I was like, you want me to come get you an umbrella? And she said, I mean, I'm good by now. And then she walked in. Like, if I really wanted, if I really cared about her, I would have walked out there with an umbrella. I just cared for the perception that I cared, right? What we do shows what we believe. It actually evidences that. So what James is saying here, and it's important not to miss this, is that works are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. Works, good works, and we're going to talk about what those are, are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. It is a natural consequence. If you have a genuine, believing, saving faith, then God will work in your heart to change you. There's a verse in Matthew that says, if you delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord, then he will give you the desires of your heart. And I've always loved that verse because it makes it seem like if I simply just love the Bible, then God will give me all the stuff that I want. I'm going to be a billionaire in no time. But what it means is when we reflect on God's word and we delight ourselves in it, we grow more like the principles in it. We grow more like God in character. And slowly, over time, because we delight in His Word, our heart beats for the same things that God's heart beats for. Our hearts beat with God. This is how the Spirit gets in our life and changes us. And the things that we want slowly become the things that He wants. The things that He delights in are the things that we delight in. And we're told in Romans that when we are saved, when we become a believer, when we have a true saving faith, that the old self, the old version of ourself that was a slave to sin, is buried with Christ and that this new self is resurrected with him on Easter. That's why baptism is a symbol of this rebirth. We go under the water. That's our old self being cast off and we rise as our new selves that God has radically and fundamentally changed. This new self has a Holy Spirit that's given to us as a down payment on our salvation, who speaks into us, who convicts us when we're going wrong, who encourages us when we're doing right. And so everything in Scripture points to the unavoidable reality that when God fundamentally changes our heart, when we have a saving faith and He rushes into our lives, that the unavoidable result is good works. Because we no longer have to choose our good works. They're a natural manifestation of the faith that is going on inside of us. That's what James is saying. And in saying this, this is important, James actually agrees with Jesus. In saying this, James actually agrees with the teachings of Jesus you have in your notes there. And at home, you should have been able to download the notes on the Gracevine. You have in your notes there two references, John 15, 5 and John 13, 35. And he says in those, John 15, 5 is this wonderful passage. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. In our vernacular, I am the trunk and you are the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. I've talked about this before. When a branch is attached to a tree, it doesn't have to worry about when to produce the fruit or what kind of fruit to produce. All it has to worry about is staying attached to that tree. And Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you obey me, if you follow me, if you pursue me, if you walk with me, if you abide in me, then you will bear much fruit. You won't have to try to bear the fruit. You won't have to try to do the good works. You won't have to make a conscious effort to do it. Just abide in me and it will naturally produce a fruit in your life. James is simply agreeing with Jesus. He's saying it another way. He's saying it in a more pointed way so it's easier to understand. Then Jesus says again in John 13 35, he says, I give you a new command to love others as I have loved you. And then he says that the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. The world will know that you are my children by what you do, by how you treat one another, by your actions. Jesus says you can say all day long that you love your brother. This is the exact example that James gives. You can say you love the poor and the needy, but if you walk away with your warm coat, then you don't. You don't really believe. Faith isn't really there. Jesus says, the world will know by your actions who you are. It's not a matter of just saying it. And honestly, we understand this principle. We get it. We've experienced this, that if there is love, there will be evidence, right? If you're not married, I think you can still appreciate the principles of this. When a husband and wife are married, when they get married, they stand at the altar and they make vows to each other. And they promise, I will love you and be faithful to you in sickness and in health and good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow. It's one thing to stand on the altar and say those things. I had no clue what that meant when I was 25 years old. I said them and I meant them with my whole heart. I know what they mean now more than I did then. And those of you who have been married for 30 and 40 years, you know even way more than me what those words mean. And a husband, listen, a husband can tell his wife that he loves her. He can write her a nice card on her birthday, I love you, you're the best, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. Which apparently when people get married, everyone's unrealistic, right? I'm married to the most handsome man ever. Are you? Because we all look pretty average. Anyways, you can say nice things and it's fine to do that. It's fine to give a mental assent to it. But a wife knows if she's loved, right? If a husband loves his wife, he won't just tell her. He'll run interference for her on Saturday morning with the kids to try to let her get a little bit more sleep than she normally does. He'll clean the kitchen without being asked to clean the kitchen. He'll make a big deal over her birthday if she wants a big deal made of it. He'll make a little deal over her birthday if she wants a little deal made of it. He'll say kind things to her. He'll let her watch what she wants to watch. He'll take her car out on the weekend and wash it and fill it up with gas so that she doesn't have to worry about that. He'll learn the little things that let his wife know that she is loved. And she never has to wonder at that. And if a guy just says occasionally, hey, I love you, you know you're the best, and then never does anything, that's not love. That's selfishness. We understand this principle. We know this to be true in our own lives, and it's true of our faith as well. And it's so true of our faith, and James actually takes this, he actually doubles down on this. This idea of faith will produce works. Love will be manifested in how we act. By presenting us with this idea, and this is where it starts to get scary. According to James, mental assent is not the same as faith. Mental assent is not the same as faith. Promising love on the altar is not the same as loving for 30 years. Just agreeing mentally that Jesus is the Son of God is not a saving faith. This is why Jesus says another scary statement in the Gospels, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. That should give you pause. This should give you pause. If what you're clinging to for your salvation is a prayer that you prayed when you were eight, the mental assent that you gave, we need to do some introspection about whether or not we have a saving faith. And I say that mental assent is not the same as faith because look at what James says in verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. In other translations it says, good. Even the demons believe and shudder. You know who else knows that Jesus is the Son of God? Satan. You know who has way better theology than all of us collectively in this room? Demons. They know the Bible inside and out. They know who Jesus is, and they are scared of him. Yet they have not placed their faith in him for eternal life. They're still working towards something else. So a faith that simply gives a mental assent, that simply says, yeah, I think that's probably true, is a demonic faith, according to James. And we don't talk about demons and Satan here a lot, but it's in the passage. This is what he says, and this ought to give us pause that even demons go, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and they're scared of him, yet they don't have faith because it's more than just a mental assent. It's more than just agreeing with the set of facts. It's more than just confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Again, I'll go back to that writing in Paul and Romans. If we confess with our hearts, if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, then we will be saved. Some of us stop at confessing with our mouths. That's where demons stop. And that's a scary, scary thing. James takes it a little bit further as he finishes out the passage. And he says that faith that doesn't provide works isn't even a saving faith. Faith that doesn't produce works isn't even a saving faith. He says it this way at the end of the passage. He says, A faith that is simply claimed and not evidenced and not met out with a series of good works and good deeds and love and grace and kindness, that's a dead faith. That's not a saving faith. A faith that we cling to because of a prayer that we prayed years ago and then nothing in our life changed after that is not a saving faith. That's why I am of the conviction, I've thought this for a long time from where I sit in ministry, that the surest sign that the gospel has taken root in someone's life is a radical change in their priorities. I've watched families come and go from churches. And you see families come and they profess a faith. They confess that they believe. And they come and maybe church attendance gets ramped up for a little bit. Maybe they're excited about it. They're caught up in the moment. But nothing between Sundays really changes. They still roll with the same group of people. And it's great. We ought to roll with the same group of people. We ought to have our friends who are not believers, but they can't be our only friends, and they can't have the only values that we emulate and try to not adopt. And the way that they spend their money doesn't change, and the way they spend their time doesn't change, and the way that they seek joy doesn't change. The only thing that really changes is now they go to church, and it makes them feel a little bit better. But eventually, eventually they'll start to fade away and then a year or two later, it's like that was just a flash in the pan. It was a confession, but it wasn't a sincere belief. Conversely, I've watched families profess a faith, come into church, kind of slowly step their way in, slowly take their next steps of obedience, becoming disciples of Christ, join small group, begin to give. Well, a huge indicator of someone's faith, and I don't talk about giving a lot, so hopefully you'll allow me this, is whether or not they give. I'm not talking about the church. I'm just talking about being generous people. Why else would you give 10% of your income away unless you were in love with a God who allowed you to do that as part of obedience to him? It doesn't make any sense. Why would a family do that unless God had radically changed their priorities? I've watched families come in and they had kids on ball teams and they were gone most weekends during the fall and the spring and every night of the week and it was consuming them. And they said, listen, because of our faith, because we want to be around church people more, we're not doing that. We're going to ratchet back all of our involvement everywhere else so that we can be involved in church. It's a radical change in priorities. I'm not saying that every family has to do that, but I am saying that that family radically changed their priorities. And to me, it's evidence that faith has taken hold. But James is very clear. If your faith is a faith that clings to a confession that you made years ago, and in the wake of your life, there is no difference. You're no different now than you were five years ago, and only you know the answer to that. And let me just twist it a little harder as I say that. Don't let yourself off the hook with this. Don't find pockets and ways to make yourself better when you really know that you're the same. If that's our faith, and there are no works, James says it's dead. So by now, you ought to be asking the question, well, crap, man, what are the works then? Because I'm a little nervous right now. What are the works that I ought to be producing? How do I know that I know that I know? How can I be certain? What kind of works is faith going to manifest in my life? I would point you to three passages to answer this question. The first is James 1.27. We talked about it earlier. I talked about it two weeks ago. It's the true religion passage. James says that, and I've that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So we should ask ourselves, as I look back on the wake of my life, do I have an increasing heart for the needy? Do I have an increasing desire to help those who are facing injustice and to be a voice for the voiceless? Or do I care about them as little now as I always have? Do I have an increased desire for holiness? Is the Holy Spirit in me, speaking into me and encouraging me as I venture into places where I need not be? Is he encouraging me as I venture towards places and people where I do need to be? Do I see that in my life? And then according to Jesus, do I look in my life and I see a wake of love in my life? Are there people who would point to me and say, I'm closer to Jesus because they love me well? Has that been manifesting itself in your life in such a way? And listen, the litmus test for this love, this godly love, this faith-inspired love that Jesus gives us is not loving the people who love us back. That's easy. Everyone does that. It's loving the people who don't love you back. It's loving the people that you don't have to love. It's loving the people when there's no transaction there. I'm not getting anything out of this. I just love you and I care for you. Do you have an increased wake of people that you love in your life that you don't have to love, that are sometimes unlovable? James says, if you have a genuine faith, then the answer to that question will be yes. And finally, Paul says in Galatians, we're told that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment for our salvation, that when we are saved, when we have a genuine faith, that the Holy Spirit rushes into our life, and that the Holy Spirit produces fruit. And the fruit of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So again, look at the wake of your life over the last three to five years. Are you producing? Are you experiencing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you still the cranky grump that you've always been? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same? And now listen. I know this is not a fun sermon. You did not get up and shower and brave the rain and you families, we opened kids ministry today. You didn't get your kids ready so that you could come in here and I could kick you in the teeth. I'm sorry about that. This is a hard one. If you're feeling uncomfortable, you should. If you're doubting your salvation, that's all right. Because Paul tells us in Philippians that we should continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that our understanding of our salvation and our relationship with God will change over the years. And if it's not, and if it's not challenged, and we're just allowed to walk through life clinging to this thing that we said once and not seeing any works and not actually being a genuine believer and not experiencing genuine faith, shame on me if I'm your pastor for years and I never confront you with the truth that James gives us here. I have to. And here's why we need to have these hard conversations with ourselves. Here's why we need to think through this and ask the question, do I have a genuine faith? Do I see that in my life? Am I sure that I'm sure that I'm sure? This week, Jen and I spent the week back home. Jen and Lily are driving back today. I've shared with the church through the journey. Jen's dad, about two years ago, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so we've been walking through that, Jen and I have, as a family and with her family. And this last week, he made the decision to stop treatment and receive hospice care in the home. And so we went home to be with the family. The good news is, it was a really, it was a good, sweet, peaceful, life-giving, gracious week. It was good to be around the family. And we're probably talking about months, not weeks. And so that's good too. And we're looking forward to sweet times with John as a whole family. I would also say for those of you who love Jen, please direct your condolences through me. The last thing she needs is to drive home from Athens, be sad that she is not with her dad right now, and then have to answer emails and texts about how he's doing and thinking and all that stuff. So direct those through me. Thank you. But here's why I bring it up. Because I sat with that man this week who has a genuine faith. We were joking about the multiple jackets that he's given to homeless people and sign spinners on the corner of the road. He just stops his car, gets out of the car, and hands him his jacket. He worked at AT&T for years and years and years. He was the vice president of international real estate, yet he knew the name of the parking attendants, he knew their birthdays, and he gave them gifts. He left gifts for the cleaning people in his office. He had a genuine faith. And now, as he's made the decision to embrace death, he is totally fearless and completely at peace. He is living out the verse that says, oh death, where is your sting? It has none for John because he's not fearful. He's totally at peace and he's going to see his Savior. And he's looking forward to it. I want you to have that peace. I want you to know that peace. I want my church to understand what that is. And that peace doesn't come by avoiding the hard truths in Scripture. It comes by continually working out our salvation with fear and with trembling. It comes with being sure that we know that we know. It comes with a genuine faith that will unavoidably produce works. I want you to have that faith too. I want you to have that peace too. So go home. Be concerned. Be confused. Be fearful. Work it out. Make sense of it. If I've confused you today, email me. Let's have a Zoom call or let's have a lunch and let's talk about it. But it's a good thing to have these conversations. It's a good thing to think through these, because when we do, we can be sure that we're sure that we're sure, and we can live our lives in perfect peace, and that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for my church. Let's pray, and then I think we're going to sing one more song together. Father, you were good. In loss, you are good. In grief, you are present. And in joys, you celebrate. So God, thank you for all of those moments and all the ways that you're with us. Lord, I pray that no one here would unnecessarily doubt that they know you. On the flip side, God, I pray that some of us would very necessarily doubt it and that in that doubt we would find a saving faith for maybe the first time ever. God, if any of us listening to me now needs to cry out to you as we sing this song, would we do that? Would you give us the courage to kneel at our house or in these rows or stand and maybe not sing and maybe just pray and search our hearts for where we are with you? Give us a genuine faith. Give us a faith that's rooted so deeply that we abide in you and you produce fruit in us. Give us the peace that comes when we know that we know you. It's in your son's name that I pray all these things. Amen.

Good to see everybody. Thank you guys for that. As is often the case these days, when it's time for me to preach, I don't want to. I just want to keep singing. It's so good to get to sing with my church family and to look and see everyone praising. What a blessing that is. I'm actually going to invite you guys back into prayer as I start the sermon this week. I don't know if you guys know this. Tuesday is kind of a big deal for us in this country, and it would probably be wise for churches to pray over it. So join me in doing that. Father, Tuesday is the election, and this is, you know, one of the more contentious ones that we have ever experienced. It is more polarizing and divisive and filled with vitriol than any that I am aware of previously. So Father, I just pray that you'd be with us. Pray that you'd be in the process. May your hand be all over what happens on Tuesday and very likely, Father, in the weeks following. Would we see you in the nooks and crannies and the polling locations in the districts of this election and the results of it. And Father, more than anything, I pray that your people would be peacemakers in the wake of it. I pray that your people would be unifiers in the wake of it. That we wouldn't have a heart to be right. We wouldn't have a heart to gloat or to complain. Or even have a heart towards doomsday scenarios. But that God, your children would seek to make the peace that you have won. Help us to do that no matter what happens on Tuesday. It's in your son's name we pray, and we're able to do that. Amen. All right, this is the third part in our series called James. I take great pride in my creative series titles, and so this one is James. Last week, Kyle carried the torch exceptionally well in talking about taming the tongue. Take it easy, it wasn't that good. It was fine. I assigned that to him because he is better at that than I am. It was less hypocritical coming from Kyle than me, if you know me well. So I'm very glad about that. I would also say just as a general statement so you guys know that it's a big value for me and for the elders and for Grace to have different voices up here speaking into your lives. So we will always look for opportunities for people besides me to continue to share and offer you their perspective, because I think we benefit from that. Scripture tells us that where there is many counselors, that there is wisdom and wise choices. So I think that that's a good thing. This week, we are jumping back into James chapter 2 to one of, some people call it controversial, though I don't really think that it is. It is confusing. A cursory glance at the passage, James 2 verses 14 through 26 is where we're going to be. If you're watching at home today, thank you so much for doing that. I don't blame you on this rainy morning, but I hope everybody will grab a Bible and interact with the text as we move through it, because we're going to go through that whole passage today. Just a cursory glance of the passage, it renders it a little bit confusing, I think, because as you move through the whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very careful to explain that salvation comes through faith. Paul says it most pointedly confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus is Lord, then we will enter into the kingdom. Jesus beckons us to believe in him and to follow him. So we see over and over again through Scripture the miracle and the mystery of the gospel, which is salvation is offered to you free of merit, free of works, completely by faith. It is the greatest gift that could ever be given. God sent his son to die on the cross for you, for everyone, for the sins that you have committed and for the sins that he knows that you will commit. He died for those so that you might be reunited with his Father, with the Father, and with him, and with the Spirit for all of eternity. God loves you so much that he came after your soul by sending his Son to die on the cross for you. And if we place our faith in that death, then Scripture teaches us that we're going to heaven. Scripture teaches us that we will spend eternity in bliss with God. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we don't have to fear death. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we're a new creature. We're no longer a slave to sin as the old creature was. And so all through the Bible, we see salvation by faith. And then we get to James here at the end of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, this peculiar passage, James says, yeah, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. You show me your faith without works and I'll show you a faith that's dead. As a matter of fact, let me show you how Abraham proved his faith by his works. And at a cursory glance, it seems like James is disagreeing with the rest of Scripture. The rest of Scripture is like, I'm good, I'm good, I have faith, I believe. And then James says, yeah, but if you believe you ought to do some stuff. And if you don't do some stuff, then you may not believe. Actually, James is more pointed than that. Remember we said that this was a well-crafted punch in the gut, this book was? James just says if you don't do some stuff, then you don't believe. It's not real. It's not sincere. And so even though it can seem a little bit contradictory, even though it can be challenging, I don't think it's confusing. I think it is crystal clear. So I want to walk us through James chapter 2 this morning and help us understand this passage and let us be appropriately challenged and worried by this passage because it's a tough one. This is what James writes. We'll start off with the first half of it. James 2, verses 14 through 18. So James shares this pretty stark, blunt reality. You can say all day long that you have faith. You can give a mental assent and a lip service to faith. Do you think that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. But what James says is unless actions follow that, it's not sincere. We saw in chapter 1 that one of the things that James says about true religion, the thing that James says about true religion, is that true religion visits the widows and the orphans in their affliction and remains unstained from the world. So what he's saying is, true religion, people who truly have a genuine faith, will care for the poor and the needy. They will care to be a voice to the voiceless. And in continuing to pull that thread here in chapter two, he basically says, you can't call yourself a believer. You can't say that you have a genuine saving faith if you don't help someone who is in need. If someone comes to you and they say, I'm wet and I'm cold and I need a jacket and I live, I'm homeless and I'm in need. And we say, in our double-layered North Face jackets, I will pray for you. Be warm and filled. I hope you find good food. There's a place downtown called Seat at the Table. You should figure out a way to get there. It's great. And then we leave. James is saying, you don't care for the poor and the needy. You just like to say that you do. You're like me this morning. I was watching a woman get out of her car with a baby, and I watched her do it for like 10 minutes. And at the last second, I was like, you want me to come get you an umbrella? And she said, I mean, I'm good by now. And then she walked in. Like, if I really wanted, if I really cared about her, I would have walked out there with an umbrella. I just cared for the perception that I cared, right? What we do shows what we believe. It actually evidences that. So what James is saying here, and it's important not to miss this, is that works are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. Works, good works, and we're going to talk about what those are, are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. It is a natural consequence. If you have a genuine, believing, saving faith, then God will work in your heart to change you. There's a verse in Matthew that says, if you delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord, then he will give you the desires of your heart. And I've always loved that verse because it makes it seem like if I simply just love the Bible, then God will give me all the stuff that I want. I'm going to be a billionaire in no time. But what it means is when we reflect on God's word and we delight ourselves in it, we grow more like the principles in it. We grow more like God in character. And slowly, over time, because we delight in His Word, our heart beats for the same things that God's heart beats for. Our hearts beat with God. This is how the Spirit gets in our life and changes us. And the things that we want slowly become the things that He wants. The things that He delights in are the things that we delight in. And we're told in Romans that when we are saved, when we become a believer, when we have a true saving faith, that the old self, the old version of ourself that was a slave to sin, is buried with Christ and that this new self is resurrected with him on Easter. That's why baptism is a symbol of this rebirth. We go under the water. That's our old self being cast off and we rise as our new selves that God has radically and fundamentally changed. This new self has a Holy Spirit that's given to us as a down payment on our salvation, who speaks into us, who convicts us when we're going wrong, who encourages us when we're doing right. And so everything in Scripture points to the unavoidable reality that when God fundamentally changes our heart, when we have a saving faith and He rushes into our lives, that the unavoidable result is good works. Because we no longer have to choose our good works. They're a natural manifestation of the faith that is going on inside of us. That's what James is saying. And in saying this, this is important, James actually agrees with Jesus. In saying this, James actually agrees with the teachings of Jesus you have in your notes there. And at home, you should have been able to download the notes on the Gracevine. You have in your notes there two references, John 15, 5 and John 13, 35. And he says in those, John 15, 5 is this wonderful passage. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. In our vernacular, I am the trunk and you are the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. I've talked about this before. When a branch is attached to a tree, it doesn't have to worry about when to produce the fruit or what kind of fruit to produce. All it has to worry about is staying attached to that tree. And Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you obey me, if you follow me, if you pursue me, if you walk with me, if you abide in me, then you will bear much fruit. You won't have to try to bear the fruit. You won't have to try to do the good works. You won't have to make a conscious effort to do it. Just abide in me and it will naturally produce a fruit in your life. James is simply agreeing with Jesus. He's saying it another way. He's saying it in a more pointed way so it's easier to understand. Then Jesus says again in John 13 35, he says, I give you a new command to love others as I have loved you. And then he says that the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. The world will know that you are my children by what you do, by how you treat one another, by your actions. Jesus says you can say all day long that you love your brother. This is the exact example that James gives. You can say you love the poor and the needy, but if you walk away with your warm coat, then you don't. You don't really believe. Faith isn't really there. Jesus says, the world will know by your actions who you are. It's not a matter of just saying it. And honestly, we understand this principle. We get it. We've experienced this, that if there is love, there will be evidence, right? If you're not married, I think you can still appreciate the principles of this. When a husband and wife are married, when they get married, they stand at the altar and they make vows to each other. And they promise, I will love you and be faithful to you in sickness and in health and good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow. It's one thing to stand on the altar and say those things. I had no clue what that meant when I was 25 years old. I said them and I meant them with my whole heart. I know what they mean now more than I did then. And those of you who have been married for 30 and 40 years, you know even way more than me what those words mean. And a husband, listen, a husband can tell his wife that he loves her. He can write her a nice card on her birthday, I love you, you're the best, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. Which apparently when people get married, everyone's unrealistic, right? I'm married to the most handsome man ever. Are you? Because we all look pretty average. Anyways, you can say nice things and it's fine to do that. It's fine to give a mental assent to it. But a wife knows if she's loved, right? If a husband loves his wife, he won't just tell her. He'll run interference for her on Saturday morning with the kids to try to let her get a little bit more sleep than she normally does. He'll clean the kitchen without being asked to clean the kitchen. He'll make a big deal over her birthday if she wants a big deal made of it. He'll make a little deal over her birthday if she wants a little deal made of it. He'll say kind things to her. He'll let her watch what she wants to watch. He'll take her car out on the weekend and wash it and fill it up with gas so that she doesn't have to worry about that. He'll learn the little things that let his wife know that she is loved. And she never has to wonder at that. And if a guy just says occasionally, hey, I love you, you know you're the best, and then never does anything, that's not love. That's selfishness. We understand this principle. We know this to be true in our own lives, and it's true of our faith as well. And it's so true of our faith, and James actually takes this, he actually doubles down on this. This idea of faith will produce works. Love will be manifested in how we act. By presenting us with this idea, and this is where it starts to get scary. According to James, mental assent is not the same as faith. Mental assent is not the same as faith. Promising love on the altar is not the same as loving for 30 years. Just agreeing mentally that Jesus is the Son of God is not a saving faith. This is why Jesus says another scary statement in the Gospels, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. That should give you pause. This should give you pause. If what you're clinging to for your salvation is a prayer that you prayed when you were eight, the mental assent that you gave, we need to do some introspection about whether or not we have a saving faith. And I say that mental assent is not the same as faith because look at what James says in verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. In other translations it says, good. Even the demons believe and shudder. You know who else knows that Jesus is the Son of God? Satan. You know who has way better theology than all of us collectively in this room? Demons. They know the Bible inside and out. They know who Jesus is, and they are scared of him. Yet they have not placed their faith in him for eternal life. They're still working towards something else. So a faith that simply gives a mental assent, that simply says, yeah, I think that's probably true, is a demonic faith, according to James. And we don't talk about demons and Satan here a lot, but it's in the passage. This is what he says, and this ought to give us pause that even demons go, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and they're scared of him, yet they don't have faith because it's more than just a mental assent. It's more than just agreeing with the set of facts. It's more than just confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Again, I'll go back to that writing in Paul and Romans. If we confess with our hearts, if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, then we will be saved. Some of us stop at confessing with our mouths. That's where demons stop. And that's a scary, scary thing. James takes it a little bit further as he finishes out the passage. And he says that faith that doesn't provide works isn't even a saving faith. Faith that doesn't produce works isn't even a saving faith. He says it this way at the end of the passage. He says, A faith that is simply claimed and not evidenced and not met out with a series of good works and good deeds and love and grace and kindness, that's a dead faith. That's not a saving faith. A faith that we cling to because of a prayer that we prayed years ago and then nothing in our life changed after that is not a saving faith. That's why I am of the conviction, I've thought this for a long time from where I sit in ministry, that the surest sign that the gospel has taken root in someone's life is a radical change in their priorities. I've watched families come and go from churches. And you see families come and they profess a faith. They confess that they believe. And they come and maybe church attendance gets ramped up for a little bit. Maybe they're excited about it. They're caught up in the moment. But nothing between Sundays really changes. They still roll with the same group of people. And it's great. We ought to roll with the same group of people. We ought to have our friends who are not believers, but they can't be our only friends, and they can't have the only values that we emulate and try to not adopt. And the way that they spend their money doesn't change, and the way they spend their time doesn't change, and the way that they seek joy doesn't change. The only thing that really changes is now they go to church, and it makes them feel a little bit better. But eventually, eventually they'll start to fade away and then a year or two later, it's like that was just a flash in the pan. It was a confession, but it wasn't a sincere belief. Conversely, I've watched families profess a faith, come into church, kind of slowly step their way in, slowly take their next steps of obedience, becoming disciples of Christ, join small group, begin to give. Well, a huge indicator of someone's faith, and I don't talk about giving a lot, so hopefully you'll allow me this, is whether or not they give. I'm not talking about the church. I'm just talking about being generous people. Why else would you give 10% of your income away unless you were in love with a God who allowed you to do that as part of obedience to him? It doesn't make any sense. Why would a family do that unless God had radically changed their priorities? I've watched families come in and they had kids on ball teams and they were gone most weekends during the fall and the spring and every night of the week and it was consuming them. And they said, listen, because of our faith, because we want to be around church people more, we're not doing that. We're going to ratchet back all of our involvement everywhere else so that we can be involved in church. It's a radical change in priorities. I'm not saying that every family has to do that, but I am saying that that family radically changed their priorities. And to me, it's evidence that faith has taken hold. But James is very clear. If your faith is a faith that clings to a confession that you made years ago, and in the wake of your life, there is no difference. You're no different now than you were five years ago, and only you know the answer to that. And let me just twist it a little harder as I say that. Don't let yourself off the hook with this. Don't find pockets and ways to make yourself better when you really know that you're the same. If that's our faith, and there are no works, James says it's dead. So by now, you ought to be asking the question, well, crap, man, what are the works then? Because I'm a little nervous right now. What are the works that I ought to be producing? How do I know that I know that I know? How can I be certain? What kind of works is faith going to manifest in my life? I would point you to three passages to answer this question. The first is James 1.27. We talked about it earlier. I talked about it two weeks ago. It's the true religion passage. James says that, and I've that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So we should ask ourselves, as I look back on the wake of my life, do I have an increasing heart for the needy? Do I have an increasing desire to help those who are facing injustice and to be a voice for the voiceless? Or do I care about them as little now as I always have? Do I have an increased desire for holiness? Is the Holy Spirit in me, speaking into me and encouraging me as I venture into places where I need not be? Is he encouraging me as I venture towards places and people where I do need to be? Do I see that in my life? And then according to Jesus, do I look in my life and I see a wake of love in my life? Are there people who would point to me and say, I'm closer to Jesus because they love me well? Has that been manifesting itself in your life in such a way? And listen, the litmus test for this love, this godly love, this faith-inspired love that Jesus gives us is not loving the people who love us back. That's easy. Everyone does that. It's loving the people who don't love you back. It's loving the people that you don't have to love. It's loving the people when there's no transaction there. I'm not getting anything out of this. I just love you and I care for you. Do you have an increased wake of people that you love in your life that you don't have to love, that are sometimes unlovable? James says, if you have a genuine faith, then the answer to that question will be yes. And finally, Paul says in Galatians, we're told that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment for our salvation, that when we are saved, when we have a genuine faith, that the Holy Spirit rushes into our life, and that the Holy Spirit produces fruit. And the fruit of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So again, look at the wake of your life over the last three to five years. Are you producing? Are you experiencing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you still the cranky grump that you've always been? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same? And now listen. I know this is not a fun sermon. You did not get up and shower and brave the rain and you families, we opened kids ministry today. You didn't get your kids ready so that you could come in here and I could kick you in the teeth. I'm sorry about that. This is a hard one. If you're feeling uncomfortable, you should. If you're doubting your salvation, that's all right. Because Paul tells us in Philippians that we should continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that our understanding of our salvation and our relationship with God will change over the years. And if it's not, and if it's not challenged, and we're just allowed to walk through life clinging to this thing that we said once and not seeing any works and not actually being a genuine believer and not experiencing genuine faith, shame on me if I'm your pastor for years and I never confront you with the truth that James gives us here. I have to. And here's why we need to have these hard conversations with ourselves. Here's why we need to think through this and ask the question, do I have a genuine faith? Do I see that in my life? Am I sure that I'm sure that I'm sure? This week, Jen and I spent the week back home. Jen and Lily are driving back today. I've shared with the church through the journey. Jen's dad, about two years ago, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so we've been walking through that, Jen and I have, as a family and with her family. And this last week, he made the decision to stop treatment and receive hospice care in the home. And so we went home to be with the family. The good news is, it was a really, it was a good, sweet, peaceful, life-giving, gracious week. It was good to be around the family. And we're probably talking about months, not weeks. And so that's good too. And we're looking forward to sweet times with John as a whole family. I would also say for those of you who love Jen, please direct your condolences through me. The last thing she needs is to drive home from Athens, be sad that she is not with her dad right now, and then have to answer emails and texts about how he's doing and thinking and all that stuff. So direct those through me. Thank you. But here's why I bring it up. Because I sat with that man this week who has a genuine faith. We were joking about the multiple jackets that he's given to homeless people and sign spinners on the corner of the road. He just stops his car, gets out of the car, and hands him his jacket. He worked at AT&T for years and years and years. He was the vice president of international real estate, yet he knew the name of the parking attendants, he knew their birthdays, and he gave them gifts. He left gifts for the cleaning people in his office. He had a genuine faith. And now, as he's made the decision to embrace death, he is totally fearless and completely at peace. He is living out the verse that says, oh death, where is your sting? It has none for John because he's not fearful. He's totally at peace and he's going to see his Savior. And he's looking forward to it. I want you to have that peace. I want you to know that peace. I want my church to understand what that is. And that peace doesn't come by avoiding the hard truths in Scripture. It comes by continually working out our salvation with fear and with trembling. It comes with being sure that we know that we know. It comes with a genuine faith that will unavoidably produce works. I want you to have that faith too. I want you to have that peace too. So go home. Be concerned. Be confused. Be fearful. Work it out. Make sense of it. If I've confused you today, email me. Let's have a Zoom call or let's have a lunch and let's talk about it. But it's a good thing to have these conversations. It's a good thing to think through these, because when we do, we can be sure that we're sure that we're sure, and we can live our lives in perfect peace, and that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for my church. Let's pray, and then I think we're going to sing one more song together. Father, you were good. In loss, you are good. In grief, you are present. And in joys, you celebrate. So God, thank you for all of those moments and all the ways that you're with us. Lord, I pray that no one here would unnecessarily doubt that they know you. On the flip side, God, I pray that some of us would very necessarily doubt it and that in that doubt we would find a saving faith for maybe the first time ever. God, if any of us listening to me now needs to cry out to you as we sing this song, would we do that? Would you give us the courage to kneel at our house or in these rows or stand and maybe not sing and maybe just pray and search our hearts for where we are with you? Give us a genuine faith. Give us a faith that's rooted so deeply that we abide in you and you produce fruit in us. Give us the peace that comes when we know that we know you. It's in your son's name that I pray all these things. Amen.

Good to see everybody. Thank you guys for that. As is often the case these days, when it's time for me to preach, I don't want to. I just want to keep singing. It's so good to get to sing with my church family and to look and see everyone praising. What a blessing that is. I'm actually going to invite you guys back into prayer as I start the sermon this week. I don't know if you guys know this. Tuesday is kind of a big deal for us in this country, and it would probably be wise for churches to pray over it. So join me in doing that. Father, Tuesday is the election, and this is, you know, one of the more contentious ones that we have ever experienced. It is more polarizing and divisive and filled with vitriol than any that I am aware of previously. So Father, I just pray that you'd be with us. Pray that you'd be in the process. May your hand be all over what happens on Tuesday and very likely, Father, in the weeks following. Would we see you in the nooks and crannies and the polling locations in the districts of this election and the results of it. And Father, more than anything, I pray that your people would be peacemakers in the wake of it. I pray that your people would be unifiers in the wake of it. That we wouldn't have a heart to be right. We wouldn't have a heart to gloat or to complain. Or even have a heart towards doomsday scenarios. But that God, your children would seek to make the peace that you have won. Help us to do that no matter what happens on Tuesday. It's in your son's name we pray, and we're able to do that. Amen. All right, this is the third part in our series called James. I take great pride in my creative series titles, and so this one is James. Last week, Kyle carried the torch exceptionally well in talking about taming the tongue. Take it easy, it wasn't that good. It was fine. I assigned that to him because he is better at that than I am. It was less hypocritical coming from Kyle than me, if you know me well. So I'm very glad about that. I would also say just as a general statement so you guys know that it's a big value for me and for the elders and for Grace to have different voices up here speaking into your lives. So we will always look for opportunities for people besides me to continue to share and offer you their perspective, because I think we benefit from that. Scripture tells us that where there is many counselors, that there is wisdom and wise choices. So I think that that's a good thing. This week, we are jumping back into James chapter 2 to one of, some people call it controversial, though I don't really think that it is. It is confusing. A cursory glance at the passage, James 2 verses 14 through 26 is where we're going to be. If you're watching at home today, thank you so much for doing that. I don't blame you on this rainy morning, but I hope everybody will grab a Bible and interact with the text as we move through it, because we're going to go through that whole passage today. Just a cursory glance of the passage, it renders it a little bit confusing, I think, because as you move through the whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very careful to explain that salvation comes through faith. Paul says it most pointedly confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus is Lord, then we will enter into the kingdom. Jesus beckons us to believe in him and to follow him. So we see over and over again through Scripture the miracle and the mystery of the gospel, which is salvation is offered to you free of merit, free of works, completely by faith. It is the greatest gift that could ever be given. God sent his son to die on the cross for you, for everyone, for the sins that you have committed and for the sins that he knows that you will commit. He died for those so that you might be reunited with his Father, with the Father, and with him, and with the Spirit for all of eternity. God loves you so much that he came after your soul by sending his Son to die on the cross for you. And if we place our faith in that death, then Scripture teaches us that we're going to heaven. Scripture teaches us that we will spend eternity in bliss with God. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we don't have to fear death. Scripture teaches us that because of that, we're a new creature. We're no longer a slave to sin as the old creature was. And so all through the Bible, we see salvation by faith. And then we get to James here at the end of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, this peculiar passage, James says, yeah, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. You show me your faith without works and I'll show you a faith that's dead. As a matter of fact, let me show you how Abraham proved his faith by his works. And at a cursory glance, it seems like James is disagreeing with the rest of Scripture. The rest of Scripture is like, I'm good, I'm good, I have faith, I believe. And then James says, yeah, but if you believe you ought to do some stuff. And if you don't do some stuff, then you may not believe. Actually, James is more pointed than that. Remember we said that this was a well-crafted punch in the gut, this book was? James just says if you don't do some stuff, then you don't believe. It's not real. It's not sincere. And so even though it can seem a little bit contradictory, even though it can be challenging, I don't think it's confusing. I think it is crystal clear. So I want to walk us through James chapter 2 this morning and help us understand this passage and let us be appropriately challenged and worried by this passage because it's a tough one. This is what James writes. We'll start off with the first half of it. James 2, verses 14 through 18. So James shares this pretty stark, blunt reality. You can say all day long that you have faith. You can give a mental assent and a lip service to faith. Do you think that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. But what James says is unless actions follow that, it's not sincere. We saw in chapter 1 that one of the things that James says about true religion, the thing that James says about true religion, is that true religion visits the widows and the orphans in their affliction and remains unstained from the world. So what he's saying is, true religion, people who truly have a genuine faith, will care for the poor and the needy. They will care to be a voice to the voiceless. And in continuing to pull that thread here in chapter two, he basically says, you can't call yourself a believer. You can't say that you have a genuine saving faith if you don't help someone who is in need. If someone comes to you and they say, I'm wet and I'm cold and I need a jacket and I live, I'm homeless and I'm in need. And we say, in our double-layered North Face jackets, I will pray for you. Be warm and filled. I hope you find good food. There's a place downtown called Seat at the Table. You should figure out a way to get there. It's great. And then we leave. James is saying, you don't care for the poor and the needy. You just like to say that you do. You're like me this morning. I was watching a woman get out of her car with a baby, and I watched her do it for like 10 minutes. And at the last second, I was like, you want me to come get you an umbrella? And she said, I mean, I'm good by now. And then she walked in. Like, if I really wanted, if I really cared about her, I would have walked out there with an umbrella. I just cared for the perception that I cared, right? What we do shows what we believe. It actually evidences that. So what James is saying here, and it's important not to miss this, is that works are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. Works, good works, and we're going to talk about what those are, are an unavoidable result of a genuine faith. It is a natural consequence. If you have a genuine, believing, saving faith, then God will work in your heart to change you. There's a verse in Matthew that says, if you delight yourselves in the laws of the Lord, then he will give you the desires of your heart. And I've always loved that verse because it makes it seem like if I simply just love the Bible, then God will give me all the stuff that I want. I'm going to be a billionaire in no time. But what it means is when we reflect on God's word and we delight ourselves in it, we grow more like the principles in it. We grow more like God in character. And slowly, over time, because we delight in His Word, our heart beats for the same things that God's heart beats for. Our hearts beat with God. This is how the Spirit gets in our life and changes us. And the things that we want slowly become the things that He wants. The things that He delights in are the things that we delight in. And we're told in Romans that when we are saved, when we become a believer, when we have a true saving faith, that the old self, the old version of ourself that was a slave to sin, is buried with Christ and that this new self is resurrected with him on Easter. That's why baptism is a symbol of this rebirth. We go under the water. That's our old self being cast off and we rise as our new selves that God has radically and fundamentally changed. This new self has a Holy Spirit that's given to us as a down payment on our salvation, who speaks into us, who convicts us when we're going wrong, who encourages us when we're doing right. And so everything in Scripture points to the unavoidable reality that when God fundamentally changes our heart, when we have a saving faith and He rushes into our lives, that the unavoidable result is good works. Because we no longer have to choose our good works. They're a natural manifestation of the faith that is going on inside of us. That's what James is saying. And in saying this, this is important, James actually agrees with Jesus. In saying this, James actually agrees with the teachings of Jesus you have in your notes there. And at home, you should have been able to download the notes on the Gracevine. You have in your notes there two references, John 15, 5 and John 13, 35. And he says in those, John 15, 5 is this wonderful passage. He says, I am the vine and you are the branches. In our vernacular, I am the trunk and you are the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. I've talked about this before. When a branch is attached to a tree, it doesn't have to worry about when to produce the fruit or what kind of fruit to produce. All it has to worry about is staying attached to that tree. And Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you obey me, if you follow me, if you pursue me, if you walk with me, if you abide in me, then you will bear much fruit. You won't have to try to bear the fruit. You won't have to try to do the good works. You won't have to make a conscious effort to do it. Just abide in me and it will naturally produce a fruit in your life. James is simply agreeing with Jesus. He's saying it another way. He's saying it in a more pointed way so it's easier to understand. Then Jesus says again in John 13 35, he says, I give you a new command to love others as I have loved you. And then he says that the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. The world will know that you are my children by what you do, by how you treat one another, by your actions. Jesus says you can say all day long that you love your brother. This is the exact example that James gives. You can say you love the poor and the needy, but if you walk away with your warm coat, then you don't. You don't really believe. Faith isn't really there. Jesus says, the world will know by your actions who you are. It's not a matter of just saying it. And honestly, we understand this principle. We get it. We've experienced this, that if there is love, there will be evidence, right? If you're not married, I think you can still appreciate the principles of this. When a husband and wife are married, when they get married, they stand at the altar and they make vows to each other. And they promise, I will love you and be faithful to you in sickness and in health and good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow. It's one thing to stand on the altar and say those things. I had no clue what that meant when I was 25 years old. I said them and I meant them with my whole heart. I know what they mean now more than I did then. And those of you who have been married for 30 and 40 years, you know even way more than me what those words mean. And a husband, listen, a husband can tell his wife that he loves her. He can write her a nice card on her birthday, I love you, you're the best, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. Which apparently when people get married, everyone's unrealistic, right? I'm married to the most handsome man ever. Are you? Because we all look pretty average. Anyways, you can say nice things and it's fine to do that. It's fine to give a mental assent to it. But a wife knows if she's loved, right? If a husband loves his wife, he won't just tell her. He'll run interference for her on Saturday morning with the kids to try to let her get a little bit more sleep than she normally does. He'll clean the kitchen without being asked to clean the kitchen. He'll make a big deal over her birthday if she wants a big deal made of it. He'll make a little deal over her birthday if she wants a little deal made of it. He'll say kind things to her. He'll let her watch what she wants to watch. He'll take her car out on the weekend and wash it and fill it up with gas so that she doesn't have to worry about that. He'll learn the little things that let his wife know that she is loved. And she never has to wonder at that. And if a guy just says occasionally, hey, I love you, you know you're the best, and then never does anything, that's not love. That's selfishness. We understand this principle. We know this to be true in our own lives, and it's true of our faith as well. And it's so true of our faith, and James actually takes this, he actually doubles down on this. This idea of faith will produce works. Love will be manifested in how we act. By presenting us with this idea, and this is where it starts to get scary. According to James, mental assent is not the same as faith. Mental assent is not the same as faith. Promising love on the altar is not the same as loving for 30 years. Just agreeing mentally that Jesus is the Son of God is not a saving faith. This is why Jesus says another scary statement in the Gospels, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. That should give you pause. This should give you pause. If what you're clinging to for your salvation is a prayer that you prayed when you were eight, the mental assent that you gave, we need to do some introspection about whether or not we have a saving faith. And I say that mental assent is not the same as faith because look at what James says in verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. In other translations it says, good. Even the demons believe and shudder. You know who else knows that Jesus is the Son of God? Satan. You know who has way better theology than all of us collectively in this room? Demons. They know the Bible inside and out. They know who Jesus is, and they are scared of him. Yet they have not placed their faith in him for eternal life. They're still working towards something else. So a faith that simply gives a mental assent, that simply says, yeah, I think that's probably true, is a demonic faith, according to James. And we don't talk about demons and Satan here a lot, but it's in the passage. This is what he says, and this ought to give us pause that even demons go, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and they're scared of him, yet they don't have faith because it's more than just a mental assent. It's more than just agreeing with the set of facts. It's more than just confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Again, I'll go back to that writing in Paul and Romans. If we confess with our hearts, if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, then we will be saved. Some of us stop at confessing with our mouths. That's where demons stop. And that's a scary, scary thing. James takes it a little bit further as he finishes out the passage. And he says that faith that doesn't provide works isn't even a saving faith. Faith that doesn't produce works isn't even a saving faith. He says it this way at the end of the passage. He says, A faith that is simply claimed and not evidenced and not met out with a series of good works and good deeds and love and grace and kindness, that's a dead faith. That's not a saving faith. A faith that we cling to because of a prayer that we prayed years ago and then nothing in our life changed after that is not a saving faith. That's why I am of the conviction, I've thought this for a long time from where I sit in ministry, that the surest sign that the gospel has taken root in someone's life is a radical change in their priorities. I've watched families come and go from churches. And you see families come and they profess a faith. They confess that they believe. And they come and maybe church attendance gets ramped up for a little bit. Maybe they're excited about it. They're caught up in the moment. But nothing between Sundays really changes. They still roll with the same group of people. And it's great. We ought to roll with the same group of people. We ought to have our friends who are not believers, but they can't be our only friends, and they can't have the only values that we emulate and try to not adopt. And the way that they spend their money doesn't change, and the way they spend their time doesn't change, and the way that they seek joy doesn't change. The only thing that really changes is now they go to church, and it makes them feel a little bit better. But eventually, eventually they'll start to fade away and then a year or two later, it's like that was just a flash in the pan. It was a confession, but it wasn't a sincere belief. Conversely, I've watched families profess a faith, come into church, kind of slowly step their way in, slowly take their next steps of obedience, becoming disciples of Christ, join small group, begin to give. Well, a huge indicator of someone's faith, and I don't talk about giving a lot, so hopefully you'll allow me this, is whether or not they give. I'm not talking about the church. I'm just talking about being generous people. Why else would you give 10% of your income away unless you were in love with a God who allowed you to do that as part of obedience to him? It doesn't make any sense. Why would a family do that unless God had radically changed their priorities? I've watched families come in and they had kids on ball teams and they were gone most weekends during the fall and the spring and every night of the week and it was consuming them. And they said, listen, because of our faith, because we want to be around church people more, we're not doing that. We're going to ratchet back all of our involvement everywhere else so that we can be involved in church. It's a radical change in priorities. I'm not saying that every family has to do that, but I am saying that that family radically changed their priorities. And to me, it's evidence that faith has taken hold. But James is very clear. If your faith is a faith that clings to a confession that you made years ago, and in the wake of your life, there is no difference. You're no different now than you were five years ago, and only you know the answer to that. And let me just twist it a little harder as I say that. Don't let yourself off the hook with this. Don't find pockets and ways to make yourself better when you really know that you're the same. If that's our faith, and there are no works, James says it's dead. So by now, you ought to be asking the question, well, crap, man, what are the works then? Because I'm a little nervous right now. What are the works that I ought to be producing? How do I know that I know that I know? How can I be certain? What kind of works is faith going to manifest in my life? I would point you to three passages to answer this question. The first is James 1.27. We talked about it earlier. I talked about it two weeks ago. It's the true religion passage. James says that, and I've that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So we should ask ourselves, as I look back on the wake of my life, do I have an increasing heart for the needy? Do I have an increasing desire to help those who are facing injustice and to be a voice for the voiceless? Or do I care about them as little now as I always have? Do I have an increased desire for holiness? Is the Holy Spirit in me, speaking into me and encouraging me as I venture into places where I need not be? Is he encouraging me as I venture towards places and people where I do need to be? Do I see that in my life? And then according to Jesus, do I look in my life and I see a wake of love in my life? Are there people who would point to me and say, I'm closer to Jesus because they love me well? Has that been manifesting itself in your life in such a way? And listen, the litmus test for this love, this godly love, this faith-inspired love that Jesus gives us is not loving the people who love us back. That's easy. Everyone does that. It's loving the people who don't love you back. It's loving the people that you don't have to love. It's loving the people when there's no transaction there. I'm not getting anything out of this. I just love you and I care for you. Do you have an increased wake of people that you love in your life that you don't have to love, that are sometimes unlovable? James says, if you have a genuine faith, then the answer to that question will be yes. And finally, Paul says in Galatians, we're told that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment for our salvation, that when we are saved, when we have a genuine faith, that the Holy Spirit rushes into our life, and that the Holy Spirit produces fruit. And the fruit of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So again, look at the wake of your life over the last three to five years. Are you producing? Are you experiencing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Are you still the cranky grump that you've always been? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same? And now listen. I know this is not a fun sermon. You did not get up and shower and brave the rain and you families, we opened kids ministry today. You didn't get your kids ready so that you could come in here and I could kick you in the teeth. I'm sorry about that. This is a hard one. If you're feeling uncomfortable, you should. If you're doubting your salvation, that's all right. Because Paul tells us in Philippians that we should continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, that our understanding of our salvation and our relationship with God will change over the years. And if it's not, and if it's not challenged, and we're just allowed to walk through life clinging to this thing that we said once and not seeing any works and not actually being a genuine believer and not experiencing genuine faith, shame on me if I'm your pastor for years and I never confront you with the truth that James gives us here. I have to. And here's why we need to have these hard conversations with ourselves. Here's why we need to think through this and ask the question, do I have a genuine faith? Do I see that in my life? Am I sure that I'm sure that I'm sure? This week, Jen and I spent the week back home. Jen and Lily are driving back today. I've shared with the church through the journey. Jen's dad, about two years ago, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so we've been walking through that, Jen and I have, as a family and with her family. And this last week, he made the decision to stop treatment and receive hospice care in the home. And so we went home to be with the family. The good news is, it was a really, it was a good, sweet, peaceful, life-giving, gracious week. It was good to be around the family. And we're probably talking about months, not weeks. And so that's good too. And we're looking forward to sweet times with John as a whole family. I would also say for those of you who love Jen, please direct your condolences through me. The last thing she needs is to drive home from Athens, be sad that she is not with her dad right now, and then have to answer emails and texts about how he's doing and thinking and all that stuff. So direct those through me. Thank you. But here's why I bring it up. Because I sat with that man this week who has a genuine faith. We were joking about the multiple jackets that he's given to homeless people and sign spinners on the corner of the road. He just stops his car, gets out of the car, and hands him his jacket. He worked at AT&T for years and years and years. He was the vice president of international real estate, yet he knew the name of the parking attendants, he knew their birthdays, and he gave them gifts. He left gifts for the cleaning people in his office. He had a genuine faith. And now, as he's made the decision to embrace death, he is totally fearless and completely at peace. He is living out the verse that says, oh death, where is your sting? It has none for John because he's not fearful. He's totally at peace and he's going to see his Savior. And he's looking forward to it. I want you to have that peace. I want you to know that peace. I want my church to understand what that is. And that peace doesn't come by avoiding the hard truths in Scripture. It comes by continually working out our salvation with fear and with trembling. It comes with being sure that we know that we know. It comes with a genuine faith that will unavoidably produce works. I want you to have that faith too. I want you to have that peace too. So go home. Be concerned. Be confused. Be fearful. Work it out. Make sense of it. If I've confused you today, email me. Let's have a Zoom call or let's have a lunch and let's talk about it. But it's a good thing to have these conversations. It's a good thing to think through these, because when we do, we can be sure that we're sure that we're sure, and we can live our lives in perfect peace, and that's what I want for you, and that's what I want for my church. Let's pray, and then I think we're going to sing one more song together. Father, you were good. In loss, you are good. In grief, you are present. And in joys, you celebrate. So God, thank you for all of those moments and all the ways that you're with us. Lord, I pray that no one here would unnecessarily doubt that they know you. On the flip side, God, I pray that some of us would very necessarily doubt it and that in that doubt we would find a saving faith for maybe the first time ever. God, if any of us listening to me now needs to cry out to you as we sing this song, would we do that? Would you give us the courage to kneel at our house or in these rows or stand and maybe not sing and maybe just pray and search our hearts for where we are with you? Give us a genuine faith. Give us a faith that's rooted so deeply that we abide in you and you produce fruit in us. Give us the peace that comes when we know that we know you. It's in your son's name that I pray all these things. Amen.