We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
