Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that. As I always say on holiday weekends, and just want to reiterate for you, God does love you more because you're here in church, especially in the rain. He loves you double today. So good job. If you're watching online from your beach house or wherever, He does not love you the same as he loves the people here. I'm sorry. That's just how it goes. It's in the Bible somewhere. This is the last part in our series called Big Emotions, where we've been looking at blow ups and blow outs in the Bible and learning how God responds to the emotions of his children, learning how God would have us manage and navigate some of our bigger emotions. And as we wrap up the series, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the big emotions of God, on one of God's biggest emotions. And it's interesting to me that God is the one that tells us this about himself. A lot of the descriptions of God in the Bible are people, the authors of the Bible, telling us who they understand God to be, how they've experienced God. But it's not very often in scripture that God comes out and is interested in describing himself to us and telling us more about him and even especially ascribing emotions to himself. And if I were to ask you, how does God feel about you? What's the first way that he says he feels about you in the Bible? I would be willing to bet, now some of you know, but I would be willing to bet that jealousy is not what you would say first. You probably do know that God is a jealous God. I'm sure you've heard that. But it's interesting to me that God, who holds back so much in describing himself and allows us to kind of pursue him and learn who he is through experience and through others, that it's important to him to come out of the gates and say, I am a jealous God. He says this in Exodus chapter 20, verses 3 through 5. This is what things, but he describes himself as a God. Now he goes on from there and talks about more things, but he describes himself to us as a jealous God. He is, and what he's jealous of is you. He's jealous of your affection, your attention, your devotion. He wants you to be focused on him. God knows that we all wake up in the morning thinking about something. There's something that's driving us. There's something that we want to pursue, and God wants to be the thing that we wake up thinking about. He wants to be the last thing we think about when we put our head on the pillow at night. God is jealous of our affection and devotion. This is interesting to me, not only because it's kind of the attribute that God leads with as he introduces himself to us at the beginning of the story, but it also kind of flies in the face of everything else that the Bible has to say about jealousy. There's a lot of passages about envy and jealousy in the Bible. God typically does not shed a positive light on that. We're not pro-jealousy. We don't raise our children to be jealous. The exact opposite. And so there's a lot of passages that I could go to to say, hey, this is pretty much what the Bible has to say about jealousy. But I found the one that synopsizes it the best for me is in James tells us, there will be disorder and every vile practice, all the corruption, all the greed, all the selfishness, wherever it exists. And yet it exists in God. So how can these things be true? How can we marry God describing himself as a jealous God for us? And also that where jealousy exists, so does every vile practice. Those two things don't seem to line up. And as I thought about it, and thought about what jealousy is, jealousy is wanting someone's attention or devotion for yourself. And it's acknowledging that when we are jealous of something, we place desire on that thing. What occurred to me with the nature of jealousy and why it's good for God to be jealous and it's bad for us to be jealous of other things besides God, is that God's jealousy is rooted in what he wants for you, not from you. God's jealousy for you is rooted in what he wants to see come about for you, not what he wants to get from you. And when we think about the things that we are jealous of, when we think about the things that we give our affection to, we are hoping to get something from them, right? When we pour ourselves into a person, we want that affirmation to come back to us. When we pour ourselves into career, we want the things that come along with that to come back to us. I saw it very clearly this week. The early part of the week, I had an opportunity to go down to Miami and stay in a resort on South Beach, which is, that's where I belong. I mean, that makes sense. I got a great body for that. I got, you know, the $20 Casio watch. I fit right in down there. I was definitely the country mouse. I got a buddy that I didn't just decide to go to Miami. Like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to a resort. I got a buddy that travels for work, and sometimes the company that uses him puts him up in the La Quinta, and other times they put him up at the nicest resort on South Beach and he gets a suite and he says, dude, you should come with me. And I'm like, all right, I'll go free Miami. So I go. And I don't know. Last time I was in Miami was 20 years ago. My grandparents lived down there and it was Boca Raton. I didn't see Miami. But now, I've seen Miami. And that's a whole scene. I don't need to go back to Miami. But as I'm down there, I'm thinking about this sermon, and the things that we're jealous for, and God's jealousy for us. And I'm just looking at this world down there that's different than Raleigh. And thinking about how easy it would be to get caught up in what that place is selling. How easy it would be to live there, to visit there, to look around, to see the yachts in the harbor. And they go, I want one of those. To see the nice watches, the nice jewelry, the beauty, the success, the wealth, the power, the affluence. It costs $300 to rent a circular bed for a day on the edge of the pool. And people paid it. And then they just sat there all day long. That's just dumb money. That's just, hey, look, everybody, I got money. I'm spending it on a lawn chair for the day. A cabana was $3,000. It would be easy to look at that stuff and to say, I want that. And to give that our attention and our affection and our devotion. And to begin to build our life around the inquirement of those things. And now here in Raleigh, in our lives, it's not as in your face. It's not as overt. But suddenly those forces still play on all of us, don't they? We get out of college, we get a job, people around us get promoted. We want to get promoted, so we put our head down and we work hard for that. We get a little older, our friends start getting nicer cars, we want nicer cars. Our friends start taking nicer vacations, we want nicer vacations. Oh, dude bought a lake house? I want a lake house. And we just start to work for it. Or we want someone who's beautiful to tell us that we are. We want someone that we're attracted to to tell us that we are attractive. Or we pour ourselves into learning or into knowledge or into whatever it might be, but we give our affection and our devotion to the things of this world. And we give it to them because of what we want it to do for us. We pour ourselves, we idolize this relationship because this relationship makes me feel secure and whole. So we pour ourselves into it. We pour ourselves into career because from career, I get status, I get power, I get wealth, I get a sense of accomplishment. I get whatever I get. We pour ourselves into family because our family growing up let us down and I don't want to do that for my kids, and so it's my idol. I'm just going to pour myself into being the best parent that I can possibly be at the sake of everything else. And all of those things are, for the most part, good desires and have their place. But when we're jealous for those things, for what the world has to offer us, our affection and devotion is misplaced. See, we give things our affection hoping that they will satisfy our souls. That's why we do it. The things we think about when we wake up in the morning, the next thing on the horizon that we want to accomplish, the way we spend our money and our time, we pour ourselves into those things hoping that they will satisfy our souls. And the thing is, they never do. They never do. It's this empty black hole tunnel that we can pour all we want into it, and our souls will never be truly satisfied. They will always be restless. They will always be wanting. They will always crave more and drive us further. And this gets to, for me, the heart of what it must feel like for God to be jealous for us. I picture it like this, and this is why I say God is jealous for us because of what he wants for us. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular. This is a total hypothetical situation. I do not have a story to go with this, but I was thinking this week trying to understand the jealousy of God as he watches us give our attention and affection to things other than him. I was thinking about a 16, 17-year-old girl and her parents watching that life. And let's assume that she's pretty and that she's charming and that she's smart and that she's capable and that she's ambitious and she's got the world at her fingertips, right? But when she's 16, 17 years old, she meets a boy. And she makes that boy her world. And she wakes up thinking about him and she goes to bed thinking about him. And she begins to make her choices around her affection for this boy and her desire to feel affection from him. The way that she dresses, The color of her hair. Maybe the classes that she chooses in school. What she chooses to be involved with after school. Whether or not she engages in this or that extracurricular or works at this or that place. And then maybe her affection for that boy is so great that she allows that to heavily inform her college decision and she doesn't go to the place where she could have gone. How painful must it be for those parents to watch that girl misplace her affection and devotion and so squander her potential on something that essentially does not matter. Dating is fine. I'm not here to criticize it or critique it. But I will say that for the most part, if you're dating in high school, you ain't getting married to that one, okay? So just relax. Just chill out. If you are going to get married to them, they'll still be there in six years. Like, it's not a big deal. I used to teach high school and do student ministry, and I would tell all the kids, whoever you're dating, you're not going to marry. One of you is going to break up with the other one. It's just going to happen. So conduct yourselves accordingly in the relationship. Every now and again, I'm wrong, and high school sweethearts get married, and that's fine, but to watch your daughter with the world at her fingertips, to squander away that potential because of affection for a boy must be a uniquely painful thing. To watch a son who's incredibly capable, who has the world at his fingertips, to squander that potential on a girl or on something else that doesn't matter, that takes his attention off of what he could do and who he could be, has got to be a pretty painful thing for a parent to walk through, to see your hopes and dreams of this child and to see what they're capable of and to watch them squander that on something that doesn't matter and will not return the affection that they need. That's what it must be like for God to watch us fritter our lives away on things that don't matter. That's what it must be like for our Father in Heaven to watch us as we put our head down and just think about career and wealth and money and status. As we make the next God in our life the beach house or the promotion or the job or the company. As we make the God in our life our marriage. shepherd their daughter through the season. I think you would want to ask the question, what is actually worth our primary affection? Mom, dad, where would you have her put her affection and devotion? What do you want her waking up thinking about? School? Class? Job? Building a resume? What do you want her thinking about? And then for us, what is it that we should wake up thinking about? What is it that should be most important to us? I would contend and direct us to the Bible telling us so, that only God can satisfy our souls. If we're to say, what is worthy of that girl's affection and devotion? What is worthy of her life's pursuit? God alone would say, I am. Because in me she will find satisfaction. In me she, she will find affirmation. In me, she will find love. In me, she will find identity. In me, she will find what she needs. I will be enough for her. In God, you will find affection. In God, you will find affirmation. In God, you will finally feel like you are enough. In God, you will finally see your identity and know who you are and what he created you to do and be. In God, you will find the affection that he lavishes on you so that you can lavish it onto others. In God, you will find the love that allows you to be the spouse that you've always wanted to be. In God, you will find the affection that you need to pour out on your kids when they need it the most. In God, we find all we need for all the other things. In God, our restless souls finally find rest. I think that's part of what Jesus was talking about when he says this in Matthew chapter 11. He says, God is jealous for us, for our affection and our devotion because he knows that it is only in him that our restless souls can rest. He knows it is only in him that our greatest needs can be met. So our God is a jealous God, not because of what he wants from you, but because of what he wants for you. And what God wants for you is for your soul to rest. What God wants for you is found in Psalm 1611. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence there is fullness of joy. What God wants for you is John 10.10 that you might have life and have it to the full. What God wants for you is that you would know what love is and it abounds so much that you never have to question yourself or your identity ever again. What God wants for you is for you to be a conduit of his grace and love and affection from him onto others. And so God is jealous for you. When he sees you prioritizing things in your life over and above him, when he knows you're waking up thinking about things that are not things of God, that are not him, that are not in your life because of him. When he knows that you go to bed thinking about things that are not in your life from God, that are not there because of him, he's jealous for you. Not because he's petty and envious and he somehow needs your attention. No, he sees you squandering your affection and devotion on things that cannot satisfy your soul. So he's jealous for you for your sake so that you can be who he created you to be, so that you can experience the love that he created you to experience, and so you can express the love that he created you to express. So when we think of our God and we say that he is a jealous God, it's important to me that we understand that jealousy not to be petty jealousy like we have where we want something from the object of our affection. No, no. It's an altruistic jealousy where he knows he is the only worthy object of your affection and devotion. And when we offer it to him, everything else falls into place. He's jealous for you because he wants you to find rest in him. As we have a day off tomorrow with our families or our friends, I hope that we'll take part of today and part of tomorrow in rest and reflect on what we have been jealous of. Reflect on where we have placed our affection and our devotion. And maybe let's take this holiday weekend to recalibrate and place our affection and devotion back on God and the things of God because he is jealous for us, for our sakes. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being jealous for us. Thank you for wanting what's best for us. I pray, God, that we would see you as the only thing that is worthy of our life's devotion. May our souls find satisfaction and rest in you. May we be encouraged by you. May we feel loved and seen by you. God, I am the most guilty of placing my priorities on other things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things that are not related to my devotion to you. And so, God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who might be like me, that we would recalibrate this weekend, that we would slow down and make you the object of our affection. Thank you for being a jealous God. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that. As I always say on holiday weekends, and just want to reiterate for you, God does love you more because you're here in church, especially in the rain. He loves you double today. So good job. If you're watching online from your beach house or wherever, He does not love you the same as he loves the people here. I'm sorry. That's just how it goes. It's in the Bible somewhere. This is the last part in our series called Big Emotions, where we've been looking at blow ups and blow outs in the Bible and learning how God responds to the emotions of his children, learning how God would have us manage and navigate some of our bigger emotions. And as we wrap up the series, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the big emotions of God, on one of God's biggest emotions. And it's interesting to me that God is the one that tells us this about himself. A lot of the descriptions of God in the Bible are people, the authors of the Bible, telling us who they understand God to be, how they've experienced God. But it's not very often in scripture that God comes out and is interested in describing himself to us and telling us more about him and even especially ascribing emotions to himself. And if I were to ask you, how does God feel about you? What's the first way that he says he feels about you in the Bible? I would be willing to bet, now some of you know, but I would be willing to bet that jealousy is not what you would say first. You probably do know that God is a jealous God. I'm sure you've heard that. But it's interesting to me that God, who holds back so much in describing himself and allows us to kind of pursue him and learn who he is through experience and through others, that it's important to him to come out of the gates and say, I am a jealous God. He says this in Exodus chapter 20, verses 3 through 5. This is what things, but he describes himself as a God. Now he goes on from there and talks about more things, but he describes himself to us as a jealous God. He is, and what he's jealous of is you. He's jealous of your affection, your attention, your devotion. He wants you to be focused on him. God knows that we all wake up in the morning thinking about something. There's something that's driving us. There's something that we want to pursue, and God wants to be the thing that we wake up thinking about. He wants to be the last thing we think about when we put our head on the pillow at night. God is jealous of our affection and devotion. This is interesting to me, not only because it's kind of the attribute that God leads with as he introduces himself to us at the beginning of the story, but it also kind of flies in the face of everything else that the Bible has to say about jealousy. There's a lot of passages about envy and jealousy in the Bible. God typically does not shed a positive light on that. We're not pro-jealousy. We don't raise our children to be jealous. The exact opposite. And so there's a lot of passages that I could go to to say, hey, this is pretty much what the Bible has to say about jealousy. But I found the one that synopsizes it the best for me is in James tells us, there will be disorder and every vile practice, all the corruption, all the greed, all the selfishness, wherever it exists. And yet it exists in God. So how can these things be true? How can we marry God describing himself as a jealous God for us? And also that where jealousy exists, so does every vile practice. Those two things don't seem to line up. And as I thought about it, and thought about what jealousy is, jealousy is wanting someone's attention or devotion for yourself. And it's acknowledging that when we are jealous of something, we place desire on that thing. What occurred to me with the nature of jealousy and why it's good for God to be jealous and it's bad for us to be jealous of other things besides God, is that God's jealousy is rooted in what he wants for you, not from you. God's jealousy for you is rooted in what he wants to see come about for you, not what he wants to get from you. And when we think about the things that we are jealous of, when we think about the things that we give our affection to, we are hoping to get something from them, right? When we pour ourselves into a person, we want that affirmation to come back to us. When we pour ourselves into career, we want the things that come along with that to come back to us. I saw it very clearly this week. The early part of the week, I had an opportunity to go down to Miami and stay in a resort on South Beach, which is, that's where I belong. I mean, that makes sense. I got a great body for that. I got, you know, the $20 Casio watch. I fit right in down there. I was definitely the country mouse. I got a buddy that I didn't just decide to go to Miami. Like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to a resort. I got a buddy that travels for work, and sometimes the company that uses him puts him up in the La Quinta, and other times they put him up at the nicest resort on South Beach and he gets a suite and he says, dude, you should come with me. And I'm like, all right, I'll go free Miami. So I go. And I don't know. Last time I was in Miami was 20 years ago. My grandparents lived down there and it was Boca Raton. I didn't see Miami. But now, I've seen Miami. And that's a whole scene. I don't need to go back to Miami. But as I'm down there, I'm thinking about this sermon, and the things that we're jealous for, and God's jealousy for us. And I'm just looking at this world down there that's different than Raleigh. And thinking about how easy it would be to get caught up in what that place is selling. How easy it would be to live there, to visit there, to look around, to see the yachts in the harbor. And they go, I want one of those. To see the nice watches, the nice jewelry, the beauty, the success, the wealth, the power, the affluence. It costs $300 to rent a circular bed for a day on the edge of the pool. And people paid it. And then they just sat there all day long. That's just dumb money. That's just, hey, look, everybody, I got money. I'm spending it on a lawn chair for the day. A cabana was $3,000. It would be easy to look at that stuff and to say, I want that. And to give that our attention and our affection and our devotion. And to begin to build our life around the inquirement of those things. And now here in Raleigh, in our lives, it's not as in your face. It's not as overt. But suddenly those forces still play on all of us, don't they? We get out of college, we get a job, people around us get promoted. We want to get promoted, so we put our head down and we work hard for that. We get a little older, our friends start getting nicer cars, we want nicer cars. Our friends start taking nicer vacations, we want nicer vacations. Oh, dude bought a lake house? I want a lake house. And we just start to work for it. Or we want someone who's beautiful to tell us that we are. We want someone that we're attracted to to tell us that we are attractive. Or we pour ourselves into learning or into knowledge or into whatever it might be, but we give our affection and our devotion to the things of this world. And we give it to them because of what we want it to do for us. We pour ourselves, we idolize this relationship because this relationship makes me feel secure and whole. So we pour ourselves into it. We pour ourselves into career because from career, I get status, I get power, I get wealth, I get a sense of accomplishment. I get whatever I get. We pour ourselves into family because our family growing up let us down and I don't want to do that for my kids, and so it's my idol. I'm just going to pour myself into being the best parent that I can possibly be at the sake of everything else. And all of those things are, for the most part, good desires and have their place. But when we're jealous for those things, for what the world has to offer us, our affection and devotion is misplaced. See, we give things our affection hoping that they will satisfy our souls. That's why we do it. The things we think about when we wake up in the morning, the next thing on the horizon that we want to accomplish, the way we spend our money and our time, we pour ourselves into those things hoping that they will satisfy our souls. And the thing is, they never do. They never do. It's this empty black hole tunnel that we can pour all we want into it, and our souls will never be truly satisfied. They will always be restless. They will always be wanting. They will always crave more and drive us further. And this gets to, for me, the heart of what it must feel like for God to be jealous for us. I picture it like this, and this is why I say God is jealous for us because of what he wants for us. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular. This is a total hypothetical situation. I do not have a story to go with this, but I was thinking this week trying to understand the jealousy of God as he watches us give our attention and affection to things other than him. I was thinking about a 16, 17-year-old girl and her parents watching that life. And let's assume that she's pretty and that she's charming and that she's smart and that she's capable and that she's ambitious and she's got the world at her fingertips, right? But when she's 16, 17 years old, she meets a boy. And she makes that boy her world. And she wakes up thinking about him and she goes to bed thinking about him. And she begins to make her choices around her affection for this boy and her desire to feel affection from him. The way that she dresses, The color of her hair. Maybe the classes that she chooses in school. What she chooses to be involved with after school. Whether or not she engages in this or that extracurricular or works at this or that place. And then maybe her affection for that boy is so great that she allows that to heavily inform her college decision and she doesn't go to the place where she could have gone. How painful must it be for those parents to watch that girl misplace her affection and devotion and so squander her potential on something that essentially does not matter. Dating is fine. I'm not here to criticize it or critique it. But I will say that for the most part, if you're dating in high school, you ain't getting married to that one, okay? So just relax. Just chill out. If you are going to get married to them, they'll still be there in six years. Like, it's not a big deal. I used to teach high school and do student ministry, and I would tell all the kids, whoever you're dating, you're not going to marry. One of you is going to break up with the other one. It's just going to happen. So conduct yourselves accordingly in the relationship. Every now and again, I'm wrong, and high school sweethearts get married, and that's fine, but to watch your daughter with the world at her fingertips, to squander away that potential because of affection for a boy must be a uniquely painful thing. To watch a son who's incredibly capable, who has the world at his fingertips, to squander that potential on a girl or on something else that doesn't matter, that takes his attention off of what he could do and who he could be, has got to be a pretty painful thing for a parent to walk through, to see your hopes and dreams of this child and to see what they're capable of and to watch them squander that on something that doesn't matter and will not return the affection that they need. That's what it must be like for God to watch us fritter our lives away on things that don't matter. That's what it must be like for our Father in Heaven to watch us as we put our head down and just think about career and wealth and money and status. As we make the next God in our life the beach house or the promotion or the job or the company. As we make the God in our life our marriage. shepherd their daughter through the season. I think you would want to ask the question, what is actually worth our primary affection? Mom, dad, where would you have her put her affection and devotion? What do you want her waking up thinking about? School? Class? Job? Building a resume? What do you want her thinking about? And then for us, what is it that we should wake up thinking about? What is it that should be most important to us? I would contend and direct us to the Bible telling us so, that only God can satisfy our souls. If we're to say, what is worthy of that girl's affection and devotion? What is worthy of her life's pursuit? God alone would say, I am. Because in me she will find satisfaction. In me she, she will find affirmation. In me, she will find love. In me, she will find identity. In me, she will find what she needs. I will be enough for her. In God, you will find affection. In God, you will find affirmation. In God, you will finally feel like you are enough. In God, you will finally see your identity and know who you are and what he created you to do and be. In God, you will find the affection that he lavishes on you so that you can lavish it onto others. In God, you will find the love that allows you to be the spouse that you've always wanted to be. In God, you will find the affection that you need to pour out on your kids when they need it the most. In God, we find all we need for all the other things. In God, our restless souls finally find rest. I think that's part of what Jesus was talking about when he says this in Matthew chapter 11. He says, God is jealous for us, for our affection and our devotion because he knows that it is only in him that our restless souls can rest. He knows it is only in him that our greatest needs can be met. So our God is a jealous God, not because of what he wants from you, but because of what he wants for you. And what God wants for you is for your soul to rest. What God wants for you is found in Psalm 1611. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence there is fullness of joy. What God wants for you is John 10.10 that you might have life and have it to the full. What God wants for you is that you would know what love is and it abounds so much that you never have to question yourself or your identity ever again. What God wants for you is for you to be a conduit of his grace and love and affection from him onto others. And so God is jealous for you. When he sees you prioritizing things in your life over and above him, when he knows you're waking up thinking about things that are not things of God, that are not him, that are not in your life because of him. When he knows that you go to bed thinking about things that are not in your life from God, that are not there because of him, he's jealous for you. Not because he's petty and envious and he somehow needs your attention. No, he sees you squandering your affection and devotion on things that cannot satisfy your soul. So he's jealous for you for your sake so that you can be who he created you to be, so that you can experience the love that he created you to experience, and so you can express the love that he created you to express. So when we think of our God and we say that he is a jealous God, it's important to me that we understand that jealousy not to be petty jealousy like we have where we want something from the object of our affection. No, no. It's an altruistic jealousy where he knows he is the only worthy object of your affection and devotion. And when we offer it to him, everything else falls into place. He's jealous for you because he wants you to find rest in him. As we have a day off tomorrow with our families or our friends, I hope that we'll take part of today and part of tomorrow in rest and reflect on what we have been jealous of. Reflect on where we have placed our affection and our devotion. And maybe let's take this holiday weekend to recalibrate and place our affection and devotion back on God and the things of God because he is jealous for us, for our sakes. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being jealous for us. Thank you for wanting what's best for us. I pray, God, that we would see you as the only thing that is worthy of our life's devotion. May our souls find satisfaction and rest in you. May we be encouraged by you. May we feel loved and seen by you. God, I am the most guilty of placing my priorities on other things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things that are not related to my devotion to you. And so, God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who might be like me, that we would recalibrate this weekend, that we would slow down and make you the object of our affection. Thank you for being a jealous God. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that. As I always say on holiday weekends, and just want to reiterate for you, God does love you more because you're here in church, especially in the rain. He loves you double today. So good job. If you're watching online from your beach house or wherever, He does not love you the same as he loves the people here. I'm sorry. That's just how it goes. It's in the Bible somewhere. This is the last part in our series called Big Emotions, where we've been looking at blow ups and blow outs in the Bible and learning how God responds to the emotions of his children, learning how God would have us manage and navigate some of our bigger emotions. And as we wrap up the series, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the big emotions of God, on one of God's biggest emotions. And it's interesting to me that God is the one that tells us this about himself. A lot of the descriptions of God in the Bible are people, the authors of the Bible, telling us who they understand God to be, how they've experienced God. But it's not very often in scripture that God comes out and is interested in describing himself to us and telling us more about him and even especially ascribing emotions to himself. And if I were to ask you, how does God feel about you? What's the first way that he says he feels about you in the Bible? I would be willing to bet, now some of you know, but I would be willing to bet that jealousy is not what you would say first. You probably do know that God is a jealous God. I'm sure you've heard that. But it's interesting to me that God, who holds back so much in describing himself and allows us to kind of pursue him and learn who he is through experience and through others, that it's important to him to come out of the gates and say, I am a jealous God. He says this in Exodus chapter 20, verses 3 through 5. This is what things, but he describes himself as a God. Now he goes on from there and talks about more things, but he describes himself to us as a jealous God. He is, and what he's jealous of is you. He's jealous of your affection, your attention, your devotion. He wants you to be focused on him. God knows that we all wake up in the morning thinking about something. There's something that's driving us. There's something that we want to pursue, and God wants to be the thing that we wake up thinking about. He wants to be the last thing we think about when we put our head on the pillow at night. God is jealous of our affection and devotion. This is interesting to me, not only because it's kind of the attribute that God leads with as he introduces himself to us at the beginning of the story, but it also kind of flies in the face of everything else that the Bible has to say about jealousy. There's a lot of passages about envy and jealousy in the Bible. God typically does not shed a positive light on that. We're not pro-jealousy. We don't raise our children to be jealous. The exact opposite. And so there's a lot of passages that I could go to to say, hey, this is pretty much what the Bible has to say about jealousy. But I found the one that synopsizes it the best for me is in James tells us, there will be disorder and every vile practice, all the corruption, all the greed, all the selfishness, wherever it exists. And yet it exists in God. So how can these things be true? How can we marry God describing himself as a jealous God for us? And also that where jealousy exists, so does every vile practice. Those two things don't seem to line up. And as I thought about it, and thought about what jealousy is, jealousy is wanting someone's attention or devotion for yourself. And it's acknowledging that when we are jealous of something, we place desire on that thing. What occurred to me with the nature of jealousy and why it's good for God to be jealous and it's bad for us to be jealous of other things besides God, is that God's jealousy is rooted in what he wants for you, not from you. God's jealousy for you is rooted in what he wants to see come about for you, not what he wants to get from you. And when we think about the things that we are jealous of, when we think about the things that we give our affection to, we are hoping to get something from them, right? When we pour ourselves into a person, we want that affirmation to come back to us. When we pour ourselves into career, we want the things that come along with that to come back to us. I saw it very clearly this week. The early part of the week, I had an opportunity to go down to Miami and stay in a resort on South Beach, which is, that's where I belong. I mean, that makes sense. I got a great body for that. I got, you know, the $20 Casio watch. I fit right in down there. I was definitely the country mouse. I got a buddy that I didn't just decide to go to Miami. Like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to a resort. I got a buddy that travels for work, and sometimes the company that uses him puts him up in the La Quinta, and other times they put him up at the nicest resort on South Beach and he gets a suite and he says, dude, you should come with me. And I'm like, all right, I'll go free Miami. So I go. And I don't know. Last time I was in Miami was 20 years ago. My grandparents lived down there and it was Boca Raton. I didn't see Miami. But now, I've seen Miami. And that's a whole scene. I don't need to go back to Miami. But as I'm down there, I'm thinking about this sermon, and the things that we're jealous for, and God's jealousy for us. And I'm just looking at this world down there that's different than Raleigh. And thinking about how easy it would be to get caught up in what that place is selling. How easy it would be to live there, to visit there, to look around, to see the yachts in the harbor. And they go, I want one of those. To see the nice watches, the nice jewelry, the beauty, the success, the wealth, the power, the affluence. It costs $300 to rent a circular bed for a day on the edge of the pool. And people paid it. And then they just sat there all day long. That's just dumb money. That's just, hey, look, everybody, I got money. I'm spending it on a lawn chair for the day. A cabana was $3,000. It would be easy to look at that stuff and to say, I want that. And to give that our attention and our affection and our devotion. And to begin to build our life around the inquirement of those things. And now here in Raleigh, in our lives, it's not as in your face. It's not as overt. But suddenly those forces still play on all of us, don't they? We get out of college, we get a job, people around us get promoted. We want to get promoted, so we put our head down and we work hard for that. We get a little older, our friends start getting nicer cars, we want nicer cars. Our friends start taking nicer vacations, we want nicer vacations. Oh, dude bought a lake house? I want a lake house. And we just start to work for it. Or we want someone who's beautiful to tell us that we are. We want someone that we're attracted to to tell us that we are attractive. Or we pour ourselves into learning or into knowledge or into whatever it might be, but we give our affection and our devotion to the things of this world. And we give it to them because of what we want it to do for us. We pour ourselves, we idolize this relationship because this relationship makes me feel secure and whole. So we pour ourselves into it. We pour ourselves into career because from career, I get status, I get power, I get wealth, I get a sense of accomplishment. I get whatever I get. We pour ourselves into family because our family growing up let us down and I don't want to do that for my kids, and so it's my idol. I'm just going to pour myself into being the best parent that I can possibly be at the sake of everything else. And all of those things are, for the most part, good desires and have their place. But when we're jealous for those things, for what the world has to offer us, our affection and devotion is misplaced. See, we give things our affection hoping that they will satisfy our souls. That's why we do it. The things we think about when we wake up in the morning, the next thing on the horizon that we want to accomplish, the way we spend our money and our time, we pour ourselves into those things hoping that they will satisfy our souls. And the thing is, they never do. They never do. It's this empty black hole tunnel that we can pour all we want into it, and our souls will never be truly satisfied. They will always be restless. They will always be wanting. They will always crave more and drive us further. And this gets to, for me, the heart of what it must feel like for God to be jealous for us. I picture it like this, and this is why I say God is jealous for us because of what he wants for us. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular. This is a total hypothetical situation. I do not have a story to go with this, but I was thinking this week trying to understand the jealousy of God as he watches us give our attention and affection to things other than him. I was thinking about a 16, 17-year-old girl and her parents watching that life. And let's assume that she's pretty and that she's charming and that she's smart and that she's capable and that she's ambitious and she's got the world at her fingertips, right? But when she's 16, 17 years old, she meets a boy. And she makes that boy her world. And she wakes up thinking about him and she goes to bed thinking about him. And she begins to make her choices around her affection for this boy and her desire to feel affection from him. The way that she dresses, The color of her hair. Maybe the classes that she chooses in school. What she chooses to be involved with after school. Whether or not she engages in this or that extracurricular or works at this or that place. And then maybe her affection for that boy is so great that she allows that to heavily inform her college decision and she doesn't go to the place where she could have gone. How painful must it be for those parents to watch that girl misplace her affection and devotion and so squander her potential on something that essentially does not matter. Dating is fine. I'm not here to criticize it or critique it. But I will say that for the most part, if you're dating in high school, you ain't getting married to that one, okay? So just relax. Just chill out. If you are going to get married to them, they'll still be there in six years. Like, it's not a big deal. I used to teach high school and do student ministry, and I would tell all the kids, whoever you're dating, you're not going to marry. One of you is going to break up with the other one. It's just going to happen. So conduct yourselves accordingly in the relationship. Every now and again, I'm wrong, and high school sweethearts get married, and that's fine, but to watch your daughter with the world at her fingertips, to squander away that potential because of affection for a boy must be a uniquely painful thing. To watch a son who's incredibly capable, who has the world at his fingertips, to squander that potential on a girl or on something else that doesn't matter, that takes his attention off of what he could do and who he could be, has got to be a pretty painful thing for a parent to walk through, to see your hopes and dreams of this child and to see what they're capable of and to watch them squander that on something that doesn't matter and will not return the affection that they need. That's what it must be like for God to watch us fritter our lives away on things that don't matter. That's what it must be like for our Father in Heaven to watch us as we put our head down and just think about career and wealth and money and status. As we make the next God in our life the beach house or the promotion or the job or the company. As we make the God in our life our marriage. shepherd their daughter through the season. I think you would want to ask the question, what is actually worth our primary affection? Mom, dad, where would you have her put her affection and devotion? What do you want her waking up thinking about? School? Class? Job? Building a resume? What do you want her thinking about? And then for us, what is it that we should wake up thinking about? What is it that should be most important to us? I would contend and direct us to the Bible telling us so, that only God can satisfy our souls. If we're to say, what is worthy of that girl's affection and devotion? What is worthy of her life's pursuit? God alone would say, I am. Because in me she will find satisfaction. In me she, she will find affirmation. In me, she will find love. In me, she will find identity. In me, she will find what she needs. I will be enough for her. In God, you will find affection. In God, you will find affirmation. In God, you will finally feel like you are enough. In God, you will finally see your identity and know who you are and what he created you to do and be. In God, you will find the affection that he lavishes on you so that you can lavish it onto others. In God, you will find the love that allows you to be the spouse that you've always wanted to be. In God, you will find the affection that you need to pour out on your kids when they need it the most. In God, we find all we need for all the other things. In God, our restless souls finally find rest. I think that's part of what Jesus was talking about when he says this in Matthew chapter 11. He says, God is jealous for us, for our affection and our devotion because he knows that it is only in him that our restless souls can rest. He knows it is only in him that our greatest needs can be met. So our God is a jealous God, not because of what he wants from you, but because of what he wants for you. And what God wants for you is for your soul to rest. What God wants for you is found in Psalm 1611. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence there is fullness of joy. What God wants for you is John 10.10 that you might have life and have it to the full. What God wants for you is that you would know what love is and it abounds so much that you never have to question yourself or your identity ever again. What God wants for you is for you to be a conduit of his grace and love and affection from him onto others. And so God is jealous for you. When he sees you prioritizing things in your life over and above him, when he knows you're waking up thinking about things that are not things of God, that are not him, that are not in your life because of him. When he knows that you go to bed thinking about things that are not in your life from God, that are not there because of him, he's jealous for you. Not because he's petty and envious and he somehow needs your attention. No, he sees you squandering your affection and devotion on things that cannot satisfy your soul. So he's jealous for you for your sake so that you can be who he created you to be, so that you can experience the love that he created you to experience, and so you can express the love that he created you to express. So when we think of our God and we say that he is a jealous God, it's important to me that we understand that jealousy not to be petty jealousy like we have where we want something from the object of our affection. No, no. It's an altruistic jealousy where he knows he is the only worthy object of your affection and devotion. And when we offer it to him, everything else falls into place. He's jealous for you because he wants you to find rest in him. As we have a day off tomorrow with our families or our friends, I hope that we'll take part of today and part of tomorrow in rest and reflect on what we have been jealous of. Reflect on where we have placed our affection and our devotion. And maybe let's take this holiday weekend to recalibrate and place our affection and devotion back on God and the things of God because he is jealous for us, for our sakes. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being jealous for us. Thank you for wanting what's best for us. I pray, God, that we would see you as the only thing that is worthy of our life's devotion. May our souls find satisfaction and rest in you. May we be encouraged by you. May we feel loved and seen by you. God, I am the most guilty of placing my priorities on other things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things that are not related to my devotion to you. And so, God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who might be like me, that we would recalibrate this weekend, that we would slow down and make you the object of our affection. Thank you for being a jealous God. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that. As I always say on holiday weekends, and just want to reiterate for you, God does love you more because you're here in church, especially in the rain. He loves you double today. So good job. If you're watching online from your beach house or wherever, He does not love you the same as he loves the people here. I'm sorry. That's just how it goes. It's in the Bible somewhere. This is the last part in our series called Big Emotions, where we've been looking at blow ups and blow outs in the Bible and learning how God responds to the emotions of his children, learning how God would have us manage and navigate some of our bigger emotions. And as we wrap up the series, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the big emotions of God, on one of God's biggest emotions. And it's interesting to me that God is the one that tells us this about himself. A lot of the descriptions of God in the Bible are people, the authors of the Bible, telling us who they understand God to be, how they've experienced God. But it's not very often in scripture that God comes out and is interested in describing himself to us and telling us more about him and even especially ascribing emotions to himself. And if I were to ask you, how does God feel about you? What's the first way that he says he feels about you in the Bible? I would be willing to bet, now some of you know, but I would be willing to bet that jealousy is not what you would say first. You probably do know that God is a jealous God. I'm sure you've heard that. But it's interesting to me that God, who holds back so much in describing himself and allows us to kind of pursue him and learn who he is through experience and through others, that it's important to him to come out of the gates and say, I am a jealous God. He says this in Exodus chapter 20, verses 3 through 5. This is what things, but he describes himself as a God. Now he goes on from there and talks about more things, but he describes himself to us as a jealous God. He is, and what he's jealous of is you. He's jealous of your affection, your attention, your devotion. He wants you to be focused on him. God knows that we all wake up in the morning thinking about something. There's something that's driving us. There's something that we want to pursue, and God wants to be the thing that we wake up thinking about. He wants to be the last thing we think about when we put our head on the pillow at night. God is jealous of our affection and devotion. This is interesting to me, not only because it's kind of the attribute that God leads with as he introduces himself to us at the beginning of the story, but it also kind of flies in the face of everything else that the Bible has to say about jealousy. There's a lot of passages about envy and jealousy in the Bible. God typically does not shed a positive light on that. We're not pro-jealousy. We don't raise our children to be jealous. The exact opposite. And so there's a lot of passages that I could go to to say, hey, this is pretty much what the Bible has to say about jealousy. But I found the one that synopsizes it the best for me is in James tells us, there will be disorder and every vile practice, all the corruption, all the greed, all the selfishness, wherever it exists. And yet it exists in God. So how can these things be true? How can we marry God describing himself as a jealous God for us? And also that where jealousy exists, so does every vile practice. Those two things don't seem to line up. And as I thought about it, and thought about what jealousy is, jealousy is wanting someone's attention or devotion for yourself. And it's acknowledging that when we are jealous of something, we place desire on that thing. What occurred to me with the nature of jealousy and why it's good for God to be jealous and it's bad for us to be jealous of other things besides God, is that God's jealousy is rooted in what he wants for you, not from you. God's jealousy for you is rooted in what he wants to see come about for you, not what he wants to get from you. And when we think about the things that we are jealous of, when we think about the things that we give our affection to, we are hoping to get something from them, right? When we pour ourselves into a person, we want that affirmation to come back to us. When we pour ourselves into career, we want the things that come along with that to come back to us. I saw it very clearly this week. The early part of the week, I had an opportunity to go down to Miami and stay in a resort on South Beach, which is, that's where I belong. I mean, that makes sense. I got a great body for that. I got, you know, the $20 Casio watch. I fit right in down there. I was definitely the country mouse. I got a buddy that I didn't just decide to go to Miami. Like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to a resort. I got a buddy that travels for work, and sometimes the company that uses him puts him up in the La Quinta, and other times they put him up at the nicest resort on South Beach and he gets a suite and he says, dude, you should come with me. And I'm like, all right, I'll go free Miami. So I go. And I don't know. Last time I was in Miami was 20 years ago. My grandparents lived down there and it was Boca Raton. I didn't see Miami. But now, I've seen Miami. And that's a whole scene. I don't need to go back to Miami. But as I'm down there, I'm thinking about this sermon, and the things that we're jealous for, and God's jealousy for us. And I'm just looking at this world down there that's different than Raleigh. And thinking about how easy it would be to get caught up in what that place is selling. How easy it would be to live there, to visit there, to look around, to see the yachts in the harbor. And they go, I want one of those. To see the nice watches, the nice jewelry, the beauty, the success, the wealth, the power, the affluence. It costs $300 to rent a circular bed for a day on the edge of the pool. And people paid it. And then they just sat there all day long. That's just dumb money. That's just, hey, look, everybody, I got money. I'm spending it on a lawn chair for the day. A cabana was $3,000. It would be easy to look at that stuff and to say, I want that. And to give that our attention and our affection and our devotion. And to begin to build our life around the inquirement of those things. And now here in Raleigh, in our lives, it's not as in your face. It's not as overt. But suddenly those forces still play on all of us, don't they? We get out of college, we get a job, people around us get promoted. We want to get promoted, so we put our head down and we work hard for that. We get a little older, our friends start getting nicer cars, we want nicer cars. Our friends start taking nicer vacations, we want nicer vacations. Oh, dude bought a lake house? I want a lake house. And we just start to work for it. Or we want someone who's beautiful to tell us that we are. We want someone that we're attracted to to tell us that we are attractive. Or we pour ourselves into learning or into knowledge or into whatever it might be, but we give our affection and our devotion to the things of this world. And we give it to them because of what we want it to do for us. We pour ourselves, we idolize this relationship because this relationship makes me feel secure and whole. So we pour ourselves into it. We pour ourselves into career because from career, I get status, I get power, I get wealth, I get a sense of accomplishment. I get whatever I get. We pour ourselves into family because our family growing up let us down and I don't want to do that for my kids, and so it's my idol. I'm just going to pour myself into being the best parent that I can possibly be at the sake of everything else. And all of those things are, for the most part, good desires and have their place. But when we're jealous for those things, for what the world has to offer us, our affection and devotion is misplaced. See, we give things our affection hoping that they will satisfy our souls. That's why we do it. The things we think about when we wake up in the morning, the next thing on the horizon that we want to accomplish, the way we spend our money and our time, we pour ourselves into those things hoping that they will satisfy our souls. And the thing is, they never do. They never do. It's this empty black hole tunnel that we can pour all we want into it, and our souls will never be truly satisfied. They will always be restless. They will always be wanting. They will always crave more and drive us further. And this gets to, for me, the heart of what it must feel like for God to be jealous for us. I picture it like this, and this is why I say God is jealous for us because of what he wants for us. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular. This is a total hypothetical situation. I do not have a story to go with this, but I was thinking this week trying to understand the jealousy of God as he watches us give our attention and affection to things other than him. I was thinking about a 16, 17-year-old girl and her parents watching that life. And let's assume that she's pretty and that she's charming and that she's smart and that she's capable and that she's ambitious and she's got the world at her fingertips, right? But when she's 16, 17 years old, she meets a boy. And she makes that boy her world. And she wakes up thinking about him and she goes to bed thinking about him. And she begins to make her choices around her affection for this boy and her desire to feel affection from him. The way that she dresses, The color of her hair. Maybe the classes that she chooses in school. What she chooses to be involved with after school. Whether or not she engages in this or that extracurricular or works at this or that place. And then maybe her affection for that boy is so great that she allows that to heavily inform her college decision and she doesn't go to the place where she could have gone. How painful must it be for those parents to watch that girl misplace her affection and devotion and so squander her potential on something that essentially does not matter. Dating is fine. I'm not here to criticize it or critique it. But I will say that for the most part, if you're dating in high school, you ain't getting married to that one, okay? So just relax. Just chill out. If you are going to get married to them, they'll still be there in six years. Like, it's not a big deal. I used to teach high school and do student ministry, and I would tell all the kids, whoever you're dating, you're not going to marry. One of you is going to break up with the other one. It's just going to happen. So conduct yourselves accordingly in the relationship. Every now and again, I'm wrong, and high school sweethearts get married, and that's fine, but to watch your daughter with the world at her fingertips, to squander away that potential because of affection for a boy must be a uniquely painful thing. To watch a son who's incredibly capable, who has the world at his fingertips, to squander that potential on a girl or on something else that doesn't matter, that takes his attention off of what he could do and who he could be, has got to be a pretty painful thing for a parent to walk through, to see your hopes and dreams of this child and to see what they're capable of and to watch them squander that on something that doesn't matter and will not return the affection that they need. That's what it must be like for God to watch us fritter our lives away on things that don't matter. That's what it must be like for our Father in Heaven to watch us as we put our head down and just think about career and wealth and money and status. As we make the next God in our life the beach house or the promotion or the job or the company. As we make the God in our life our marriage. shepherd their daughter through the season. I think you would want to ask the question, what is actually worth our primary affection? Mom, dad, where would you have her put her affection and devotion? What do you want her waking up thinking about? School? Class? Job? Building a resume? What do you want her thinking about? And then for us, what is it that we should wake up thinking about? What is it that should be most important to us? I would contend and direct us to the Bible telling us so, that only God can satisfy our souls. If we're to say, what is worthy of that girl's affection and devotion? What is worthy of her life's pursuit? God alone would say, I am. Because in me she will find satisfaction. In me she, she will find affirmation. In me, she will find love. In me, she will find identity. In me, she will find what she needs. I will be enough for her. In God, you will find affection. In God, you will find affirmation. In God, you will finally feel like you are enough. In God, you will finally see your identity and know who you are and what he created you to do and be. In God, you will find the affection that he lavishes on you so that you can lavish it onto others. In God, you will find the love that allows you to be the spouse that you've always wanted to be. In God, you will find the affection that you need to pour out on your kids when they need it the most. In God, we find all we need for all the other things. In God, our restless souls finally find rest. I think that's part of what Jesus was talking about when he says this in Matthew chapter 11. He says, God is jealous for us, for our affection and our devotion because he knows that it is only in him that our restless souls can rest. He knows it is only in him that our greatest needs can be met. So our God is a jealous God, not because of what he wants from you, but because of what he wants for you. And what God wants for you is for your soul to rest. What God wants for you is found in Psalm 1611. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence there is fullness of joy. What God wants for you is John 10.10 that you might have life and have it to the full. What God wants for you is that you would know what love is and it abounds so much that you never have to question yourself or your identity ever again. What God wants for you is for you to be a conduit of his grace and love and affection from him onto others. And so God is jealous for you. When he sees you prioritizing things in your life over and above him, when he knows you're waking up thinking about things that are not things of God, that are not him, that are not in your life because of him. When he knows that you go to bed thinking about things that are not in your life from God, that are not there because of him, he's jealous for you. Not because he's petty and envious and he somehow needs your attention. No, he sees you squandering your affection and devotion on things that cannot satisfy your soul. So he's jealous for you for your sake so that you can be who he created you to be, so that you can experience the love that he created you to experience, and so you can express the love that he created you to express. So when we think of our God and we say that he is a jealous God, it's important to me that we understand that jealousy not to be petty jealousy like we have where we want something from the object of our affection. No, no. It's an altruistic jealousy where he knows he is the only worthy object of your affection and devotion. And when we offer it to him, everything else falls into place. He's jealous for you because he wants you to find rest in him. As we have a day off tomorrow with our families or our friends, I hope that we'll take part of today and part of tomorrow in rest and reflect on what we have been jealous of. Reflect on where we have placed our affection and our devotion. And maybe let's take this holiday weekend to recalibrate and place our affection and devotion back on God and the things of God because he is jealous for us, for our sakes. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being jealous for us. Thank you for wanting what's best for us. I pray, God, that we would see you as the only thing that is worthy of our life's devotion. May our souls find satisfaction and rest in you. May we be encouraged by you. May we feel loved and seen by you. God, I am the most guilty of placing my priorities on other things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things, of seeing the shiny thing and chasing after it, of waking up and thinking about myriad things that are not related to my devotion to you. And so, God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who might be like me, that we would recalibrate this weekend, that we would slow down and make you the object of our affection. Thank you for being a jealous God. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Good to see you during this Christmas season. December is my favorite month of the year at Grace. Before I just dive in, a couple things. First of all, it's Gibson's birthday today, so don't do it right now because we have more important things. But if you get a chance in the lobby, just wish him a happy 48th. And then also, it looks great in here. Aaron Winston did Yauman's work this week to get this done. Carly was a big help there, too. So say thank you to them. They took good care of us, and everything looks great. So we are festive and in full swing for Christmas. And as we do that, as Michelle mentioned at the onset, we're going to be looking at prophecies about Christ. We're going to be looking at Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament that tell us about the Jesus that we are celebrating here in December. This morning, we're going to be looking at what I think is probably the most famous Messianic prophecy. It's at least the most famous Christmas prophecy. Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, when I read it, you will absolutely recognize it. It was made popular by a guy named Friedrich Handel, who wrote Handel's Messiah, that great song that we hear every Christmas. It's really, really good. I tried to get Gibby to robe a choir and hire an orchestra so we could do it big this morning, but he has no passion or willingness to dream. His mind is very small. And so he keeps us from great and grand things here. So maybe next year, let's work on them together. But this is the prophecy that we all know. I think it's the most famous one that we'll talk about. And it was almost the entirety of the whole series out of this verse. I'll tell you why in just a minute. But Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 says this. These are familiar words. For to us a child is born. To us a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So I think it was back in the spring, Jen told me that she was doing a devotional. Jen's my wife. She's back there teaching the fourth and fifth grade right now. She told me that she was doing this devotional, and the devotional focused on this verse. And she said, I think it can make a great Christmas series, and here's why. And it almost was the Christmas series, and it's actually the reason why we landed on focusing on prophecy for the Christmas series. I just wanted to cover more than just this verse. But one of the things that the author of this devotional noted that I thought was an interesting point that I had not pieced together before, which is a low bar, but I saw that there was, or she points out that in these names of Jesus, there are four distinct roles and four distinct descriptors of each of those roles. So we have four distinct roles. We have counselor, God, father, and prince. And then we have four unique descriptors for those roles. Wonderful, mighty, everlasting, and peace or peaceful. He's the prince of peace. And I think it's worth it to take a look at each of these roles and descriptors, each of these names for Jesus, and think about what they mean, why they were chosen, why it's so significant that he's a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, an everlasting Father, and our Prince of Peace. Why those names? Why does Isaiah say this is what he will be called? Why did God direct him to write those particular things down? Why are they so powerful? And how can they encourage us in our faith today? And I thought it would be a great morning to just kind of sit in this reality of who Jesus is. That's what we're going to be talking about this morning. The Savior that we claim, that we sang to, that we said, yes, I will cry out to you no matter what my whole life, for all my days, I will claim you. Who is this Jesus that we claim and that we are celebrating this month in particular? And I think these four descriptors, these four roles are a great place to camp, to acquaint us with our Christ and hopefully leave here more desirous of him than you were when you came in and feeling like you know your Jesus a little bit better. So I want to look at these four titles and roles of Christ, these four names for Christ described by Isaiah through an angel. And the first one is that he is a wonderful counselor. Isaiah leads with wonderful counselor. Now this word counsel or counselor there, and I don't do a lot of like particular word work a lot, but it's relevant this morning because it's the type of counsel that advises, that purposes someone with a plan, that guides and directs. It's the kind of counsel that you go to to get advice. What should I do in this situation? That's kind of the implication here. That's the kind of counsel that Jesus is offering, and he is a wonderful counselor. And so it's worth asking, well, why is he wonderful? What makes him and his counsel so wonderful? And I think it's this. It's an obvious point, but when you think about it, it's such an important point. His counsel is wonderful because it is always right and always loving. His counsel is wonderful because it is always right and it is always loving. I don't know how often you guys find yourselves in situations where you're serving someone as a counselor. Where they're coming to you for advice. They're talking about their marriage. They're talking about their family. They're talking about their kids. They're talking about their career, they're talking about inner family dynamics, whatever it is. I don't know how often you counsel someone, but the more regularly you do it, the more difficult you understand it is to be both right and loving in the counsel that you offer. It's hard to be either one of those things. I remember as a pastor, people asked me for advice way more than they should based on my limited experience in life. When I was a student pastor at my last church, a dad came in. Him and his wife had divorced. He had a daughter. His wife had disparate standards for his daughter than he did, so it was causing some tension between him and his daughter when she would stay with him, and she was starting to rebel, and he didn't know what to do, so he came to the youth pastor. How do I maintain this relationship with my teenage daughter who's pushing against me because her mom gives me, gives her more freedom than I do. And I said, well, you're in luck because I am 29 years old and I have no children and I know the exact right answer to this. And I honestly, I said, his name was, his name was Carson. Great dude. I said, Carson, I don't know why you're here. He goes, you're the pastor. I said, I don't even have any kids, man. I don't know how to get a dog to keep liking me. Like, I don't, I can't help you. And to his ever-loving credit, Carson goes, you know what? You're right. I don't know why I'm here. Thanks for your time. And he left. He just walked out of my office. That was loving counsel. It was not right counsel. It gets more serious when we think about the counselors that we have in the world. I've got a really good friend. One of my best friends in the world and his marriage is really struggling right now. And he and his wife, like all of us, are broken people who brought in broken pieces and created a broken marriage. She is seeing a counselor on her own. He's seeing a different counselor on their own. Then they're seeing another counselor together that's supposed to be like the foremost marriage and family counselor in their area. And they've signed agreements for all of the counselors to talk to each other about the best plan of action for this particular couple. And yet, after his last session on Thursday, he called me to let me know how it went. And he said, I've never been more confused about anything in my entire life. I don't know what to do. He used to claim a faith, now he does not, nor does his wife. So you can't just say, hey, this is what scripture, I think, would have you do. I think this is what God's desire would be for you. I can't just give him that counsel, he's not going to receive it. I do think that in a marriage where there has not been infidelity, where there is not abuse, and where there is not abandonment, where both parties are in and they want to see this thing work, that the absolute best and right thing to do for everyone involved is to keep working at that for as long and as hard as you can. And I think that if they would just give themselves over to it and shut that back door of stepping out of the marriage and going separate ways and say, we're in, we're here, how do we do this? How do we find a path to happy together? I believe that they could, and I believe that the counsel of God, which is in scripture, correlates with that and agrees with that, and that is both right and loving counsel from our wonderful counselor. But instead of following that counsel, they're following the counsel of the world, and it has left him in a place where they are counseled out of their mind, to the hill. They are up to here in counseling appointments. And he left the last one saying, I've never been more confused about anything in my whole life. Jesus is our wonderful counselor. If we want to know what to do, we go to him in prayer. If we want to know what the plan is, how to handle a situation, we go to his word and we see if there's anything here that can guide us. We go to people who know us and know his word and we ask them what they think and we ask our friends to pray for us and we ask people to gather around us and maybe even lay hands on us and pray for us. What do we do? And we ask and we plead for the direction of God. I can't tell you how many times in my life I have not known what to do in a certain situation, making a big decision, facing some uncertainty or whatever it might be, and I've just prayed to God, would you please just make your will clear? That's all I need. I'm not asking for a particular outcome, but would you help me walk in confidence and faith that I am taking the steps that you want me to take? Will you please do that? And whenever I'm telling you the truth, whenever I have prayed that prayer, God has been faithful to make my path forward as crystal clear as possible. And when you do that, when it's a no, and you feel like God has said, don't do that yet. There were times in my last church where I prayed, God, can I please look for another job? I'm not happy here. And I felt like the answer was no. That's not my counsel for you. That's not what I would have you do. And I wasn't ready, and I didn't do it. I didn't go, and I stayed. But I had peace in staying. And then eventually, it became yes, go. And then eventually, it became yes, grace. And he made it so clear along the way that these were the steps that he wanted me to take, that he had orchestrated for me. And there's confirmation after confirmation that I was following God's counsel in being here. And what that also helps with is when things are tough, when you get discouraged, when, say, a global pandemic happens and your attendance is reduced by 95% and you have to hit the reset button on the whole church, you start to doubt whether or not I heard that counsel right. But you know that you did. And so following God's counsel, knowing that he knows the perfect plan, having confirmation that this is what he wants you to do, keeps you faithful in the path because we have a wonderful counselor. I was reminded as I was thinking of this, as one of my favorite verses, I remind you of it often because it's so simple and yet so powerful. John 10.10, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus says, I have come here so that you would have life and have it to the full, so that you would have the best, most rich, extravagant, adventurous, deep life possible. The best, the most full life possible for you. Now, his definition of that is going to look different than ours might, but when we experience his, we'll change our mind to his definition. Jesus says, if you'll just follow my counsel, I will lead you down the right paths. In Christ, we have a wonderful counselor whose advice is always right and always loving. The next thing that we see is that we have this mighty God. We have a mighty God. And I thought about how do we make a mighty God relevant in 2024? Certainly that resonates a little bit differently than it did in 800 BC, right? We live in a different timeframe, a different context. So how does that resonate for us? And I was reminded of a sermon that I like to do on David and Goliath. I did this sermon my first summer here, and I haven't done it again. Maybe it's time to polish it off because I really like doing it. I love telling the story. I think it's an amazing story. But in the story of David and Goliath, for those who have existed like in a space station for 30 years, David's a little guy, he kills a giant with a rock. I'd like to ask, as we look at that story, what made David so different than the rest of the fighting men of Israel? David's this ruddy teenager, 15, 16 years old. He goes to the front lines. He's there with all these fighting men, all these courageous men who have gone to battle, and it's a horrendous kind of battle where you hack off more limbs than your opponent does. It's a terrible, terrible way to do war, and they have faced it, and they are ready to face it, and yet there's this one giant Goliath of Gath who stands in the valley and blasphemes them and their God every day, making fun of them. And they won't even make eye contact with him. They're terrified of him. And when David sees Goliath, he goes, who's this guy? Who's this jerk? Who does he think he is? And then he says, I'm going to fight him. Then he says, I don't need Saul's armor. Then he goes out there and Goliath talks smack to David and David gives it right back to him. And then he slings the rock and he drops Goliath. And so the question is, how is David able to confront Goliath and respond to Goliath in such a vastly different way than everyone else in his country? And a lot of times people say faith. David was a man of faith. He had great faith. He knew that God was going to do it. And I just simply am not satisfied with that answer. Because I think that there was many men of faith in that army. Certainly of a more mature and seasoned and deep faith than that of a 15 or 16 year old. I'm not sure that David was the most faithful person in Israel. Maybe he was, but that doesn't resonate with me. Even Saul, the king, was a man of faith at that time in his life. My answer to what causes David to see, to respond to Goliath differently is that when everyone else looked at Goliath, they compared the strength and the might of Goliath to themselves, and they said, I am inadequate for this task. I cannot handle it, so I will not fight him. When David looked at Goliath and heard him blaspheming God, he compared the strength and the might of Goliath to the strength and the might of his mighty God, Everlasting Father, and he went, dude, you're in trouble. And so when David goes down to fight Goliath, it's not with his own might. It's not with his own strength. God didn't need that. God just needed a warm body to go do what he told him to do. And now it's just God's might and God's strength at play. And what we see, and this is so important, is that when we talk about mighty God and why that matters, it's because his might makes ours obsolete. The might of God makes our personal fortitude and might and strength and stick-to-itiveness and determination and all the things that we like to say about ourselves. It makes those obsolete. When we do things in the might of God, we don't need ours. All we need to do is be a warm body that's willing to do what God tells us to do. And if you think about this, even the strongest of you, even the smartest of you, even the mightiest of you, there are myriad things in your life for which you are inadequate. It does not take you long to have children and realize I am inadequate for the task of parenting them well. I am inadequate for the task of parenting them perfectly. I am not going to thread this needle without sending them to counseling for something. It's just I'd like to send them for as little as possible. That's my goal with John and Lily. I want to release into the wild capable adults who love Jesus and are self-actualized and have as few reasons to do counseling as possible. That's the goal. When you get married, you realize very quickly, if you're paying attention and you're not a moron, that you are inadequate for this task of being the spouse that your husband or that your wife needs. It's just not in there. You're going to make mistakes. We are inadequate to be perfect friends for each other, to be perfect confidants and counselors for each other. There are myriad ways in life. In most situations, if we would really just think about it, what we should admit is that every single one of us has imposter syndrome about something, and we are inadequate for the task that we face. That's good, because God isn't. So quit comparing yourself to the task and finding yourself lacking and start comparing the task to God and finding him sufficient. He is our mighty warrior. He fights our battles for us. It is not my job to lead grace according to the standards of Nate. It is not my job to make us successful or not successful. It is my job to be a warm body that gets up here on Sundays and does what God asks him to do. It is not your job to make your things successful. It is your job to be obedient because we have a mighty God that goes before us and fights our battles for us. This next one is interesting. We are told that he is our everlasting father, which is interesting for multiple reasons, not the least of which is Jesus is not referred to as God the Father in Scripture. This is the only place I can think of where Jesus is referred to as Father, and so it's interesting wondering why. And really, that word is just a general descriptor for a parental figure. He looks out for us. He nurtures us. He protects us. He guides us. He's a safe place for us. Jesus is fatherly in his behavior towards us. It's kind of a placeholder for that. And as I was thinking about what it means, not only that this is one of Jesus's roles, that he's a father figure for us, but that the descriptor that was chosen was everlasting. And I thought, there's got to be something to everlasting. There's got to be something to why that word was chosen. And as I thought about this, I was reminded of how I think about parents. I think that when you're born, if you're born into a half-decent family, it doesn't even have to be a great family, just a half-decent one, they're going to provide you with food and shelter. They're going to shelter you. They're going to give you a safe environment in which you can grow up. For most of us, that's our experience. So I've always thought of my parents as my shelter. And then at some point or another, they're going to send you out into the big, bad world, and you're going to face it alone. And you're going to see if you can go it alone. And you're going to see if you can make it. But here's what I know, and this makes me emotional every time I think about it. What I know is, I'm out here, Jen and I are out here on our own facing the big bad world. But I know that if it gets too stormy, I always have a shelter I can run to. I know that if things go sideways and we shut the doors and I'm jobless and useless because I have no marketable skills, I know that I can take the family back to their house and we can find our path again. I don't want to, mom and dad, if you're watching, I don't want to do that at all. Sounds terrible. But I know that we could. I have a shelter. And sometimes in life when the storm comes, when I'm getting, and this happens from time to time, it's bound to in this role, really harsh criticism, when I'm trying to determine if it's fair and just, when I'm really discouraged, when I don't know what to do, I can always pick up the phone and call mom and call dad and get advice from people who love me and love Jesus and aren't trying to get me to perform as their pastor. They just want to see what's best for me. I know that when the storms come, I can call and I can hide under that shelter for a little bit. And it always makes me sad when I do the funeral of a parent, whether they're 85, 95, or older. And what a blessing it is to have our parents for that long if we do. Or whether that parent is 55 or 45. Because it makes me sad for the kids, usually adults, that are left behind because their shelter is not here anymore. You're your own shelter. And I think about how lonely that must feel. There's a singer-songwriter named James Blunt that wrote a song about this, sitting next to his dad as his dad was dying of a disease. And he wrote a song about saying goodbye to your parents. And this is the chorus of the song. I think it's so powerful. He says, I'm not your son. You're not my father. We're just two grown men saying goodbye. No need to forgive. No need to forget. I know your mistakes and you know mine. And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud. So, Daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid. It's my turn to chase the monsters away. Jeepers. The reality is, and I know this is heavy for December 8th, at least it's not Family Jammy Sunday. That would be weird. This occurred to me as we were walking through the process of losing my father-in-law, John. That when you are born, best case scenario in your life, you bury your parents. That's the best case scenario. Because if you don't, something more sad than that happens. Because here's the reality about our moms and our dads. They are not everlasting. And one day, we'll say goodbye to them. And when we do, it'll be our turn to chase the monsters away. But in Christ, we have an everlasting Father. And because of that, because of His eternal nature, means we never have to face the world alone. His eternal nature means we never have to face the world alone. We always have shelter. We always have someone to run to. We always have someone to cling to. We always have someone to call. Because he is our everlasting father and we never have to say goodbye to him. And I know that for some of you, you're big and tough and you're stoic and this emotional stuff doesn't do it for you. First of all, you need therapy. Second, you may have been fighting the monsters for a long time on your own. It may be a long time since you lost your mama or your daddy. Or maybe you're one of the unfortunate ones whose mom or dad ran out on you quick, and you've never really had that shelter to run to. And you've been fighting by yourself for a long time and you're tough. I'd be willing to bet you all my money that there have been times in the years and decades since you lost them where you thought to yourself, God, I wish I could talk to Dad. I wish I could call my mom. I wish I could just talk to him. Or maybe, I wish I had a dad that ever gave me good advice, ever. I just wish they were here. That's what makes this promise and this title of Christ so powerful. He is our everlasting Father. We never have to say goodbye. We never have to face the world alone. He is always there, constantly looking, constantly protecting, constantly guarding. And we can always, always run to him. And we'll never have to be on our own with what we face. Because of all these things, I believe, Isaiah calls him and finishes with the Prince of Peace. Jesus, he says, is the Prince of Peace. Why is he the Prince of Peace? His peace is the only possible consequence of his attributes. His peace, the peace of Christ that transcends all understanding and guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, this peace of Christ is the only possible response and consequence of his other attributes. If you really believe that Jesus is a wonderful counselor and that his advice and his counsel is always right and always loving and that all you have to do is walk in his counsel. All you have to do is follow his advice. All you have to do is walk the path that he's laid out for you. I don't have to worry about everything else. I just need to walk this way and I know that Jesus will take care of me. If you believe that's true and if you believe that Jesus is your mighty warrior who goes ahead of you and fights your battles for you, who makes your personal might obsolete, who only asks of you for a warm body that's willing to do as he instructs, if you believe that's true and it takes the mantle of the battles off of you that we fight and it places it on his more sturdy shoulders and all you have to do is walk behind him, if you believe that he's a mighty warrior that goes before you, and then you believe that he's an everlasting father that you can always run to for shelter, that you can always run to for comfort, that you'll never have to say goodbye to, that is the reason that you'll never have to face the world alone or chase the monsters on your own, if you believe those things, how could we not arrive at the conclusion that he is the Prince of Peace and experience that peace? Jesus says in the Upper Room Discourse that we focused on last spring, John chapter 14 through 16, before he prays the High Priestly Prayer in 17, he finishes the Upper Room Discourse in chapter 16, I believe verse 39, and he says, I say these things to you that you might have peace, that you might rest, that you don't have to worry anymore. Just walk in me and walk towards me, and I will take care of everything else. It's why I think these four titles of Christ are so powerful together, because they flow one right after the other, and they lead us into this place of perfect and uncontested peace, so that if we really believe those things about Christ, we will not be like the proverbial duck on top of calm water looking calm and placid on the surface but legs flailing like crazy underneath. We will be like the disciples on the boat after Jesus groggily comes up and calms the storms and calms the winds and the rains and says peace be still. And then he goes back down to continue taking his nap, and the disciples look at each other and they go, Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? Look at him. Perfect peace. How did he do it? That's how we should feel when we reflect on who Jesus is and what he is for us. So this Christmas, when you hear Handel's Messiah, when you hear the great chorus swell, when you encounter this verse and you're met with the reality that he is our Prince of Peace and you understand more fully how we arrive at that peace, I hope and pray that the person of Christ will be brought freshly to your mind. And maybe not all four of these titles will resonate with you, but maybe the one that did the most is the one that you'll be reminded of and that this Christmas you'll experience the peace of Christ and you'll celebrate the peace of Christ. And we'll remember to do this as we celebrate together with our families, that we will never hear this messianic prophecy, this Christmas verse the same, but that will always remind us of the peace that we find in Christ and make us more desirous of the Savior that graciously offers us that peace. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. We love you. We praise you. We thank you for the gift of Jesus, for sending us your son, so that not only would he come to reconcile us to you. To reconcile your creation back to you. To give us a hope for the future. But God in so doing. Also becomes our wonderful counselor. Our mighty God. Our everlasting father and our prince of peace. Father I pray for for us that we would know Jesus better as we leave here. That we would seek Him more, be more desirous of Him as we leave here. And that God, those of us who are not experiencing Your peace, those of us who need a Father to run to, those of us who need a wonderful counselor, who need a mighty God to fight a battle for them. Lord, I pray that they would be heartened by these words, that they would be encouraged as they go. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
All right, well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Good to see you during this Christmas season. December is my favorite month of the year at Grace. Before I just dive in, a couple things. First of all, it's Gibson's birthday today, so don't do it right now because we have more important things. But if you get a chance in the lobby, just wish him a happy 48th. And then also, it looks great in here. Aaron Winston did Yauman's work this week to get this done. Carly was a big help there, too. So say thank you to them. They took good care of us, and everything looks great. So we are festive and in full swing for Christmas. And as we do that, as Michelle mentioned at the onset, we're going to be looking at prophecies about Christ. We're going to be looking at Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament that tell us about the Jesus that we are celebrating here in December. This morning, we're going to be looking at what I think is probably the most famous Messianic prophecy. It's at least the most famous Christmas prophecy. Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, when I read it, you will absolutely recognize it. It was made popular by a guy named Friedrich Handel, who wrote Handel's Messiah, that great song that we hear every Christmas. It's really, really good. I tried to get Gibby to robe a choir and hire an orchestra so we could do it big this morning, but he has no passion or willingness to dream. His mind is very small. And so he keeps us from great and grand things here. So maybe next year, let's work on them together. But this is the prophecy that we all know. I think it's the most famous one that we'll talk about. And it was almost the entirety of the whole series out of this verse. I'll tell you why in just a minute. But Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 says this. These are familiar words. For to us a child is born. To us a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So I think it was back in the spring, Jen told me that she was doing a devotional. Jen's my wife. She's back there teaching the fourth and fifth grade right now. She told me that she was doing this devotional, and the devotional focused on this verse. And she said, I think it can make a great Christmas series, and here's why. And it almost was the Christmas series, and it's actually the reason why we landed on focusing on prophecy for the Christmas series. I just wanted to cover more than just this verse. But one of the things that the author of this devotional noted that I thought was an interesting point that I had not pieced together before, which is a low bar, but I saw that there was, or she points out that in these names of Jesus, there are four distinct roles and four distinct descriptors of each of those roles. So we have four distinct roles. We have counselor, God, father, and prince. And then we have four unique descriptors for those roles. Wonderful, mighty, everlasting, and peace or peaceful. He's the prince of peace. And I think it's worth it to take a look at each of these roles and descriptors, each of these names for Jesus, and think about what they mean, why they were chosen, why it's so significant that he's a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, an everlasting Father, and our Prince of Peace. Why those names? Why does Isaiah say this is what he will be called? Why did God direct him to write those particular things down? Why are they so powerful? And how can they encourage us in our faith today? And I thought it would be a great morning to just kind of sit in this reality of who Jesus is. That's what we're going to be talking about this morning. The Savior that we claim, that we sang to, that we said, yes, I will cry out to you no matter what my whole life, for all my days, I will claim you. Who is this Jesus that we claim and that we are celebrating this month in particular? And I think these four descriptors, these four roles are a great place to camp, to acquaint us with our Christ and hopefully leave here more desirous of him than you were when you came in and feeling like you know your Jesus a little bit better. So I want to look at these four titles and roles of Christ, these four names for Christ described by Isaiah through an angel. And the first one is that he is a wonderful counselor. Isaiah leads with wonderful counselor. Now this word counsel or counselor there, and I don't do a lot of like particular word work a lot, but it's relevant this morning because it's the type of counsel that advises, that purposes someone with a plan, that guides and directs. It's the kind of counsel that you go to to get advice. What should I do in this situation? That's kind of the implication here. That's the kind of counsel that Jesus is offering, and he is a wonderful counselor. And so it's worth asking, well, why is he wonderful? What makes him and his counsel so wonderful? And I think it's this. It's an obvious point, but when you think about it, it's such an important point. His counsel is wonderful because it is always right and always loving. His counsel is wonderful because it is always right and it is always loving. I don't know how often you guys find yourselves in situations where you're serving someone as a counselor. Where they're coming to you for advice. They're talking about their marriage. They're talking about their family. They're talking about their kids. They're talking about their career, they're talking about inner family dynamics, whatever it is. I don't know how often you counsel someone, but the more regularly you do it, the more difficult you understand it is to be both right and loving in the counsel that you offer. It's hard to be either one of those things. I remember as a pastor, people asked me for advice way more than they should based on my limited experience in life. When I was a student pastor at my last church, a dad came in. Him and his wife had divorced. He had a daughter. His wife had disparate standards for his daughter than he did, so it was causing some tension between him and his daughter when she would stay with him, and she was starting to rebel, and he didn't know what to do, so he came to the youth pastor. How do I maintain this relationship with my teenage daughter who's pushing against me because her mom gives me, gives her more freedom than I do. And I said, well, you're in luck because I am 29 years old and I have no children and I know the exact right answer to this. And I honestly, I said, his name was, his name was Carson. Great dude. I said, Carson, I don't know why you're here. He goes, you're the pastor. I said, I don't even have any kids, man. I don't know how to get a dog to keep liking me. Like, I don't, I can't help you. And to his ever-loving credit, Carson goes, you know what? You're right. I don't know why I'm here. Thanks for your time. And he left. He just walked out of my office. That was loving counsel. It was not right counsel. It gets more serious when we think about the counselors that we have in the world. I've got a really good friend. One of my best friends in the world and his marriage is really struggling right now. And he and his wife, like all of us, are broken people who brought in broken pieces and created a broken marriage. She is seeing a counselor on her own. He's seeing a different counselor on their own. Then they're seeing another counselor together that's supposed to be like the foremost marriage and family counselor in their area. And they've signed agreements for all of the counselors to talk to each other about the best plan of action for this particular couple. And yet, after his last session on Thursday, he called me to let me know how it went. And he said, I've never been more confused about anything in my entire life. I don't know what to do. He used to claim a faith, now he does not, nor does his wife. So you can't just say, hey, this is what scripture, I think, would have you do. I think this is what God's desire would be for you. I can't just give him that counsel, he's not going to receive it. I do think that in a marriage where there has not been infidelity, where there is not abuse, and where there is not abandonment, where both parties are in and they want to see this thing work, that the absolute best and right thing to do for everyone involved is to keep working at that for as long and as hard as you can. And I think that if they would just give themselves over to it and shut that back door of stepping out of the marriage and going separate ways and say, we're in, we're here, how do we do this? How do we find a path to happy together? I believe that they could, and I believe that the counsel of God, which is in scripture, correlates with that and agrees with that, and that is both right and loving counsel from our wonderful counselor. But instead of following that counsel, they're following the counsel of the world, and it has left him in a place where they are counseled out of their mind, to the hill. They are up to here in counseling appointments. And he left the last one saying, I've never been more confused about anything in my whole life. Jesus is our wonderful counselor. If we want to know what to do, we go to him in prayer. If we want to know what the plan is, how to handle a situation, we go to his word and we see if there's anything here that can guide us. We go to people who know us and know his word and we ask them what they think and we ask our friends to pray for us and we ask people to gather around us and maybe even lay hands on us and pray for us. What do we do? And we ask and we plead for the direction of God. I can't tell you how many times in my life I have not known what to do in a certain situation, making a big decision, facing some uncertainty or whatever it might be, and I've just prayed to God, would you please just make your will clear? That's all I need. I'm not asking for a particular outcome, but would you help me walk in confidence and faith that I am taking the steps that you want me to take? Will you please do that? And whenever I'm telling you the truth, whenever I have prayed that prayer, God has been faithful to make my path forward as crystal clear as possible. And when you do that, when it's a no, and you feel like God has said, don't do that yet. There were times in my last church where I prayed, God, can I please look for another job? I'm not happy here. And I felt like the answer was no. That's not my counsel for you. That's not what I would have you do. And I wasn't ready, and I didn't do it. I didn't go, and I stayed. But I had peace in staying. And then eventually, it became yes, go. And then eventually, it became yes, grace. And he made it so clear along the way that these were the steps that he wanted me to take, that he had orchestrated for me. And there's confirmation after confirmation that I was following God's counsel in being here. And what that also helps with is when things are tough, when you get discouraged, when, say, a global pandemic happens and your attendance is reduced by 95% and you have to hit the reset button on the whole church, you start to doubt whether or not I heard that counsel right. But you know that you did. And so following God's counsel, knowing that he knows the perfect plan, having confirmation that this is what he wants you to do, keeps you faithful in the path because we have a wonderful counselor. I was reminded as I was thinking of this, as one of my favorite verses, I remind you of it often because it's so simple and yet so powerful. John 10.10, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus says, I have come here so that you would have life and have it to the full, so that you would have the best, most rich, extravagant, adventurous, deep life possible. The best, the most full life possible for you. Now, his definition of that is going to look different than ours might, but when we experience his, we'll change our mind to his definition. Jesus says, if you'll just follow my counsel, I will lead you down the right paths. In Christ, we have a wonderful counselor whose advice is always right and always loving. The next thing that we see is that we have this mighty God. We have a mighty God. And I thought about how do we make a mighty God relevant in 2024? Certainly that resonates a little bit differently than it did in 800 BC, right? We live in a different timeframe, a different context. So how does that resonate for us? And I was reminded of a sermon that I like to do on David and Goliath. I did this sermon my first summer here, and I haven't done it again. Maybe it's time to polish it off because I really like doing it. I love telling the story. I think it's an amazing story. But in the story of David and Goliath, for those who have existed like in a space station for 30 years, David's a little guy, he kills a giant with a rock. I'd like to ask, as we look at that story, what made David so different than the rest of the fighting men of Israel? David's this ruddy teenager, 15, 16 years old. He goes to the front lines. He's there with all these fighting men, all these courageous men who have gone to battle, and it's a horrendous kind of battle where you hack off more limbs than your opponent does. It's a terrible, terrible way to do war, and they have faced it, and they are ready to face it, and yet there's this one giant Goliath of Gath who stands in the valley and blasphemes them and their God every day, making fun of them. And they won't even make eye contact with him. They're terrified of him. And when David sees Goliath, he goes, who's this guy? Who's this jerk? Who does he think he is? And then he says, I'm going to fight him. Then he says, I don't need Saul's armor. Then he goes out there and Goliath talks smack to David and David gives it right back to him. And then he slings the rock and he drops Goliath. And so the question is, how is David able to confront Goliath and respond to Goliath in such a vastly different way than everyone else in his country? And a lot of times people say faith. David was a man of faith. He had great faith. He knew that God was going to do it. And I just simply am not satisfied with that answer. Because I think that there was many men of faith in that army. Certainly of a more mature and seasoned and deep faith than that of a 15 or 16 year old. I'm not sure that David was the most faithful person in Israel. Maybe he was, but that doesn't resonate with me. Even Saul, the king, was a man of faith at that time in his life. My answer to what causes David to see, to respond to Goliath differently is that when everyone else looked at Goliath, they compared the strength and the might of Goliath to themselves, and they said, I am inadequate for this task. I cannot handle it, so I will not fight him. When David looked at Goliath and heard him blaspheming God, he compared the strength and the might of Goliath to the strength and the might of his mighty God, Everlasting Father, and he went, dude, you're in trouble. And so when David goes down to fight Goliath, it's not with his own might. It's not with his own strength. God didn't need that. God just needed a warm body to go do what he told him to do. And now it's just God's might and God's strength at play. And what we see, and this is so important, is that when we talk about mighty God and why that matters, it's because his might makes ours obsolete. The might of God makes our personal fortitude and might and strength and stick-to-itiveness and determination and all the things that we like to say about ourselves. It makes those obsolete. When we do things in the might of God, we don't need ours. All we need to do is be a warm body that's willing to do what God tells us to do. And if you think about this, even the strongest of you, even the smartest of you, even the mightiest of you, there are myriad things in your life for which you are inadequate. It does not take you long to have children and realize I am inadequate for the task of parenting them well. I am inadequate for the task of parenting them perfectly. I am not going to thread this needle without sending them to counseling for something. It's just I'd like to send them for as little as possible. That's my goal with John and Lily. I want to release into the wild capable adults who love Jesus and are self-actualized and have as few reasons to do counseling as possible. That's the goal. When you get married, you realize very quickly, if you're paying attention and you're not a moron, that you are inadequate for this task of being the spouse that your husband or that your wife needs. It's just not in there. You're going to make mistakes. We are inadequate to be perfect friends for each other, to be perfect confidants and counselors for each other. There are myriad ways in life. In most situations, if we would really just think about it, what we should admit is that every single one of us has imposter syndrome about something, and we are inadequate for the task that we face. That's good, because God isn't. So quit comparing yourself to the task and finding yourself lacking and start comparing the task to God and finding him sufficient. He is our mighty warrior. He fights our battles for us. It is not my job to lead grace according to the standards of Nate. It is not my job to make us successful or not successful. It is my job to be a warm body that gets up here on Sundays and does what God asks him to do. It is not your job to make your things successful. It is your job to be obedient because we have a mighty God that goes before us and fights our battles for us. This next one is interesting. We are told that he is our everlasting father, which is interesting for multiple reasons, not the least of which is Jesus is not referred to as God the Father in Scripture. This is the only place I can think of where Jesus is referred to as Father, and so it's interesting wondering why. And really, that word is just a general descriptor for a parental figure. He looks out for us. He nurtures us. He protects us. He guides us. He's a safe place for us. Jesus is fatherly in his behavior towards us. It's kind of a placeholder for that. And as I was thinking about what it means, not only that this is one of Jesus's roles, that he's a father figure for us, but that the descriptor that was chosen was everlasting. And I thought, there's got to be something to everlasting. There's got to be something to why that word was chosen. And as I thought about this, I was reminded of how I think about parents. I think that when you're born, if you're born into a half-decent family, it doesn't even have to be a great family, just a half-decent one, they're going to provide you with food and shelter. They're going to shelter you. They're going to give you a safe environment in which you can grow up. For most of us, that's our experience. So I've always thought of my parents as my shelter. And then at some point or another, they're going to send you out into the big, bad world, and you're going to face it alone. And you're going to see if you can go it alone. And you're going to see if you can make it. But here's what I know, and this makes me emotional every time I think about it. What I know is, I'm out here, Jen and I are out here on our own facing the big bad world. But I know that if it gets too stormy, I always have a shelter I can run to. I know that if things go sideways and we shut the doors and I'm jobless and useless because I have no marketable skills, I know that I can take the family back to their house and we can find our path again. I don't want to, mom and dad, if you're watching, I don't want to do that at all. Sounds terrible. But I know that we could. I have a shelter. And sometimes in life when the storm comes, when I'm getting, and this happens from time to time, it's bound to in this role, really harsh criticism, when I'm trying to determine if it's fair and just, when I'm really discouraged, when I don't know what to do, I can always pick up the phone and call mom and call dad and get advice from people who love me and love Jesus and aren't trying to get me to perform as their pastor. They just want to see what's best for me. I know that when the storms come, I can call and I can hide under that shelter for a little bit. And it always makes me sad when I do the funeral of a parent, whether they're 85, 95, or older. And what a blessing it is to have our parents for that long if we do. Or whether that parent is 55 or 45. Because it makes me sad for the kids, usually adults, that are left behind because their shelter is not here anymore. You're your own shelter. And I think about how lonely that must feel. There's a singer-songwriter named James Blunt that wrote a song about this, sitting next to his dad as his dad was dying of a disease. And he wrote a song about saying goodbye to your parents. And this is the chorus of the song. I think it's so powerful. He says, I'm not your son. You're not my father. We're just two grown men saying goodbye. No need to forgive. No need to forget. I know your mistakes and you know mine. And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud. So, Daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid. It's my turn to chase the monsters away. Jeepers. The reality is, and I know this is heavy for December 8th, at least it's not Family Jammy Sunday. That would be weird. This occurred to me as we were walking through the process of losing my father-in-law, John. That when you are born, best case scenario in your life, you bury your parents. That's the best case scenario. Because if you don't, something more sad than that happens. Because here's the reality about our moms and our dads. They are not everlasting. And one day, we'll say goodbye to them. And when we do, it'll be our turn to chase the monsters away. But in Christ, we have an everlasting Father. And because of that, because of His eternal nature, means we never have to face the world alone. His eternal nature means we never have to face the world alone. We always have shelter. We always have someone to run to. We always have someone to cling to. We always have someone to call. Because he is our everlasting father and we never have to say goodbye to him. And I know that for some of you, you're big and tough and you're stoic and this emotional stuff doesn't do it for you. First of all, you need therapy. Second, you may have been fighting the monsters for a long time on your own. It may be a long time since you lost your mama or your daddy. Or maybe you're one of the unfortunate ones whose mom or dad ran out on you quick, and you've never really had that shelter to run to. And you've been fighting by yourself for a long time and you're tough. I'd be willing to bet you all my money that there have been times in the years and decades since you lost them where you thought to yourself, God, I wish I could talk to Dad. I wish I could call my mom. I wish I could just talk to him. Or maybe, I wish I had a dad that ever gave me good advice, ever. I just wish they were here. That's what makes this promise and this title of Christ so powerful. He is our everlasting Father. We never have to say goodbye. We never have to face the world alone. He is always there, constantly looking, constantly protecting, constantly guarding. And we can always, always run to him. And we'll never have to be on our own with what we face. Because of all these things, I believe, Isaiah calls him and finishes with the Prince of Peace. Jesus, he says, is the Prince of Peace. Why is he the Prince of Peace? His peace is the only possible consequence of his attributes. His peace, the peace of Christ that transcends all understanding and guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, this peace of Christ is the only possible response and consequence of his other attributes. If you really believe that Jesus is a wonderful counselor and that his advice and his counsel is always right and always loving and that all you have to do is walk in his counsel. All you have to do is follow his advice. All you have to do is walk the path that he's laid out for you. I don't have to worry about everything else. I just need to walk this way and I know that Jesus will take care of me. If you believe that's true and if you believe that Jesus is your mighty warrior who goes ahead of you and fights your battles for you, who makes your personal might obsolete, who only asks of you for a warm body that's willing to do as he instructs, if you believe that's true and it takes the mantle of the battles off of you that we fight and it places it on his more sturdy shoulders and all you have to do is walk behind him, if you believe that he's a mighty warrior that goes before you, and then you believe that he's an everlasting father that you can always run to for shelter, that you can always run to for comfort, that you'll never have to say goodbye to, that is the reason that you'll never have to face the world alone or chase the monsters on your own, if you believe those things, how could we not arrive at the conclusion that he is the Prince of Peace and experience that peace? Jesus says in the Upper Room Discourse that we focused on last spring, John chapter 14 through 16, before he prays the High Priestly Prayer in 17, he finishes the Upper Room Discourse in chapter 16, I believe verse 39, and he says, I say these things to you that you might have peace, that you might rest, that you don't have to worry anymore. Just walk in me and walk towards me, and I will take care of everything else. It's why I think these four titles of Christ are so powerful together, because they flow one right after the other, and they lead us into this place of perfect and uncontested peace, so that if we really believe those things about Christ, we will not be like the proverbial duck on top of calm water looking calm and placid on the surface but legs flailing like crazy underneath. We will be like the disciples on the boat after Jesus groggily comes up and calms the storms and calms the winds and the rains and says peace be still. And then he goes back down to continue taking his nap, and the disciples look at each other and they go, Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? Look at him. Perfect peace. How did he do it? That's how we should feel when we reflect on who Jesus is and what he is for us. So this Christmas, when you hear Handel's Messiah, when you hear the great chorus swell, when you encounter this verse and you're met with the reality that he is our Prince of Peace and you understand more fully how we arrive at that peace, I hope and pray that the person of Christ will be brought freshly to your mind. And maybe not all four of these titles will resonate with you, but maybe the one that did the most is the one that you'll be reminded of and that this Christmas you'll experience the peace of Christ and you'll celebrate the peace of Christ. And we'll remember to do this as we celebrate together with our families, that we will never hear this messianic prophecy, this Christmas verse the same, but that will always remind us of the peace that we find in Christ and make us more desirous of the Savior that graciously offers us that peace. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. We love you. We praise you. We thank you for the gift of Jesus, for sending us your son, so that not only would he come to reconcile us to you. To reconcile your creation back to you. To give us a hope for the future. But God in so doing. Also becomes our wonderful counselor. Our mighty God. Our everlasting father and our prince of peace. Father I pray for for us that we would know Jesus better as we leave here. That we would seek Him more, be more desirous of Him as we leave here. And that God, those of us who are not experiencing Your peace, those of us who need a Father to run to, those of us who need a wonderful counselor, who need a mighty God to fight a battle for them. Lord, I pray that they would be heartened by these words, that they would be encouraged as they go. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.
I feel like I need to do some preaching after singing like that. You guys were on it this morning. That was really, really great. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. And I'm so glad that you guys are here in this June Sunday. I can't believe the perfect weather that we're having. I like to laugh at Southerners because during the summer we complain that it's too hot all the time. And I just wish it would cool off. And there's like a week and a half where God gets it right, and then we complain that we're too cold, and I wish it would warm up. And it's like God's got to be in heaven going, you know, pick a spot. So to you that can never be happy, praise your God for this last week because it was amazing. This morning, we are starting a new series called Idols based on the book that Michelle mentioned, Counterfeit Gods, by Tim Keller. These are available out there on the information table. I got about 30 because I didn't want to lose my rear end on them if you guys didn't want to buy them. But we're just asking for $10 a piece for those. You can just add $10 to your tithe, go online and just do a $10 transaction. You can put $10 in the offering basket or one of the boxes when it comes by and then grab one afterwards. If you've already grabbed one because you saw them there, I noticed we have less now than we did before you guys were invited. So you have stolen and you are in the debt of the church. All right. That is on your head. All right. You have to deal with that. If you happen to put $10 in the offering basket when it comes by and then there's no more books out there, thank you for your donation. We appreciate that. I can get it back to you. It's a very complicated process. You can email me. When we plan series, we sit in a staff meeting and I ask everybody who's on staff to come to the meeting with one idea that they feel like is so good for a series that they'll be disappointed if we don't do it. And then I try to come with my own ideas as well. And then we put everybody's idea up on a whiteboard and then we just pick out the worst ones and we humiliate one another until we whittle it down to a series that we like. This series was Gibson's idea. So if it's good, tell him so and thank him for that. If it's bad, it's definitely in the delivery. It is not in the material, I assure you. But we put it on the calendar. And this was, I mean, we planned to do this probably back in the fall. This is just the order and how we do things. And I had kind of forgotten about it. And halfway through the last series, I realized I need to start getting ready for this one. And so I'm like, hey, what was that book? And on a trip down to Atlanta, I listened to it and then listened to it on the way back. And I'll be honest, when I kind of reached back out to Gibson, I was like, hey, what's the series? What are we doing? Can you help me wrap my head around it? When he was explaining it to me, I remember thinking like, why did we agree to this? What is, that staff let me down. This is a terrible idea. But before I canned it, I read the book, listened to the book. And as I was listening to it, I just thought, man, this stuff is so good and so important that I think every believer needs to think through these things. Now, if you're not familiar with Tim Keller, it would behoove you to be. He was a Presbyterian minister in Manhattan for at least 30 years, I think. Wonderfully smart, wonderfully thoughtful, and a very good speaker and author. Very professorial in his approach. And as I listened to it, I knew that we needed to talk about this topic together. So this week is going to kind of be a setup for the next four weeks. And what I'm going to do is invite you to just be thoughtful with me, to think about the topics that we're going to be discussing. My prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit will open your heart and open your eyes to let you see what's inside you. And then hopefully, if what's there isn't what's supposed to be there, then we move through a process of repentance together and allow God to begin to eradicate some of the sin that we might have in our lives that we might not know about. As we approach the topic, it's based on this one verse in Exodus, this very short verse. We're going to do a whole series out of this singular verse, Exodus chapter 20, verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. Now, my Bible scholars know that that's at the beginning of the Ten Commandments. As the Israelites, God's children, are freed from slavery, wandering around the desert, eventually God says, I'm going to now give you the Ten Commandments. And Moses comes up on this mountain with God, and God himself writes on these tablets the Ten Commandments and a bunch of other stuff. There's a bunch of other things on there besides just the Ten Commandments, but he starts with the Ten Commandments. And I always think it's interesting to point out, I'm not going to camp out here, I'm just going to mention it and let you think about it and process this. It's very interesting to me when God chooses to give his children the Ten Commandments. When God chooses to give his followers the rules. Because I don't know if you've thought about this or not, but God was interacting with humanity for several thousand years before Moses comes on the scene and he gives them the rules. God's already interacting with people like Melchizedek and Abraham and Enoch and Noah and Adam and potentially Job. God's already been interacting with his children and revealing himself to creation for several thousand years before Moses comes onto the scene. And I think that's important to acknowledge. And I think as we think about the Ten Commandments, again, I'm not going to linger here, but God knew that when he gave us rules, we'd make it all about the rules. He knew we'd mess it up, that we'd get off track, and that Jesus would have to come correct things. So we do not start here to make the point that God is a God of rules. He really is not and wasn't for thousands of years prior to this, and I think that's important. But as he decides, finally, to give his children the rules, here are the ten most important ones. The very first one, right out of the gate, you should have no other gods before me. Now, I don't necessarily think that the sixth commandment is of greater import than the ninth commandment because the ninth commandment comes later. But I do think it's very interesting which commandment God chooses to lead with. You should have no other gods before me. You shall have no other idols. There shouldn't be any idols in your life. And when we think about that in our context, our minds know where to go. We've done that exercise before. In the ancient world, there was other gods. There was other gods to choose from. We still have other gods to choose from. I mean, you could leave today and be like, you know what? I think I'm going to go with Norse gods. I think Thor is real. The movie is dumb, not an accurate depiction, but he's there, and I'm now Norse. Okay, you could go be a Druid if you wanted to, but most of you in this room are probably not going to make that choice. So we don't think about it like the ancient mind did, choosing some other god. We've chosen our god. But we also understand that when we have something in our life that's more important to us than Jesus, then that becomes an idol and that that is a problem. We understand that. But the way that Tim Keller frames it up in his book, I found to be very helpful for me. And it made me put a much finer point on what idolatry is and what I idolize in my life. And it's a little bit of a kick in the teeth when you have to answer the question, but I'm getting kicked in the teeth too. And we're going to move through this together. But he defines an idol as whatever goes in this blank for you. My life only has meaning slash I only have worth if I have blank. Whatever you put in that blank, that's your idol. Whatever you put in that blank that isn't Jesus, then that's a God that you have before our God. And I think that that's pretty tough. Because if I'm being honest, there's probably several things at different parts of my life that I could fill in that blank with. I know for me, there was a season, and I think, I genuinely think I'm over it. I also hope I never have to find out if it's true. But there was a season where my job would fill in that blank, my title and my position. That if you took this from me, and I don't get to be a pastor anymore, that's part of my identity, that's who I am. That if this got taken from me, I wouldn't really know who I was, and I really wouldn't feel nearly as valuable as I once did. And so it's absolutely true of me that there have been seasons where I've idolized my career. I hope that I don't still do that. I think I'm secure in who I am and who Jesus has made me to be and how he wants to use me in his kingdom. And if it's not doing this, I think I'd be okay with it. But I don't want to find out. My career goal is to retire from grace because, A, I just want to know what it is to do ministry in one place, in one community for decades. And man, I just get, this is just an aside, but I was so moved by our community last week, by our church gathering around those families that got to baptize. It meant so much to me, and I'm so grateful for the community of grace and the way that we love each other. So I want to be a part of that for a really long time. And then if you manage to retire as a pastor, it means that you went for pretty much all of your life without doing anything really, really stupid, and that seems important. So I want you to, yeah, thanks, Harris. You two are cute, by the way. I wasn't going to say anything, but then you did. I know, I totally lost my place now. That's what I get for being a smart aleck. I don't know what you would fill in that blank with. I don't know, I know some of you, I know some of you. I know you well enough to know that if you can't admit that you have filled in that blank with your career at seasons in your life, you are lying to yourself. I know that there's plenty in the room that it might not be career, but it might be the title of mom or dad, that without having this role in my life for my children, I would not feel worth and I would not feel valued. And in that way, we can idolize parenthood. Maybe at different points, we say I would not feel worth or value if I didn't have my spouse. And without meaning to, we begin to idolize them and put them in a place where they don't belong. And if you guys could join me in praying for Jen, that's her great struggle. It's oppressive. But my guess is that there is something in your life, your money, your status, your success, your friends, there's something in your life that you could place there. That if this were taken away from me, I would really struggle to feel worth or value and my life would be void of meaning. When you can fill in that blank with anything besides Jesus, then that's the thing that you're idolizing. And here's what happens when we begin to make an idol out of something in our lives. Do you understand that when you have an idol, that you are fundamentally worshiping that thing? That your worship is devoted to that thing. We sang at the end of the song set. Our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. And I'll brag on Aaron a little bit because I told him right before the service that I was going to use that song. And what's the name of the song? And he told me, he goes, do you want me to just put it at the end of the set? And I was like, you can do that? Yeah. And you guys, y'all didn't know that wasn't even planned. He just did it. Very good. But we sang together and I heard you sing. I heard you say it. Our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. Jesus, we love you. Oh, how we love you. And I love that song. And that's a wonderful song. But when we have idols in our life, can I tell you what we're singing with our lives? With our mouths on Sunday, we say our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. But in our efforts Monday through Saturday, we sing with our lives, our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of my career. Our affection, our devotion, my affection, my devotion poured out onto my children. Oh, how I love them. Yes, I love them. My affection, my devotion poured out at the feet of acquiring more, poured out on the feet of status, poured out. Can we be honest about ourselves in this culture that many of us, our idol is materialism? Our idol is things? Our idol is a perceived lifestyle? I mean, as a culture, we've invented influencers. Try to explain that to your great-grandparents. Some of you in here are going, I don't know what that is. You are better for it. It's just people who create a lifestyle that other people want to have, and then we make our idol being perceived as having the lifestyle that we want to have. And it's absurd. But when we allow these idols in our life, when we begin to idolize things, to put things in a position of primacy where they do not belong, we begin to worship those things. And if we're honest with how we invest our time and our money and our talent, then we can be honest about the things we're idolizing. And like you, I have sung on Sunday that I pour out my devotion at the feet of Jesus and by Sunday afternoon I have forgotten that and I'm pouring it out to the God of comfort or I'm pouring it out to the God of performance or I'm pouring it out to the God of lifestyle and materialism and perception and approval. But I think it's really important for us to admit that we have idols, active idols in our life that we continue to put in place in positions of primacy for which they were not designed. Because if you would have asked me this question before I really started thinking about this, before I read this stupid book by stupid Timothy Keller, and it made me feel bad, if you would have asked me that before I started thinking about this topic, hey, Nate, do you have idols in your life? I would have said, without much thought, yeah, yeah, of course I do, absolutely. There's seasons where I make this more important or that more important. There's seasons where things get wonky and I'm not really living for Jesus day in and day out. I get convicted and I get back to it. I've certainly had idols, but I would tell you that I don't think that there's any one thing that I idolize too much. But now what I realize is that's being far too kind to myself. And I think our temptation is to be far too kind to ourselves too. And so what I want you to do this morning is be really honest about what goes in that blank. Be really honest about what we need to put there. Because here's the thing, I don't know what your idol is. I don't know what your idol is, but idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Robbie, if you need to take a break, man, you can go take a break. Okay. You're fighting a good fight over there. I'm trying to give you an out. You can go out there and make all the noise you want. Our idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Do you understand how awesome of a thing worship is? What a great responsibility it is. This idea that there can be a life devoted to a thing that we can go through the years and go through the decades and you can watch the lives of other people and see the things that they're devoted to and see the things that they worship and that our worship is an awesome thing because God created us to worship him. And when we get into eternity, into the perfect eternity for which he has purposed us, we will worship him for all of eternity. It's what our soul yearns to do. We were designed intentionally to be worshipers. So when we put something in the place of primacy in our lives, we are fundamentally worshiping that thing. And the problem is the idols that we worship cannot bear the weight of that worship. Our career can never, ever make us happy. It can never make us satisfied. It will never be enough. There will always be another mountain to climb. There will always be another deal to close. If that is what we are worshiping, then we will never find a place where we are happy. And I'll tell you where we can see in real time that idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. As you parents who have kids that play competitive sports, and you see these other parents losing their minds at the ump or at their child or at the ref or at a coach. You see these dads literally punishing their sons for what they perceive as underperformance. Those men and women are idolizing their children. And they're idolizing the performance of their children because it's their identity. How good their kids perform is how good they get to feel about themselves. And those children were not designed to bear the weight of their parents' worship. Your spouse was not designed to bear the weight of your worship. They will be human and they will let you down. Money was not designed to bear the weight of your worship. There will never be enough. You will always want just a little bit more. I heard this anecdote last week or week before last, and I thought it was appropriate. At some point or another, Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, and Andrew Heller, the author of Catch-22, were at a party in the Hamptons at this just monstrously huge house. This extravagantly wealthy person throwing a huge party and Kurt leans over to Andrew and he says he says he makes more in a week than you ever made than you have made and ever will make from catch-22 your greatest accomplishment and Heller says yeah but I have something that he can never have and Vonnegut says what's what's that? And Heller says, enough. Well, that's a great point. The things that we idolize cannot bear the weight that our worship places on them. And they will always, always end in misery. Idolizing something that isn't Jesus, organizing our life around something that isn't Jesus, pouring out our affection and our devotion at the feet of things that are not Jesus will always lead to discontentment, to dissatisfaction, to misery, to unhappiness, to anxiety. It will always lead down a bad path. Always, always, always. What's at the end of those pursuits, if we dedicate our life to anything that is not Jesus, what we have at the end of that road is dissatisfaction and misery. And not only does it make us dissatisfied and us miserable, but the people around us too, while we flail around trying to achieve happiness and meaning and meaning and identity from things that are not equipped to provide that for us. So this is why I think God puts it first. Because you can go follow the other nine commandments, but if you've got this messed up, then you're on the wrong path right out of the gate. Nothing we can pursue in our lives can lead to the contentment and happiness that a pursuit of Christ leads to. Everything else will fall short and is empty. This is why Paul tells us that we are to live our lives as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is, he says, our spiritual act of worship. If we, by default, worship the thing in our life that we hold most dear, then if we are going to be people who are worshipers of Christ, it cannot just be with our mouths on Sunday. It has to be with our lives on Thursday. We have got to do that. And here's the other thing that I think is so wonderful about this commandment. When I was a kid and I heard this commandment, I grew up in the church. I don't know when you first encountered this idea there should be no other gods before me. But I remember hearing that as a kid and I kind of thought like, yeah, that checks out. I mean, he made us. He's the boss and he wants us to think of him as the boss. So like that makes sense. I get it. Okay. But when you really think about it, and when you look at how dangerous idols can be to us as people, what we understand is that God is looking out for us in this commandment, not himself. The reason he leads with it is because he's like a parent watching a 17 or an 18 year old make a series of bad decisions and he knows what's going to happen. He knows that's going to end in pain. He knows you're going down the wrong road, but you're not willing to listen. And he's just going to have to sit back and watch the train wreck and help the child pick up the pieces. He knows that when we, I, that we are so given to idols, we are so given to put other things in that place of primacy. We will by default worship things, and God knows that. And he knows that if we worship anything that isn't him, if we devote our life to anything that isn't Jesus, that that's going to end in misery for us and for those around us. And so he's trying to help us avoid that by saying, give me your worship. Give me your affection and devotion. I will not let you down. I am a capable bearer of the weight of that worship. You were designed to worship me. I am the only right receiver of that worship. This is what God wants for us. This is what is best for us. And I actually love this principle about everything that God ever tells us to do. Any standard that we can find in the Bible, anything he says about what it means to pursue holiness, any rule that we feel like we're given, anything that we're supposed to live up to and pursue, all the things that God tells us to do, do you realize that not a single one of those things is self-serving? Not a single thing God asks us to do is somehow self-serving as the creator. I'm the boss and I want you to treat me like it. Every single thing in scripture that we are told to do, that we are encouraged to do, that we are forbidden from, that we are pushed towards, every single thing is for our best. Every single thing is for our good. That's all God ever wants for us. And really, I think that the Old Testament says that you should put no other gods before me, and the principles there remind me of the principles in one of my favorite verses, John 10, 10. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. And I believe that most of Christian life comes down to whether or not we think that's true. Do I believe that God actually wants to give me life to the full, the best, most meaningful, richest, most purposeful life possible? Do I really actually believe that? Because if I do, I will not idolize other things over him. If I do, I will actually trust him and follow him. If I believe that the words that John wrote are true, that Jesus came that I might have life and have it to the full, that I might have the richest life possible here. Now he gets to define that life. We don't, but what we'll find at the end of the road is that was the best way to live my life. And so much of Christianity comes down to, do I believe that or not? And if you have an idol in your life right now, and listen, you do, what you are saying to God is, yeah, I understand that you want me to have a full life, but I actually think that by putting my efforts into this, I'm going to create a better life for myself than you could if I were to follow your standards. So I'm going to try this for a while and not do it your way. And then, because we're Christians, here's what we do. And we all know we do it. Don't act innocent here. We choose other things to prioritize over Jesus in our life. And then because we're Christians, we turn to Jesus and we ask him to bless the things that we've prioritized over him. Jesus, could you please help me be a better parent so that my children can behave better so that I can feel better about myself? Really reworded is Jesus, can you please help my sinning and misprioritizing my family over you go a little bit more smoothly so that I can feel better about it? God, I know that I've placed my career in a place where it doesn't need to be and that that occupies a place of primacy in my life, but I'd really like it if you could just help me out with this so you can make my sinning over here more easy. And I know, I know that that's harsh language. I know that that's very direct, but I'm not being direct top down. I'm being direct with myself and with you. That when we just sprinkle a little bit of Jesus into our life because we're Christians, what we're really asking him to do is to bless the ways that we are sinning so that sin, so that that sin can be more peaceful. Maybe the best thing he could possibly do is make it harder until you fully rely on him and quit looking at those other things. And this is why I think it's worth our time to take the next four weeks after this going through this idea of idolatry and how it sneaks into our lives. And I hope that you leave today with at least an awareness that you're more given to idolatry than you thought you were when you got here. I know that I am convicted of that. And this is how we're going to spend the rest of our time. There's this really interesting idea, I think, in the book that Tim Keller presents, and it's something I had never thought of before, and it's the thing that when Gibby mentioned it to me, I went, yeah, that's pretty interesting. We should think through that. It's this idea. Our visible surface idols have invisible source idols. So our visible surface idols, the things that we would fill in the blank with, our children, wealth, career, sex, approval, materialism, lifestyle, the things that we have marshaled our lives around, those surface idols that are visible, all have what he calls source idols. And the four source idols are power, control, approval, and comfort. And I think what's so interesting about these motives of our idolization, of our idolizing, is that we could have said, you could have said, I don't know that anybody outright says this, but this could be an answer, that your thing is greed. My idol? Money. I just want more of it. I just like making it, and I like watching it grow. Great. You picked money. But what Tim Keller says is, there's a reason you picked money. And it wasn't just because you love money. It was because you either love the power that you feel like money brings. Now you're untouchable. Now you can do what you want. Or maybe you like the comfort that money provides. I be at peace here and that's that's my hedge around myself or it could be for control and money provides you that or it could be because your source idol is approval and money provides you with that so with these source idols the surface idols can be fueled by any of those four and so we're going to look at the next four weeks. We're going to look at those source idols. Because each of those source idols has a besetting sin that will manifest itself in your life. The first one we're looking at next week is going to be power, because that's mine. And I really am uncomfortable admitting that. I thought it was control, but the more I looked at it and thought about it, it's power. And there's a besetting sin of anger. And we're going to talk about that next week. And I think we're all capable of having multiple sore cycles. So I hope that you'll get the book. I hope that you'll be willing to walk through this with us. I hope that we'll be willing to think through this together. And again, my biggest prayer as we go through the series together is that we would allow the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and our hearts to what we have put in a position of primacy in our life that does not belong there. And how we can slowly begin the repentant process of putting Jesus back where he belongs so that our affection and our devotion will be poured out at his feet and not the feet of something that is unworthy of our worship. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the conviction of idolatry. God, thank you for helping me to see that I am far more guilty and vulnerable to that sin than I thought I was. Father, I pray that we would see the very real threat that that sin is to us and how these idols seek to weave themselves into our lives and into our psyche so that we organize our lives around them instead of around you. And Father, would you please forgive us for asking you, for treating you like someone who is designed to help with our pursuit of things that are not you, for sprinkling you into our lives rather than devoting ourselves to you. And Father, I pray that grace would be a place that when we sing songs like that, that we would not only mean them with all of our hearts on Sunday, but we would live them out on Tuesdays. Be with us as we go. In Jesus' name, amen.
I feel like I need to do some preaching after singing like that. You guys were on it this morning. That was really, really great. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. And I'm so glad that you guys are here in this June Sunday. I can't believe the perfect weather that we're having. I like to laugh at Southerners because during the summer we complain that it's too hot all the time. And I just wish it would cool off. And there's like a week and a half where God gets it right, and then we complain that we're too cold, and I wish it would warm up. And it's like God's got to be in heaven going, you know, pick a spot. So to you that can never be happy, praise your God for this last week because it was amazing. This morning, we are starting a new series called Idols based on the book that Michelle mentioned, Counterfeit Gods, by Tim Keller. These are available out there on the information table. I got about 30 because I didn't want to lose my rear end on them if you guys didn't want to buy them. But we're just asking for $10 a piece for those. You can just add $10 to your tithe, go online and just do a $10 transaction. You can put $10 in the offering basket or one of the boxes when it comes by and then grab one afterwards. If you've already grabbed one because you saw them there, I noticed we have less now than we did before you guys were invited. So you have stolen and you are in the debt of the church. All right. That is on your head. All right. You have to deal with that. If you happen to put $10 in the offering basket when it comes by and then there's no more books out there, thank you for your donation. We appreciate that. I can get it back to you. It's a very complicated process. You can email me. When we plan series, we sit in a staff meeting and I ask everybody who's on staff to come to the meeting with one idea that they feel like is so good for a series that they'll be disappointed if we don't do it. And then I try to come with my own ideas as well. And then we put everybody's idea up on a whiteboard and then we just pick out the worst ones and we humiliate one another until we whittle it down to a series that we like. This series was Gibson's idea. So if it's good, tell him so and thank him for that. If it's bad, it's definitely in the delivery. It is not in the material, I assure you. But we put it on the calendar. And this was, I mean, we planned to do this probably back in the fall. This is just the order and how we do things. And I had kind of forgotten about it. And halfway through the last series, I realized I need to start getting ready for this one. And so I'm like, hey, what was that book? And on a trip down to Atlanta, I listened to it and then listened to it on the way back. And I'll be honest, when I kind of reached back out to Gibson, I was like, hey, what's the series? What are we doing? Can you help me wrap my head around it? When he was explaining it to me, I remember thinking like, why did we agree to this? What is, that staff let me down. This is a terrible idea. But before I canned it, I read the book, listened to the book. And as I was listening to it, I just thought, man, this stuff is so good and so important that I think every believer needs to think through these things. Now, if you're not familiar with Tim Keller, it would behoove you to be. He was a Presbyterian minister in Manhattan for at least 30 years, I think. Wonderfully smart, wonderfully thoughtful, and a very good speaker and author. Very professorial in his approach. And as I listened to it, I knew that we needed to talk about this topic together. So this week is going to kind of be a setup for the next four weeks. And what I'm going to do is invite you to just be thoughtful with me, to think about the topics that we're going to be discussing. My prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit will open your heart and open your eyes to let you see what's inside you. And then hopefully, if what's there isn't what's supposed to be there, then we move through a process of repentance together and allow God to begin to eradicate some of the sin that we might have in our lives that we might not know about. As we approach the topic, it's based on this one verse in Exodus, this very short verse. We're going to do a whole series out of this singular verse, Exodus chapter 20, verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. Now, my Bible scholars know that that's at the beginning of the Ten Commandments. As the Israelites, God's children, are freed from slavery, wandering around the desert, eventually God says, I'm going to now give you the Ten Commandments. And Moses comes up on this mountain with God, and God himself writes on these tablets the Ten Commandments and a bunch of other stuff. There's a bunch of other things on there besides just the Ten Commandments, but he starts with the Ten Commandments. And I always think it's interesting to point out, I'm not going to camp out here, I'm just going to mention it and let you think about it and process this. It's very interesting to me when God chooses to give his children the Ten Commandments. When God chooses to give his followers the rules. Because I don't know if you've thought about this or not, but God was interacting with humanity for several thousand years before Moses comes on the scene and he gives them the rules. God's already interacting with people like Melchizedek and Abraham and Enoch and Noah and Adam and potentially Job. God's already been interacting with his children and revealing himself to creation for several thousand years before Moses comes onto the scene. And I think that's important to acknowledge. And I think as we think about the Ten Commandments, again, I'm not going to linger here, but God knew that when he gave us rules, we'd make it all about the rules. He knew we'd mess it up, that we'd get off track, and that Jesus would have to come correct things. So we do not start here to make the point that God is a God of rules. He really is not and wasn't for thousands of years prior to this, and I think that's important. But as he decides, finally, to give his children the rules, here are the ten most important ones. The very first one, right out of the gate, you should have no other gods before me. Now, I don't necessarily think that the sixth commandment is of greater import than the ninth commandment because the ninth commandment comes later. But I do think it's very interesting which commandment God chooses to lead with. You should have no other gods before me. You shall have no other idols. There shouldn't be any idols in your life. And when we think about that in our context, our minds know where to go. We've done that exercise before. In the ancient world, there was other gods. There was other gods to choose from. We still have other gods to choose from. I mean, you could leave today and be like, you know what? I think I'm going to go with Norse gods. I think Thor is real. The movie is dumb, not an accurate depiction, but he's there, and I'm now Norse. Okay, you could go be a Druid if you wanted to, but most of you in this room are probably not going to make that choice. So we don't think about it like the ancient mind did, choosing some other god. We've chosen our god. But we also understand that when we have something in our life that's more important to us than Jesus, then that becomes an idol and that that is a problem. We understand that. But the way that Tim Keller frames it up in his book, I found to be very helpful for me. And it made me put a much finer point on what idolatry is and what I idolize in my life. And it's a little bit of a kick in the teeth when you have to answer the question, but I'm getting kicked in the teeth too. And we're going to move through this together. But he defines an idol as whatever goes in this blank for you. My life only has meaning slash I only have worth if I have blank. Whatever you put in that blank, that's your idol. Whatever you put in that blank that isn't Jesus, then that's a God that you have before our God. And I think that that's pretty tough. Because if I'm being honest, there's probably several things at different parts of my life that I could fill in that blank with. I know for me, there was a season, and I think, I genuinely think I'm over it. I also hope I never have to find out if it's true. But there was a season where my job would fill in that blank, my title and my position. That if you took this from me, and I don't get to be a pastor anymore, that's part of my identity, that's who I am. That if this got taken from me, I wouldn't really know who I was, and I really wouldn't feel nearly as valuable as I once did. And so it's absolutely true of me that there have been seasons where I've idolized my career. I hope that I don't still do that. I think I'm secure in who I am and who Jesus has made me to be and how he wants to use me in his kingdom. And if it's not doing this, I think I'd be okay with it. But I don't want to find out. My career goal is to retire from grace because, A, I just want to know what it is to do ministry in one place, in one community for decades. And man, I just get, this is just an aside, but I was so moved by our community last week, by our church gathering around those families that got to baptize. It meant so much to me, and I'm so grateful for the community of grace and the way that we love each other. So I want to be a part of that for a really long time. And then if you manage to retire as a pastor, it means that you went for pretty much all of your life without doing anything really, really stupid, and that seems important. So I want you to, yeah, thanks, Harris. You two are cute, by the way. I wasn't going to say anything, but then you did. I know, I totally lost my place now. That's what I get for being a smart aleck. I don't know what you would fill in that blank with. I don't know, I know some of you, I know some of you. I know you well enough to know that if you can't admit that you have filled in that blank with your career at seasons in your life, you are lying to yourself. I know that there's plenty in the room that it might not be career, but it might be the title of mom or dad, that without having this role in my life for my children, I would not feel worth and I would not feel valued. And in that way, we can idolize parenthood. Maybe at different points, we say I would not feel worth or value if I didn't have my spouse. And without meaning to, we begin to idolize them and put them in a place where they don't belong. And if you guys could join me in praying for Jen, that's her great struggle. It's oppressive. But my guess is that there is something in your life, your money, your status, your success, your friends, there's something in your life that you could place there. That if this were taken away from me, I would really struggle to feel worth or value and my life would be void of meaning. When you can fill in that blank with anything besides Jesus, then that's the thing that you're idolizing. And here's what happens when we begin to make an idol out of something in our lives. Do you understand that when you have an idol, that you are fundamentally worshiping that thing? That your worship is devoted to that thing. We sang at the end of the song set. Our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. And I'll brag on Aaron a little bit because I told him right before the service that I was going to use that song. And what's the name of the song? And he told me, he goes, do you want me to just put it at the end of the set? And I was like, you can do that? Yeah. And you guys, y'all didn't know that wasn't even planned. He just did it. Very good. But we sang together and I heard you sing. I heard you say it. Our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. Jesus, we love you. Oh, how we love you. And I love that song. And that's a wonderful song. But when we have idols in our life, can I tell you what we're singing with our lives? With our mouths on Sunday, we say our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. But in our efforts Monday through Saturday, we sing with our lives, our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of my career. Our affection, our devotion, my affection, my devotion poured out onto my children. Oh, how I love them. Yes, I love them. My affection, my devotion poured out at the feet of acquiring more, poured out on the feet of status, poured out. Can we be honest about ourselves in this culture that many of us, our idol is materialism? Our idol is things? Our idol is a perceived lifestyle? I mean, as a culture, we've invented influencers. Try to explain that to your great-grandparents. Some of you in here are going, I don't know what that is. You are better for it. It's just people who create a lifestyle that other people want to have, and then we make our idol being perceived as having the lifestyle that we want to have. And it's absurd. But when we allow these idols in our life, when we begin to idolize things, to put things in a position of primacy where they do not belong, we begin to worship those things. And if we're honest with how we invest our time and our money and our talent, then we can be honest about the things we're idolizing. And like you, I have sung on Sunday that I pour out my devotion at the feet of Jesus and by Sunday afternoon I have forgotten that and I'm pouring it out to the God of comfort or I'm pouring it out to the God of performance or I'm pouring it out to the God of lifestyle and materialism and perception and approval. But I think it's really important for us to admit that we have idols, active idols in our life that we continue to put in place in positions of primacy for which they were not designed. Because if you would have asked me this question before I really started thinking about this, before I read this stupid book by stupid Timothy Keller, and it made me feel bad, if you would have asked me that before I started thinking about this topic, hey, Nate, do you have idols in your life? I would have said, without much thought, yeah, yeah, of course I do, absolutely. There's seasons where I make this more important or that more important. There's seasons where things get wonky and I'm not really living for Jesus day in and day out. I get convicted and I get back to it. I've certainly had idols, but I would tell you that I don't think that there's any one thing that I idolize too much. But now what I realize is that's being far too kind to myself. And I think our temptation is to be far too kind to ourselves too. And so what I want you to do this morning is be really honest about what goes in that blank. Be really honest about what we need to put there. Because here's the thing, I don't know what your idol is. I don't know what your idol is, but idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Robbie, if you need to take a break, man, you can go take a break. Okay. You're fighting a good fight over there. I'm trying to give you an out. You can go out there and make all the noise you want. Our idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. Do you understand how awesome of a thing worship is? What a great responsibility it is. This idea that there can be a life devoted to a thing that we can go through the years and go through the decades and you can watch the lives of other people and see the things that they're devoted to and see the things that they worship and that our worship is an awesome thing because God created us to worship him. And when we get into eternity, into the perfect eternity for which he has purposed us, we will worship him for all of eternity. It's what our soul yearns to do. We were designed intentionally to be worshipers. So when we put something in the place of primacy in our lives, we are fundamentally worshiping that thing. And the problem is the idols that we worship cannot bear the weight of that worship. Our career can never, ever make us happy. It can never make us satisfied. It will never be enough. There will always be another mountain to climb. There will always be another deal to close. If that is what we are worshiping, then we will never find a place where we are happy. And I'll tell you where we can see in real time that idols cannot bear the weight of our worship. As you parents who have kids that play competitive sports, and you see these other parents losing their minds at the ump or at their child or at the ref or at a coach. You see these dads literally punishing their sons for what they perceive as underperformance. Those men and women are idolizing their children. And they're idolizing the performance of their children because it's their identity. How good their kids perform is how good they get to feel about themselves. And those children were not designed to bear the weight of their parents' worship. Your spouse was not designed to bear the weight of your worship. They will be human and they will let you down. Money was not designed to bear the weight of your worship. There will never be enough. You will always want just a little bit more. I heard this anecdote last week or week before last, and I thought it was appropriate. At some point or another, Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, and Andrew Heller, the author of Catch-22, were at a party in the Hamptons at this just monstrously huge house. This extravagantly wealthy person throwing a huge party and Kurt leans over to Andrew and he says he says he makes more in a week than you ever made than you have made and ever will make from catch-22 your greatest accomplishment and Heller says yeah but I have something that he can never have and Vonnegut says what's what's that? And Heller says, enough. Well, that's a great point. The things that we idolize cannot bear the weight that our worship places on them. And they will always, always end in misery. Idolizing something that isn't Jesus, organizing our life around something that isn't Jesus, pouring out our affection and our devotion at the feet of things that are not Jesus will always lead to discontentment, to dissatisfaction, to misery, to unhappiness, to anxiety. It will always lead down a bad path. Always, always, always. What's at the end of those pursuits, if we dedicate our life to anything that is not Jesus, what we have at the end of that road is dissatisfaction and misery. And not only does it make us dissatisfied and us miserable, but the people around us too, while we flail around trying to achieve happiness and meaning and meaning and identity from things that are not equipped to provide that for us. So this is why I think God puts it first. Because you can go follow the other nine commandments, but if you've got this messed up, then you're on the wrong path right out of the gate. Nothing we can pursue in our lives can lead to the contentment and happiness that a pursuit of Christ leads to. Everything else will fall short and is empty. This is why Paul tells us that we are to live our lives as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is, he says, our spiritual act of worship. If we, by default, worship the thing in our life that we hold most dear, then if we are going to be people who are worshipers of Christ, it cannot just be with our mouths on Sunday. It has to be with our lives on Thursday. We have got to do that. And here's the other thing that I think is so wonderful about this commandment. When I was a kid and I heard this commandment, I grew up in the church. I don't know when you first encountered this idea there should be no other gods before me. But I remember hearing that as a kid and I kind of thought like, yeah, that checks out. I mean, he made us. He's the boss and he wants us to think of him as the boss. So like that makes sense. I get it. Okay. But when you really think about it, and when you look at how dangerous idols can be to us as people, what we understand is that God is looking out for us in this commandment, not himself. The reason he leads with it is because he's like a parent watching a 17 or an 18 year old make a series of bad decisions and he knows what's going to happen. He knows that's going to end in pain. He knows you're going down the wrong road, but you're not willing to listen. And he's just going to have to sit back and watch the train wreck and help the child pick up the pieces. He knows that when we, I, that we are so given to idols, we are so given to put other things in that place of primacy. We will by default worship things, and God knows that. And he knows that if we worship anything that isn't him, if we devote our life to anything that isn't Jesus, that that's going to end in misery for us and for those around us. And so he's trying to help us avoid that by saying, give me your worship. Give me your affection and devotion. I will not let you down. I am a capable bearer of the weight of that worship. You were designed to worship me. I am the only right receiver of that worship. This is what God wants for us. This is what is best for us. And I actually love this principle about everything that God ever tells us to do. Any standard that we can find in the Bible, anything he says about what it means to pursue holiness, any rule that we feel like we're given, anything that we're supposed to live up to and pursue, all the things that God tells us to do, do you realize that not a single one of those things is self-serving? Not a single thing God asks us to do is somehow self-serving as the creator. I'm the boss and I want you to treat me like it. Every single thing in scripture that we are told to do, that we are encouraged to do, that we are forbidden from, that we are pushed towards, every single thing is for our best. Every single thing is for our good. That's all God ever wants for us. And really, I think that the Old Testament says that you should put no other gods before me, and the principles there remind me of the principles in one of my favorite verses, John 10, 10. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. And I believe that most of Christian life comes down to whether or not we think that's true. Do I believe that God actually wants to give me life to the full, the best, most meaningful, richest, most purposeful life possible? Do I really actually believe that? Because if I do, I will not idolize other things over him. If I do, I will actually trust him and follow him. If I believe that the words that John wrote are true, that Jesus came that I might have life and have it to the full, that I might have the richest life possible here. Now he gets to define that life. We don't, but what we'll find at the end of the road is that was the best way to live my life. And so much of Christianity comes down to, do I believe that or not? And if you have an idol in your life right now, and listen, you do, what you are saying to God is, yeah, I understand that you want me to have a full life, but I actually think that by putting my efforts into this, I'm going to create a better life for myself than you could if I were to follow your standards. So I'm going to try this for a while and not do it your way. And then, because we're Christians, here's what we do. And we all know we do it. Don't act innocent here. We choose other things to prioritize over Jesus in our life. And then because we're Christians, we turn to Jesus and we ask him to bless the things that we've prioritized over him. Jesus, could you please help me be a better parent so that my children can behave better so that I can feel better about myself? Really reworded is Jesus, can you please help my sinning and misprioritizing my family over you go a little bit more smoothly so that I can feel better about it? God, I know that I've placed my career in a place where it doesn't need to be and that that occupies a place of primacy in my life, but I'd really like it if you could just help me out with this so you can make my sinning over here more easy. And I know, I know that that's harsh language. I know that that's very direct, but I'm not being direct top down. I'm being direct with myself and with you. That when we just sprinkle a little bit of Jesus into our life because we're Christians, what we're really asking him to do is to bless the ways that we are sinning so that sin, so that that sin can be more peaceful. Maybe the best thing he could possibly do is make it harder until you fully rely on him and quit looking at those other things. And this is why I think it's worth our time to take the next four weeks after this going through this idea of idolatry and how it sneaks into our lives. And I hope that you leave today with at least an awareness that you're more given to idolatry than you thought you were when you got here. I know that I am convicted of that. And this is how we're going to spend the rest of our time. There's this really interesting idea, I think, in the book that Tim Keller presents, and it's something I had never thought of before, and it's the thing that when Gibby mentioned it to me, I went, yeah, that's pretty interesting. We should think through that. It's this idea. Our visible surface idols have invisible source idols. So our visible surface idols, the things that we would fill in the blank with, our children, wealth, career, sex, approval, materialism, lifestyle, the things that we have marshaled our lives around, those surface idols that are visible, all have what he calls source idols. And the four source idols are power, control, approval, and comfort. And I think what's so interesting about these motives of our idolization, of our idolizing, is that we could have said, you could have said, I don't know that anybody outright says this, but this could be an answer, that your thing is greed. My idol? Money. I just want more of it. I just like making it, and I like watching it grow. Great. You picked money. But what Tim Keller says is, there's a reason you picked money. And it wasn't just because you love money. It was because you either love the power that you feel like money brings. Now you're untouchable. Now you can do what you want. Or maybe you like the comfort that money provides. I be at peace here and that's that's my hedge around myself or it could be for control and money provides you that or it could be because your source idol is approval and money provides you with that so with these source idols the surface idols can be fueled by any of those four and so we're going to look at the next four weeks. We're going to look at those source idols. Because each of those source idols has a besetting sin that will manifest itself in your life. The first one we're looking at next week is going to be power, because that's mine. And I really am uncomfortable admitting that. I thought it was control, but the more I looked at it and thought about it, it's power. And there's a besetting sin of anger. And we're going to talk about that next week. And I think we're all capable of having multiple sore cycles. So I hope that you'll get the book. I hope that you'll be willing to walk through this with us. I hope that we'll be willing to think through this together. And again, my biggest prayer as we go through the series together is that we would allow the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and our hearts to what we have put in a position of primacy in our life that does not belong there. And how we can slowly begin the repentant process of putting Jesus back where he belongs so that our affection and our devotion will be poured out at his feet and not the feet of something that is unworthy of our worship. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the conviction of idolatry. God, thank you for helping me to see that I am far more guilty and vulnerable to that sin than I thought I was. Father, I pray that we would see the very real threat that that sin is to us and how these idols seek to weave themselves into our lives and into our psyche so that we organize our lives around them instead of around you. And Father, would you please forgive us for asking you, for treating you like someone who is designed to help with our pursuit of things that are not you, for sprinkling you into our lives rather than devoting ourselves to you. And Father, I pray that grace would be a place that when we sing songs like that, that we would not only mean them with all of our hearts on Sunday, but we would live them out on Tuesdays. Be with us as we go. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.
