Well, good morning. My name is Michelle Maskin. to be one of the pastors here. And sorry about that. This is the second part or the third part of our series called Ascent, where we're focusing on the 15 Psalms, Psalm 120 to Psalm 134 in the book of Psalms that are meant to be used as your family takes its pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And so these particular 15 Psalms in a book with 150 Psalms are really important and central to life growing up in Israel. And so we thought it would be good to take some time and focus on them for us and see what we can learn from these Psalms of Ascent as we journey towards God ourselves. Last week I talked about repentance. Mikey, those are all online. You can listen to those whenever you'd like. I talked about repentance and how that's always, repentance is always the first step in a journey towards God. This week, I'm looking at Psalm 126 that Michelle just read for us very well about joy. And I picked this because I think I'm the perfect person to give a sermon on joy, right? Like if you guys were out to dinner with some friends who didn't go to Grace and they said, describe, give me three words that you think best describe your pastor. 95% of you in the top three would have joyful somewhere. I'm pretty sure of it, right? There's giggles because I think that there are some misconceptions around joy and what it is. I think sometimes we can think of somebody who's joyful, and it just means that they're exuberant. It just means that they're bubbly and they're happy all the time. But we don't realize that that could be masking a deep anxiety that they're trying to counter with and they're not actually a deeply joyful person. And so I was talking with Jen about this idea, about, Jen is my wife if y'all don't know us, about joy and what it is and how we define it. And I actually saw a clip that helped me think of it a little bit. It was just a quick clip of Jerry Seinfeld on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. And I showed it to Jen and I showed it to Aaron Winston and to Carly. And it's of Seinfeld and he's talking about vacations and complaining about stuff like he always does. And he goes, but at one point he looks at Jimmy and he goes, I'm very happy. I'm a happy guy. I'm very, I hate everything. And that makes me happy. I'm, I'm perfectly happy hating everything all the time. And I told them like, I feel so seen. This makes, I love this. I'm a very happy guy. I love, and then he goes, he goes, but I do like to complain about things, and that's something I do enjoy. And I was like, yes, this is my guy. So I think joy comes in all shapes and sizes, and I was asking Jen, when you think of someone who's joyful, what do you think? And she actually said Jimmy Fallon, and because he's bubbly and exuberant and yada, yada, yada. And I said, I don't know. I don't think, that's not what I think of. And she said, what do you think of? And I know he's going to hate me for saying this, and I'm very sorry. But I think of Ron Torrance when I think of someone joyful. And if you don't know Ron yet, you will. If you come back three times, he will know your name. I promise you he will. He's got some more years under his belt than me. But whenever I talk to Ron, whether it's during the week or on a Sunday morning, I always leave that conversation a little bit happier and a little bit more encouraged than I was when I entered that conversation. And he exudes for me the type of joy that we want to think about this morning. So as we seek to think about it, understand it, learn about it, we should probably together define it. The problem with defining joy in a sermon on joy is that our definition needs to come from the Bible. It shouldn't come from me. However, when I search the scriptures for a clear definition of joy, the Bible is quiet on that. It's not quiet about the topic of joy, but it is silent on giving us a direct explanation of what it is and how we can best understand it. So instead it just talks about it and it brings it up and it points us to it and it says that God desires it from us and it says that God seeks to make us joyful and shows us the benefits of joy, but it doesn't define it. And so we are left to define it on our own. So I'm going to offer you my best definition of joy. And if you don't agree with me or you think it's somehow incomplete, that's okay. You add your own stuff too. The important part is that we have a common understanding of the foundations of it. So here's how we're going to define joy this morning. Joy is a state of happiness fueled by gratitude. Joy is a state of happiness fueled by gratitude. So it's not a fleeting moment of happiness. This is important. I thought about words like foundational and unimpeachable, but those seem too cumbersome in a clear definition that I wanted you guys to kind of remember a little bit. So it's a state of happiness. It's not an experience of happiness. It's not a brush with happiness or a feeling of happiness. It's a state that we exist in, just kind of this simmering happiness, positivity, joy. And it is fueled, and this is important,'s fueled by gratitude. Joy is always fueled by gratitude. It has to be. When you think about it, when you think about the things that make you joyful, you're thinking of things for which you are grateful. And this psalm maps it out for us very clearly. It shows us, they model for us how we arrive at joy. Those first two verses, I don't know if you paid attention to them when they were being read, but this is what they said. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. So there was a time in the past when they were not doing well, where the people were not doing well, where they were living, they were living in poverty, they were living in oppression, and they were scattered. And then God restored their fortunes. He built the nation back up. And now there are joyful people with songs in their hearts. And the other nations around them looked onto them and said, wow, they are really blessed. And so this joy that they're experiencing comes out of abundance. Joy is always the product of abundance. If we want to talk about the joy that we experience from God, it is always the product of abundance. Think about a time in your life in which you've been exceedingly joyful. Think about some of the happiest moments of your life. Think about a season where you were just deeply content and you look back and you go, man, that may be the sweetest season of my life. I don't think of seasons for me as much as I think of moments. I know that for me, anytime I have my arms around both of my kids voluntarily, and we're not wrestling on the bed, anytime I sit there with that long enough, I start to tear up. Because we'll be watching, I'll be watching football and sometimes I'll want to come watch it with me, which really makes me tear up because that's just great. This is the perfect, the absolute perfect two minutes right here. Because I'm watching my favorite thing and I'm hugging my favorite people. And sometimes we're watching TV and one of them will climb up on my lap and then the other one will want to do that too. And I just completely tune out. I check out of whatever's on the television and just kind of sit there. And I just feel so much joy. Why do I feel that? Because I'm existing in this abundance right now. Right? I remember, this is so cheesy, but it's true. Jen plays the piano a little bit, not a lot of it. And don't get any ideas, she'll never ever play it for you, ever. You will never hear her play the piano. But she plays it, and sometimes she'll play the old hymns like Great is Thy Faithfulness, and those are my favorite. And whenever she plays the piano, I always tell her, that's my favorite sound in the world. I love you filling the house with the sound of this piano because I know it brings her peace and joy and I love it too. And I think it was last Christmas. In the lead up to last Christmas, Jen was at the piano and I was standing next to her and she was playing Oh Holy Night. And then she and I just started singing Oh Holy Night. That's my favorite Christmas song. It's my favorite song, just in general. And Lily knew some of the words, so she started singing it too. And it was this moment of abundance. And then here's what I did that makes me a crazy softie, is I spun it forward. Because I think that the house that we're in now, Lord willing, and the creek Don't Rise, is the one that we're going to be in for a long time. And so I think our kids are going to come home from college to this house. And I would anticipate, if God grants it and is good to us in this way, that they might one day bring grandkids into this house, and we might get to celebrate holidays in this house. And our piano is in the dining room. And so I just, for whatever reason, I let myself start to imagine 15, 20 years down the road when the family's coming in and Jen and whatever her weird mama, Mimi nickname is, is playing piano. And the whole family's singing along. And I just started to, like, I started getting emotional. I started to tear up. And Jen's like, what's the matter with you? I was like, I really don't want to tell you because I'm going to sound like a loon. But when we think about the moments of joy in our life and the pockets of joy in our life, I think we can conclude that the joy is always produced by abundance. It's always in moments and in times when we realize we have these amazing blessings in our lives. And it reminds me of a verse that I like to remind you guys of often, one that we have on our wall in the house, John 1 16, where it says, but from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God, from all of his goodness, he bubbles over grace and goodness, and it spills down onto us, and we are happy recipients of this grace and goodness. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all been blessed in ways in which we don't deserve. I love Tom Sartorius, one of our elders and greeters. If you ask him, hey, Tom, how you doing? I guarantee you, better not deserve every time. That's kind of an acknowledgement of this. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. And so one of the things I would just stop and point out to you is if you're not experiencing joy, if you don't think of yourself as a joyful person, if you don't think of yourself as existing in a state of happiness that is fueled by gratitude, maybe what's happening is we're running short on fuel. And it's not because we don't have enough. It's because we don't notice what we do have. We're like my son John when he goes to the store. Whenever John goes to the store, the Dollar Tree or whatever it is, if he sees animals, little plastic animals in a bin, in a bag, on their own, if he sees animals, he wants the animals. He has to have them. He loves animals, and he wants them. Now this, I've been complimentary of Jen. Jen is a sucker. I never buy that kid animals. 100% of the time, they go to the store. He comes back with another gorilla, and I'm like, what are we doing here? Because he loses his mind if he can't get the animals, and it's easier at the Dollar Tree just to spend $1.25. Go he'd go, here, kid, shut up. Here's a monkey. Now let's keep going. So she does it to keep the peace. I get it. But he's so concerned with this animal that he wants that he forgets that we have literally a whole bookshelf full, like in cubbies, filled with plastic animals that will never see the light of day again until we throw them away. Ever. If any of you just had kids, because we've got a lot of you right now, if you need animals, we got you. I think so often in life, we can move through life like John moves through the Dollar General. And we have a house full of blessings. But we just want the one that we don't have. And I think that if we would just stop and spend some time being grateful for the abundance that we see in our lives, that we would by, be a more joyful people. And so I think in many cases, we might not be experiencing joy because we're just not looking around at the abundance that does exist in our life. And so that's where we should start. And if we're not experiencing joy, we probably want it, right? We probably all want to live a joyful life. I know that this is true because if you ask anybody from any walk of life, no matter their religion, I can at least speak to Western culture, what is your top hope for yourself? And more interestingly, what's your biggest goal for your children? What do you want your children to experience? What do you want you to experience? What do you pray about for your children to experience? Somewhere in the top three, unlike your answer about me being joyful, this is actually legitimate, sometime in the top three, you're going to say happiness. What do you want for your children? I want them to be happy. I want them to be content. What do you want for your future? I want to be happy. I want to be content. The whole world defaults to a pursuit of joy. Every commercial you see tells you, if you buy this product, you will experience a more joyful life. If you vote for this candidate, usually the way it goes is you will experience a less joyful life. Right? We are drugged up. We are counseled up. We are self-helped up. Every facet of our society tells us to pursue this happiness. And here it is sitting right in the Bible where we get this psalm of joy. And we need to realize that joy is fueled by abundance. Joy is given to us by abundance, fueled by gratitude for that abundance. But we ought to be asking the question by now, if I'm not experiencing joy, how do I get it? If it's a little bit more than just looking around at my life and seeing what's there, how do I pursue this joy? How do I pursue this happiness that God offers? I think that there's a great answer for this that Eugene Peterson offers himself. He says in the chapter on joy, he says, joy is the verified, repeated experience of those involved in what God is doing. Joy is the verified, repeated experience of those involved in what God is doing. I want you to do this with me. Think of the most joyful person you know or the most joyful people you know. Think of who would come to mind in your life when you're asked that question. People who seem to exist in a state of happiness that's fueled by gratitude. Once you have them in your mind, let me make two bets about this person. The first thing I bet is true about them is that they have said they have sacrificially served others with their lives they are people who have spent their lives serving others I bet you they are people who have spent their lives getting involved in what God is doing and going where Jesus is growing I bet you the most joyful people that you know whoever it is you're thinking of I bet you that they have a long track record of getting involved where God is involved, of serving Christ and pursuing him and living their life for him. And I would bet that they have personally sacrificed. They've allowed some pain and some pain points to come into their life so that they could serve Christ well, so that they could serve others well. I bet you the most joyful person you know is also a servant of Jesus who sacrifices for others. See, we think that the road to joy, this is what the world would have us believe, that the road to joy is paved in pleasures. That if we just go from pleasure to pleasure, from experience to experience, from good time to good time, from enjoyable thing to enjoyable thing, if we can just stack together enough fun, enough pleasure, enough relaxation, enough good times, enough luxury, enough things, then eventually we'll arrive at joy. And the path to joy is not paved in pleasure, it's paved in sacrifice. Joy is the verified, repeatable experience of those who are involved in the work that the Lord is doing. So for one, that joyful person you're thinking of, I bet that they are a servant of Christ. The other thing I would bet about them is that their life has not been void of tragedy. I'd be willing to bet whoever you're thinking of has walked through some dark days. I'd be willing to bet that whoever you're thinking of has reasons, good reasons in their life to maybe not be joyful all the time, and yet their joy persists. We do not get to joy by pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. That's not the pathway there. The pathway is through Christ. And when we pursue Christ and what he has for us, what we find is that he produces an abundance of joy in us that cannot be touched. I think of it this way. So we do not pursue joy. We said, how do we pursue joy? How do we pursue this abundance that God offers us? We don't. We don't pursue joy. We pursue Christ. We don't pursue joy. We pursue Jesus. This falls in line with this other verse I like to mention that I have on the wall of my office that I think is really applicable here. John 10 10, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus says, do you know that I want you to have the best life possible? Do you know that I want you to, to, to, to experience an abundance of joy? Do you know that I want you to experience the overflow of the Father and His goodness? Do you know that I want you to have the best life possible? And I love this verse because if we just decide to trust it, we'll never mess up again. Anytime in our life we mess up, we sin, we develop a bad habit, we make a bad decision, we behave poorly in a situation, we allow something into our life that we know we shouldn't allow into our life, but we keep it there. All we're doing is saying, Jesus, I don't trust you to bring about the best life for me. I'm going to figure this one out on my own. But Jesus tells us, the path to joy is through me. The path to happiness that we want for ourselves and for our children that all of society seeks after every day in every way. The path there is through Jesus. So we do not pursue joy. We pursue Christ. And when we pursue Christ and he blesses us with an abundant life, and we have to be careful about this because I am not talking about financial abundance. I'm talking about the kind of abundance that actually makes you joyful. I'm talking about blessings. I'm talking about your kid coming up to you and giving you a hug when you didn't expect it. I'm talking about a wealth of relationships and friendships that you have in your life that when you think about it, you're just so grateful for. I'm talking about the years of marriage when you've been married 25, 30, 40 years and you look at this person that, gosh, we haven't always gotten along and sometimes I don't know that I would choose you every day, but man, we love each other deeply for what we've walked through. That type of richness. That type of abundance. That's what Jesus offers us. So when we pursue Christ, we can proclaim with the Israelites like they do in Psalm 126, verse 3. I love this proclamation. The Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy. The Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy. And Eugene Peterson's the message. He translates it. We are a nation of joyful people. We are a joyful nation. And so if we can look around at the abundance that we have in our life and allow that to fuel gratitude within us, then that will fuel joy. And if we can pursue Christ, then by that pursuit of Christ, the byproduct is joy. So the first two things I would say to you today, if you're not experiencing joy in your life, check those two things. How's your gratitude doing? How grateful are you for the abundance that you have in your life? And then how's your pursuit of Christ coming along? Are you devoting your life to him and serving him? Are you getting involved in the things that God is involved in? If you'll do those two things, I promise you God will move you in this inexplicable way towards joy, and you will be able to proclaim with the Israelites that we are a people of joy. Now, here's what I also know about joy. There are some who are in this room, who are listening online, who will listen, who are absolutely not feeling like they're in a season of abundance right now. As a matter of fact, they're feeling like they're in a season of scarcity. And the reality of life is that sometimes life is hard. And sometimes the days are dark. And sometimes it's heavy. And so I know that for some of you, as you listen to me go on and on about joy, you're like, yeah, dude, this ain't for me because that's not what I'm feeling right now. If I had to try to preach this sermon to my wife in the wake of the loss of her father without this last part, she would have scoffed at the whole thing and swept it aside, and I wouldn't blame you if that's what you wanted to do so far. But sometimes life can be heavy, and if that's your season, I understand. This week was a little bit of a heavy week for Jen and I, just in the things that were happening in the lives of the people around us, not in our lives. But in a 24-hour period, we got news that a mama who we had been praying for since she started trying to get pregnant, there were struggles there, and so we joined with them and we prayed with them and we were elated when they were pregnant. We'd been praying the whole time. She went into labor. We were very excited, but a C-section had to get involved. And it was frantic there for a minute a minute and it was scary and I spent some uneasy moments with her mama and daddy in the waiting room of the hospital who were concerned about their baby that was heavy everyone's happy and healthy there then the next morning we learned that a really good friend of ours, someone that we hold dear, was going to need to be hospitalized for psychological issues that have not been experienced before by this individual. It's a scary thing. There's a heavy load on her family. And then just a few minutes after getting off that phone call, we found out that another friend of ours was separated from her husband because her husband let his family down. And she doesn't really know how to walk through this. And then that day, I'm on the phone with my buddy who's in marriage counseling with his wife and they were asked hey his name's Dan it doesn't matter you don't know Dan do you think you could find a path to love for Beth and he said yeah I think I do I think there's a version of her that I really love and I'd like. And she said, Beth, do you think that there's a path to love for Dan? For you to love Dan? And she goes, no. I think that ship sailed years ago. They have four kids. He might be thinking about divorce. She might leave him. Sometimes we have seasons like that. Sometimes we have heavy seasons of pain. And when somebody gets up and starts talking to us over and over again about joy, we're like, yeah, man, not for me. I'm not buying that this morning. So if that's your season, or you know somebody in that season, this psalm actually addresses that. It finishes with this in mind, that we don't all just look around at hyperabundance all the time. Sometimes life is hard. So this is how we pursue joy in moments when we don't think we're having it at all because life is heavy. Verse four, restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. I don't know if you picked it up, because I didn't. I just saw it as kind of flowery language and imagery. But Eugene Peterson points out in the chapter this idea that the pain and the sorrow that we're experiencing, the heaviness and the worry that we have, those are seeds. Those are seeds of future joy. And what we're supposed to do, what they pray here in this psalm is, God, when I'm experiencing pain, when I'm experiencing hurt, I'm going to hand my pain over to you. I'm going to trust you with it. I'm going to give you my suffering and my despair and my pain, and I'm going to trust you with it. And I know that one day, eventually, if I trust you with it and I walk towards you, that you will reap for me a great harvest of joy from this seed of pain. And I think it's a beautiful idea that even at our darkest and even at our lowest and even when life is the most difficult, we can take the pain that we're experiencing, we can see it as a seed of future joy that we hand God and say, I don't know how you're going to turn this into joy, but I'm going to trust you to do it here. And we walk as faithful pilgrims on our journey waiting for God to bring about joy. It reminds me of what I do find helpful to say to people who are experiencing great tragedy. The best advice I ever received on how to talk to people who are going through incredible pain was from my pastor growing up. And his advice was, Nathan, don't say anything stupid. Okay? Thank you. What's stupid? Stupid are the empty words that don't really help. Stupid is when we miscarried our first child and somebody meaning well said, I guess God needed another angel. That's dumb. That's not helpful. So we'd be very careful about what we say in those moments. But one thing that I do think is helpful is when someone's hurting very much and they say, this sucks. I don't see how I'll be happy again. I don't see how I'm going to get through this. This hurts so much. I hate this. The one thing I found helpful to say there is to say, yeah, today stinks. Today's the worst. And you're allowed to hurt. And however you respond to this hurt is the right way to respond. No one can tell you what to do here, but here's what I also know. Not every day will feel like today. Not every day will hurt as bad as today. I know right now you can't see a light at the end of the tunnel. You're not even sure if light's going to be there, but one day you'll wake up and you'll see light. And one day you'll wake up and you'll be closer to it. And one day you'll wake up and you'll be in the light again. So let today be what today needs to be. And just know that not every day will be like this one. I think it's the same idea from Psalm 126. You think of your pain and your suffering as seeds of joy to be planted with God and allow him to reap a harvest of joy. So our job in pain and in trial, if we're here today and we're just feeling low, and it's not because we don't have abundance, it's not because we haven't been pursuing crisis because something really cruddy is going on and it's heavy on me and I'm having a hard time finding joy from here. Here's what you do. So your seeds of pain with God and wait expectantly for him to reap a harvest of joy. If you're hurting, sow that seed of pain with God and wait expectantly for him to reap for you a harvest of joy. So this morning, we're talking about a thing that everybody wants. Everybody that you meet, everybody that you see just wants what this is offering. They just want joy. They just want happiness. That's what everybody wants. And so in this psalm, we learn about it. We see about it. We learn how to get it. So here's my encouragement to you. If you are not in a season of pain right now, if life is pretty easy, pretty good, you're in good steady flow, nothing really bad's happening, but you wouldn't call yourself a joyful person, you're not in a state of happiness that's fueled by gratitude, two things for you. Check your gratitude dial. How's that doing? Check your Jesus dial. How much am I pursuing him? And if those are both turned way down, then it's no wonder that you're not experiencing exuberant joy. If you are in pain, plant the seeds of that pain with God and walk daily expecting that one day he will turn that sorrow into wonderful, exuberant joy because we serve a faithful God and he wants that abundant life for you. So my prayer for you is that you would be a joyful people and that together grace can say the Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you want us to experience joy. We thank you that you desire for us to live in abundance that's been poured out by you. God, I pray that you would give us an unshakable, unimpeachable joy out of a sense of gratitude for what you've done for us. God, give us eyes to see the blessings that maybe we miss. Give us ears to hear the good news that maybe sometimes we tune out. And God, for those of us who are hurting, those of us who are in pain, for those around us who hurt, I pray that they would hand that pain over to you, trusting that you would produce from that an unmeasurable joy. And God, I pray that we would be such a joyful people that those that we encounter would mark us for it, would sense it from us, and that through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of you simply by the joy that we exude. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.
Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.
