Luke

Good morning, good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you are here with your dad today, good for you. You're a good kid. And if you're a dad and your kids are here, man, that's so great, especially if your adult kids still want to hang out with you. That's the dream, right? That's all we're trying to do with John and Lily. Just when we release them to the wild, we want to make sure they come back. I do want to offer a prayer here at the beginning of the sermon for fathers and for Father's Day because it's a day of mixed emotions. In our house, we've lost Jen's dad. And so she wants to celebrate me, but it's also a sad day. And sometimes days like this are wonderful because they allow us to celebrate wonderful people, but we also know that for different reasons, Father's Day can be difficult. And so I just wanted to offer a prayer here as we begin, and then I'm going to go into a message that has nothing to do with fathers or even manhood at all. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for being our good father. For those of us who have been blessed and lucky to have good dads, we're so grateful for that blessing. We're so grateful for dads who point the way to you, who are fallible and who mess up, but who love us and love you, and they show us how to do that. So thank you for them. And if we have those, God, help us to be like them. God, for those for whom today is painful, maybe it conjures up loss or hurt or any other things that days like this can stir. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would be reminded that you are the good father and that your love today would fill in the spots that are left behind by hurts or hardships or blind spots. So God, be a good father for us today. Let your children feel your presence. Thank you for the good dads. Give us grace for the not as good dads and help us be good dads too. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we are in the third part of our series called 27. We'll be doing it this summer and next summer, going through the 27 books in the New Testament. In the month of June, we've been going through the Gospels. So in the first week, we looked at Matthew, and we said that Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week, we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as a servant. And this week we're looking at the book of Luke. And Luke, the gospel of Luke, was written to the Greeks and it depicts Jesus as a human or as a man. So Luke was written to a Greek audience. There's a guy named Theophilus. It's addressed to, oh, blessed Theophilus. And Luke and the book of Acts are really two parts of the same book, the same letter that was written to Theophilus so that he might understand everything that happened in the life of Christ and then the things that happened immediately following the life of Christ. And so Luke was written to a Greek audience to depict Jesus as a human, as a man, because to the Greek mind and in Greek culture and thinking and philosophy, man is the apex of creation. We are the culmination of all the things. And so to depict Jesus as the greatest man to have ever lived, as the greatest philosopher to have ever lived, would be appealing and capturing and captivating to the Greek mind. But as I thought about us and how to preach that and how to apply that to us and how that should stir us, I was really focusing on the humanity of Christ and kind of asking myself all week long. I started thinking about it last week and just kind of chipping away at what does it mean to be human? What does it mean that Jesus was a human? Why is this important? And I was trying to figure this out. Whenever I write my sermons, I don't know how you guys write your sermons, but when I write my sermons, I try to just like, I think of it as the attack angle. Like, how am I going to approach this? What am I going to talk about? What's interesting about this? What's helpful about this? And I was having a really hard time with it. And so when I have a hard time, I talk to people. And our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, happened to be around. He's the only person around. I would have loved to talk to someone else. It was just him. So we ended up talking about it. And he actually made this point. I thought it was a great point. So I included in my sermon. Aaron has done at least one useful thing today. But he reminded me that Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. And in all honesty, we have such a good staff. I can go talk to any of them and be like, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to do. I can just throw out the sermon. And every time they get me unstuck and they are wonderful. And when he said this, I kind of do a thing when I'm trying to figure a sermon out or something out. And I ask you about it and you say something. Once you say the one useful thing, I'm like, that's it. I got it. You keep talking. I'm not there anymore. I'm thinking about son of man. And he said this, and I was like, that's it. So I dove into some research on that. Why did Jesus call himself that? What did it mean? And what I learned is it very much is Jesus's favorite term for himself. It shows up 32 times in the gospel of Matthew, 15 times in the gospel of Mark, and 26 times in the Gospel of Luke. And every single one of those times, it's Jesus himself using that term to refer to himself. The only time it's used 12 times in John, and two of those times it's someone else calling him that mockingly. But all the other times, this is how Jesus refers to himself as son of man. So why did he like that term? Why did he refer to himself as son of man? Well, first, the phrase son of man would have meant in the ancient world what human being means to us. It's just a way to say that I'm mortal. It's a way to say I'm a human. I'm part of the human race. So Jesus, every time he says it, is declaring his humanity. He's dropping a little hint. I'm a human. I'm a son of man. And we know that Jesus is both man and divine. The fancy theological word for Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is called the hypostatic union. So Jesus is highlighting the hypostatic union every time he says son of man, because he's declaring his humanity, but he's also referring back to this famous prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, this famous messianic prophecy. And I'm going to read it to you this morning and it'll be up on the screen because it just sounds cool. As I went back and I read it, I was like, this sounds like one of those good ancient prophecies and I want you guys to hear it because sometimes they say cool things in the Bible and this is one of them. Daniel has a vision in chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man comes like the Son of Man, and he is presented to the Ancient of Days. The Son of Man is Jesus. Ancient of Days is God the Father. And so this is a messianic prediction about Jesus ascending to the throne and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So when he says in the New Testament, Thy am the Son of Man, the Son of man has no place to lay his head. When he refers to himself like that, he is referring to Daniel seven. He is declaring his divinity while at the same time he's declaring his humanity. And I think that's a really interesting name and choice for Jesus to make to constantly declare his humanity. And I think it's even more interesting that Luke decided that this needed to be a theme of his gospel. There's other themes within the gospel. We spent the spring in the book of Luke, and we talked about it being the hospitality gospel, that throughout the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, attending, or coming from a meal. It's the hospitality gospel. There's around the table. But another theme of Luke, another thing that he weaves throughout the gospel is the humanity of Christ. Which brings us back to our question for the week. Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? What is so important about that? Why should it matter so much that Jesus is a human? Why did he himself choose a name that would highlight his humanity the entire time? Why did Luke, one of the gospel writers, decide to craft an entire gospel to display that aspect of our Christ? Why is this so important? This is an important question that I've been wrestling with all week. And the more I wrestled with it, the more aspects of it that I thought about, even kind of diving into what does it mean for us to be human? What makes us human? And going down that rabbit trail and all the things, what I realized is that there's a story in Luke, in Luke chapter 4, the temptation of Christ, that probably more dramatically and openly and honestly and overtly displays the humanity of Christ more than any other story in the Bible, save maybe the stories around his crucifixion. Jesus is utterly human in this story. And as I went through the story, I realized that the temptations that Jesus has are that Satan offers Jesus and the responses that Jesus offers Satan. I realized that those things actually highlight all of the reasons why it's so important for us to understand that Jesus is a human, that Jesus is man, that he's 100% man and 100% God. And it helps us understand why that's so important. And hopefully, as we move through this, if I do it right, what we'll find is ultimately Jesus' humanity is comforting and inspiring and even an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. So let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter four and look at the aspects of Jesus's humanity that are on full display for us to see that kind of answer some of our questions. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the temptation of Christ or need a refresher, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, he was 30 years old and then he was about to start calling disciples and declaring the gospel and start that process of public ministry. Before he started his public ministry, it took 40 days and he went out in the desert to pray and to fast and to prepare his body and his mind and his spirit for what he needed to do. And this isn't the point of the sermon at all, but it's so interesting to me that Jesus, the Savior of the world, the most capable minister that's ever existed, which is so gross an understatement it is stupid to say out loud. Jesus was good at ministry. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Go home. That's the best point I got today. Before, he's perfectly capable of the ministry. Before he began it, he went and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days. My volunteers in the room, folks who had stepped into kids ministry, into committees, to being on an elder board, who volunteer with students, who volunteer with the ministry downtown. Those of you who have brought children into the world and started that ministry. Me, as I took over the church. What period of preparation and prayer and fasting do we give ourselves for the task at hand before we just launch right into it thinking ourselves capable? And if Jesus doesn't do that, if Jesus doesn't launch into things without stopping and pausing and praying, then why do we think we can? So maybe there's a season for us where that's what we need to do as we enter into ministry. But he goes to fast and pray, And at the end of the 40 days, Satan comes to him to tempt him. And we see these three temptations that he has. The first one is found in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. So Satan comes to him, he's maximum hungry. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more hungry than you would be after 40 days. And Satan says when he's maximum hungry, maximum weak, if you are the son of God, this whole time Satan's trying to get him to prove that he is who he says he is. If you're the son of God, then turn this stone into bread and eat it and everybody will believe you. And Jesus says, quotes back scripture, man shall not live by bread alone., how is the humanity displayed in this verse? What we see in Jesus' response is that he's hungry. He's tempted, but he says, I don't need that right now. So what we see is that Jesus feels what we feel. Jesus feels and experiences what we feel and experience. And that's such a short and cheap sentence that if we don't stop, we're going to miss what that means and how profound that actually is. Originally, as I started writing the sermon, I was going to spend the whole morning here because I think it's unbelievable. First of all, Jesus condescended. He was in heavenly form. I don't know what heavenly form is, but it's better than this. And he took on this when he didn't have to and limited himself when he didn't have to. He became a human. It's the ultimate act of humility. I've known a lot of people over the years who want to help the impoverished in other countries. I've not known very many of them to move into that neighborhood. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. He took on human form and he began to feel what we feel. He experienced hunger like we experience hunger. You think God gets hungry? You think God the Father is looking forward to a steak on Father's Day? He doesn't care. He doesn't need food to sustain him. He took on hunger. Jesus was maximum hungry. He lived in a country and in a society that was not wealthy. He said the son of man has no place to lay his head. He wandered around as a vagabond for most of his adult ministry. If you've ever been hungry, people who have ever known hunger, they have a Jesus who can empathize with that hunger because he was hungry. He feels what we feel. I bet Jesus, because he's human, growing up, had insecurities. There was probably some cool kids that didn't like him, and it was hard. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus liked a girl that didn't like him back. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus saw his parents fight. I'd be willing to bet that he was embarrassed, that he was proud. Can you imagine the pride that you would have to fight back if you found out you were the savior of the world? Jesus has experienced all the human emotions that we have experienced. He experienced temptation. He experienced loss. We don't know where or how, but somewhere in between Luke chapter 3, or 2 rather, and Luke 3, Joseph disappears from the narrative. Joseph, his earthly father, who I'm just going to refer to as his father for ease of language, but I know that God's the father. He lost his dad at some point. We're not really given much indication if it was by death or by divorce, but we know that he fades away from the narrative and he's lost in the fog of history. So what we can be sure of is that Jesus understood either what it was to be in a broken home or what it was to lose a father early. Jesus, and I don't say this lightly to make a cheap joke. Jesus had father issues. I've always, I would be very interested to see how Jesus treated older men as he was growing up in his ministry. Because people with father issues tend to revere older men in ways that are different than folks without father issues. And I don't think that we stop to think enough about what it means for Jesus to be a human and to have experienced humanity. Because I started thinking about that too and what is it to be human? And I was reminded of back in the summer of 2020, I started to see a therapist or a counselor. I never know the right word. The one to help me identify and unpack all of my childhood issues. And there was no compelling event that took me there. There was no pressing thing. I just heard from enough people that it was a good practice to see a therapist. And so I thought if it's worked for other people, if it's been a good practice for them, I need to go try it too. And I found it to be an amazing experience. He told me all the things and I fixed it all within about nine months. I'm good now. Never need it again. It's probably time for a checkup, really. But in therapy, as he walked me through things, and I was just telling him about what's going on in my life and different things, and he'd ask me about my past, and it's not all just like childhood and parents, but you do talk about all that stuff in there. He showed this to me about myself. There's things about me that I don't like. There's things about me that if I could wave a wand, I would fix them. If I could wave a wand and give myself more patience, I would. If I could wave a wand and give myself more discernment in conversation, to not be such a dummy all the time, and for the joke that you don't need to go for, I would waive it. There's rough edges of my character that if you gave me the option to get rid of them, I would. I just don't know how. And you start to talk to your therapist about things like that. And what he helped me see is, yeah, those things are a part of you, but they're a part of you because of how you were brought up, the environment you were raised in, the things that happened around you. Those things are a part of you because of so much that was so outside of your control that you really can't even be blamed for those things being in your life. Now, it doesn't mean that as adults we shouldn't deal with those things and cope with those things and try to work them out of our life, but their very existence in our life is not our fault. And I started to learn, because I always thought that when somebody messes up, when somebody does something that they shouldn't do, that that's their fault. And if someone's living a life of bad choices and they're throwing their life away, that's their fault. They need to get their head out of their rear end, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and do the right thing. And I thought that about myself, too, that anything that existed within me that was bad and wrong and displeasing to God and displeasing to myself, I needed to figure it out and white-knuckle it and just walk my way to health. And what I learned in therapy is that that's not how that goes. The things that are a part of me that I didn't want, I didn't put there. Life did. It's just humanity. And learning that about myself gave me a deep empathy for the people around me. I know that it's difficult to tell at times, but it's deeper now than it used to be. It helped me understand if I didn't choose my brokenness, then they didn't either. And the bad habits and the bad behaviors and the bad attitudes and all of those things that exist in their life were not chosen by them because they want them. They are products of the environment that they were brought up in. Those are things that happened to them, not things that they chose. And then those things cause behaviors that are unattractive, but they don't like those behaviors either. It gave me a deep empathy for others. It helped me understand that when I meet a grown man who wants to tell me his 40 time or is proud of how loud his car is or something, that he's not just a jerk. He is a jerk because nobody cares about that stuff. But he's also just saying in an undeveloped way, will you please like me? Will you just tell me that I'm enough? Will someone give me some approval? It helped me realize we're all just bags of insecurities and coping mechanisms. And some of us just learn to do it better than others. But it gave me a deep empathy for humans. And I say all that to say that Jesus was a human too. Jesus carried those things. Jesus had to work through his brokenness and his loss and his disappointment. Jesus watched that happen in the people around him. He saw that too. This is why I honestly believe that when we sin and we mess up and we make life choices and involve ourselves in patterns and habits that Jesus wouldn't choose for us, that when he sees us do those things, I truly don't think that his primary response to us is frustration or anger. I think it's pity and hurt and love and empathy. I think he sees our hurt driving us into places of deeper hurt, and he's just waiting and begging for the day that we come back to him and allow him to heal us. I think it's that song we sing, Reckless Love. There's no mountain that he won't climb up. There's no wall he won't kick down. Like he's coming after us. He sees you hurting and hurting yourself and he's relentlessly pursuing you. And listen, I don't think he's mad at you for your sins. I think he watches your sins and it hurts him that you continue to hurt yourself in that way because he's a human and he knows why you're doing it and he has deep empathy for it and he wants you to stop. It matters so much that Jesus feels what we feel. The other aspect of his humanity that we see in the temptation of Christ is that the second temptation. Your notes say verse 7. I'm going to start and their glory he's offering in the kingdoms of the world. For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So Satan takes him to where he can see the kingdoms of the world and he says, they've been given to me. If you want them, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is worship me. And Jesus' response is, I am only allowed to worship God the Father. And so what this reveals is Jesus serves who we serve. Jesus serves who we serve. He's subject to the same laws and edicts that we are. He doesn't say, I only can worship myself. He says, no, I can only worship God the Father, no one else, which means that Jesus was subject to the same laws that we were. He followed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He followed the law of the Old Testament perfectly. He was a human who was tempted to break the law, but he didn't. He still followed God's laws like we do. He didn't think that he was too good for them. Last night I was watching Bluey with Lily, my daughter. And if you are a parent of, I don't know what the age range would be, of a kid under 10 and you don't know what Bluey is, you're not a good parent. It's amazing. We're watching it, and in this particular episode, there's two little kids. Their little dog's Bluey, and Bingo is the little sister, and Bluey is the older sister, and then they've got a cousin named Muffin. All this is important, okay? Don't forget these details. And Muffin's coming. She's riding with Uncle Scout or whoever over to Bluey and Bingo's house. And Muffin asks her dad if she's special. And dad says, yes, you're very special. And then dad says, you're the most special kid on the planet. And I'm watching it thinking, that is not smart. That's not smart. Your kid is not the most special kid on the planet. No kid is. And they get to Bluey's house, and they start to play. The three kids start to play, and they're playing a game, I think, called Library. And you've got to check out the book, and you can only check out three. And Muffin is doing whatever Muffin wants to do. Muffin doesn't want to check out three. Muffin doesn't want to be quiet. Muffin's not following any of the rules of the game. And so Bluey and Bingo go complain to Uncle and Mom, hey, Muffin's not playing right. And they're like, just let Muffin play however Muffin wants. Like, okay. So they go back, and Muffin's behavior is ruining the game because Muffin believes that she is the most special child to ever exist and doesn't have to follow any of the rules. And so finally it comes to this point where Dad's got to get involved. So he goes and grabs Muffin and says, why aren't you playing right? And Muffin says, well, because I'm the most special child, I don't have to follow the rules that anybody else follows. And he says what a good dad would say. I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were not the most special child. You're the most special child to me and your mom. You're not more special than them. Okay. I say all that to say that Jesus did not go through life as God's special little boy, okay? He didn't just declare, I'm Jesus, I can do whatever I want, none of the rules apply to me. He lived with the same humanity, the same restraints, the same limitations that you do. He did not go through life thinking that he was special and some sort of exception. So the challenges that you face with being Christ-like, being godly, trying to follow the rules and do what the Bible says, trying to learn the Bible and apply it to your own life, Jesus faced those too. Jesus serves who we serve. He follows the laws that we're told we're following when we love God and love others. He was challenged just like you were. The last one is of particular interest to me. We see it down at the end of the story, verses 12 and 13. Satan has just told Jesus, he's taken him up to the top of the temple and he says, if you're really God, if you're really who you say you are, then fling yourself off the temple and God will send his angels to capture you. And this is Jesus' response. And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Before we unpack what's there in the temptation in Jesus' response, I included that last verse. Satan departed from him to return to him at a more opportune time. It's not as if Jesus had this one encounter with Satan and then was not tempted for the rest of his life. I have a note in my Bible that I wrote years ago that Jesus had moments of weakness too. Satan would prey on him at opportune times. So this resisting of temptation, this humanity that he experienced wasn't just a one and done deal here at the beginning of his ministry and now you're good. This is a persistent, pervasive thing. But in this response, it's fling yourself off and surely God will catch you. Jesus says, it is not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Now this is interesting because Jesus is God. And Jesus later says to Pilate, when Pilate's trying to ask if he was the king, he says, dude, if I wanted to get out of here, I could call the angels and they would get me. So we know that Jesus can call on the angels if he wants to. He doesn't need God the father to do it. He could have done this, called on the angels himself, not been in violation of any laws or any rules, I'm in perfectly fine. But he says, no, I can't do that. It's not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Because if angels are going to come rescue him, it's not going to be because he insisted on it. It's going to be because God acted for him. And so what we see is that Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies on God the same way that we rely on God. And the phrasing there is a little funny because I wanted it to fit in with the other notes because that's what good pastors do. But I'll explain it a little bit. I think of it this way. When Jesus went through life and was performing miracles and was preaching and teaching and was directing people and doing what he does, he didn't do all that with his Jesus powers. He did that with his Holy Spirit powers. He didn't perform miracles because he was Jesus from his Jesus powers. I don't know how to talk about it as if he's not in the Marvel universe, but that's how I think about it. He didn't use his Jesus powers. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he healed. He prayed, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he cast out demons. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was guided in wisdom. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was strengthened for obedience. He relied on the Holy Spirit the same way you rely on the Holy Spirit. He did not skate through life being Jesus, finding it within himself to do Jesus' things. He relies on the same God that you rely on. When he hurt, he ran to God for strength and for comfort. We see him do this. We see his humanity on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane where he falls on his face praying the night of his arrest and eventual crucifixion, God, please don't make me do this. Yet not my will, but your will be done. He did it God's way. He relied on God during his ministry when he would perform miracles. Not only is he praying to the Spirit to bring about this miracle, but then when he's done, he says, don't tell anybody I did this. It is not yet the proper time. He's sensitive to God's timing. He's reliant upon God for direction on the timing of when he should be crucified. Jesus relies on who we rely on. He prays like we pray. He needs the Spirit to move and to comfort and to cajole and to convict in the same way that we do. And so in all these different ways, we see on full display in the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Christ. And we see that he feels what we feel, that he serves who he serves, that he relies how we rely. And this makes him different than any other God in the pantheon of gods that we've invented or created or thought about on this earth. There's no other God that condescends to take on human form and offers his very presence to us, to understand us, to walk with us, to feel what we feel. And there's no other God that can offer this. And this is, my wife pointed this out to me. This is why she's my number one sermon counselor. But she pointed out this, and this is what the humanity of Jesus is driving to, that Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. When we see somebody hurt, before we had a miscarriage, Jen and I, and somebody would miscarriage, I could offer them my sympathy. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That must be difficult. But when it happened to us, he gave us the gift of empathy. And the gift of empathy, there's a couple at the church who miscarried recently. And it had recently happened and I had not called them and I saw them in church during worship. And I was able to just walk up to them and give them both a big tear-filled hug. And none of us said a word. And we all knew exactly what I meant. That's what empathy does. You know when you're going through something and you want to talk to somebody about it. You want to talk to somebody who's gone through it too. When Jen lost her dad, she wasn't super interested in people comforting her that had not walked through that. There's just something to knowing that the person you're talking to has that shared experience. Jesus has shared our experience. When we pray, we pray towards empathy, not sympathy, not a condescending God who doesn't understand the human experience and the human existence. We pray to a God who literally whispers into the ear of the Father as we pray. It says Jesus, Romans 8 tells us Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Going, I know what they're going through. I've been there. I get that. I understand it. Father, here's what they need. Do you realize that when you pray, you pray to empathy and how powerful that is? in this way, praying to a God that empathizes, understanding that Jesus is human, that Jesus offers us his presence. We can run to him with anything, and he is there with us, and he is present with us. This is why he leaves his spirit and says, it's better than me. I will be with you through my spirit. This is why I think Luke chose to highlight this in his gospel. This is why I think Jesus declared his humanity over and over and over again, and why it's on full display in all the gospels, particularly Luke. Because he wants you to know that you serve a God who feels what you feel, who serves the way you serve, who has to rely on God the way that you rely on God, and ultimately, who offers you his empathy and his comfort, not just his sympathy. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing that draws us to him. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We need you. And we are grateful that you are here for us. Thank you for the way that you love us, for the way that you care about us. Thank you for a Savior who condescended and took on human form, who became one of us so that he might know us and experience us and love us well. Thank you that you empathize with our hurts and our hangups and our habits. We thank you that you are a God who's experienced loss, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. And God, I pray that you would be with us in those things and in those ways. In Jesus' name, amen. Normally, I step off the stage right now, and I let Aaron do his thing. But I was thinking, as we were singing the first first three songs and I was listening to them sing, I'm always moved when people who are gifted with their voice declare it and let their heavenly father who made them that way hear it. I'm always moved when God made musicians on purpose use it to turn people to praise to him because God made them this way on purpose so that they would do this. But it also occurs to me that your heavenly father gave you a voice too. If you're like me, it's average at best. But what better Father's Day gift could we give to our heavenly father than to let him hear the voice that he gave you and declare praise back to him? So as we sing this last song, let's let it go. Let's let God hear us. Let's offer a Father's Day present to him as we allow him to hear the voices of his children declaring his praises.

Good morning, good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you are here with your dad today, good for you. You're a good kid. And if you're a dad and your kids are here, man, that's so great, especially if your adult kids still want to hang out with you. That's the dream, right? That's all we're trying to do with John and Lily. Just when we release them to the wild, we want to make sure they come back. I do want to offer a prayer here at the beginning of the sermon for fathers and for Father's Day because it's a day of mixed emotions. In our house, we've lost Jen's dad. And so she wants to celebrate me, but it's also a sad day. And sometimes days like this are wonderful because they allow us to celebrate wonderful people, but we also know that for different reasons, Father's Day can be difficult. And so I just wanted to offer a prayer here as we begin, and then I'm going to go into a message that has nothing to do with fathers or even manhood at all. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for being our good father. For those of us who have been blessed and lucky to have good dads, we're so grateful for that blessing. We're so grateful for dads who point the way to you, who are fallible and who mess up, but who love us and love you, and they show us how to do that. So thank you for them. And if we have those, God, help us to be like them. God, for those for whom today is painful, maybe it conjures up loss or hurt or any other things that days like this can stir. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would be reminded that you are the good father and that your love today would fill in the spots that are left behind by hurts or hardships or blind spots. So God, be a good father for us today. Let your children feel your presence. Thank you for the good dads. Give us grace for the not as good dads and help us be good dads too. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we are in the third part of our series called 27. We'll be doing it this summer and next summer, going through the 27 books in the New Testament. In the month of June, we've been going through the Gospels. So in the first week, we looked at Matthew, and we said that Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week, we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as a servant. And this week we're looking at the book of Luke. And Luke, the gospel of Luke, was written to the Greeks and it depicts Jesus as a human or as a man. So Luke was written to a Greek audience. There's a guy named Theophilus. It's addressed to, oh, blessed Theophilus. And Luke and the book of Acts are really two parts of the same book, the same letter that was written to Theophilus so that he might understand everything that happened in the life of Christ and then the things that happened immediately following the life of Christ. And so Luke was written to a Greek audience to depict Jesus as a human, as a man, because to the Greek mind and in Greek culture and thinking and philosophy, man is the apex of creation. We are the culmination of all the things. And so to depict Jesus as the greatest man to have ever lived, as the greatest philosopher to have ever lived, would be appealing and capturing and captivating to the Greek mind. But as I thought about us and how to preach that and how to apply that to us and how that should stir us, I was really focusing on the humanity of Christ and kind of asking myself all week long. I started thinking about it last week and just kind of chipping away at what does it mean to be human? What does it mean that Jesus was a human? Why is this important? And I was trying to figure this out. Whenever I write my sermons, I don't know how you guys write your sermons, but when I write my sermons, I try to just like, I think of it as the attack angle. Like, how am I going to approach this? What am I going to talk about? What's interesting about this? What's helpful about this? And I was having a really hard time with it. And so when I have a hard time, I talk to people. And our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, happened to be around. He's the only person around. I would have loved to talk to someone else. It was just him. So we ended up talking about it. And he actually made this point. I thought it was a great point. So I included in my sermon. Aaron has done at least one useful thing today. But he reminded me that Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. And in all honesty, we have such a good staff. I can go talk to any of them and be like, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to do. I can just throw out the sermon. And every time they get me unstuck and they are wonderful. And when he said this, I kind of do a thing when I'm trying to figure a sermon out or something out. And I ask you about it and you say something. Once you say the one useful thing, I'm like, that's it. I got it. You keep talking. I'm not there anymore. I'm thinking about son of man. And he said this, and I was like, that's it. So I dove into some research on that. Why did Jesus call himself that? What did it mean? And what I learned is it very much is Jesus's favorite term for himself. It shows up 32 times in the gospel of Matthew, 15 times in the gospel of Mark, and 26 times in the Gospel of Luke. And every single one of those times, it's Jesus himself using that term to refer to himself. The only time it's used 12 times in John, and two of those times it's someone else calling him that mockingly. But all the other times, this is how Jesus refers to himself as son of man. So why did he like that term? Why did he refer to himself as son of man? Well, first, the phrase son of man would have meant in the ancient world what human being means to us. It's just a way to say that I'm mortal. It's a way to say I'm a human. I'm part of the human race. So Jesus, every time he says it, is declaring his humanity. He's dropping a little hint. I'm a human. I'm a son of man. And we know that Jesus is both man and divine. The fancy theological word for Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is called the hypostatic union. So Jesus is highlighting the hypostatic union every time he says son of man, because he's declaring his humanity, but he's also referring back to this famous prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, this famous messianic prophecy. And I'm going to read it to you this morning and it'll be up on the screen because it just sounds cool. As I went back and I read it, I was like, this sounds like one of those good ancient prophecies and I want you guys to hear it because sometimes they say cool things in the Bible and this is one of them. Daniel has a vision in chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man comes like the Son of Man, and he is presented to the Ancient of Days. The Son of Man is Jesus. Ancient of Days is God the Father. And so this is a messianic prediction about Jesus ascending to the throne and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So when he says in the New Testament, Thy am the Son of Man, the Son of man has no place to lay his head. When he refers to himself like that, he is referring to Daniel seven. He is declaring his divinity while at the same time he's declaring his humanity. And I think that's a really interesting name and choice for Jesus to make to constantly declare his humanity. And I think it's even more interesting that Luke decided that this needed to be a theme of his gospel. There's other themes within the gospel. We spent the spring in the book of Luke, and we talked about it being the hospitality gospel, that throughout the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, attending, or coming from a meal. It's the hospitality gospel. There's around the table. But another theme of Luke, another thing that he weaves throughout the gospel is the humanity of Christ. Which brings us back to our question for the week. Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? What is so important about that? Why should it matter so much that Jesus is a human? Why did he himself choose a name that would highlight his humanity the entire time? Why did Luke, one of the gospel writers, decide to craft an entire gospel to display that aspect of our Christ? Why is this so important? This is an important question that I've been wrestling with all week. And the more I wrestled with it, the more aspects of it that I thought about, even kind of diving into what does it mean for us to be human? What makes us human? And going down that rabbit trail and all the things, what I realized is that there's a story in Luke, in Luke chapter 4, the temptation of Christ, that probably more dramatically and openly and honestly and overtly displays the humanity of Christ more than any other story in the Bible, save maybe the stories around his crucifixion. Jesus is utterly human in this story. And as I went through the story, I realized that the temptations that Jesus has are that Satan offers Jesus and the responses that Jesus offers Satan. I realized that those things actually highlight all of the reasons why it's so important for us to understand that Jesus is a human, that Jesus is man, that he's 100% man and 100% God. And it helps us understand why that's so important. And hopefully, as we move through this, if I do it right, what we'll find is ultimately Jesus' humanity is comforting and inspiring and even an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. So let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter four and look at the aspects of Jesus's humanity that are on full display for us to see that kind of answer some of our questions. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the temptation of Christ or need a refresher, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, he was 30 years old and then he was about to start calling disciples and declaring the gospel and start that process of public ministry. Before he started his public ministry, it took 40 days and he went out in the desert to pray and to fast and to prepare his body and his mind and his spirit for what he needed to do. And this isn't the point of the sermon at all, but it's so interesting to me that Jesus, the Savior of the world, the most capable minister that's ever existed, which is so gross an understatement it is stupid to say out loud. Jesus was good at ministry. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Go home. That's the best point I got today. Before, he's perfectly capable of the ministry. Before he began it, he went and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days. My volunteers in the room, folks who had stepped into kids ministry, into committees, to being on an elder board, who volunteer with students, who volunteer with the ministry downtown. Those of you who have brought children into the world and started that ministry. Me, as I took over the church. What period of preparation and prayer and fasting do we give ourselves for the task at hand before we just launch right into it thinking ourselves capable? And if Jesus doesn't do that, if Jesus doesn't launch into things without stopping and pausing and praying, then why do we think we can? So maybe there's a season for us where that's what we need to do as we enter into ministry. But he goes to fast and pray, And at the end of the 40 days, Satan comes to him to tempt him. And we see these three temptations that he has. The first one is found in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. So Satan comes to him, he's maximum hungry. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more hungry than you would be after 40 days. And Satan says when he's maximum hungry, maximum weak, if you are the son of God, this whole time Satan's trying to get him to prove that he is who he says he is. If you're the son of God, then turn this stone into bread and eat it and everybody will believe you. And Jesus says, quotes back scripture, man shall not live by bread alone., how is the humanity displayed in this verse? What we see in Jesus' response is that he's hungry. He's tempted, but he says, I don't need that right now. So what we see is that Jesus feels what we feel. Jesus feels and experiences what we feel and experience. And that's such a short and cheap sentence that if we don't stop, we're going to miss what that means and how profound that actually is. Originally, as I started writing the sermon, I was going to spend the whole morning here because I think it's unbelievable. First of all, Jesus condescended. He was in heavenly form. I don't know what heavenly form is, but it's better than this. And he took on this when he didn't have to and limited himself when he didn't have to. He became a human. It's the ultimate act of humility. I've known a lot of people over the years who want to help the impoverished in other countries. I've not known very many of them to move into that neighborhood. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. He took on human form and he began to feel what we feel. He experienced hunger like we experience hunger. You think God gets hungry? You think God the Father is looking forward to a steak on Father's Day? He doesn't care. He doesn't need food to sustain him. He took on hunger. Jesus was maximum hungry. He lived in a country and in a society that was not wealthy. He said the son of man has no place to lay his head. He wandered around as a vagabond for most of his adult ministry. If you've ever been hungry, people who have ever known hunger, they have a Jesus who can empathize with that hunger because he was hungry. He feels what we feel. I bet Jesus, because he's human, growing up, had insecurities. There was probably some cool kids that didn't like him, and it was hard. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus liked a girl that didn't like him back. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus saw his parents fight. I'd be willing to bet that he was embarrassed, that he was proud. Can you imagine the pride that you would have to fight back if you found out you were the savior of the world? Jesus has experienced all the human emotions that we have experienced. He experienced temptation. He experienced loss. We don't know where or how, but somewhere in between Luke chapter 3, or 2 rather, and Luke 3, Joseph disappears from the narrative. Joseph, his earthly father, who I'm just going to refer to as his father for ease of language, but I know that God's the father. He lost his dad at some point. We're not really given much indication if it was by death or by divorce, but we know that he fades away from the narrative and he's lost in the fog of history. So what we can be sure of is that Jesus understood either what it was to be in a broken home or what it was to lose a father early. Jesus, and I don't say this lightly to make a cheap joke. Jesus had father issues. I've always, I would be very interested to see how Jesus treated older men as he was growing up in his ministry. Because people with father issues tend to revere older men in ways that are different than folks without father issues. And I don't think that we stop to think enough about what it means for Jesus to be a human and to have experienced humanity. Because I started thinking about that too and what is it to be human? And I was reminded of back in the summer of 2020, I started to see a therapist or a counselor. I never know the right word. The one to help me identify and unpack all of my childhood issues. And there was no compelling event that took me there. There was no pressing thing. I just heard from enough people that it was a good practice to see a therapist. And so I thought if it's worked for other people, if it's been a good practice for them, I need to go try it too. And I found it to be an amazing experience. He told me all the things and I fixed it all within about nine months. I'm good now. Never need it again. It's probably time for a checkup, really. But in therapy, as he walked me through things, and I was just telling him about what's going on in my life and different things, and he'd ask me about my past, and it's not all just like childhood and parents, but you do talk about all that stuff in there. He showed this to me about myself. There's things about me that I don't like. There's things about me that if I could wave a wand, I would fix them. If I could wave a wand and give myself more patience, I would. If I could wave a wand and give myself more discernment in conversation, to not be such a dummy all the time, and for the joke that you don't need to go for, I would waive it. There's rough edges of my character that if you gave me the option to get rid of them, I would. I just don't know how. And you start to talk to your therapist about things like that. And what he helped me see is, yeah, those things are a part of you, but they're a part of you because of how you were brought up, the environment you were raised in, the things that happened around you. Those things are a part of you because of so much that was so outside of your control that you really can't even be blamed for those things being in your life. Now, it doesn't mean that as adults we shouldn't deal with those things and cope with those things and try to work them out of our life, but their very existence in our life is not our fault. And I started to learn, because I always thought that when somebody messes up, when somebody does something that they shouldn't do, that that's their fault. And if someone's living a life of bad choices and they're throwing their life away, that's their fault. They need to get their head out of their rear end, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and do the right thing. And I thought that about myself, too, that anything that existed within me that was bad and wrong and displeasing to God and displeasing to myself, I needed to figure it out and white-knuckle it and just walk my way to health. And what I learned in therapy is that that's not how that goes. The things that are a part of me that I didn't want, I didn't put there. Life did. It's just humanity. And learning that about myself gave me a deep empathy for the people around me. I know that it's difficult to tell at times, but it's deeper now than it used to be. It helped me understand if I didn't choose my brokenness, then they didn't either. And the bad habits and the bad behaviors and the bad attitudes and all of those things that exist in their life were not chosen by them because they want them. They are products of the environment that they were brought up in. Those are things that happened to them, not things that they chose. And then those things cause behaviors that are unattractive, but they don't like those behaviors either. It gave me a deep empathy for others. It helped me understand that when I meet a grown man who wants to tell me his 40 time or is proud of how loud his car is or something, that he's not just a jerk. He is a jerk because nobody cares about that stuff. But he's also just saying in an undeveloped way, will you please like me? Will you just tell me that I'm enough? Will someone give me some approval? It helped me realize we're all just bags of insecurities and coping mechanisms. And some of us just learn to do it better than others. But it gave me a deep empathy for humans. And I say all that to say that Jesus was a human too. Jesus carried those things. Jesus had to work through his brokenness and his loss and his disappointment. Jesus watched that happen in the people around him. He saw that too. This is why I honestly believe that when we sin and we mess up and we make life choices and involve ourselves in patterns and habits that Jesus wouldn't choose for us, that when he sees us do those things, I truly don't think that his primary response to us is frustration or anger. I think it's pity and hurt and love and empathy. I think he sees our hurt driving us into places of deeper hurt, and he's just waiting and begging for the day that we come back to him and allow him to heal us. I think it's that song we sing, Reckless Love. There's no mountain that he won't climb up. There's no wall he won't kick down. Like he's coming after us. He sees you hurting and hurting yourself and he's relentlessly pursuing you. And listen, I don't think he's mad at you for your sins. I think he watches your sins and it hurts him that you continue to hurt yourself in that way because he's a human and he knows why you're doing it and he has deep empathy for it and he wants you to stop. It matters so much that Jesus feels what we feel. The other aspect of his humanity that we see in the temptation of Christ is that the second temptation. Your notes say verse 7. I'm going to start and their glory he's offering in the kingdoms of the world. For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So Satan takes him to where he can see the kingdoms of the world and he says, they've been given to me. If you want them, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is worship me. And Jesus' response is, I am only allowed to worship God the Father. And so what this reveals is Jesus serves who we serve. Jesus serves who we serve. He's subject to the same laws and edicts that we are. He doesn't say, I only can worship myself. He says, no, I can only worship God the Father, no one else, which means that Jesus was subject to the same laws that we were. He followed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He followed the law of the Old Testament perfectly. He was a human who was tempted to break the law, but he didn't. He still followed God's laws like we do. He didn't think that he was too good for them. Last night I was watching Bluey with Lily, my daughter. And if you are a parent of, I don't know what the age range would be, of a kid under 10 and you don't know what Bluey is, you're not a good parent. It's amazing. We're watching it, and in this particular episode, there's two little kids. Their little dog's Bluey, and Bingo is the little sister, and Bluey is the older sister, and then they've got a cousin named Muffin. All this is important, okay? Don't forget these details. And Muffin's coming. She's riding with Uncle Scout or whoever over to Bluey and Bingo's house. And Muffin asks her dad if she's special. And dad says, yes, you're very special. And then dad says, you're the most special kid on the planet. And I'm watching it thinking, that is not smart. That's not smart. Your kid is not the most special kid on the planet. No kid is. And they get to Bluey's house, and they start to play. The three kids start to play, and they're playing a game, I think, called Library. And you've got to check out the book, and you can only check out three. And Muffin is doing whatever Muffin wants to do. Muffin doesn't want to check out three. Muffin doesn't want to be quiet. Muffin's not following any of the rules of the game. And so Bluey and Bingo go complain to Uncle and Mom, hey, Muffin's not playing right. And they're like, just let Muffin play however Muffin wants. Like, okay. So they go back, and Muffin's behavior is ruining the game because Muffin believes that she is the most special child to ever exist and doesn't have to follow any of the rules. And so finally it comes to this point where Dad's got to get involved. So he goes and grabs Muffin and says, why aren't you playing right? And Muffin says, well, because I'm the most special child, I don't have to follow the rules that anybody else follows. And he says what a good dad would say. I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were not the most special child. You're the most special child to me and your mom. You're not more special than them. Okay. I say all that to say that Jesus did not go through life as God's special little boy, okay? He didn't just declare, I'm Jesus, I can do whatever I want, none of the rules apply to me. He lived with the same humanity, the same restraints, the same limitations that you do. He did not go through life thinking that he was special and some sort of exception. So the challenges that you face with being Christ-like, being godly, trying to follow the rules and do what the Bible says, trying to learn the Bible and apply it to your own life, Jesus faced those too. Jesus serves who we serve. He follows the laws that we're told we're following when we love God and love others. He was challenged just like you were. The last one is of particular interest to me. We see it down at the end of the story, verses 12 and 13. Satan has just told Jesus, he's taken him up to the top of the temple and he says, if you're really God, if you're really who you say you are, then fling yourself off the temple and God will send his angels to capture you. And this is Jesus' response. And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Before we unpack what's there in the temptation in Jesus' response, I included that last verse. Satan departed from him to return to him at a more opportune time. It's not as if Jesus had this one encounter with Satan and then was not tempted for the rest of his life. I have a note in my Bible that I wrote years ago that Jesus had moments of weakness too. Satan would prey on him at opportune times. So this resisting of temptation, this humanity that he experienced wasn't just a one and done deal here at the beginning of his ministry and now you're good. This is a persistent, pervasive thing. But in this response, it's fling yourself off and surely God will catch you. Jesus says, it is not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Now this is interesting because Jesus is God. And Jesus later says to Pilate, when Pilate's trying to ask if he was the king, he says, dude, if I wanted to get out of here, I could call the angels and they would get me. So we know that Jesus can call on the angels if he wants to. He doesn't need God the father to do it. He could have done this, called on the angels himself, not been in violation of any laws or any rules, I'm in perfectly fine. But he says, no, I can't do that. It's not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Because if angels are going to come rescue him, it's not going to be because he insisted on it. It's going to be because God acted for him. And so what we see is that Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies on God the same way that we rely on God. And the phrasing there is a little funny because I wanted it to fit in with the other notes because that's what good pastors do. But I'll explain it a little bit. I think of it this way. When Jesus went through life and was performing miracles and was preaching and teaching and was directing people and doing what he does, he didn't do all that with his Jesus powers. He did that with his Holy Spirit powers. He didn't perform miracles because he was Jesus from his Jesus powers. I don't know how to talk about it as if he's not in the Marvel universe, but that's how I think about it. He didn't use his Jesus powers. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he healed. He prayed, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he cast out demons. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was guided in wisdom. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was strengthened for obedience. He relied on the Holy Spirit the same way you rely on the Holy Spirit. He did not skate through life being Jesus, finding it within himself to do Jesus' things. He relies on the same God that you rely on. When he hurt, he ran to God for strength and for comfort. We see him do this. We see his humanity on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane where he falls on his face praying the night of his arrest and eventual crucifixion, God, please don't make me do this. Yet not my will, but your will be done. He did it God's way. He relied on God during his ministry when he would perform miracles. Not only is he praying to the Spirit to bring about this miracle, but then when he's done, he says, don't tell anybody I did this. It is not yet the proper time. He's sensitive to God's timing. He's reliant upon God for direction on the timing of when he should be crucified. Jesus relies on who we rely on. He prays like we pray. He needs the Spirit to move and to comfort and to cajole and to convict in the same way that we do. And so in all these different ways, we see on full display in the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Christ. And we see that he feels what we feel, that he serves who he serves, that he relies how we rely. And this makes him different than any other God in the pantheon of gods that we've invented or created or thought about on this earth. There's no other God that condescends to take on human form and offers his very presence to us, to understand us, to walk with us, to feel what we feel. And there's no other God that can offer this. And this is, my wife pointed this out to me. This is why she's my number one sermon counselor. But she pointed out this, and this is what the humanity of Jesus is driving to, that Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. When we see somebody hurt, before we had a miscarriage, Jen and I, and somebody would miscarriage, I could offer them my sympathy. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That must be difficult. But when it happened to us, he gave us the gift of empathy. And the gift of empathy, there's a couple at the church who miscarried recently. And it had recently happened and I had not called them and I saw them in church during worship. And I was able to just walk up to them and give them both a big tear-filled hug. And none of us said a word. And we all knew exactly what I meant. That's what empathy does. You know when you're going through something and you want to talk to somebody about it. You want to talk to somebody who's gone through it too. When Jen lost her dad, she wasn't super interested in people comforting her that had not walked through that. There's just something to knowing that the person you're talking to has that shared experience. Jesus has shared our experience. When we pray, we pray towards empathy, not sympathy, not a condescending God who doesn't understand the human experience and the human existence. We pray to a God who literally whispers into the ear of the Father as we pray. It says Jesus, Romans 8 tells us Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Going, I know what they're going through. I've been there. I get that. I understand it. Father, here's what they need. Do you realize that when you pray, you pray to empathy and how powerful that is? in this way, praying to a God that empathizes, understanding that Jesus is human, that Jesus offers us his presence. We can run to him with anything, and he is there with us, and he is present with us. This is why he leaves his spirit and says, it's better than me. I will be with you through my spirit. This is why I think Luke chose to highlight this in his gospel. This is why I think Jesus declared his humanity over and over and over again, and why it's on full display in all the gospels, particularly Luke. Because he wants you to know that you serve a God who feels what you feel, who serves the way you serve, who has to rely on God the way that you rely on God, and ultimately, who offers you his empathy and his comfort, not just his sympathy. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing that draws us to him. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We need you. And we are grateful that you are here for us. Thank you for the way that you love us, for the way that you care about us. Thank you for a Savior who condescended and took on human form, who became one of us so that he might know us and experience us and love us well. Thank you that you empathize with our hurts and our hangups and our habits. We thank you that you are a God who's experienced loss, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. And God, I pray that you would be with us in those things and in those ways. In Jesus' name, amen. Normally, I step off the stage right now, and I let Aaron do his thing. But I was thinking, as we were singing the first first three songs and I was listening to them sing, I'm always moved when people who are gifted with their voice declare it and let their heavenly father who made them that way hear it. I'm always moved when God made musicians on purpose use it to turn people to praise to him because God made them this way on purpose so that they would do this. But it also occurs to me that your heavenly father gave you a voice too. If you're like me, it's average at best. But what better Father's Day gift could we give to our heavenly father than to let him hear the voice that he gave you and declare praise back to him? So as we sing this last song, let's let it go. Let's let God hear us. Let's offer a Father's Day present to him as we allow him to hear the voices of his children declaring his praises.

Good morning, good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you are here with your dad today, good for you. You're a good kid. And if you're a dad and your kids are here, man, that's so great, especially if your adult kids still want to hang out with you. That's the dream, right? That's all we're trying to do with John and Lily. Just when we release them to the wild, we want to make sure they come back. I do want to offer a prayer here at the beginning of the sermon for fathers and for Father's Day because it's a day of mixed emotions. In our house, we've lost Jen's dad. And so she wants to celebrate me, but it's also a sad day. And sometimes days like this are wonderful because they allow us to celebrate wonderful people, but we also know that for different reasons, Father's Day can be difficult. And so I just wanted to offer a prayer here as we begin, and then I'm going to go into a message that has nothing to do with fathers or even manhood at all. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for being our good father. For those of us who have been blessed and lucky to have good dads, we're so grateful for that blessing. We're so grateful for dads who point the way to you, who are fallible and who mess up, but who love us and love you, and they show us how to do that. So thank you for them. And if we have those, God, help us to be like them. God, for those for whom today is painful, maybe it conjures up loss or hurt or any other things that days like this can stir. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would be reminded that you are the good father and that your love today would fill in the spots that are left behind by hurts or hardships or blind spots. So God, be a good father for us today. Let your children feel your presence. Thank you for the good dads. Give us grace for the not as good dads and help us be good dads too. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we are in the third part of our series called 27. We'll be doing it this summer and next summer, going through the 27 books in the New Testament. In the month of June, we've been going through the Gospels. So in the first week, we looked at Matthew, and we said that Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week, we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as a servant. And this week we're looking at the book of Luke. And Luke, the gospel of Luke, was written to the Greeks and it depicts Jesus as a human or as a man. So Luke was written to a Greek audience. There's a guy named Theophilus. It's addressed to, oh, blessed Theophilus. And Luke and the book of Acts are really two parts of the same book, the same letter that was written to Theophilus so that he might understand everything that happened in the life of Christ and then the things that happened immediately following the life of Christ. And so Luke was written to a Greek audience to depict Jesus as a human, as a man, because to the Greek mind and in Greek culture and thinking and philosophy, man is the apex of creation. We are the culmination of all the things. And so to depict Jesus as the greatest man to have ever lived, as the greatest philosopher to have ever lived, would be appealing and capturing and captivating to the Greek mind. But as I thought about us and how to preach that and how to apply that to us and how that should stir us, I was really focusing on the humanity of Christ and kind of asking myself all week long. I started thinking about it last week and just kind of chipping away at what does it mean to be human? What does it mean that Jesus was a human? Why is this important? And I was trying to figure this out. Whenever I write my sermons, I don't know how you guys write your sermons, but when I write my sermons, I try to just like, I think of it as the attack angle. Like, how am I going to approach this? What am I going to talk about? What's interesting about this? What's helpful about this? And I was having a really hard time with it. And so when I have a hard time, I talk to people. And our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, happened to be around. He's the only person around. I would have loved to talk to someone else. It was just him. So we ended up talking about it. And he actually made this point. I thought it was a great point. So I included in my sermon. Aaron has done at least one useful thing today. But he reminded me that Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. And in all honesty, we have such a good staff. I can go talk to any of them and be like, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to do. I can just throw out the sermon. And every time they get me unstuck and they are wonderful. And when he said this, I kind of do a thing when I'm trying to figure a sermon out or something out. And I ask you about it and you say something. Once you say the one useful thing, I'm like, that's it. I got it. You keep talking. I'm not there anymore. I'm thinking about son of man. And he said this, and I was like, that's it. So I dove into some research on that. Why did Jesus call himself that? What did it mean? And what I learned is it very much is Jesus's favorite term for himself. It shows up 32 times in the gospel of Matthew, 15 times in the gospel of Mark, and 26 times in the Gospel of Luke. And every single one of those times, it's Jesus himself using that term to refer to himself. The only time it's used 12 times in John, and two of those times it's someone else calling him that mockingly. But all the other times, this is how Jesus refers to himself as son of man. So why did he like that term? Why did he refer to himself as son of man? Well, first, the phrase son of man would have meant in the ancient world what human being means to us. It's just a way to say that I'm mortal. It's a way to say I'm a human. I'm part of the human race. So Jesus, every time he says it, is declaring his humanity. He's dropping a little hint. I'm a human. I'm a son of man. And we know that Jesus is both man and divine. The fancy theological word for Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is called the hypostatic union. So Jesus is highlighting the hypostatic union every time he says son of man, because he's declaring his humanity, but he's also referring back to this famous prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, this famous messianic prophecy. And I'm going to read it to you this morning and it'll be up on the screen because it just sounds cool. As I went back and I read it, I was like, this sounds like one of those good ancient prophecies and I want you guys to hear it because sometimes they say cool things in the Bible and this is one of them. Daniel has a vision in chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man comes like the Son of Man, and he is presented to the Ancient of Days. The Son of Man is Jesus. Ancient of Days is God the Father. And so this is a messianic prediction about Jesus ascending to the throne and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So when he says in the New Testament, Thy am the Son of Man, the Son of man has no place to lay his head. When he refers to himself like that, he is referring to Daniel seven. He is declaring his divinity while at the same time he's declaring his humanity. And I think that's a really interesting name and choice for Jesus to make to constantly declare his humanity. And I think it's even more interesting that Luke decided that this needed to be a theme of his gospel. There's other themes within the gospel. We spent the spring in the book of Luke, and we talked about it being the hospitality gospel, that throughout the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, attending, or coming from a meal. It's the hospitality gospel. There's around the table. But another theme of Luke, another thing that he weaves throughout the gospel is the humanity of Christ. Which brings us back to our question for the week. Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? What is so important about that? Why should it matter so much that Jesus is a human? Why did he himself choose a name that would highlight his humanity the entire time? Why did Luke, one of the gospel writers, decide to craft an entire gospel to display that aspect of our Christ? Why is this so important? This is an important question that I've been wrestling with all week. And the more I wrestled with it, the more aspects of it that I thought about, even kind of diving into what does it mean for us to be human? What makes us human? And going down that rabbit trail and all the things, what I realized is that there's a story in Luke, in Luke chapter 4, the temptation of Christ, that probably more dramatically and openly and honestly and overtly displays the humanity of Christ more than any other story in the Bible, save maybe the stories around his crucifixion. Jesus is utterly human in this story. And as I went through the story, I realized that the temptations that Jesus has are that Satan offers Jesus and the responses that Jesus offers Satan. I realized that those things actually highlight all of the reasons why it's so important for us to understand that Jesus is a human, that Jesus is man, that he's 100% man and 100% God. And it helps us understand why that's so important. And hopefully, as we move through this, if I do it right, what we'll find is ultimately Jesus' humanity is comforting and inspiring and even an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. So let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter four and look at the aspects of Jesus's humanity that are on full display for us to see that kind of answer some of our questions. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the temptation of Christ or need a refresher, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, he was 30 years old and then he was about to start calling disciples and declaring the gospel and start that process of public ministry. Before he started his public ministry, it took 40 days and he went out in the desert to pray and to fast and to prepare his body and his mind and his spirit for what he needed to do. And this isn't the point of the sermon at all, but it's so interesting to me that Jesus, the Savior of the world, the most capable minister that's ever existed, which is so gross an understatement it is stupid to say out loud. Jesus was good at ministry. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Go home. That's the best point I got today. Before, he's perfectly capable of the ministry. Before he began it, he went and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days. My volunteers in the room, folks who had stepped into kids ministry, into committees, to being on an elder board, who volunteer with students, who volunteer with the ministry downtown. Those of you who have brought children into the world and started that ministry. Me, as I took over the church. What period of preparation and prayer and fasting do we give ourselves for the task at hand before we just launch right into it thinking ourselves capable? And if Jesus doesn't do that, if Jesus doesn't launch into things without stopping and pausing and praying, then why do we think we can? So maybe there's a season for us where that's what we need to do as we enter into ministry. But he goes to fast and pray, And at the end of the 40 days, Satan comes to him to tempt him. And we see these three temptations that he has. The first one is found in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. So Satan comes to him, he's maximum hungry. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more hungry than you would be after 40 days. And Satan says when he's maximum hungry, maximum weak, if you are the son of God, this whole time Satan's trying to get him to prove that he is who he says he is. If you're the son of God, then turn this stone into bread and eat it and everybody will believe you. And Jesus says, quotes back scripture, man shall not live by bread alone., how is the humanity displayed in this verse? What we see in Jesus' response is that he's hungry. He's tempted, but he says, I don't need that right now. So what we see is that Jesus feels what we feel. Jesus feels and experiences what we feel and experience. And that's such a short and cheap sentence that if we don't stop, we're going to miss what that means and how profound that actually is. Originally, as I started writing the sermon, I was going to spend the whole morning here because I think it's unbelievable. First of all, Jesus condescended. He was in heavenly form. I don't know what heavenly form is, but it's better than this. And he took on this when he didn't have to and limited himself when he didn't have to. He became a human. It's the ultimate act of humility. I've known a lot of people over the years who want to help the impoverished in other countries. I've not known very many of them to move into that neighborhood. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. He took on human form and he began to feel what we feel. He experienced hunger like we experience hunger. You think God gets hungry? You think God the Father is looking forward to a steak on Father's Day? He doesn't care. He doesn't need food to sustain him. He took on hunger. Jesus was maximum hungry. He lived in a country and in a society that was not wealthy. He said the son of man has no place to lay his head. He wandered around as a vagabond for most of his adult ministry. If you've ever been hungry, people who have ever known hunger, they have a Jesus who can empathize with that hunger because he was hungry. He feels what we feel. I bet Jesus, because he's human, growing up, had insecurities. There was probably some cool kids that didn't like him, and it was hard. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus liked a girl that didn't like him back. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus saw his parents fight. I'd be willing to bet that he was embarrassed, that he was proud. Can you imagine the pride that you would have to fight back if you found out you were the savior of the world? Jesus has experienced all the human emotions that we have experienced. He experienced temptation. He experienced loss. We don't know where or how, but somewhere in between Luke chapter 3, or 2 rather, and Luke 3, Joseph disappears from the narrative. Joseph, his earthly father, who I'm just going to refer to as his father for ease of language, but I know that God's the father. He lost his dad at some point. We're not really given much indication if it was by death or by divorce, but we know that he fades away from the narrative and he's lost in the fog of history. So what we can be sure of is that Jesus understood either what it was to be in a broken home or what it was to lose a father early. Jesus, and I don't say this lightly to make a cheap joke. Jesus had father issues. I've always, I would be very interested to see how Jesus treated older men as he was growing up in his ministry. Because people with father issues tend to revere older men in ways that are different than folks without father issues. And I don't think that we stop to think enough about what it means for Jesus to be a human and to have experienced humanity. Because I started thinking about that too and what is it to be human? And I was reminded of back in the summer of 2020, I started to see a therapist or a counselor. I never know the right word. The one to help me identify and unpack all of my childhood issues. And there was no compelling event that took me there. There was no pressing thing. I just heard from enough people that it was a good practice to see a therapist. And so I thought if it's worked for other people, if it's been a good practice for them, I need to go try it too. And I found it to be an amazing experience. He told me all the things and I fixed it all within about nine months. I'm good now. Never need it again. It's probably time for a checkup, really. But in therapy, as he walked me through things, and I was just telling him about what's going on in my life and different things, and he'd ask me about my past, and it's not all just like childhood and parents, but you do talk about all that stuff in there. He showed this to me about myself. There's things about me that I don't like. There's things about me that if I could wave a wand, I would fix them. If I could wave a wand and give myself more patience, I would. If I could wave a wand and give myself more discernment in conversation, to not be such a dummy all the time, and for the joke that you don't need to go for, I would waive it. There's rough edges of my character that if you gave me the option to get rid of them, I would. I just don't know how. And you start to talk to your therapist about things like that. And what he helped me see is, yeah, those things are a part of you, but they're a part of you because of how you were brought up, the environment you were raised in, the things that happened around you. Those things are a part of you because of so much that was so outside of your control that you really can't even be blamed for those things being in your life. Now, it doesn't mean that as adults we shouldn't deal with those things and cope with those things and try to work them out of our life, but their very existence in our life is not our fault. And I started to learn, because I always thought that when somebody messes up, when somebody does something that they shouldn't do, that that's their fault. And if someone's living a life of bad choices and they're throwing their life away, that's their fault. They need to get their head out of their rear end, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and do the right thing. And I thought that about myself, too, that anything that existed within me that was bad and wrong and displeasing to God and displeasing to myself, I needed to figure it out and white-knuckle it and just walk my way to health. And what I learned in therapy is that that's not how that goes. The things that are a part of me that I didn't want, I didn't put there. Life did. It's just humanity. And learning that about myself gave me a deep empathy for the people around me. I know that it's difficult to tell at times, but it's deeper now than it used to be. It helped me understand if I didn't choose my brokenness, then they didn't either. And the bad habits and the bad behaviors and the bad attitudes and all of those things that exist in their life were not chosen by them because they want them. They are products of the environment that they were brought up in. Those are things that happened to them, not things that they chose. And then those things cause behaviors that are unattractive, but they don't like those behaviors either. It gave me a deep empathy for others. It helped me understand that when I meet a grown man who wants to tell me his 40 time or is proud of how loud his car is or something, that he's not just a jerk. He is a jerk because nobody cares about that stuff. But he's also just saying in an undeveloped way, will you please like me? Will you just tell me that I'm enough? Will someone give me some approval? It helped me realize we're all just bags of insecurities and coping mechanisms. And some of us just learn to do it better than others. But it gave me a deep empathy for humans. And I say all that to say that Jesus was a human too. Jesus carried those things. Jesus had to work through his brokenness and his loss and his disappointment. Jesus watched that happen in the people around him. He saw that too. This is why I honestly believe that when we sin and we mess up and we make life choices and involve ourselves in patterns and habits that Jesus wouldn't choose for us, that when he sees us do those things, I truly don't think that his primary response to us is frustration or anger. I think it's pity and hurt and love and empathy. I think he sees our hurt driving us into places of deeper hurt, and he's just waiting and begging for the day that we come back to him and allow him to heal us. I think it's that song we sing, Reckless Love. There's no mountain that he won't climb up. There's no wall he won't kick down. Like he's coming after us. He sees you hurting and hurting yourself and he's relentlessly pursuing you. And listen, I don't think he's mad at you for your sins. I think he watches your sins and it hurts him that you continue to hurt yourself in that way because he's a human and he knows why you're doing it and he has deep empathy for it and he wants you to stop. It matters so much that Jesus feels what we feel. The other aspect of his humanity that we see in the temptation of Christ is that the second temptation. Your notes say verse 7. I'm going to start and their glory he's offering in the kingdoms of the world. For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So Satan takes him to where he can see the kingdoms of the world and he says, they've been given to me. If you want them, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is worship me. And Jesus' response is, I am only allowed to worship God the Father. And so what this reveals is Jesus serves who we serve. Jesus serves who we serve. He's subject to the same laws and edicts that we are. He doesn't say, I only can worship myself. He says, no, I can only worship God the Father, no one else, which means that Jesus was subject to the same laws that we were. He followed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He followed the law of the Old Testament perfectly. He was a human who was tempted to break the law, but he didn't. He still followed God's laws like we do. He didn't think that he was too good for them. Last night I was watching Bluey with Lily, my daughter. And if you are a parent of, I don't know what the age range would be, of a kid under 10 and you don't know what Bluey is, you're not a good parent. It's amazing. We're watching it, and in this particular episode, there's two little kids. Their little dog's Bluey, and Bingo is the little sister, and Bluey is the older sister, and then they've got a cousin named Muffin. All this is important, okay? Don't forget these details. And Muffin's coming. She's riding with Uncle Scout or whoever over to Bluey and Bingo's house. And Muffin asks her dad if she's special. And dad says, yes, you're very special. And then dad says, you're the most special kid on the planet. And I'm watching it thinking, that is not smart. That's not smart. Your kid is not the most special kid on the planet. No kid is. And they get to Bluey's house, and they start to play. The three kids start to play, and they're playing a game, I think, called Library. And you've got to check out the book, and you can only check out three. And Muffin is doing whatever Muffin wants to do. Muffin doesn't want to check out three. Muffin doesn't want to be quiet. Muffin's not following any of the rules of the game. And so Bluey and Bingo go complain to Uncle and Mom, hey, Muffin's not playing right. And they're like, just let Muffin play however Muffin wants. Like, okay. So they go back, and Muffin's behavior is ruining the game because Muffin believes that she is the most special child to ever exist and doesn't have to follow any of the rules. And so finally it comes to this point where Dad's got to get involved. So he goes and grabs Muffin and says, why aren't you playing right? And Muffin says, well, because I'm the most special child, I don't have to follow the rules that anybody else follows. And he says what a good dad would say. I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were not the most special child. You're the most special child to me and your mom. You're not more special than them. Okay. I say all that to say that Jesus did not go through life as God's special little boy, okay? He didn't just declare, I'm Jesus, I can do whatever I want, none of the rules apply to me. He lived with the same humanity, the same restraints, the same limitations that you do. He did not go through life thinking that he was special and some sort of exception. So the challenges that you face with being Christ-like, being godly, trying to follow the rules and do what the Bible says, trying to learn the Bible and apply it to your own life, Jesus faced those too. Jesus serves who we serve. He follows the laws that we're told we're following when we love God and love others. He was challenged just like you were. The last one is of particular interest to me. We see it down at the end of the story, verses 12 and 13. Satan has just told Jesus, he's taken him up to the top of the temple and he says, if you're really God, if you're really who you say you are, then fling yourself off the temple and God will send his angels to capture you. And this is Jesus' response. And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Before we unpack what's there in the temptation in Jesus' response, I included that last verse. Satan departed from him to return to him at a more opportune time. It's not as if Jesus had this one encounter with Satan and then was not tempted for the rest of his life. I have a note in my Bible that I wrote years ago that Jesus had moments of weakness too. Satan would prey on him at opportune times. So this resisting of temptation, this humanity that he experienced wasn't just a one and done deal here at the beginning of his ministry and now you're good. This is a persistent, pervasive thing. But in this response, it's fling yourself off and surely God will catch you. Jesus says, it is not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Now this is interesting because Jesus is God. And Jesus later says to Pilate, when Pilate's trying to ask if he was the king, he says, dude, if I wanted to get out of here, I could call the angels and they would get me. So we know that Jesus can call on the angels if he wants to. He doesn't need God the father to do it. He could have done this, called on the angels himself, not been in violation of any laws or any rules, I'm in perfectly fine. But he says, no, I can't do that. It's not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Because if angels are going to come rescue him, it's not going to be because he insisted on it. It's going to be because God acted for him. And so what we see is that Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies on God the same way that we rely on God. And the phrasing there is a little funny because I wanted it to fit in with the other notes because that's what good pastors do. But I'll explain it a little bit. I think of it this way. When Jesus went through life and was performing miracles and was preaching and teaching and was directing people and doing what he does, he didn't do all that with his Jesus powers. He did that with his Holy Spirit powers. He didn't perform miracles because he was Jesus from his Jesus powers. I don't know how to talk about it as if he's not in the Marvel universe, but that's how I think about it. He didn't use his Jesus powers. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he healed. He prayed, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he cast out demons. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was guided in wisdom. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was strengthened for obedience. He relied on the Holy Spirit the same way you rely on the Holy Spirit. He did not skate through life being Jesus, finding it within himself to do Jesus' things. He relies on the same God that you rely on. When he hurt, he ran to God for strength and for comfort. We see him do this. We see his humanity on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane where he falls on his face praying the night of his arrest and eventual crucifixion, God, please don't make me do this. Yet not my will, but your will be done. He did it God's way. He relied on God during his ministry when he would perform miracles. Not only is he praying to the Spirit to bring about this miracle, but then when he's done, he says, don't tell anybody I did this. It is not yet the proper time. He's sensitive to God's timing. He's reliant upon God for direction on the timing of when he should be crucified. Jesus relies on who we rely on. He prays like we pray. He needs the Spirit to move and to comfort and to cajole and to convict in the same way that we do. And so in all these different ways, we see on full display in the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Christ. And we see that he feels what we feel, that he serves who he serves, that he relies how we rely. And this makes him different than any other God in the pantheon of gods that we've invented or created or thought about on this earth. There's no other God that condescends to take on human form and offers his very presence to us, to understand us, to walk with us, to feel what we feel. And there's no other God that can offer this. And this is, my wife pointed this out to me. This is why she's my number one sermon counselor. But she pointed out this, and this is what the humanity of Jesus is driving to, that Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. When we see somebody hurt, before we had a miscarriage, Jen and I, and somebody would miscarriage, I could offer them my sympathy. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That must be difficult. But when it happened to us, he gave us the gift of empathy. And the gift of empathy, there's a couple at the church who miscarried recently. And it had recently happened and I had not called them and I saw them in church during worship. And I was able to just walk up to them and give them both a big tear-filled hug. And none of us said a word. And we all knew exactly what I meant. That's what empathy does. You know when you're going through something and you want to talk to somebody about it. You want to talk to somebody who's gone through it too. When Jen lost her dad, she wasn't super interested in people comforting her that had not walked through that. There's just something to knowing that the person you're talking to has that shared experience. Jesus has shared our experience. When we pray, we pray towards empathy, not sympathy, not a condescending God who doesn't understand the human experience and the human existence. We pray to a God who literally whispers into the ear of the Father as we pray. It says Jesus, Romans 8 tells us Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Going, I know what they're going through. I've been there. I get that. I understand it. Father, here's what they need. Do you realize that when you pray, you pray to empathy and how powerful that is? in this way, praying to a God that empathizes, understanding that Jesus is human, that Jesus offers us his presence. We can run to him with anything, and he is there with us, and he is present with us. This is why he leaves his spirit and says, it's better than me. I will be with you through my spirit. This is why I think Luke chose to highlight this in his gospel. This is why I think Jesus declared his humanity over and over and over again, and why it's on full display in all the gospels, particularly Luke. Because he wants you to know that you serve a God who feels what you feel, who serves the way you serve, who has to rely on God the way that you rely on God, and ultimately, who offers you his empathy and his comfort, not just his sympathy. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing that draws us to him. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We need you. And we are grateful that you are here for us. Thank you for the way that you love us, for the way that you care about us. Thank you for a Savior who condescended and took on human form, who became one of us so that he might know us and experience us and love us well. Thank you that you empathize with our hurts and our hangups and our habits. We thank you that you are a God who's experienced loss, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. And God, I pray that you would be with us in those things and in those ways. In Jesus' name, amen. Normally, I step off the stage right now, and I let Aaron do his thing. But I was thinking, as we were singing the first first three songs and I was listening to them sing, I'm always moved when people who are gifted with their voice declare it and let their heavenly father who made them that way hear it. I'm always moved when God made musicians on purpose use it to turn people to praise to him because God made them this way on purpose so that they would do this. But it also occurs to me that your heavenly father gave you a voice too. If you're like me, it's average at best. But what better Father's Day gift could we give to our heavenly father than to let him hear the voice that he gave you and declare praise back to him? So as we sing this last song, let's let it go. Let's let God hear us. Let's offer a Father's Day present to him as we allow him to hear the voices of his children declaring his praises.

Advent. The coming. The waiting for light to shine in the darkness. We light candles each week to remind us of the coming of Christmas. As the candles burn down, our anticipation grows. We hear songs on the radio, think about sales we want to hit, see the smiles and the well wishes of peace on earth, the bright lights and decorations and everyone talking about joy, joy, joy. Really? People are more cranky and stressed, more frustrated and depressed than ever. Tragic news pops up in our headlines almost daily now and around the world we hear the same story. We live in a world starving for joy. In the New Testament, Luke tells us of angels coming to announce the birth of Jesus to some lowly and defeated, depressed, and joy-starved shepherds. That night, there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, Don't be afraid, he said. I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Lighting up night, the angel proclaimed, And we marvel as well that God would step into our mess, a broken world marred by our sin. And the knowledge that God is accomplishing something new, that he cannot be stopped or deterred, brings us great comfort and great joy. Yes, we still feel sorrow and pain, but God is ever redeeming, ever remaking, bringing joy from sadness, and we look forward to his return when he will make all things new, and we will live in the great unceasing joy that he has promised us. No matter what you go through, we can know this. Jesus is with us. Think about it. He is with you in your greatest victories and your most humiliating defeats. He invited us to come with him and he will give us rest. He has won the victory for us to relieve our frustration and stress. Our striving is over. Let us be overjoyed. Jesus is with us at all times, in all things. That is the beauty of meeting together around these candles. We light a new Advent candle each week to help us prepare for the coming of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. And this week we light the pink candle to remind us of the real, deep-seated joy that Jesus brings that we can hold onto no matter what is going on. This great joy is the startling realization that God has taken up residence in this world. Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Will you receive this king? to be here this morning talking to you about joy. I am also very sorry that I just made that wordplay joke. That was terrible. I can't promise you it's going to be the last one of the sermon, but I can promise you you're going to not enjoy any of them. But the truth is the same. I am so thrilled to be here this morning getting to talk about joy. As you just heard, we are in our third Sunday of Advent. We are lighting the candle of joy, the pink candle of joy, and for me, it is maybe my favorite one. I think maybe the reason for that is because I believe one of the major reasons why people love Christmas so much, why it truly is the most wonderful time of the year, or at least this is how I feel, is because I feel like Christmas is just synonymous with joy. That the purpose of Christmas, the purpose of all of the decorations and the lights and the giving gifts and the songs and just the super fun, joyful songs. All of this is just meant to bring about this joy of this Christmas season. And it's so cool because when you go all the way back to scripture and when you look at the very first Christmas, I think we see the same exact thing. When we jump into Luke 2, and we're going to actually read through some verses in Luke 2, when we look at the first Christmas, as we look at what happened when Jesus was born, I think we're just overwhelmed with the amount of joy that's coming out of it. As it starts, Jesus has been born and there are shepherds that are in the field. They're to Jesus, this angel comes. And so we pick a sign for you. wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, excuse me, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so what happens? The angels go away and the shepherds immediately, I mean, it doesn't say this, but I imagine they sprinted to go find this baby because they're like, that was the most insane thing I've ever seen. I've got to figure out what they're talking about. And so they go and they see that what the angels had said was true, that this baby had been born. And I think they knew, they knew what that meant. And so after they see the baby, they see that it's legit. They run back and they want to tell everybody they know. They tell their families that it says they basically just recited what the angels had said to them. And then what did they do then? They hussled on back. They returned. They had to go see Jesus again. And we pick up back in verse 20, it says, I mean, there's just joy oozing out of every part of that passage. You start, you got the angels who come and they bring, quote, good tidings, good news of great joy. And then after delivering the message they have, they immediately start singing. It was essentially the world's first Buddy the Elf Christmas gram. And then after they get done singing, all of these shepherds in their joy and excitement run over. They see Jesus and then they're so excited that they take their joy elsewhere and tell other people about it. And then they bring them back and they're so overjoyed at just looking at God that they just have to turn to praising God because they're so overcome with this joy that they've experienced. And how incredible is it that now, today, this season, this December 25th, this Christmas time, we're celebrating that exact same joy. And I would argue that even the, excuse me, even the folks that celebrate Christmas that are more doing it just as a holiday, maybe because they aren't believers yet, that I don't think that they would even argue with you that Christmas is synonymous with joy. Because every part of Christmas is meant to push that agenda. But what we have the blessing of knowing is that the reason, the real reason why Christmas is synonymous with joy is because Christ is synonymous with joy and because Christ was born and Christ came and we have the gospel, we have the Savior who we know came and we know why that is a big deal and why that is important. And so we celebrate with everything we have. We have this childlike wonder and this childlike joy to just sing these goofy songs and to put up these goofy decorations and to do all of these things so that we can celebrate with the people around us this great and wonderful and awesome Christmas joy like none other. But as we all know too well, regardless of how soon, regardless of what date, even if it's like November 1st that we decide, all right, I'm going ahead, I'm getting my Christmas tree, I'm putting up my Christmas decorations as soon as possible, I'm immediately switching to only Christmas music for the next three months, as we all know, as quickly as Christmas comes, it goes. As quickly as we are just once again encapsulated by the joy of Christmas, we get on the other side of it. We get into the new year and we pack up all of our Christmas stuff and we kind of turn from that Christmas joy back into our far less joyful, far more mundane, boring, regular lives. Counting down the days until it's the next Christmas season so that you can experience that Christmas joy all over again. This is going to be weird to say, but just roll with me. I feel like our relationship with Christmas in this way is similar to my relationship that I had for a long time with the sport of disc golf. Yes, I said disc golf. It is not the same as actually as was said to me this morning, golf golf or real golf or regular golf or as us in the disc golf community like to call it, ball golf, but it is similar. Instead of there being a hole in the ground and instead of hitting a ball with a club, yeah, the form was good, I know. That was just a show off to you guys. But instead of that, it is played with a frisbee, or with different frisbees, so you throw it, and the goal is to get it down into a basket in a certain number of shots. You know, you've got your birdies, you've got your pars, bogeys, all of that stuff, and you play a round of disc golf. Now, for those of you who know me, this sport was basically tailor-made for me. One, because it's outside, and it's in these beautiful parks in nature, and you just get to be a part of that, and that's really cool. Another thing is, like, it's a sport in the sense of you're throwing frisbees, and throwing Frisbee is literally my favorite thing to do and has been my entire life. But it's not so intense to where you still just get to hang out with the people that you're with. Talk, mess around, and it was perfect during COVID because you could stay far away from people but still be around people. And you add an element of competition. And as much as I love disc golf, it was something that I very seldomly did. Basically, it was my times playing disc golf were reserved to the times where I was able to go visit home or we would go on maybe a once or twice a year, we would go on a family vacation when it worked out for the family's schedules. And so anytime we'd go on one of these vacations, my brother and my dad and I would look up and we would try to find these different local disc golf courses so that we could play. And it was awesome. It's so much fun. Like I said, it's right down my alley to play this sport. And so it became one of those things where like one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips and about getting to see my family was being able to look up these different courses and get to go and play these courses the couple times a year I was able to do so. Well, imagine my elation as I put together in my head that, wait, Kyle, you can play disc golf more than just a couple times a year. Because, Kyle, there's literally a disc golf course that's a quarter mile from your house that you drive by all the time. Now, as you hear that, I know you're putting it together in your head and you're giving me way too much benefit of the doubt as you think, oh, I bet what he did is say, I like disc golf. I wonder if there's any courses in Raleigh and realize that this one was close. No. Literally, this is a course that is very easily seen that I drove by, I'd point at people playing disc golf, and I'd be like, can't wait to play that in six months. I know, I was very obtuse to this understanding that this is something that was within my grasp this whole time, but thus, there I was, realizing for the first time this truth, that I could go and I could play this sport of disc golf, this thing that I absolutely loved doing, I could go and I could play it whenever I wanted to. Well, let me tell you that that is exactly what happened. I started playing all the time. I, I'd get done with work, and I'd go and play like two rounds every day. I'd hit up people, see if they'd want to come, or I'd go out there by myself, and I absolutely loved it. Because guess what happens when you really love something, and something brings you a lot of joy, and then you get to do it all the time. It brings you a lot of joy. And clearly I'm saying that to say the point of my message this morning is keep all of your Christmas decorations up all year. No, obviously not. And I mean, like you do you if that's down your alley, like more power to you. But obviously the point of that is not to say, hey, if Christmas brings you joy, then just celebrate Christmas all year. But what I am here to say is that the joy that is brought through Christmas is not brought because of the season. It's brought because of the truth of Christ. And there is a big and vast difference between the first time that these people celebrated Christmas and us celebrating today. And what that difference is, is that they were celebrating the birth of a baby that gave them hope. We celebrate not only the coming of Jesus, but the life of Jesus. And we celebrate the death of Jesus as he took on the weight of our sin, of your sin, of my sin, and said, I am putting this to death because I want the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And in that death, and in his resurrection, coming back to life, signifying that if we would put our sin behind us, if we would simply say, I realize that I am not perfect, I realize I deserve nothing but death, but I also realize what Jesus has done for me and has given me the opportunity to have eternal relationship with God, with our creator, with this perfect creator. And that is the joy that we celebrate on Christmas. That is the gospel. And put so beautifully, I think, by a musical group, Beautiful Eulogy, in their title song, they say, as long as the gospel is true, why do we treat Christmas as our quick fix, as our quick time where we are able to experience this great joy. Why do we use Christmas as the one time that we just celebrate Jesus and we're willing to be more childlike in our hearts? Being a little bit more goofy, decorating a little bit weirder, all because inside of us we're just joyful that it's Christmas time. Because the joy of Christmas and the joy of the gospel is forever. In Lamentations, Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy. But nonetheless, here we go. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy,. Again, I say rejoice. I've got news for you. God invented joy. God sent his son to be born and created the joy that that brought to those people. He sent his son to die so that we could have joy eternally. He didn't create joy to say, man, when it comes to December, my people are going to be so excited. He sent joy so that literally every single day he could shower on us joy and he could shower new mercies on us every morning. God is giddy to bring you joy. He wants to celebrate with us. He invented singing. He invented dancing, both of which I'm eternally thankful to him for. Because they're great and I'm great at both of them. But not only that, but guess what happens? Guess what happened when I started playing disc golf a lot more? I got a lot better. As I played more, I started understanding more intricacies of the game. I grew this much greater love and appreciation for what was going on, from what I was seeing other people doing and trying to emulate that because I wanted to achieve those things, I started achieving goals that, like, I never even thought I could achieve, you know? I was getting my first birdies, shooting my first under par round, shooting my first 10 under par round. A few weeks ago, I think some of you guys saw on Facebook because I posted about it. I wasn't quite as joyful on my Facebook post because, you know, the putting was off. But I played in my first tournament, which is hilarious because I didn't even know that that's a thing that existed. Like when I used to just play a couple times a year, like I was like, oh, that's a thing people do. And hey, guess what? Yes, it's a thing that people do, including your boy Kyle. And I played in it, and it was so much fun, and it was so cool to just like unlock this whole new joy I didn't even know was a real thing. My putter was off, but hey, you know what that did? That just made me want to press in, because I didn't want to fall short on my putter again. The next round I play in a tournament, I want to do better. I want to see what it feels like to do even better than that. Hey, a few days after that, I went and played disc golf with my brother and with my sister-in-law, and that in itself brought me great joy. But hole 13, I got my first ace, my first hole in one. I mean, I like, you know, I put it, I got my stance. I ripped it up. Nice little Anheuser, little turnover shot up the hill, about 250 feet uphill. Smashed that thing. It's flying. It's going. Smashes into the chains. Lands in the basket. And I go nuts. I mean, like, you probably can imagine, like, you're watching me right now, and you're like, this guy's just talking, and he's going this crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. But I went insane. I was screaming, I was yelling, I was cheering. Like, literally, I wanted to make sure everyone on the course knew that I had just gotten an ace. I mean, like, I'm running around and yelling. Like, to the point that I turn around at one point, I see that my disc golf bag is here on my bench, and all my body can think to do is, I got to kick that. And so I just kick it, like, through the air. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled, and it was awesome, and I can't wait to get another one. But what was incredible to think about was the fact that that was a joy. Throwing a hole-in-one in disc golf is a joy I never even thought to be possible when I was just playing disc golf once or twice a year. Playing in a tournament, I didn't even know tournaments existed back when I was just doing it once or twice a year. Literally, as I kept playing, I've continued to unlock these greater and greater joys that I never even knew were possible or never even knew existed. And that's just a silly game. I love it. It's fun. Let's go play sometime. But it's just a silly game. Imagine how much more joy the Lord has in store for you if you will just say, I want to put that type of effort every day into seeking after him. I want my faith to be so important to me that instead of just waiting for December, I want every day to be a day that I'm seeking the same type of joy that I get to experience during Christmas time. Psalm 1611 says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, true, complete, 100% fullness of joy, may not be completely available until heaven, where joy, as John Piper put it, joy has no other competitors. I believe that this verse is making us, making it known that this does not start until heaven. I mean, excuse me, that this starts way before heaven. We get to experience this fullness of joy now. And guess what? Fullness of joy changes definitions because God continues to unlock joys we never even knew were existent. He has pleasures for us forever. He wants to shower on us a love that knows no bounds that we can't even comprehend. He wants to bring peace to us and hope to us that sustains us in every part and in every portion and in every circumstance of our life. And he wants to overwhelm us with joy to the point that as an overflow, we can't help but sing and we can't help but dance and we can't help but just be childlike and giddy because we're so overwhelmed with the blessings of God. And at the end of the day, I say all of this, but I don't say this to say that the gospel changes. The gospel remains the same. Every Christmas we're celebrating the same thing. And so I don't say this to say that if you spend more time with God and if you spend more time in scripture and more time growing in your personal faith, that that will change the facts of the gospel. Because the gospel is the root of our joy. The gospel is the reason why we're able to rejoice. But what I am saying is when we choose to pursue this type of joy, when we choose to pursue the joy of the gospel and the joy of salvation and the joy that is a relationship with God, when we choose that daily, and when we decide that we want to start taking that next step of obedience, whatever that looks like in our life, I can promise you that those joys that you experience through a growing faith will be far deeper and they'll be far sweeter and they will be far more profound and they will come so much more frequently than anything that you could ever imagine. So, what if next Christmas, what if instead of next Christmas being just the next time where we get to celebrate the joy of Jesus, what if instead it is a time where we get to take stock of what the Lord has done in our lives and in our hearts the last year, where we look back at the Christmas prior and then we see the ways that because we sprinted after and we pursued the joys of the Lord all year, and we said, oh my gosh, look at the unbelievable things that the Lord has done in my life this year. Literally, if I would have thought last Christmas that the Lord would have done this in my life, I would have said there's absolutely no way. So what if next year? What if next Christmas? What if this Christmas? What if from now until this Christmas when we look back from, what, a week, two weeks? We say, gosh, look at all the joys that the Lord has brought me and my heart and my family just in these two weeks. And I think that's the point of Christmas. Not simply to celebrate a birth of Jesus, but to celebrate his life in eternity. Everything that he did. Everything that that means for us. And because the gospel is true, and because the gospel is final, we do not have to wait for Christmas time to rejoice. But instead, we always have reason to rejoice. God's blessings, his joys, his mercies are new every morning and all he wants to do is shower them on you because all he wants to do is celebrate with you his creation and somebody who he has a relationship with that he loves more so than we can even grasp. And so let our joy of this Christmas be the beginning. Let it be the root by which our joy grows throughout this year. And I can't wait until next Christmas to hear what has grown out of that root of joy that started last Christmas. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for creating joy. Thank you for Christmas, God. Thank you for even the holiday of Christmas so that we can be reminded of your great joy, so we can be reminded of the gospel and of its truth. But God, let us not forget once Christmas time is over that the joy of the gospel is final and is forever. But instead, God, let this be the nudge in the right direction to say, I want this joy always. Every day, I'm going to pursue it. I'm going to pursue you. God, let us pursue you always. And let us, let you do what brings you so much joy, and that is simply raining down blessings, raining down mercies, and raining down joy upon your children. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

Advent. The coming. The waiting for light to shine in the darkness. We light candles each week to remind us of the coming of Christmas. As the candles burn down, our anticipation grows. We hear songs on the radio, think about sales we want to hit, see the smiles and the well wishes of peace on earth, the bright lights and decorations and everyone talking about joy, joy, joy. Really? People are more cranky and stressed, more frustrated and depressed than ever. Tragic news pops up in our headlines almost daily now and around the world we hear the same story. We live in a world starving for joy. In the New Testament, Luke tells us of angels coming to announce the birth of Jesus to some lowly and defeated, depressed, and joy-starved shepherds. That night, there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, Don't be afraid, he said. I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Lighting up night, the angel proclaimed, And we marvel as well that God would step into our mess, a broken world marred by our sin. And the knowledge that God is accomplishing something new, that he cannot be stopped or deterred, brings us great comfort and great joy. Yes, we still feel sorrow and pain, but God is ever redeeming, ever remaking, bringing joy from sadness, and we look forward to his return when he will make all things new, and we will live in the great unceasing joy that he has promised us. No matter what you go through, we can know this. Jesus is with us. Think about it. He is with you in your greatest victories and your most humiliating defeats. He invited us to come with him and he will give us rest. He has won the victory for us to relieve our frustration and stress. Our striving is over. Let us be overjoyed. Jesus is with us at all times, in all things. That is the beauty of meeting together around these candles. We light a new Advent candle each week to help us prepare for the coming of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. And this week we light the pink candle to remind us of the real, deep-seated joy that Jesus brings that we can hold onto no matter what is going on. This great joy is the startling realization that God has taken up residence in this world. Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Will you receive this king? to be here this morning talking to you about joy. I am also very sorry that I just made that wordplay joke. That was terrible. I can't promise you it's going to be the last one of the sermon, but I can promise you you're going to not enjoy any of them. But the truth is the same. I am so thrilled to be here this morning getting to talk about joy. As you just heard, we are in our third Sunday of Advent. We are lighting the candle of joy, the pink candle of joy, and for me, it is maybe my favorite one. I think maybe the reason for that is because I believe one of the major reasons why people love Christmas so much, why it truly is the most wonderful time of the year, or at least this is how I feel, is because I feel like Christmas is just synonymous with joy. That the purpose of Christmas, the purpose of all of the decorations and the lights and the giving gifts and the songs and just the super fun, joyful songs. All of this is just meant to bring about this joy of this Christmas season. And it's so cool because when you go all the way back to scripture and when you look at the very first Christmas, I think we see the same exact thing. When we jump into Luke 2, and we're going to actually read through some verses in Luke 2, when we look at the first Christmas, as we look at what happened when Jesus was born, I think we're just overwhelmed with the amount of joy that's coming out of it. As it starts, Jesus has been born and there are shepherds that are in the field. They're to Jesus, this angel comes. And so we pick a sign for you. wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, excuse me, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so what happens? The angels go away and the shepherds immediately, I mean, it doesn't say this, but I imagine they sprinted to go find this baby because they're like, that was the most insane thing I've ever seen. I've got to figure out what they're talking about. And so they go and they see that what the angels had said was true, that this baby had been born. And I think they knew, they knew what that meant. And so after they see the baby, they see that it's legit. They run back and they want to tell everybody they know. They tell their families that it says they basically just recited what the angels had said to them. And then what did they do then? They hussled on back. They returned. They had to go see Jesus again. And we pick up back in verse 20, it says, I mean, there's just joy oozing out of every part of that passage. You start, you got the angels who come and they bring, quote, good tidings, good news of great joy. And then after delivering the message they have, they immediately start singing. It was essentially the world's first Buddy the Elf Christmas gram. And then after they get done singing, all of these shepherds in their joy and excitement run over. They see Jesus and then they're so excited that they take their joy elsewhere and tell other people about it. And then they bring them back and they're so overjoyed at just looking at God that they just have to turn to praising God because they're so overcome with this joy that they've experienced. And how incredible is it that now, today, this season, this December 25th, this Christmas time, we're celebrating that exact same joy. And I would argue that even the, excuse me, even the folks that celebrate Christmas that are more doing it just as a holiday, maybe because they aren't believers yet, that I don't think that they would even argue with you that Christmas is synonymous with joy. Because every part of Christmas is meant to push that agenda. But what we have the blessing of knowing is that the reason, the real reason why Christmas is synonymous with joy is because Christ is synonymous with joy and because Christ was born and Christ came and we have the gospel, we have the Savior who we know came and we know why that is a big deal and why that is important. And so we celebrate with everything we have. We have this childlike wonder and this childlike joy to just sing these goofy songs and to put up these goofy decorations and to do all of these things so that we can celebrate with the people around us this great and wonderful and awesome Christmas joy like none other. But as we all know too well, regardless of how soon, regardless of what date, even if it's like November 1st that we decide, all right, I'm going ahead, I'm getting my Christmas tree, I'm putting up my Christmas decorations as soon as possible, I'm immediately switching to only Christmas music for the next three months, as we all know, as quickly as Christmas comes, it goes. As quickly as we are just once again encapsulated by the joy of Christmas, we get on the other side of it. We get into the new year and we pack up all of our Christmas stuff and we kind of turn from that Christmas joy back into our far less joyful, far more mundane, boring, regular lives. Counting down the days until it's the next Christmas season so that you can experience that Christmas joy all over again. This is going to be weird to say, but just roll with me. I feel like our relationship with Christmas in this way is similar to my relationship that I had for a long time with the sport of disc golf. Yes, I said disc golf. It is not the same as actually as was said to me this morning, golf golf or real golf or regular golf or as us in the disc golf community like to call it, ball golf, but it is similar. Instead of there being a hole in the ground and instead of hitting a ball with a club, yeah, the form was good, I know. That was just a show off to you guys. But instead of that, it is played with a frisbee, or with different frisbees, so you throw it, and the goal is to get it down into a basket in a certain number of shots. You know, you've got your birdies, you've got your pars, bogeys, all of that stuff, and you play a round of disc golf. Now, for those of you who know me, this sport was basically tailor-made for me. One, because it's outside, and it's in these beautiful parks in nature, and you just get to be a part of that, and that's really cool. Another thing is, like, it's a sport in the sense of you're throwing frisbees, and throwing Frisbee is literally my favorite thing to do and has been my entire life. But it's not so intense to where you still just get to hang out with the people that you're with. Talk, mess around, and it was perfect during COVID because you could stay far away from people but still be around people. And you add an element of competition. And as much as I love disc golf, it was something that I very seldomly did. Basically, it was my times playing disc golf were reserved to the times where I was able to go visit home or we would go on maybe a once or twice a year, we would go on a family vacation when it worked out for the family's schedules. And so anytime we'd go on one of these vacations, my brother and my dad and I would look up and we would try to find these different local disc golf courses so that we could play. And it was awesome. It's so much fun. Like I said, it's right down my alley to play this sport. And so it became one of those things where like one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips and about getting to see my family was being able to look up these different courses and get to go and play these courses the couple times a year I was able to do so. Well, imagine my elation as I put together in my head that, wait, Kyle, you can play disc golf more than just a couple times a year. Because, Kyle, there's literally a disc golf course that's a quarter mile from your house that you drive by all the time. Now, as you hear that, I know you're putting it together in your head and you're giving me way too much benefit of the doubt as you think, oh, I bet what he did is say, I like disc golf. I wonder if there's any courses in Raleigh and realize that this one was close. No. Literally, this is a course that is very easily seen that I drove by, I'd point at people playing disc golf, and I'd be like, can't wait to play that in six months. I know, I was very obtuse to this understanding that this is something that was within my grasp this whole time, but thus, there I was, realizing for the first time this truth, that I could go and I could play this sport of disc golf, this thing that I absolutely loved doing, I could go and I could play it whenever I wanted to. Well, let me tell you that that is exactly what happened. I started playing all the time. I, I'd get done with work, and I'd go and play like two rounds every day. I'd hit up people, see if they'd want to come, or I'd go out there by myself, and I absolutely loved it. Because guess what happens when you really love something, and something brings you a lot of joy, and then you get to do it all the time. It brings you a lot of joy. And clearly I'm saying that to say the point of my message this morning is keep all of your Christmas decorations up all year. No, obviously not. And I mean, like you do you if that's down your alley, like more power to you. But obviously the point of that is not to say, hey, if Christmas brings you joy, then just celebrate Christmas all year. But what I am here to say is that the joy that is brought through Christmas is not brought because of the season. It's brought because of the truth of Christ. And there is a big and vast difference between the first time that these people celebrated Christmas and us celebrating today. And what that difference is, is that they were celebrating the birth of a baby that gave them hope. We celebrate not only the coming of Jesus, but the life of Jesus. And we celebrate the death of Jesus as he took on the weight of our sin, of your sin, of my sin, and said, I am putting this to death because I want the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And in that death, and in his resurrection, coming back to life, signifying that if we would put our sin behind us, if we would simply say, I realize that I am not perfect, I realize I deserve nothing but death, but I also realize what Jesus has done for me and has given me the opportunity to have eternal relationship with God, with our creator, with this perfect creator. And that is the joy that we celebrate on Christmas. That is the gospel. And put so beautifully, I think, by a musical group, Beautiful Eulogy, in their title song, they say, as long as the gospel is true, why do we treat Christmas as our quick fix, as our quick time where we are able to experience this great joy. Why do we use Christmas as the one time that we just celebrate Jesus and we're willing to be more childlike in our hearts? Being a little bit more goofy, decorating a little bit weirder, all because inside of us we're just joyful that it's Christmas time. Because the joy of Christmas and the joy of the gospel is forever. In Lamentations, Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy. But nonetheless, here we go. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy,. Again, I say rejoice. I've got news for you. God invented joy. God sent his son to be born and created the joy that that brought to those people. He sent his son to die so that we could have joy eternally. He didn't create joy to say, man, when it comes to December, my people are going to be so excited. He sent joy so that literally every single day he could shower on us joy and he could shower new mercies on us every morning. God is giddy to bring you joy. He wants to celebrate with us. He invented singing. He invented dancing, both of which I'm eternally thankful to him for. Because they're great and I'm great at both of them. But not only that, but guess what happens? Guess what happened when I started playing disc golf a lot more? I got a lot better. As I played more, I started understanding more intricacies of the game. I grew this much greater love and appreciation for what was going on, from what I was seeing other people doing and trying to emulate that because I wanted to achieve those things, I started achieving goals that, like, I never even thought I could achieve, you know? I was getting my first birdies, shooting my first under par round, shooting my first 10 under par round. A few weeks ago, I think some of you guys saw on Facebook because I posted about it. I wasn't quite as joyful on my Facebook post because, you know, the putting was off. But I played in my first tournament, which is hilarious because I didn't even know that that's a thing that existed. Like when I used to just play a couple times a year, like I was like, oh, that's a thing people do. And hey, guess what? Yes, it's a thing that people do, including your boy Kyle. And I played in it, and it was so much fun, and it was so cool to just like unlock this whole new joy I didn't even know was a real thing. My putter was off, but hey, you know what that did? That just made me want to press in, because I didn't want to fall short on my putter again. The next round I play in a tournament, I want to do better. I want to see what it feels like to do even better than that. Hey, a few days after that, I went and played disc golf with my brother and with my sister-in-law, and that in itself brought me great joy. But hole 13, I got my first ace, my first hole in one. I mean, I like, you know, I put it, I got my stance. I ripped it up. Nice little Anheuser, little turnover shot up the hill, about 250 feet uphill. Smashed that thing. It's flying. It's going. Smashes into the chains. Lands in the basket. And I go nuts. I mean, like, you probably can imagine, like, you're watching me right now, and you're like, this guy's just talking, and he's going this crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. But I went insane. I was screaming, I was yelling, I was cheering. Like, literally, I wanted to make sure everyone on the course knew that I had just gotten an ace. I mean, like, I'm running around and yelling. Like, to the point that I turn around at one point, I see that my disc golf bag is here on my bench, and all my body can think to do is, I got to kick that. And so I just kick it, like, through the air. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled, and it was awesome, and I can't wait to get another one. But what was incredible to think about was the fact that that was a joy. Throwing a hole-in-one in disc golf is a joy I never even thought to be possible when I was just playing disc golf once or twice a year. Playing in a tournament, I didn't even know tournaments existed back when I was just doing it once or twice a year. Literally, as I kept playing, I've continued to unlock these greater and greater joys that I never even knew were possible or never even knew existed. And that's just a silly game. I love it. It's fun. Let's go play sometime. But it's just a silly game. Imagine how much more joy the Lord has in store for you if you will just say, I want to put that type of effort every day into seeking after him. I want my faith to be so important to me that instead of just waiting for December, I want every day to be a day that I'm seeking the same type of joy that I get to experience during Christmas time. Psalm 1611 says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, true, complete, 100% fullness of joy, may not be completely available until heaven, where joy, as John Piper put it, joy has no other competitors. I believe that this verse is making us, making it known that this does not start until heaven. I mean, excuse me, that this starts way before heaven. We get to experience this fullness of joy now. And guess what? Fullness of joy changes definitions because God continues to unlock joys we never even knew were existent. He has pleasures for us forever. He wants to shower on us a love that knows no bounds that we can't even comprehend. He wants to bring peace to us and hope to us that sustains us in every part and in every portion and in every circumstance of our life. And he wants to overwhelm us with joy to the point that as an overflow, we can't help but sing and we can't help but dance and we can't help but just be childlike and giddy because we're so overwhelmed with the blessings of God. And at the end of the day, I say all of this, but I don't say this to say that the gospel changes. The gospel remains the same. Every Christmas we're celebrating the same thing. And so I don't say this to say that if you spend more time with God and if you spend more time in scripture and more time growing in your personal faith, that that will change the facts of the gospel. Because the gospel is the root of our joy. The gospel is the reason why we're able to rejoice. But what I am saying is when we choose to pursue this type of joy, when we choose to pursue the joy of the gospel and the joy of salvation and the joy that is a relationship with God, when we choose that daily, and when we decide that we want to start taking that next step of obedience, whatever that looks like in our life, I can promise you that those joys that you experience through a growing faith will be far deeper and they'll be far sweeter and they will be far more profound and they will come so much more frequently than anything that you could ever imagine. So, what if next Christmas, what if instead of next Christmas being just the next time where we get to celebrate the joy of Jesus, what if instead it is a time where we get to take stock of what the Lord has done in our lives and in our hearts the last year, where we look back at the Christmas prior and then we see the ways that because we sprinted after and we pursued the joys of the Lord all year, and we said, oh my gosh, look at the unbelievable things that the Lord has done in my life this year. Literally, if I would have thought last Christmas that the Lord would have done this in my life, I would have said there's absolutely no way. So what if next year? What if next Christmas? What if this Christmas? What if from now until this Christmas when we look back from, what, a week, two weeks? We say, gosh, look at all the joys that the Lord has brought me and my heart and my family just in these two weeks. And I think that's the point of Christmas. Not simply to celebrate a birth of Jesus, but to celebrate his life in eternity. Everything that he did. Everything that that means for us. And because the gospel is true, and because the gospel is final, we do not have to wait for Christmas time to rejoice. But instead, we always have reason to rejoice. God's blessings, his joys, his mercies are new every morning and all he wants to do is shower them on you because all he wants to do is celebrate with you his creation and somebody who he has a relationship with that he loves more so than we can even grasp. And so let our joy of this Christmas be the beginning. Let it be the root by which our joy grows throughout this year. And I can't wait until next Christmas to hear what has grown out of that root of joy that started last Christmas. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for creating joy. Thank you for Christmas, God. Thank you for even the holiday of Christmas so that we can be reminded of your great joy, so we can be reminded of the gospel and of its truth. But God, let us not forget once Christmas time is over that the joy of the gospel is final and is forever. But instead, God, let this be the nudge in the right direction to say, I want this joy always. Every day, I'm going to pursue it. I'm going to pursue you. God, let us pursue you always. And let us, let you do what brings you so much joy, and that is simply raining down blessings, raining down mercies, and raining down joy upon your children. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

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. A lot of you have chosen this morning to make this a part of your Sunday. So many so that Keith had to sit in the front with the good Christians. So this is going to be a great Sunday. I almost said the good Christians except for Alan's up here too. So you guys can be buddies together. Sorry, you're both excellent placeholders for that joke that I wanted to make. And if you're, listen, if you're new here and you're trying to, you're kicking the tires, what just happened in worship is just such a great microcosm for, I think, who we are as a church, where we are worshiping earnestly and singing and getting after it. And it was a sweet moment. And then we start the next song and there's a little whoopsie and then we all laugh at ourselves and we just get right back into it. And I just thought it was great. I actually got on my knees and prayed and I pray before every sermon. And I'm just, I was just praying that I'm just so grateful that I get to be the pastor, one of the pastors of a church that I just love so much. I just, I just, I love this place. I love you guys. I consider it a huge privilege. I've told a couple different people this week. It just came up in conversation that I just don't think there could be an easier church to pastor. You guys are so great to me and my family. But anyways, we're in part two of our series called Big Emotions. I think, is that right, Carly? Is that what we're calling this one? Okay. I never know. I always tell them what it's about and then they just name it and I go, okay. And then I get it wrong. But part two of big emotions. And basically what we're doing is looking at stories, instances in the Bible where the people in the Bible had these big emotions, sometimes a blow up or a blow out. We're looking at that. We're examining it. We're relating to it because we're emotional creatures. We have blow ups and blow outs sometimes. And we're trying to figure out what we can learn from it. And so this week, we're looking at a pretty unique instance in the life of Christ. When I was growing up, I don't have many memories at all that don't involve church. I don't have a memory that goes beyond my church involvement. And so growing up, I heard all the stories. And before I heard the stories about Jesus, I heard about him that he was perfect, right? That he lived a sinless life. That he never did anything wrong, which is remarkable. And so I knew that as a little kid, but there's two stories that I encountered when I was young that gave me pause. Like, wait, are you sure? Because that really feels like sin. That really feels like that guy did stuff he wasn't supposed to do. The first one is in, I think it's Luke, when it records that Mary and Joseph took the family to Jerusalem for Passover, as was their habit. And they left, and Jesus chose to stay behind as a 12-year-old to talk to the rabbis and the scribes and the Pharisees. And I always looked at that story and thought, like, listen, I'm not trying to accuse our Savior of anything. I just know that when I was a kid, pretty high up on the obedience priority list was when your parents say it's time to go, you go. Like you don't just be like, yeah, I opted in to just remain at Six Flags after you guys left. Like I'm just going to, or I guess here it's Bush Gardens. I'm just going to, I'm just going to stay there. You guys go ahead. I'll figure it out. Like that seemed like pretty egregious sin for a 12 year old to just say, you know what you guys go on. I'm going to talk to my new pals in the temple, but obviously he didn't sin. I still not quite sure how that worked out for 12 year old Jesus, just to start making decisions about where he's going to stay. But I don't think that it blemishes his perfect record. The other story that made me go, gosh, that really seems like there's a different way to do that, is the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. And I honestly think that even now, and we'll get into the story in a second, so if you don't know what that is yet, don't worry, we'll get there. But I think even now, if you made us contemporaries of Jesus, and we saw him do what he's about to do when he cleanses the temple, we probably would have pulled him aside and been like, hey, buddy, I don't know that that was the best way to handle that. There's probably a different way to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. It's pretty untoward to do that. We would probably tell him that he was wrong and that he owed some people some apologies. But we're going to get into the story and actually see why his anger and zeal in this story is pretty warranted. So this story is in all four of the Gospels. I think John gives the best account of it, and we find it in John 2, verses 13 through 16. So I'll read it to you, and then we can talk about what's going on. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And then in verse 17, he says, So to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wherever you were, you needed to get you and your family to Jerusalem to observe the holidays. Passover was one of those times where it's written in God's law and expected as you exercise your faith that you would be obedient and go supposed to go to the temple. And when you got to the temple, you were supposed to offer sacrifices in accordance with just your regular religious maintenance. In Leviticus, we see a ton of laws about what kinds of sacrifices are required for what types of grievances and sins. And so you had to offer those as well as your traditional Passover sacrifices for you and your family. This is all written into the law and required of good religious people. And so good religious people from all over Israel would go to Jerusalem on these high holidays and walk in obedience to those instructions in what we call the Old Testament. They're being obedient and living out their faith well. So if we picture this from the perspective of a family in Nazareth where Jesus was from, to get to Jerusalem, I believe is about 30 miles. Scholars believe that that journey is going to take three to five days depending on who you've got with you. For my family with a seven-year-old and a two-year-old, that's going to take seven days, and I'm going to not have any religion by the time I get to Jerusalem. Or I'll just have some serious sacrificing to do, right? To make things right. So whatever pace you go at, it's a three to five-day journey, a lot of people think. And you get there, you've got to find some place to stay. Maybe you stay in an inn. Maybe, I'm sure they had a commercialization set up and people would take advantage of people needing places to stay. Maybe you had friends or family in Jerusalem and there was one big house that you all got to stay at, but you've got to figure that out. And then you've got to go to the temple, right? But to go into the temple, you had to pay a temple tax. I don't know why you had to pay this temple tax. It feels a little bit like kind of Catholic indulgences, middle ages, like that kind of thing where the leaders of the church are just trying to extract more money from the people who come in. It would be like if I charged you $5 a seat to listen to the sermons and to worship with us. I don't think anything could clear this place out quicker than if I started asking for, that's right, than if I started asking for money to listen to me. But that's what you had to do when you went there. And so these money changers, they had these coins, and this is where the racket comes in. They had these coins that were made in Israel for Hebrews, and they did not bear Caesar's symbol. They had a real issue with coins with Caesar's symbol on them because Caesar claimed to be Lord, and that wasn't good. And so they couldn't accept the Roman currency that was ubiquitous in the country. Far more Roman currency going around than this particular, specifically Israeli currency going around. And so they would ask for you to take your Roman currency and exchange it for that Israeli currency or that Jewish currency. And some people think it's because of the issue with Caesar and other people think it's just that the Jewish coins were minted with more and better silver, and so it was of greater value. But at any rate, you had to take the coins that you had and exchange them. And you know, as well as I do, that the guy who's got the bucket of the Jewish coins at the temple and is exchanging them isn't doing that on good faith. He's making a little off the top because he's got a family to feed too, right? And maybe, maybe the family in Nazareth has its own cash of Jewish coins that are acceptable at the temple, and maybe they don't need that money changer. But my bet is they probably do. And my bet is he's scalping them. He's making some money off of that exchange. And we don't know for sure that the people in the temple who were selling animals and lending money, we don't know for sure that they were price gouging, that they were taking advantage of the populace. But we do know that Jesus said that they had turned his father's house and the other gospel accounts, that they had turned his father's house into a den of thieves or robbers. Which leads me to believe that they were taking advantage of their situation. You're a family from Nazareth. You're traveling three to five days. Who knows how many people are in your caravan. You probably don't want to or have the capacity to bring sheep with you, doves with you for the sacrifice, oxen with you for the sacrifice. You probably don't have that capacity. And even when you get where you're going and you've got to stay at the Hampton Inn, they probably don't allow sheep in there. Maybe you have a house that you can go to and they've got a stable or a barn and you've brought all your sacrificial animals and you're self-sufficient. But I would guess, and research bears this out, that most of the populace did not have that stuff to bring or the capacity to bring it to Jerusalem. So once you get to Jerusalem, to the temple, and you've got to get in the temple with the coin that they accept and you've got to perform the sacrifices that your God demands of you, you have to buy those animals once you get there. Do you see what I'm saying? This is like, this is a North Carolina zoo situation at the junction. This is Disney World. They've got you. You're going to get chicken tenders and you're going to pay $17 and you're going to like it. Nothing you can do about it. And again, we can't say with certainty that they were price gouging, but everything in the text points to the fact that they were. And so Jesus sees this and he's rightly angered by it. Because when you think about it, it's pretty appalling what they're doing. They are leveraging God's laws to line their own pockets. They are commercializing the sacred. And what's more, to me, the high priest is complicit in all of this. Because you don't get to set up shop on the temple grounds. And when we hear this story, please know that when we think about a temple, I think we think about this indoor structure. But at the Temple Mount, there was this outer courtyard that was the size of several football fields, and everyone's allowed in there, Gentiles and Jews alike. You're allowed in there, and that's where all of the tables and the moneylenders are set up. And then you have like this rectangle in the middle, and the rectangle is divided into two squares, and the front square is where Jewish men and women are allowed, and the back square is where Jewish that Jesus goes in and clears out. He goes in there. First of all, he sees what they're doing. And if you read the text, it says he fashioned a whip. He didn't go find one. He sat down and anger wove a whole whip. And then he took it and he started flipping over tables like a madman. And I assume hitting people with the whip. That's one of the scenes in Jesus's life I would have liked to attend. But when you understand what's going on, his anger makes so much sense. And to me, it's so very justifiable. These people are humble people trying to be obedient to their God, trying to do the right thing. And they're going to Jerusalem to take the pilgrimage like good Hebrews should. And listen, we know how faith works. We know how religious cultures work. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think 100% of the Hebrew people are taking a pilgrimage for all three high holidays every year. Some people had opted out. Some people didn't care. Some people couldn't make it. I'm sure a higher percentage of that population went than would go in Christian America in the 80s making some pilgrimage, but not everybody went. So the ones who are going are the faithful ones. They're the committed ones. To them, this faith matters, and they're trying to do the right thing, and they're trying to teach it to their children and their children's children too. And when they get there, they're being taken advantage of. We don't know this for sure, but I'd be willing to proffer a guess that the people exchanging those coins had a higher net value than the people who needed the exchanging done. I bet the people selling oxen had a higher net worth than a majority of the people buying the oxen from them. The rich were likely getting richer while the poor were getting poorer. And the galling thing is it's all in the name of God. They're taking advantage of the sacred to line their own pockets, and it's gross. And Jesus won't have it. He goes in there, flips tables, drives them out, and the disciples are reminded that it was said about him that he would have zeal for his father's house. So there's a lot of things that we can learn from this story as we look at it and we pull it apart and we analyze it. There's a lot of things we can learn from this story. I think one of the things, and I almost preached about it, but I'm just going to set it here and let you guys consider it later in your own time. Maybe you can talk about it in your small groups. But this story pretty heavily indicates that justice matters a lot to Jesus. And fighting against injustice matters a lot to Jesus. I think what galled Jesus was the fact that these people who in good faith were trying to be obedient to their father were being taken advantage of for their very faith. It's remarkably unjust and it ticked them off. But I think more than that, more than that, was what they were turning his father's house into. And what I see glaring like a bullhorn from these passages is that Jesus will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Our Jesus will not put up with, he will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. I don't know where you draw lines in your life. I don't know what you feel like you can't put up with, what really gets your ire going. I know for me, when I see someone who is, believe it or not, when I see someone who is willfully unkind and hurtful to someone else, I write that person off. I have a really hard time with someone who is willing to be unkind and hurtful to someone else. I just can't tolerate it. I don't know what your thing is. Jesus' thing is, one of them, you will not sully the sacred while I am here. Because the temple, the temple was sacred to the Jew. It was sacred to Jesus. Do you understand that the temple was the place of the presence of God for thousands of years? In that back rectangle where the Holy of Holies sat, in the Holy of Holies behind a veil sat the Ark of the Covenant. And on the Ark of the Covenant, there's two angels, golden angels, and their wings touch in the middle. And where their wings touch is called the mercy seat. And on the mercy seat rests the very presence of God, making that temple and that city and that nation unique in all the world. Do you know that every synagogue built outside of Israel is built to face Jerusalem and that every synagogue in Israel faces Jerusalem. It's all about the Holy of Holies and what's in there and the presence of God being in that place. The temple was a sacred space. A space that when you go into it, it's different than any other experience in your life. A space where you take your children and you teach them the way that you were taught. The space where when you become the matriarch or the patriarch of your family, you sit your grandchildren down and you tell them about the pilgrimages that you used to make. And most importantly, it's a place of worship where we assign worth to God. Not just praise and worship, not singing like what we did a few minutes ago, but worship where you declare with every breath and with every action and with every thought and with every deed that God, you are Lord and I am not. That was a place where you went to lay yourself down prostrate and say, God, you are amazing and to stand in awe of God. The temple was a space for the sacred and they sullied it with their selfishness. And so Jesus said, no, I will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Now here's why that should matter a lot to you and I, because of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul tells us this, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. The New Testament teaches us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And I used to hear growing up, I would hear Baptists say that you shouldn't drink because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and alcohol is not healthy for you. And then you just look at them and be like, do you eat fried chicken? And then that clearly is a misapplication. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Meaning, Paul tells us in other writings, I think it's Ephesians, but I'm not certain on that. But I am certain that what he says is that when you become a Christian, that you receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment on your salvation. And again, to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. He came to deliver the world. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he is who he says he, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to get us and take us home. To be a Christian is to believe those things. And when we believe those things, the Bible teaches us that God gives us his Holy Spirit in our hearts. And what does that language mean? We don't know. We just kind of feel that language. But he gives us the Holy Spirit in our heart as a seal of the promise that one day he's going to send his son back to take us to him, to take us home. And that because of that, because this is the place where the Holy Spirit dwells, we have now become the temple. Our bodies are the temple. Our bodies are where the presence of God sits in this earthly place. Because when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, many of you know this, the veil that was hung in the Holy of Holies that separated the presence of God from everyone else was torn in two from top to bottom and the presence of God exited that place. And then we learn at the end of the Gospels and at the beginning of Acts that that presence actually returns to us in the form of God's Spirit and that we are the houses of God's Spirit. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what are temples for? Temples are for worship. Temples are sacred. Temples are where we meet with God. And when we talk about temples being places of worship, I am reminded I'm reminded that Paul wrote that we are actually called to be living sacrifices. That going through life as a living sacrifice, Paul calls it, this is our spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable to God. He tells us as Christians that we are to live our lives as sacrifices. God, we wake up every day, God, what would you have me do today? How would you have me use this instrument for your glory today? And that is our spiritual act of worship. Not praise, but worship. And our spiritual act of worship, if what happens in the temple is every thought, every action, every deed declares implicitly, Lord, you are Lord and I am not, then what he calls us to do, what we are called to do when we understand the theology of the New Testament is to live our lives as the temples of the Holy Spirit, to live our lives as spiritual acts of worship. Meaning, when we go throughout our day, every thought, every word, every action, every deed ought to declare, God, you are God and I am not. Now that is pretty high bar. And I'll be the first to admit to you, I do not think I have yet accumulated a day where every thought, deed, action, emotion, reaction I had that day declared, God, you are God and I am not. But here's what we're not going to do at Grace. We're not going to back off of the high bar that Scripture sets for us to make it more attainable for ourselves so that we become something that we're not supposed to be. We're going to sit in humility and brokenness before the incredibly high bar of Scripture and say, Jesus, I can't. You have to help me. But when we are told that our bodies, the temples of the Holy Spirit, the way to live our lives is living sacrifices. This is our spiritual act of worship within that temple. We are told that every thought and deed and action and word needs to declare that he is Lord and we are not. And that's a very high bar. We are also reminded that Jesus does not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. And Paul has declared us sacred because we are temples. You guys can see where I'm going there. All of you, I'm certain, walked in here this morning with something in your temple that's sullying the sacred. All of us in our lives have trampled on Jesus. All of us in our actions and our thoughts and our deeds and our words have sullied the sacred, have prevented our bodies from being used for worship. And so, to me, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is in all four Gospels because it is a continuous reminder when we examine it and consider it and reflect on it that we ought to be people of repentance. That we ought to be people who invite Jesus into our life and say, turn over my tables if you need to. Show me where I am sullying the sacred and help me to get rid of those things. I don't need to enumerate the possible sins and the possible attitudes that you walked into this room with. And when I say you, I mean me too. I don't need to list those for you because you already know what they are. Because you have the Holy Spirit and he's getting after you about them right now. So I believe that this story calls us to repentance. Calls us to a moment where we plead with Jesus, would you please clean out this temple? Would you please turn over these tables? And when we talk about repentance, most of us in this room know what repentance is. I've done a sermon or two on it, but just so we're on the same page. Repentance means 180 degree turn. So it's not just confession. Confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yes, I see that. And it definitely was wrong to cuss at that six-year-old in the store. And I'm so sorry. That's wrong. Repentance is to move away from it and never do that again. Okay. So confession is, I'm sorry that I disappointed you in this way. I can see why that was disappointing. I agree, I would be disappointed in me too. But if we just keep doing it, then it doesn't matter. We just stop it, I'm sorry. So repentance is to apologize and then move in the opposite direction, away from sin and back towards the Father. That's what repentance is. And I think that when we think about repentance, we think about repenting of actions, things that we did. And so we repent and we say, God, I'm sorry that I did this. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry that I looked at that. I'm not going to look at that anymore. I'm sorry that I drank too much that time. I'm not going to drink too much anymore. I'm sorry that I lost my temper. I'm not going to lose my temper. I'm sorry that I worried too much. I'm not going to worry. We tend to repent of actions, things that we did. I'm sorry I did blank. I'm not going to do blank anymore. But I would actually put in front of you maybe a new way of thinking or a different way of thinking about repentance that was put in front of me a couple of weeks ago and I'm just so grateful for it. I think that we should repent of what we allow in our hearts, not necessarily how we behave. We should repent of what we allow to take up residence in our heart. The attitudes and the motives behind the behaviors are far more important to repent of than the actions themselves. Can I actually, can I tell you something? I mean, I know I can. That's a stupid question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna. I actually had an interesting conversation recently with a couple of my friends where we were asking, is God really even that interested in our behavior? Does he even really care about our behavior? And I increasingly think the answer is no. I increasingly think it's just he doesn't really care about our behavior, not because it doesn't matter to him what we do, but because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Because our behaviors will follow our attitudes and motives. So he's far more worried about cleansing our heart than making our behavior good. And I think that the way it works to repent of attitudes over actions can go something like this. You could pick a sin. I'm not sure what it is you struggle with. I can make some educated guesses, but I know for sure what I struggle with. And I shared one of those with you last week. I got angry. I lost my temper. I slapped the center console. I raised my voice at my daughter. She cried, and it was a moment that I wish I could take back. And I do that. I have a shorter fuse than I'd like. I can get angry or frustrated quickly. Hopefully, I deflate quickly too. But that's one of the things that I deal with. And so last week we talked about how when we lose our temper and we lash out, we looked at the story of Peter in the garden and they were coming to arrest Jesus and he swung his sword and he cut off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus. And Jesus picks up the ear and he puts it back on the guard and he mouthing us and he says, go on your way, Peter, stop doing that. And so we kind of talked about this language of sometimes we will lash out and we'll cut off people's ears. And so if anger is a thing that you deal with, like me, then I don't think it's really helpful to say, God, I'm sorry I cut off that person's ear. I'm never going to cut off ears again. I'm going to take a deep breath and count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my daughter. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my coworker, at my wife, at my husband, whatever it is. I'm going to count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't think that's super helpful. I think what's more helpful is to stop and think, well, why was I angry? Just in general, I'm going to step over here. This is not biblical, okay? I hesitated to even say anything about this, but when you ask why you're angry, you'll almost always find that you're not entitled to it. And most anger comes from unmet expectations. And some of those aren't very fair. Okay. When I reflect on when I get frustrated, what I find at the root of that, 98% of the time, is just unmitigated selfishness. It's just a bratty nine-year-old kid who doesn't want to do what they don't want to do. I don't want to get up and take the dog outside. I wish we didn't have one. I want to sit on the couch. So I'm angry. A lot of my anger has to do with me just wanting to sit on the couch. I don't want to get up and go do that. I don't want to clean. I don't want to go follow after a two-year-old. I want to sit right here, and I want to watch the Masters. That's what I want to do. I don't want to be going this slowly on 540. I'd like to be going quicker than you, and you're prohibiting that. I don't want to be in this conversation. I don't want to hear that story. I don't want to have to go there. I don't want to have to go stand in a field with sunshine and get my picture taken with my children who will not smile. I don't want to do that. My anger, my frustration in my life almost always is stirred up by poor Nate being made to do something he doesn't want to do. What a baby. You are too. So for me, rather than praying, God, help me not lash out at people anymore. A much better prayer is, God, help me to become a more selfless, patient person so that I might better love those around me. Help me to become, I've identified that I get frustrated because I'm selfish, so help me to be a more patient and selfless person. And here's the best part, so that I might better love those around me. Because those sins and attitudes and actions that exist in your life, who do they hurt the most? They hurt the people you love the most. And when we carry those through our lives, we actually love them more poorly than we could and should. So a helpful thing when we repent is to think, how was this attitude? How was my selfishness? How was my greed? How was my anxiety? How was my stubbornness? How was my pride? How was that hurting the people around me? And then you apologize to them and you repent of that too. But we don't repent by praying that God would take away actions. We pray that he would come into our hearts and take away attitudes. And I think that this mindset of repentance sheds light on what David writes in Psalm 139. It's a passage that's vexed me for most of my life. I'll tell you why in a second. But in Psalm 139, David says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I usually joke when I mention that verse that that's a prayer I've never had to pray. I've never had to be like, dear God, can you just show me where I'm sinning? Because I don't see it. And I would like you to help me. I've never had to pray that prayer. I know where I'm messing up. I see it. And if I don't always see it, I have a wife. She sees it. She'll tell me. She's not here today. I can say that. Lily's sick. She's got a cold. But the more I think about it, I don't really think that's what David meant either. I don't think maybe he did, but David was so very human. David was a terrible father. He had so many cracks in the facade. It's difficult for me to believe that David had a season of his life when he was writing Psalm 139 where he thought, you know what? I know I used to mess up, but I've been pretty much nailing it lately. God, I think I'm perfect for the last month, so if you could just tell me if I'm not, that'd be great. I don't think that's what David was doing. I think what David was doing is what we're talking about this morning. Jesus, can you come in my heart and search out those motives? Can you come in my heart and start flipping over tables? Some of us are people pleasers. We bend over backwards to make everyone around us happy. And sometimes that makes us be people that we're not. It's an interesting prayer to say, God, can you show me why I do that? Can you help me understand why I want those people to like me so much? Can you help me understand why I'm getting so angry? Can you help me understand why I seem to be so motivated by success? Can you help me understand why I don't like many of the people in my life right now and I know it's my problem? We start praying motive prayers, idols in heart prayers, sullying the temple prayers. And true repentance, the kind that we need, really, we can't do that on our own. If we're not repenting of actions, and we can't just white-knuckle our way back to holiness, but we have to repent of attitudes and things that we've allowed to take root in our heart and sully the sacred, then we need the kind of cleansing that only Jesus can offer. We need to pray the prayer of David in light of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple and say, God, wherever the tables have set up in my life, wherever there's money changing going on, wherever I'm taking advantage of people, whatever is in here that's sullying the sacred space of the temple of your Holy Spirit, God, would you show it to me, and would you give me the courage to pray that it leaves? And I'll help you with this too. Maybe you know exactly what it is. I don't need God to divine my attitude. I don't need to go to counseling to help suss this out. I don't need to talk to advisors who love me and can tell me what my attitudes have been. I know exactly what I need to do. But I don't want to do it. I like that sin. I like that sullying. And I'm not going to listen to one sermon by some guy and then walk away from that. Okay? I've been there too. So let me just encourage you to pray this. God, I don't want this to not be in my life. Would you help me to want to want it to go away? I'm not ready to let go of this sin, but God, will you move me closer to wanting to get rid of it, to hating it like you do? Because right now I don't. Right now I like it. Will you just help move the needle a little bit today and tomorrow and next week on not being happy with this in my life? But for a lot of us, the prayer today is a prayer of repentance, which should be a regular thing in our Christian life. God, show me what attitudes and idols I have in my heart and what things I have motivating the sin in my life that you might turn them over and force them out just like you did in the temple that day. Because if Jesus has a zeal for not sullying the sacred in that temple, then I can promise you that he is zealous about your temples too. Let's invite him in and let's be places that are places, let's be people that are places of worship every day as we learn what it is to repent of the things that are sullying the sacred in our lives. Let's pray. Father, God, we love you so much. We thank you that your kindness leads us to repentance, that it's not something you force onto us, that you don't run into our lives with a whip and start turning over tables and just cause all kinds of pain and hurt and dishevelment, but that your kindness, your love, your invitation, your grace, your patience and forbearance with us leads us to repentance. That the more we learn about you, the closer we want to be to you. And the less patience we have for the things that prevent us from worshiping you. God, I pray that we in this room would repent of sins big and little. That we would repent of attitudes egregious and simply unholy and unhelpful. And that God, even today, all of us in this room would take a step towards being cleansed. We pray the prayer of David and invite you into our hearts to clean things out so that we might be instruments of worship for you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

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. A lot of you have chosen this morning to make this a part of your Sunday. So many so that Keith had to sit in the front with the good Christians. So this is going to be a great Sunday. I almost said the good Christians except for Alan's up here too. So you guys can be buddies together. Sorry, you're both excellent placeholders for that joke that I wanted to make. And if you're, listen, if you're new here and you're trying to, you're kicking the tires, what just happened in worship is just such a great microcosm for, I think, who we are as a church, where we are worshiping earnestly and singing and getting after it. And it was a sweet moment. And then we start the next song and there's a little whoopsie and then we all laugh at ourselves and we just get right back into it. And I just thought it was great. I actually got on my knees and prayed and I pray before every sermon. And I'm just, I was just praying that I'm just so grateful that I get to be the pastor, one of the pastors of a church that I just love so much. I just, I just, I love this place. I love you guys. I consider it a huge privilege. I've told a couple different people this week. It just came up in conversation that I just don't think there could be an easier church to pastor. You guys are so great to me and my family. But anyways, we're in part two of our series called Big Emotions. I think, is that right, Carly? Is that what we're calling this one? Okay. I never know. I always tell them what it's about and then they just name it and I go, okay. And then I get it wrong. But part two of big emotions. And basically what we're doing is looking at stories, instances in the Bible where the people in the Bible had these big emotions, sometimes a blow up or a blow out. We're looking at that. We're examining it. We're relating to it because we're emotional creatures. We have blow ups and blow outs sometimes. And we're trying to figure out what we can learn from it. And so this week, we're looking at a pretty unique instance in the life of Christ. When I was growing up, I don't have many memories at all that don't involve church. I don't have a memory that goes beyond my church involvement. And so growing up, I heard all the stories. And before I heard the stories about Jesus, I heard about him that he was perfect, right? That he lived a sinless life. That he never did anything wrong, which is remarkable. And so I knew that as a little kid, but there's two stories that I encountered when I was young that gave me pause. Like, wait, are you sure? Because that really feels like sin. That really feels like that guy did stuff he wasn't supposed to do. The first one is in, I think it's Luke, when it records that Mary and Joseph took the family to Jerusalem for Passover, as was their habit. And they left, and Jesus chose to stay behind as a 12-year-old to talk to the rabbis and the scribes and the Pharisees. And I always looked at that story and thought, like, listen, I'm not trying to accuse our Savior of anything. I just know that when I was a kid, pretty high up on the obedience priority list was when your parents say it's time to go, you go. Like you don't just be like, yeah, I opted in to just remain at Six Flags after you guys left. Like I'm just going to, or I guess here it's Bush Gardens. I'm just going to, I'm just going to stay there. You guys go ahead. I'll figure it out. Like that seemed like pretty egregious sin for a 12 year old to just say, you know what you guys go on. I'm going to talk to my new pals in the temple, but obviously he didn't sin. I still not quite sure how that worked out for 12 year old Jesus, just to start making decisions about where he's going to stay. But I don't think that it blemishes his perfect record. The other story that made me go, gosh, that really seems like there's a different way to do that, is the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. And I honestly think that even now, and we'll get into the story in a second, so if you don't know what that is yet, don't worry, we'll get there. But I think even now, if you made us contemporaries of Jesus, and we saw him do what he's about to do when he cleanses the temple, we probably would have pulled him aside and been like, hey, buddy, I don't know that that was the best way to handle that. There's probably a different way to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. It's pretty untoward to do that. We would probably tell him that he was wrong and that he owed some people some apologies. But we're going to get into the story and actually see why his anger and zeal in this story is pretty warranted. So this story is in all four of the Gospels. I think John gives the best account of it, and we find it in John 2, verses 13 through 16. So I'll read it to you, and then we can talk about what's going on. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And then in verse 17, he says, So to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wherever you were, you needed to get you and your family to Jerusalem to observe the holidays. Passover was one of those times where it's written in God's law and expected as you exercise your faith that you would be obedient and go supposed to go to the temple. And when you got to the temple, you were supposed to offer sacrifices in accordance with just your regular religious maintenance. In Leviticus, we see a ton of laws about what kinds of sacrifices are required for what types of grievances and sins. And so you had to offer those as well as your traditional Passover sacrifices for you and your family. This is all written into the law and required of good religious people. And so good religious people from all over Israel would go to Jerusalem on these high holidays and walk in obedience to those instructions in what we call the Old Testament. They're being obedient and living out their faith well. So if we picture this from the perspective of a family in Nazareth where Jesus was from, to get to Jerusalem, I believe is about 30 miles. Scholars believe that that journey is going to take three to five days depending on who you've got with you. For my family with a seven-year-old and a two-year-old, that's going to take seven days, and I'm going to not have any religion by the time I get to Jerusalem. Or I'll just have some serious sacrificing to do, right? To make things right. So whatever pace you go at, it's a three to five-day journey, a lot of people think. And you get there, you've got to find some place to stay. Maybe you stay in an inn. Maybe, I'm sure they had a commercialization set up and people would take advantage of people needing places to stay. Maybe you had friends or family in Jerusalem and there was one big house that you all got to stay at, but you've got to figure that out. And then you've got to go to the temple, right? But to go into the temple, you had to pay a temple tax. I don't know why you had to pay this temple tax. It feels a little bit like kind of Catholic indulgences, middle ages, like that kind of thing where the leaders of the church are just trying to extract more money from the people who come in. It would be like if I charged you $5 a seat to listen to the sermons and to worship with us. I don't think anything could clear this place out quicker than if I started asking for, that's right, than if I started asking for money to listen to me. But that's what you had to do when you went there. And so these money changers, they had these coins, and this is where the racket comes in. They had these coins that were made in Israel for Hebrews, and they did not bear Caesar's symbol. They had a real issue with coins with Caesar's symbol on them because Caesar claimed to be Lord, and that wasn't good. And so they couldn't accept the Roman currency that was ubiquitous in the country. Far more Roman currency going around than this particular, specifically Israeli currency going around. And so they would ask for you to take your Roman currency and exchange it for that Israeli currency or that Jewish currency. And some people think it's because of the issue with Caesar and other people think it's just that the Jewish coins were minted with more and better silver, and so it was of greater value. But at any rate, you had to take the coins that you had and exchange them. And you know, as well as I do, that the guy who's got the bucket of the Jewish coins at the temple and is exchanging them isn't doing that on good faith. He's making a little off the top because he's got a family to feed too, right? And maybe, maybe the family in Nazareth has its own cash of Jewish coins that are acceptable at the temple, and maybe they don't need that money changer. But my bet is they probably do. And my bet is he's scalping them. He's making some money off of that exchange. And we don't know for sure that the people in the temple who were selling animals and lending money, we don't know for sure that they were price gouging, that they were taking advantage of the populace. But we do know that Jesus said that they had turned his father's house and the other gospel accounts, that they had turned his father's house into a den of thieves or robbers. Which leads me to believe that they were taking advantage of their situation. You're a family from Nazareth. You're traveling three to five days. Who knows how many people are in your caravan. You probably don't want to or have the capacity to bring sheep with you, doves with you for the sacrifice, oxen with you for the sacrifice. You probably don't have that capacity. And even when you get where you're going and you've got to stay at the Hampton Inn, they probably don't allow sheep in there. Maybe you have a house that you can go to and they've got a stable or a barn and you've brought all your sacrificial animals and you're self-sufficient. But I would guess, and research bears this out, that most of the populace did not have that stuff to bring or the capacity to bring it to Jerusalem. So once you get to Jerusalem, to the temple, and you've got to get in the temple with the coin that they accept and you've got to perform the sacrifices that your God demands of you, you have to buy those animals once you get there. Do you see what I'm saying? This is like, this is a North Carolina zoo situation at the junction. This is Disney World. They've got you. You're going to get chicken tenders and you're going to pay $17 and you're going to like it. Nothing you can do about it. And again, we can't say with certainty that they were price gouging, but everything in the text points to the fact that they were. And so Jesus sees this and he's rightly angered by it. Because when you think about it, it's pretty appalling what they're doing. They are leveraging God's laws to line their own pockets. They are commercializing the sacred. And what's more, to me, the high priest is complicit in all of this. Because you don't get to set up shop on the temple grounds. And when we hear this story, please know that when we think about a temple, I think we think about this indoor structure. But at the Temple Mount, there was this outer courtyard that was the size of several football fields, and everyone's allowed in there, Gentiles and Jews alike. You're allowed in there, and that's where all of the tables and the moneylenders are set up. And then you have like this rectangle in the middle, and the rectangle is divided into two squares, and the front square is where Jewish men and women are allowed, and the back square is where Jewish that Jesus goes in and clears out. He goes in there. First of all, he sees what they're doing. And if you read the text, it says he fashioned a whip. He didn't go find one. He sat down and anger wove a whole whip. And then he took it and he started flipping over tables like a madman. And I assume hitting people with the whip. That's one of the scenes in Jesus's life I would have liked to attend. But when you understand what's going on, his anger makes so much sense. And to me, it's so very justifiable. These people are humble people trying to be obedient to their God, trying to do the right thing. And they're going to Jerusalem to take the pilgrimage like good Hebrews should. And listen, we know how faith works. We know how religious cultures work. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think 100% of the Hebrew people are taking a pilgrimage for all three high holidays every year. Some people had opted out. Some people didn't care. Some people couldn't make it. I'm sure a higher percentage of that population went than would go in Christian America in the 80s making some pilgrimage, but not everybody went. So the ones who are going are the faithful ones. They're the committed ones. To them, this faith matters, and they're trying to do the right thing, and they're trying to teach it to their children and their children's children too. And when they get there, they're being taken advantage of. We don't know this for sure, but I'd be willing to proffer a guess that the people exchanging those coins had a higher net value than the people who needed the exchanging done. I bet the people selling oxen had a higher net worth than a majority of the people buying the oxen from them. The rich were likely getting richer while the poor were getting poorer. And the galling thing is it's all in the name of God. They're taking advantage of the sacred to line their own pockets, and it's gross. And Jesus won't have it. He goes in there, flips tables, drives them out, and the disciples are reminded that it was said about him that he would have zeal for his father's house. So there's a lot of things that we can learn from this story as we look at it and we pull it apart and we analyze it. There's a lot of things we can learn from this story. I think one of the things, and I almost preached about it, but I'm just going to set it here and let you guys consider it later in your own time. Maybe you can talk about it in your small groups. But this story pretty heavily indicates that justice matters a lot to Jesus. And fighting against injustice matters a lot to Jesus. I think what galled Jesus was the fact that these people who in good faith were trying to be obedient to their father were being taken advantage of for their very faith. It's remarkably unjust and it ticked them off. But I think more than that, more than that, was what they were turning his father's house into. And what I see glaring like a bullhorn from these passages is that Jesus will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Our Jesus will not put up with, he will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. I don't know where you draw lines in your life. I don't know what you feel like you can't put up with, what really gets your ire going. I know for me, when I see someone who is, believe it or not, when I see someone who is willfully unkind and hurtful to someone else, I write that person off. I have a really hard time with someone who is willing to be unkind and hurtful to someone else. I just can't tolerate it. I don't know what your thing is. Jesus' thing is, one of them, you will not sully the sacred while I am here. Because the temple, the temple was sacred to the Jew. It was sacred to Jesus. Do you understand that the temple was the place of the presence of God for thousands of years? In that back rectangle where the Holy of Holies sat, in the Holy of Holies behind a veil sat the Ark of the Covenant. And on the Ark of the Covenant, there's two angels, golden angels, and their wings touch in the middle. And where their wings touch is called the mercy seat. And on the mercy seat rests the very presence of God, making that temple and that city and that nation unique in all the world. Do you know that every synagogue built outside of Israel is built to face Jerusalem and that every synagogue in Israel faces Jerusalem. It's all about the Holy of Holies and what's in there and the presence of God being in that place. The temple was a sacred space. A space that when you go into it, it's different than any other experience in your life. A space where you take your children and you teach them the way that you were taught. The space where when you become the matriarch or the patriarch of your family, you sit your grandchildren down and you tell them about the pilgrimages that you used to make. And most importantly, it's a place of worship where we assign worth to God. Not just praise and worship, not singing like what we did a few minutes ago, but worship where you declare with every breath and with every action and with every thought and with every deed that God, you are Lord and I am not. That was a place where you went to lay yourself down prostrate and say, God, you are amazing and to stand in awe of God. The temple was a space for the sacred and they sullied it with their selfishness. And so Jesus said, no, I will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Now here's why that should matter a lot to you and I, because of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul tells us this, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. The New Testament teaches us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And I used to hear growing up, I would hear Baptists say that you shouldn't drink because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and alcohol is not healthy for you. And then you just look at them and be like, do you eat fried chicken? And then that clearly is a misapplication. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Meaning, Paul tells us in other writings, I think it's Ephesians, but I'm not certain on that. But I am certain that what he says is that when you become a Christian, that you receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment on your salvation. And again, to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. He came to deliver the world. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he is who he says he, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to get us and take us home. To be a Christian is to believe those things. And when we believe those things, the Bible teaches us that God gives us his Holy Spirit in our hearts. And what does that language mean? We don't know. We just kind of feel that language. But he gives us the Holy Spirit in our heart as a seal of the promise that one day he's going to send his son back to take us to him, to take us home. And that because of that, because this is the place where the Holy Spirit dwells, we have now become the temple. Our bodies are the temple. Our bodies are where the presence of God sits in this earthly place. Because when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, many of you know this, the veil that was hung in the Holy of Holies that separated the presence of God from everyone else was torn in two from top to bottom and the presence of God exited that place. And then we learn at the end of the Gospels and at the beginning of Acts that that presence actually returns to us in the form of God's Spirit and that we are the houses of God's Spirit. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what are temples for? Temples are for worship. Temples are sacred. Temples are where we meet with God. And when we talk about temples being places of worship, I am reminded I'm reminded that Paul wrote that we are actually called to be living sacrifices. That going through life as a living sacrifice, Paul calls it, this is our spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable to God. He tells us as Christians that we are to live our lives as sacrifices. God, we wake up every day, God, what would you have me do today? How would you have me use this instrument for your glory today? And that is our spiritual act of worship. Not praise, but worship. And our spiritual act of worship, if what happens in the temple is every thought, every action, every deed declares implicitly, Lord, you are Lord and I am not, then what he calls us to do, what we are called to do when we understand the theology of the New Testament is to live our lives as the temples of the Holy Spirit, to live our lives as spiritual acts of worship. Meaning, when we go throughout our day, every thought, every word, every action, every deed ought to declare, God, you are God and I am not. Now that is pretty high bar. And I'll be the first to admit to you, I do not think I have yet accumulated a day where every thought, deed, action, emotion, reaction I had that day declared, God, you are God and I am not. But here's what we're not going to do at Grace. We're not going to back off of the high bar that Scripture sets for us to make it more attainable for ourselves so that we become something that we're not supposed to be. We're going to sit in humility and brokenness before the incredibly high bar of Scripture and say, Jesus, I can't. You have to help me. But when we are told that our bodies, the temples of the Holy Spirit, the way to live our lives is living sacrifices. This is our spiritual act of worship within that temple. We are told that every thought and deed and action and word needs to declare that he is Lord and we are not. And that's a very high bar. We are also reminded that Jesus does not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. And Paul has declared us sacred because we are temples. You guys can see where I'm going there. All of you, I'm certain, walked in here this morning with something in your temple that's sullying the sacred. All of us in our lives have trampled on Jesus. All of us in our actions and our thoughts and our deeds and our words have sullied the sacred, have prevented our bodies from being used for worship. And so, to me, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is in all four Gospels because it is a continuous reminder when we examine it and consider it and reflect on it that we ought to be people of repentance. That we ought to be people who invite Jesus into our life and say, turn over my tables if you need to. Show me where I am sullying the sacred and help me to get rid of those things. I don't need to enumerate the possible sins and the possible attitudes that you walked into this room with. And when I say you, I mean me too. I don't need to list those for you because you already know what they are. Because you have the Holy Spirit and he's getting after you about them right now. So I believe that this story calls us to repentance. Calls us to a moment where we plead with Jesus, would you please clean out this temple? Would you please turn over these tables? And when we talk about repentance, most of us in this room know what repentance is. I've done a sermon or two on it, but just so we're on the same page. Repentance means 180 degree turn. So it's not just confession. Confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yes, I see that. And it definitely was wrong to cuss at that six-year-old in the store. And I'm so sorry. That's wrong. Repentance is to move away from it and never do that again. Okay. So confession is, I'm sorry that I disappointed you in this way. I can see why that was disappointing. I agree, I would be disappointed in me too. But if we just keep doing it, then it doesn't matter. We just stop it, I'm sorry. So repentance is to apologize and then move in the opposite direction, away from sin and back towards the Father. That's what repentance is. And I think that when we think about repentance, we think about repenting of actions, things that we did. And so we repent and we say, God, I'm sorry that I did this. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry that I looked at that. I'm not going to look at that anymore. I'm sorry that I drank too much that time. I'm not going to drink too much anymore. I'm sorry that I lost my temper. I'm not going to lose my temper. I'm sorry that I worried too much. I'm not going to worry. We tend to repent of actions, things that we did. I'm sorry I did blank. I'm not going to do blank anymore. But I would actually put in front of you maybe a new way of thinking or a different way of thinking about repentance that was put in front of me a couple of weeks ago and I'm just so grateful for it. I think that we should repent of what we allow in our hearts, not necessarily how we behave. We should repent of what we allow to take up residence in our heart. The attitudes and the motives behind the behaviors are far more important to repent of than the actions themselves. Can I actually, can I tell you something? I mean, I know I can. That's a stupid question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna. I actually had an interesting conversation recently with a couple of my friends where we were asking, is God really even that interested in our behavior? Does he even really care about our behavior? And I increasingly think the answer is no. I increasingly think it's just he doesn't really care about our behavior, not because it doesn't matter to him what we do, but because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Because our behaviors will follow our attitudes and motives. So he's far more worried about cleansing our heart than making our behavior good. And I think that the way it works to repent of attitudes over actions can go something like this. You could pick a sin. I'm not sure what it is you struggle with. I can make some educated guesses, but I know for sure what I struggle with. And I shared one of those with you last week. I got angry. I lost my temper. I slapped the center console. I raised my voice at my daughter. She cried, and it was a moment that I wish I could take back. And I do that. I have a shorter fuse than I'd like. I can get angry or frustrated quickly. Hopefully, I deflate quickly too. But that's one of the things that I deal with. And so last week we talked about how when we lose our temper and we lash out, we looked at the story of Peter in the garden and they were coming to arrest Jesus and he swung his sword and he cut off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus. And Jesus picks up the ear and he puts it back on the guard and he mouthing us and he says, go on your way, Peter, stop doing that. And so we kind of talked about this language of sometimes we will lash out and we'll cut off people's ears. And so if anger is a thing that you deal with, like me, then I don't think it's really helpful to say, God, I'm sorry I cut off that person's ear. I'm never going to cut off ears again. I'm going to take a deep breath and count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my daughter. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my coworker, at my wife, at my husband, whatever it is. I'm going to count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't think that's super helpful. I think what's more helpful is to stop and think, well, why was I angry? Just in general, I'm going to step over here. This is not biblical, okay? I hesitated to even say anything about this, but when you ask why you're angry, you'll almost always find that you're not entitled to it. And most anger comes from unmet expectations. And some of those aren't very fair. Okay. When I reflect on when I get frustrated, what I find at the root of that, 98% of the time, is just unmitigated selfishness. It's just a bratty nine-year-old kid who doesn't want to do what they don't want to do. I don't want to get up and take the dog outside. I wish we didn't have one. I want to sit on the couch. So I'm angry. A lot of my anger has to do with me just wanting to sit on the couch. I don't want to get up and go do that. I don't want to clean. I don't want to go follow after a two-year-old. I want to sit right here, and I want to watch the Masters. That's what I want to do. I don't want to be going this slowly on 540. I'd like to be going quicker than you, and you're prohibiting that. I don't want to be in this conversation. I don't want to hear that story. I don't want to have to go there. I don't want to have to go stand in a field with sunshine and get my picture taken with my children who will not smile. I don't want to do that. My anger, my frustration in my life almost always is stirred up by poor Nate being made to do something he doesn't want to do. What a baby. You are too. So for me, rather than praying, God, help me not lash out at people anymore. A much better prayer is, God, help me to become a more selfless, patient person so that I might better love those around me. Help me to become, I've identified that I get frustrated because I'm selfish, so help me to be a more patient and selfless person. And here's the best part, so that I might better love those around me. Because those sins and attitudes and actions that exist in your life, who do they hurt the most? They hurt the people you love the most. And when we carry those through our lives, we actually love them more poorly than we could and should. So a helpful thing when we repent is to think, how was this attitude? How was my selfishness? How was my greed? How was my anxiety? How was my stubbornness? How was my pride? How was that hurting the people around me? And then you apologize to them and you repent of that too. But we don't repent by praying that God would take away actions. We pray that he would come into our hearts and take away attitudes. And I think that this mindset of repentance sheds light on what David writes in Psalm 139. It's a passage that's vexed me for most of my life. I'll tell you why in a second. But in Psalm 139, David says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I usually joke when I mention that verse that that's a prayer I've never had to pray. I've never had to be like, dear God, can you just show me where I'm sinning? Because I don't see it. And I would like you to help me. I've never had to pray that prayer. I know where I'm messing up. I see it. And if I don't always see it, I have a wife. She sees it. She'll tell me. She's not here today. I can say that. Lily's sick. She's got a cold. But the more I think about it, I don't really think that's what David meant either. I don't think maybe he did, but David was so very human. David was a terrible father. He had so many cracks in the facade. It's difficult for me to believe that David had a season of his life when he was writing Psalm 139 where he thought, you know what? I know I used to mess up, but I've been pretty much nailing it lately. God, I think I'm perfect for the last month, so if you could just tell me if I'm not, that'd be great. I don't think that's what David was doing. I think what David was doing is what we're talking about this morning. Jesus, can you come in my heart and search out those motives? Can you come in my heart and start flipping over tables? Some of us are people pleasers. We bend over backwards to make everyone around us happy. And sometimes that makes us be people that we're not. It's an interesting prayer to say, God, can you show me why I do that? Can you help me understand why I want those people to like me so much? Can you help me understand why I'm getting so angry? Can you help me understand why I seem to be so motivated by success? Can you help me understand why I don't like many of the people in my life right now and I know it's my problem? We start praying motive prayers, idols in heart prayers, sullying the temple prayers. And true repentance, the kind that we need, really, we can't do that on our own. If we're not repenting of actions, and we can't just white-knuckle our way back to holiness, but we have to repent of attitudes and things that we've allowed to take root in our heart and sully the sacred, then we need the kind of cleansing that only Jesus can offer. We need to pray the prayer of David in light of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple and say, God, wherever the tables have set up in my life, wherever there's money changing going on, wherever I'm taking advantage of people, whatever is in here that's sullying the sacred space of the temple of your Holy Spirit, God, would you show it to me, and would you give me the courage to pray that it leaves? And I'll help you with this too. Maybe you know exactly what it is. I don't need God to divine my attitude. I don't need to go to counseling to help suss this out. I don't need to talk to advisors who love me and can tell me what my attitudes have been. I know exactly what I need to do. But I don't want to do it. I like that sin. I like that sullying. And I'm not going to listen to one sermon by some guy and then walk away from that. Okay? I've been there too. So let me just encourage you to pray this. God, I don't want this to not be in my life. Would you help me to want to want it to go away? I'm not ready to let go of this sin, but God, will you move me closer to wanting to get rid of it, to hating it like you do? Because right now I don't. Right now I like it. Will you just help move the needle a little bit today and tomorrow and next week on not being happy with this in my life? But for a lot of us, the prayer today is a prayer of repentance, which should be a regular thing in our Christian life. God, show me what attitudes and idols I have in my heart and what things I have motivating the sin in my life that you might turn them over and force them out just like you did in the temple that day. Because if Jesus has a zeal for not sullying the sacred in that temple, then I can promise you that he is zealous about your temples too. Let's invite him in and let's be places that are places, let's be people that are places of worship every day as we learn what it is to repent of the things that are sullying the sacred in our lives. Let's pray. Father, God, we love you so much. We thank you that your kindness leads us to repentance, that it's not something you force onto us, that you don't run into our lives with a whip and start turning over tables and just cause all kinds of pain and hurt and dishevelment, but that your kindness, your love, your invitation, your grace, your patience and forbearance with us leads us to repentance. That the more we learn about you, the closer we want to be to you. And the less patience we have for the things that prevent us from worshiping you. God, I pray that we in this room would repent of sins big and little. That we would repent of attitudes egregious and simply unholy and unhelpful. And that God, even today, all of us in this room would take a step towards being cleansed. We pray the prayer of David and invite you into our hearts to clean things out so that we might be instruments of worship for you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

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. A lot of you have chosen this morning to make this a part of your Sunday. So many so that Keith had to sit in the front with the good Christians. So this is going to be a great Sunday. I almost said the good Christians except for Alan's up here too. So you guys can be buddies together. Sorry, you're both excellent placeholders for that joke that I wanted to make. And if you're, listen, if you're new here and you're trying to, you're kicking the tires, what just happened in worship is just such a great microcosm for, I think, who we are as a church, where we are worshiping earnestly and singing and getting after it. And it was a sweet moment. And then we start the next song and there's a little whoopsie and then we all laugh at ourselves and we just get right back into it. And I just thought it was great. I actually got on my knees and prayed and I pray before every sermon. And I'm just, I was just praying that I'm just so grateful that I get to be the pastor, one of the pastors of a church that I just love so much. I just, I just, I love this place. I love you guys. I consider it a huge privilege. I've told a couple different people this week. It just came up in conversation that I just don't think there could be an easier church to pastor. You guys are so great to me and my family. But anyways, we're in part two of our series called Big Emotions. I think, is that right, Carly? Is that what we're calling this one? Okay. I never know. I always tell them what it's about and then they just name it and I go, okay. And then I get it wrong. But part two of big emotions. And basically what we're doing is looking at stories, instances in the Bible where the people in the Bible had these big emotions, sometimes a blow up or a blow out. We're looking at that. We're examining it. We're relating to it because we're emotional creatures. We have blow ups and blow outs sometimes. And we're trying to figure out what we can learn from it. And so this week, we're looking at a pretty unique instance in the life of Christ. When I was growing up, I don't have many memories at all that don't involve church. I don't have a memory that goes beyond my church involvement. And so growing up, I heard all the stories. And before I heard the stories about Jesus, I heard about him that he was perfect, right? That he lived a sinless life. That he never did anything wrong, which is remarkable. And so I knew that as a little kid, but there's two stories that I encountered when I was young that gave me pause. Like, wait, are you sure? Because that really feels like sin. That really feels like that guy did stuff he wasn't supposed to do. The first one is in, I think it's Luke, when it records that Mary and Joseph took the family to Jerusalem for Passover, as was their habit. And they left, and Jesus chose to stay behind as a 12-year-old to talk to the rabbis and the scribes and the Pharisees. And I always looked at that story and thought, like, listen, I'm not trying to accuse our Savior of anything. I just know that when I was a kid, pretty high up on the obedience priority list was when your parents say it's time to go, you go. Like you don't just be like, yeah, I opted in to just remain at Six Flags after you guys left. Like I'm just going to, or I guess here it's Bush Gardens. I'm just going to, I'm just going to stay there. You guys go ahead. I'll figure it out. Like that seemed like pretty egregious sin for a 12 year old to just say, you know what you guys go on. I'm going to talk to my new pals in the temple, but obviously he didn't sin. I still not quite sure how that worked out for 12 year old Jesus, just to start making decisions about where he's going to stay. But I don't think that it blemishes his perfect record. The other story that made me go, gosh, that really seems like there's a different way to do that, is the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. And I honestly think that even now, and we'll get into the story in a second, so if you don't know what that is yet, don't worry, we'll get there. But I think even now, if you made us contemporaries of Jesus, and we saw him do what he's about to do when he cleanses the temple, we probably would have pulled him aside and been like, hey, buddy, I don't know that that was the best way to handle that. There's probably a different way to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. It's pretty untoward to do that. We would probably tell him that he was wrong and that he owed some people some apologies. But we're going to get into the story and actually see why his anger and zeal in this story is pretty warranted. So this story is in all four of the Gospels. I think John gives the best account of it, and we find it in John 2, verses 13 through 16. So I'll read it to you, and then we can talk about what's going on. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And then in verse 17, he says, So to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Wherever you were, you needed to get you and your family to Jerusalem to observe the holidays. Passover was one of those times where it's written in God's law and expected as you exercise your faith that you would be obedient and go supposed to go to the temple. And when you got to the temple, you were supposed to offer sacrifices in accordance with just your regular religious maintenance. In Leviticus, we see a ton of laws about what kinds of sacrifices are required for what types of grievances and sins. And so you had to offer those as well as your traditional Passover sacrifices for you and your family. This is all written into the law and required of good religious people. And so good religious people from all over Israel would go to Jerusalem on these high holidays and walk in obedience to those instructions in what we call the Old Testament. They're being obedient and living out their faith well. So if we picture this from the perspective of a family in Nazareth where Jesus was from, to get to Jerusalem, I believe is about 30 miles. Scholars believe that that journey is going to take three to five days depending on who you've got with you. For my family with a seven-year-old and a two-year-old, that's going to take seven days, and I'm going to not have any religion by the time I get to Jerusalem. Or I'll just have some serious sacrificing to do, right? To make things right. So whatever pace you go at, it's a three to five-day journey, a lot of people think. And you get there, you've got to find some place to stay. Maybe you stay in an inn. Maybe, I'm sure they had a commercialization set up and people would take advantage of people needing places to stay. Maybe you had friends or family in Jerusalem and there was one big house that you all got to stay at, but you've got to figure that out. And then you've got to go to the temple, right? But to go into the temple, you had to pay a temple tax. I don't know why you had to pay this temple tax. It feels a little bit like kind of Catholic indulgences, middle ages, like that kind of thing where the leaders of the church are just trying to extract more money from the people who come in. It would be like if I charged you $5 a seat to listen to the sermons and to worship with us. I don't think anything could clear this place out quicker than if I started asking for, that's right, than if I started asking for money to listen to me. But that's what you had to do when you went there. And so these money changers, they had these coins, and this is where the racket comes in. They had these coins that were made in Israel for Hebrews, and they did not bear Caesar's symbol. They had a real issue with coins with Caesar's symbol on them because Caesar claimed to be Lord, and that wasn't good. And so they couldn't accept the Roman currency that was ubiquitous in the country. Far more Roman currency going around than this particular, specifically Israeli currency going around. And so they would ask for you to take your Roman currency and exchange it for that Israeli currency or that Jewish currency. And some people think it's because of the issue with Caesar and other people think it's just that the Jewish coins were minted with more and better silver, and so it was of greater value. But at any rate, you had to take the coins that you had and exchange them. And you know, as well as I do, that the guy who's got the bucket of the Jewish coins at the temple and is exchanging them isn't doing that on good faith. He's making a little off the top because he's got a family to feed too, right? And maybe, maybe the family in Nazareth has its own cash of Jewish coins that are acceptable at the temple, and maybe they don't need that money changer. But my bet is they probably do. And my bet is he's scalping them. He's making some money off of that exchange. And we don't know for sure that the people in the temple who were selling animals and lending money, we don't know for sure that they were price gouging, that they were taking advantage of the populace. But we do know that Jesus said that they had turned his father's house and the other gospel accounts, that they had turned his father's house into a den of thieves or robbers. Which leads me to believe that they were taking advantage of their situation. You're a family from Nazareth. You're traveling three to five days. Who knows how many people are in your caravan. You probably don't want to or have the capacity to bring sheep with you, doves with you for the sacrifice, oxen with you for the sacrifice. You probably don't have that capacity. And even when you get where you're going and you've got to stay at the Hampton Inn, they probably don't allow sheep in there. Maybe you have a house that you can go to and they've got a stable or a barn and you've brought all your sacrificial animals and you're self-sufficient. But I would guess, and research bears this out, that most of the populace did not have that stuff to bring or the capacity to bring it to Jerusalem. So once you get to Jerusalem, to the temple, and you've got to get in the temple with the coin that they accept and you've got to perform the sacrifices that your God demands of you, you have to buy those animals once you get there. Do you see what I'm saying? This is like, this is a North Carolina zoo situation at the junction. This is Disney World. They've got you. You're going to get chicken tenders and you're going to pay $17 and you're going to like it. Nothing you can do about it. And again, we can't say with certainty that they were price gouging, but everything in the text points to the fact that they were. And so Jesus sees this and he's rightly angered by it. Because when you think about it, it's pretty appalling what they're doing. They are leveraging God's laws to line their own pockets. They are commercializing the sacred. And what's more, to me, the high priest is complicit in all of this. Because you don't get to set up shop on the temple grounds. And when we hear this story, please know that when we think about a temple, I think we think about this indoor structure. But at the Temple Mount, there was this outer courtyard that was the size of several football fields, and everyone's allowed in there, Gentiles and Jews alike. You're allowed in there, and that's where all of the tables and the moneylenders are set up. And then you have like this rectangle in the middle, and the rectangle is divided into two squares, and the front square is where Jewish men and women are allowed, and the back square is where Jewish that Jesus goes in and clears out. He goes in there. First of all, he sees what they're doing. And if you read the text, it says he fashioned a whip. He didn't go find one. He sat down and anger wove a whole whip. And then he took it and he started flipping over tables like a madman. And I assume hitting people with the whip. That's one of the scenes in Jesus's life I would have liked to attend. But when you understand what's going on, his anger makes so much sense. And to me, it's so very justifiable. These people are humble people trying to be obedient to their God, trying to do the right thing. And they're going to Jerusalem to take the pilgrimage like good Hebrews should. And listen, we know how faith works. We know how religious cultures work. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think 100% of the Hebrew people are taking a pilgrimage for all three high holidays every year. Some people had opted out. Some people didn't care. Some people couldn't make it. I'm sure a higher percentage of that population went than would go in Christian America in the 80s making some pilgrimage, but not everybody went. So the ones who are going are the faithful ones. They're the committed ones. To them, this faith matters, and they're trying to do the right thing, and they're trying to teach it to their children and their children's children too. And when they get there, they're being taken advantage of. We don't know this for sure, but I'd be willing to proffer a guess that the people exchanging those coins had a higher net value than the people who needed the exchanging done. I bet the people selling oxen had a higher net worth than a majority of the people buying the oxen from them. The rich were likely getting richer while the poor were getting poorer. And the galling thing is it's all in the name of God. They're taking advantage of the sacred to line their own pockets, and it's gross. And Jesus won't have it. He goes in there, flips tables, drives them out, and the disciples are reminded that it was said about him that he would have zeal for his father's house. So there's a lot of things that we can learn from this story as we look at it and we pull it apart and we analyze it. There's a lot of things we can learn from this story. I think one of the things, and I almost preached about it, but I'm just going to set it here and let you guys consider it later in your own time. Maybe you can talk about it in your small groups. But this story pretty heavily indicates that justice matters a lot to Jesus. And fighting against injustice matters a lot to Jesus. I think what galled Jesus was the fact that these people who in good faith were trying to be obedient to their father were being taken advantage of for their very faith. It's remarkably unjust and it ticked them off. But I think more than that, more than that, was what they were turning his father's house into. And what I see glaring like a bullhorn from these passages is that Jesus will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Our Jesus will not put up with, he will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. I don't know where you draw lines in your life. I don't know what you feel like you can't put up with, what really gets your ire going. I know for me, when I see someone who is, believe it or not, when I see someone who is willfully unkind and hurtful to someone else, I write that person off. I have a really hard time with someone who is willing to be unkind and hurtful to someone else. I just can't tolerate it. I don't know what your thing is. Jesus' thing is, one of them, you will not sully the sacred while I am here. Because the temple, the temple was sacred to the Jew. It was sacred to Jesus. Do you understand that the temple was the place of the presence of God for thousands of years? In that back rectangle where the Holy of Holies sat, in the Holy of Holies behind a veil sat the Ark of the Covenant. And on the Ark of the Covenant, there's two angels, golden angels, and their wings touch in the middle. And where their wings touch is called the mercy seat. And on the mercy seat rests the very presence of God, making that temple and that city and that nation unique in all the world. Do you know that every synagogue built outside of Israel is built to face Jerusalem and that every synagogue in Israel faces Jerusalem. It's all about the Holy of Holies and what's in there and the presence of God being in that place. The temple was a sacred space. A space that when you go into it, it's different than any other experience in your life. A space where you take your children and you teach them the way that you were taught. The space where when you become the matriarch or the patriarch of your family, you sit your grandchildren down and you tell them about the pilgrimages that you used to make. And most importantly, it's a place of worship where we assign worth to God. Not just praise and worship, not singing like what we did a few minutes ago, but worship where you declare with every breath and with every action and with every thought and with every deed that God, you are Lord and I am not. That was a place where you went to lay yourself down prostrate and say, God, you are amazing and to stand in awe of God. The temple was a space for the sacred and they sullied it with their selfishness. And so Jesus said, no, I will not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. Now here's why that should matter a lot to you and I, because of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul tells us this, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. The New Testament teaches us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And I used to hear growing up, I would hear Baptists say that you shouldn't drink because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and alcohol is not healthy for you. And then you just look at them and be like, do you eat fried chicken? And then that clearly is a misapplication. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Meaning, Paul tells us in other writings, I think it's Ephesians, but I'm not certain on that. But I am certain that what he says is that when you become a Christian, that you receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment on your salvation. And again, to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. He came to deliver the world. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he is who he says he, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to get us and take us home. To be a Christian is to believe those things. And when we believe those things, the Bible teaches us that God gives us his Holy Spirit in our hearts. And what does that language mean? We don't know. We just kind of feel that language. But he gives us the Holy Spirit in our heart as a seal of the promise that one day he's going to send his son back to take us to him, to take us home. And that because of that, because this is the place where the Holy Spirit dwells, we have now become the temple. Our bodies are the temple. Our bodies are where the presence of God sits in this earthly place. Because when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, many of you know this, the veil that was hung in the Holy of Holies that separated the presence of God from everyone else was torn in two from top to bottom and the presence of God exited that place. And then we learn at the end of the Gospels and at the beginning of Acts that that presence actually returns to us in the form of God's Spirit and that we are the houses of God's Spirit. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what are temples for? Temples are for worship. Temples are sacred. Temples are where we meet with God. And when we talk about temples being places of worship, I am reminded I'm reminded that Paul wrote that we are actually called to be living sacrifices. That going through life as a living sacrifice, Paul calls it, this is our spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable to God. He tells us as Christians that we are to live our lives as sacrifices. God, we wake up every day, God, what would you have me do today? How would you have me use this instrument for your glory today? And that is our spiritual act of worship. Not praise, but worship. And our spiritual act of worship, if what happens in the temple is every thought, every action, every deed declares implicitly, Lord, you are Lord and I am not, then what he calls us to do, what we are called to do when we understand the theology of the New Testament is to live our lives as the temples of the Holy Spirit, to live our lives as spiritual acts of worship. Meaning, when we go throughout our day, every thought, every word, every action, every deed ought to declare, God, you are God and I am not. Now that is pretty high bar. And I'll be the first to admit to you, I do not think I have yet accumulated a day where every thought, deed, action, emotion, reaction I had that day declared, God, you are God and I am not. But here's what we're not going to do at Grace. We're not going to back off of the high bar that Scripture sets for us to make it more attainable for ourselves so that we become something that we're not supposed to be. We're going to sit in humility and brokenness before the incredibly high bar of Scripture and say, Jesus, I can't. You have to help me. But when we are told that our bodies, the temples of the Holy Spirit, the way to live our lives is living sacrifices. This is our spiritual act of worship within that temple. We are told that every thought and deed and action and word needs to declare that he is Lord and we are not. And that's a very high bar. We are also reminded that Jesus does not tolerate the sullying of the sacred. And Paul has declared us sacred because we are temples. You guys can see where I'm going there. All of you, I'm certain, walked in here this morning with something in your temple that's sullying the sacred. All of us in our lives have trampled on Jesus. All of us in our actions and our thoughts and our deeds and our words have sullied the sacred, have prevented our bodies from being used for worship. And so, to me, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is in all four Gospels because it is a continuous reminder when we examine it and consider it and reflect on it that we ought to be people of repentance. That we ought to be people who invite Jesus into our life and say, turn over my tables if you need to. Show me where I am sullying the sacred and help me to get rid of those things. I don't need to enumerate the possible sins and the possible attitudes that you walked into this room with. And when I say you, I mean me too. I don't need to list those for you because you already know what they are. Because you have the Holy Spirit and he's getting after you about them right now. So I believe that this story calls us to repentance. Calls us to a moment where we plead with Jesus, would you please clean out this temple? Would you please turn over these tables? And when we talk about repentance, most of us in this room know what repentance is. I've done a sermon or two on it, but just so we're on the same page. Repentance means 180 degree turn. So it's not just confession. Confession is to agree with God about your sin. Yes, I see that. And it definitely was wrong to cuss at that six-year-old in the store. And I'm so sorry. That's wrong. Repentance is to move away from it and never do that again. Okay. So confession is, I'm sorry that I disappointed you in this way. I can see why that was disappointing. I agree, I would be disappointed in me too. But if we just keep doing it, then it doesn't matter. We just stop it, I'm sorry. So repentance is to apologize and then move in the opposite direction, away from sin and back towards the Father. That's what repentance is. And I think that when we think about repentance, we think about repenting of actions, things that we did. And so we repent and we say, God, I'm sorry that I did this. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry that I looked at that. I'm not going to look at that anymore. I'm sorry that I drank too much that time. I'm not going to drink too much anymore. I'm sorry that I lost my temper. I'm not going to lose my temper. I'm sorry that I worried too much. I'm not going to worry. We tend to repent of actions, things that we did. I'm sorry I did blank. I'm not going to do blank anymore. But I would actually put in front of you maybe a new way of thinking or a different way of thinking about repentance that was put in front of me a couple of weeks ago and I'm just so grateful for it. I think that we should repent of what we allow in our hearts, not necessarily how we behave. We should repent of what we allow to take up residence in our heart. The attitudes and the motives behind the behaviors are far more important to repent of than the actions themselves. Can I actually, can I tell you something? I mean, I know I can. That's a stupid question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna. I actually had an interesting conversation recently with a couple of my friends where we were asking, is God really even that interested in our behavior? Does he even really care about our behavior? And I increasingly think the answer is no. I increasingly think it's just he doesn't really care about our behavior, not because it doesn't matter to him what we do, but because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Because our behaviors will follow our attitudes and motives. So he's far more worried about cleansing our heart than making our behavior good. And I think that the way it works to repent of attitudes over actions can go something like this. You could pick a sin. I'm not sure what it is you struggle with. I can make some educated guesses, but I know for sure what I struggle with. And I shared one of those with you last week. I got angry. I lost my temper. I slapped the center console. I raised my voice at my daughter. She cried, and it was a moment that I wish I could take back. And I do that. I have a shorter fuse than I'd like. I can get angry or frustrated quickly. Hopefully, I deflate quickly too. But that's one of the things that I deal with. And so last week we talked about how when we lose our temper and we lash out, we looked at the story of Peter in the garden and they were coming to arrest Jesus and he swung his sword and he cut off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus. And Jesus picks up the ear and he puts it back on the guard and he mouthing us and he says, go on your way, Peter, stop doing that. And so we kind of talked about this language of sometimes we will lash out and we'll cut off people's ears. And so if anger is a thing that you deal with, like me, then I don't think it's really helpful to say, God, I'm sorry I cut off that person's ear. I'm never going to cut off ears again. I'm going to take a deep breath and count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my daughter. I'm sorry I lost my temper at my coworker, at my wife, at my husband, whatever it is. I'm going to count to 10. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't think that's super helpful. I think what's more helpful is to stop and think, well, why was I angry? Just in general, I'm going to step over here. This is not biblical, okay? I hesitated to even say anything about this, but when you ask why you're angry, you'll almost always find that you're not entitled to it. And most anger comes from unmet expectations. And some of those aren't very fair. Okay. When I reflect on when I get frustrated, what I find at the root of that, 98% of the time, is just unmitigated selfishness. It's just a bratty nine-year-old kid who doesn't want to do what they don't want to do. I don't want to get up and take the dog outside. I wish we didn't have one. I want to sit on the couch. So I'm angry. A lot of my anger has to do with me just wanting to sit on the couch. I don't want to get up and go do that. I don't want to clean. I don't want to go follow after a two-year-old. I want to sit right here, and I want to watch the Masters. That's what I want to do. I don't want to be going this slowly on 540. I'd like to be going quicker than you, and you're prohibiting that. I don't want to be in this conversation. I don't want to hear that story. I don't want to have to go there. I don't want to have to go stand in a field with sunshine and get my picture taken with my children who will not smile. I don't want to do that. My anger, my frustration in my life almost always is stirred up by poor Nate being made to do something he doesn't want to do. What a baby. You are too. So for me, rather than praying, God, help me not lash out at people anymore. A much better prayer is, God, help me to become a more selfless, patient person so that I might better love those around me. Help me to become, I've identified that I get frustrated because I'm selfish, so help me to be a more patient and selfless person. And here's the best part, so that I might better love those around me. Because those sins and attitudes and actions that exist in your life, who do they hurt the most? They hurt the people you love the most. And when we carry those through our lives, we actually love them more poorly than we could and should. So a helpful thing when we repent is to think, how was this attitude? How was my selfishness? How was my greed? How was my anxiety? How was my stubbornness? How was my pride? How was that hurting the people around me? And then you apologize to them and you repent of that too. But we don't repent by praying that God would take away actions. We pray that he would come into our hearts and take away attitudes. And I think that this mindset of repentance sheds light on what David writes in Psalm 139. It's a passage that's vexed me for most of my life. I'll tell you why in a second. But in Psalm 139, David says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I usually joke when I mention that verse that that's a prayer I've never had to pray. I've never had to be like, dear God, can you just show me where I'm sinning? Because I don't see it. And I would like you to help me. I've never had to pray that prayer. I know where I'm messing up. I see it. And if I don't always see it, I have a wife. She sees it. She'll tell me. She's not here today. I can say that. Lily's sick. She's got a cold. But the more I think about it, I don't really think that's what David meant either. I don't think maybe he did, but David was so very human. David was a terrible father. He had so many cracks in the facade. It's difficult for me to believe that David had a season of his life when he was writing Psalm 139 where he thought, you know what? I know I used to mess up, but I've been pretty much nailing it lately. God, I think I'm perfect for the last month, so if you could just tell me if I'm not, that'd be great. I don't think that's what David was doing. I think what David was doing is what we're talking about this morning. Jesus, can you come in my heart and search out those motives? Can you come in my heart and start flipping over tables? Some of us are people pleasers. We bend over backwards to make everyone around us happy. And sometimes that makes us be people that we're not. It's an interesting prayer to say, God, can you show me why I do that? Can you help me understand why I want those people to like me so much? Can you help me understand why I'm getting so angry? Can you help me understand why I seem to be so motivated by success? Can you help me understand why I don't like many of the people in my life right now and I know it's my problem? We start praying motive prayers, idols in heart prayers, sullying the temple prayers. And true repentance, the kind that we need, really, we can't do that on our own. If we're not repenting of actions, and we can't just white-knuckle our way back to holiness, but we have to repent of attitudes and things that we've allowed to take root in our heart and sully the sacred, then we need the kind of cleansing that only Jesus can offer. We need to pray the prayer of David in light of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple and say, God, wherever the tables have set up in my life, wherever there's money changing going on, wherever I'm taking advantage of people, whatever is in here that's sullying the sacred space of the temple of your Holy Spirit, God, would you show it to me, and would you give me the courage to pray that it leaves? And I'll help you with this too. Maybe you know exactly what it is. I don't need God to divine my attitude. I don't need to go to counseling to help suss this out. I don't need to talk to advisors who love me and can tell me what my attitudes have been. I know exactly what I need to do. But I don't want to do it. I like that sin. I like that sullying. And I'm not going to listen to one sermon by some guy and then walk away from that. Okay? I've been there too. So let me just encourage you to pray this. God, I don't want this to not be in my life. Would you help me to want to want it to go away? I'm not ready to let go of this sin, but God, will you move me closer to wanting to get rid of it, to hating it like you do? Because right now I don't. Right now I like it. Will you just help move the needle a little bit today and tomorrow and next week on not being happy with this in my life? But for a lot of us, the prayer today is a prayer of repentance, which should be a regular thing in our Christian life. God, show me what attitudes and idols I have in my heart and what things I have motivating the sin in my life that you might turn them over and force them out just like you did in the temple that day. Because if Jesus has a zeal for not sullying the sacred in that temple, then I can promise you that he is zealous about your temples too. Let's invite him in and let's be places that are places, let's be people that are places of worship every day as we learn what it is to repent of the things that are sullying the sacred in our lives. Let's pray. Father, God, we love you so much. We thank you that your kindness leads us to repentance, that it's not something you force onto us, that you don't run into our lives with a whip and start turning over tables and just cause all kinds of pain and hurt and dishevelment, but that your kindness, your love, your invitation, your grace, your patience and forbearance with us leads us to repentance. That the more we learn about you, the closer we want to be to you. And the less patience we have for the things that prevent us from worshiping you. God, I pray that we in this room would repent of sins big and little. That we would repent of attitudes egregious and simply unholy and unhelpful. And that God, even today, all of us in this room would take a step towards being cleansed. We pray the prayer of David and invite you into our hearts to clean things out so that we might be instruments of worship for you. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.