Luke 15

Good morning, Grace. Welcome to the new year. I am so thrilled to be here this morning. Before we jump into what we're actually going to be talking about and going to be walking through this morning, I wanted to take just a quick second to give you an update. I know as many of you guys have been walking alongside and have been praying for Nate and for Jen, as Jen has been in the process of her father has been going through pancreatic cancer. And a lot of you know, as we've talked about kind of during the Christmas season, that it looked like that during this Christmas holiday was going to be the time where he finally was able to pass on into eternity. And that did happen. John is now in heaven, in the arms of the Father that he committed his life to. He's able to be up there absolutely rejoicing in Jesus, this Jesus that he's loved his whole life. He now is able to see and to know and to touch and to worship with no distractions. But as that has happened, I say that not only to say continue to keep the Vincent and the Rector families in your prayers, but I also say that to say that I could see and I could tell through your virtual faces as I look at you through your screens that you were like, ugh, this guy again. And I get it. I know and I understand. But I say that to say that John's funeral was yesterday. It was yesterday at two o'clock and then they did a graveside afterwards. And so it's my pleasure and my joy this morning to just have the opportunity to take away that one small extra burden from Nate that while he was dealing with being there for his wife and for his family and while he was there helping plan a funeral and preparing words to say for a funeral that he didn't have to worry about. Also writing a sermon and worry about jumping in the car from the funeral and driving from Atlanta all the way to Raleigh just so he could be here preaching this morning. And so I'm thrilled and I'm excited to be here this morning, not only because I love being up here getting to preach and getting to talk with you guys about things that I'm passionate with, but in particular this morning, just as a way to alleviate just a little bit of stress from Nate that he didn't have to worry about doing all of that, about driving back just so he can preach a sermon and he could just spend this week with his family as they mourn, but also as they celebrate John's life, what it was and what now it is in perfection in eternity. And with that, I say welcome to the new year. And this morning, as we're kicking off the new year at Grace, we kick it off with a new series called Things You Should Know. And I know that that title leaves a bit to be desired. I know it's probably, you know, you're like, okay, that could go a few different directions. And if it's going to go in the direction of you're going to come up and be Professor Kyle and teach me all of these boring things I don't know, then I'm turning it off. And don't, don't turn it off. That's not what I'm up here doing. I admit that probably when it comes to things of wisdom and discernment and just pure knowledge and understanding of things, I could probably turn to you much quicker than you would turn to me to learn those things. But instead, as we're focusing on things you should know, what we're talking about is maybe some of those words or some of those concepts that we hear and that we talk about in church that we definitely know what they are, right? And we definitely, like, we could probably define them and we could use them in conversations pretty well, but that maybe when we take like a deep look, and you've all been there, right, where you use a word, and someone goes, do you really know what that word means? Okay, like give me a definition, and as you struggle with it, you go, gosh, maybe I don't actually fully know that definition. Or when you talk about that you know a lot about, you know, you say like, I know about this, I understand this. And as soon as someone asks you two or three questions, you go, goodness gracious, I don't know how to answer that. And so these instead, for the next five weeks, we're going to talk about some of these words, some of these concepts, and some of these beliefs that we have in our church and through scripture that definitely we know, that we probably know pretty well. Some of you are going to know very well, but some of those things that I think at times we talk a lot about, but maybe don't sit down to just only talk about that, to just get a full and holistic view and understanding of what they are. And so this morning, I have the distinct pleasure of talking about baptism. What a wonderful and what a beautiful time to talk about baptism, to talk about us giving our hearts to Jesus, of the symbol of us being dead as Jesus was killed and being resurrected as Jesus was being resurrected. As yesterday, we celebrated a man, Jen's father and Nate's father-in-law going to heaven as this beautiful celebration of life and a celebration of a faith that he committed to and a baptism that he committed to long ago that he's now able to see the full fruit and the full fruition of what that means. But this morning, we're talking about baptism. And I know that if you've been around grace for a while, then you're probably, as soon as I said we're talking about baptism, you probably were a bit confused. You're like, wait, didn't we have like an entire Sunday, like an entire sermon where Nate preached about baptism, about what it is, and about what it means? And the answer is yes. It was, I would say, a little bit less than two and a half years ago. And the reason why I remember that is because my first Sunday was right after Nate had given that message. And the reason I know that is because my first Sunday was when Grace celebrated this huge day of baptisms where we had a group of people come, different people throughout age groups and men and women and youth and student age folks come and celebrate and be baptized this first Sunday that I was at Grace. And it was incredible and it was remarkable. And in that sermon that Nate gave that got all of these people thinking about and got all these people excited about being baptism, he talked about what we believe baptism is at grace. That we believe that baptism is for those who are able to articulate a faith and have experienced salvation. That when someone is able to give their heart to Jesus, when someone is able to repent of their sin and fully realize and understand the magnitude of their sin and how their sin equals eternal death, but because God is a good God, that God, because he sent his son to earth, that his son who lived a perfect life, when he was killed, he was killed to put to death your sin, to put to death our sin. And as he was raised to life, he was raised in a symbol that in the same way, if we would give our hearts to faith, if we would put our faith in that Jesus, that because of that, we could go from eternal death and destruction to eternal life and to have an eternal relationship with God, our creator and our father, both on earth and in heaven and eternity. And so in the same way, when that happens, we believe that we baptize when someone comes to faith through immersion. That's just a big word for basically saying we dunk people. As Nate puts it, we get them full wet or completely wet or whatever it is, the weird phrase that he says. But basically when someone comes to faith, they come in front of the church and they're baptized and they're brought down into the water, completely underwater, and then being brought back up. And that is meant to be a symbol of the faith that we are giving our hearts to. I think the symbol is most beautifully put and most beautifully said by Paul in Romans, in Romans 6, 3 through 4, where he says, What a beautiful depiction, and what a beautiful description, and what a beautiful symbol that as we are being dunked into the water, that we are being gone. And that is signifying the death of our old life. That is signifying the death of our old selves. And most importantly, that is signifying the death of our sin that no longer binds us and no longer holds us back from knowing God and having a relationship with him. And as we come out of the water, just as Jesus was resurrected, so are we being resurrected in newness of life. That water has washed the sins away from us. And as we burst forth out of that water, we are bursting forth into eternity, into this eternal relationship with God. And we know and we understand, just as John Piper put so eloquently, that faith, faith is what unites us to Christ. Baptism symbolizes the union. Baptism is a symbol of the union of Christ. We understand and we know and we have knowledge that it is our faith in Jesus. It's our hearts being given to Jesus is what saves us. If that is not something we've experienced, then baptism is meaningless. Then believer's baptism becomes meaningless because the water isn't what saves us. Our faith is what saves us. And on a Sunday where we're talking about baptism and on a Sunday where we get to talk about baptism, I don't think that there's any way, nor should there ever be any way around getting to talk about why baptism is so significant, why it is so important that baptism is the symbol of coming to faith. Because coming to faith is what this is all about. We are called, as we're called to make disciples, we're called, part of that is being called to baptism, that we come to a saving knowledge of faith. We come and we give our hearts to Jesus and we know that our eternal resting place is with God in eternity in relationship with him. And so when we experience that faith, we bring that faith, we go and we make disciples, we tell people who that is, we tell people of this experience that we have had with Jesus so that they can experience it as well. And as they do, we're able to baptize them into the kingdom, into our eternal family. And so there's no way to not talk about that, nor should there be. But I also understand, and what I also realize is you're like, Kyle, this is all stuff that we've talked about. This is stuff we do know. You should change the title to Kyle Tells Us Things That We Already Know, right? Because you've heard this before, and I know that it's not an incredibly difficult concept to understand, right? That when you've heard, when you read scripture, it's like, okay, like, I understand that symbol. You know, I understand that the water is washing away our sins and that we're going from death into life. And I understand that it's not what saves us, but instead it's our faith that what saves us. But I do understand why it's important. But the reason this morning why I'm excited to talk about baptism is because one of my favorite aspects of baptism is also falls in line with the question that I most often get from the people who I talk with about getting baptized. Granted, these are normally students. They're normally like middle schoolers, high schoolers who have given their hearts to Jesus. They've come to know who Jesus is and they want to live their life for him. And so they come in and they talk to me and they're like, Kyle, like, I get it. I understand baptism. I think it's really cool. I get why it's important, but they're smart. And they're like, but if it's a symbol of our faith, don't you talk about all the time that our faith is personal and it's ours and it's our own hearts, that our faith is not about our parents' faith, that we don't have our parents' faith, we don't have our friends' faith, we don't have our kids' faiths in the words of an adult or of a parent? Don't you say that? And so if it is a personal thing, then wouldn't the symbol of baptism, wouldn't it be that I could just like invite you over or I could just call up Nate and say, hey, Nate, can you come over to the house? We'll go out back and you can baptize me and you can go out back. You can baptize me in my pool and we can be done with it. But instead, the question, so the question they have is, I understand all of that, but why do I have to do it in front of everybody? And I love that question. I think it's a great, and I think it's a great point that yes, certainly baptism is the symbol of your personal faith. And certainly the symbol of baptism is not lost when you do it by yourself or when you do it alone. But I love the question and I understand the question, especially if you can imagine sixth and seventh graders being like, Kyle, I don't like when anyone looks at me ever. Much less do I want to be the reason why an entire room of people are looking straight at me. I don't want to go, because it's like, it's not like I'm standing, I don't even want to stand in the back of like a choir or like stand in the like, as Rob always talks about when he's playing the bass, he's like, gosh, we got to get some more light on me so people can see me rocking the bass. It's like, students don't want to be in the dark playing instruments up front, much less have a spotlight on them being like, hey, everybody in this entire place, we're talking about this kid now. And I would imagine that this is something that you've probably thought about and considered as well, because don't grow out of people of not wanting like everyone to look at you. You don't grow out of like being like, oh, this feels weird. This feels awkward. I don't like having all of these people looking at me. And so I think it's a great question of why in the world do I have to be in front of everyone to get baptized? And with that question, I want to take a quick pivot and I want to tell you about one of the best and one of the most joy-filled days of my entire life. And I know with all of that, everything coming down the pipe, you're like, all right, now he's going to tell me about his baptism or he's going to tell me about someone he loves baptism. And while that certainly probably would have been a far better idea, I'm actually going to not talk about that, and I'm going to talk about something else. Instead, I want to tell you about the day that my brother, Jay, my younger brother, and his wife, Conley, got married. To give you a little background, to know me is to probably also know Jay and to know Conley. I talk about them quite often. Jay has been my best friend since, I guess, his birth because he's younger than me. So I think mathematically that works. And for our whole lives, since he's only a couple years younger than me, we've kind of just done all of the same things. We like the same things. We do the same things. We've always gotten along really well. We don't fight a ton. We just have always kind of gotten along. And so especially as the years progressed and as he got towards middle school and interests kind of began aligning even more, we just were kind of best friends and have been best friends ever since. He's the person I love most in this world. On the other side, Jay had this great friend named Conley when he was in elementary school. And as early as like sixth or seventh grade, they started dating or going out or being boyfriend and girlfriend. I don't know. Like they were in sixth grade. No one knew what to call it, whatever. But as funny as it is, and as goofy sometimes as middle school relationship goes, their relationship lasted through middle school and through high school and through college all the way to marriage. And so I say that to say that as long as I have known Jay and as long as I have been so close to Jay, almost as much as that time, I have known Conley in the same way. And so in the same way, his wife Conley, I have seen for a long, long time, for years and years, as basically my little sister and as basically just another one of my very best and closest friends. And for the same reason, Jay didn't have too many friends that weren't also great friends with Conley and vice versa. Conley's friends were great friends with Jay and loved Jay. Because for so much of their lives and so much of their growing up, they were growing up together. And so as people are walking in friendship with these two apart, they are walking in friendship with these two together, walking towards and anticipating the day, one day when they will finally be able to have a wedding and be married. And so you can imagine how wonderful and how joyful a celebration we had when they finally got married a couple years ago. It was unbelievable. I can't describe to you a time where I have been more joy-filled and more proud in my whole life than to stand next to Jay and watch him be married. Standing in there with a church full of people, church full of loved ones who absolutely love these two and would do anything for them. And the celebration as we sang hymns, the celebration as we joined in excitement and cheering as they vowed to each other and as Jay kissed the bride, as Jay kissed Conley, and as we went off into the reception and we danced the night away and did all of those things because there was not a time more joyful than that because what an incredible experience. And we all know it. Like, you don't know Jay and Conley, but you've probably been to a wedding and you've probably had a wedding before. And so you get it. Weddings are joyful. People love weddings. I have even heard tale, this is true, I have even heard tale that Nate Rector, our pastor, has actually been known to dance at weddings. Like they are joyful experiences. They are joyful celebrations of these two people making these vows and making these commitments to each other. And I think just as significantly, even if not more so, one of the great and incredible reasons to have a wedding where you invite loved ones in to celebrate with you is not simply to celebrate with you on that day or on that night where you are saying yes to your partner forever, but also outside of that day, after that celebration ends, that the people that are watching and the people that are witnessing Jay and Conley and whoever these two people are that are getting married, as they are vowing their hearts and their lives to the other person, then the loved ones around them are being invited into saying, hey, I am making this vow. I am making this commitment. I need you to walk alongside me in that. And I think that's maybe even a more significant reason to have a wedding and to share your vows in public with these people that love you because what those people know because they've been married or just, I mean, for me, I haven't been married, but what I know through experience and what I know through loving people is it gets harder, right? That it's not always the honeymoon. They call it the honeymoon stage because at some point it ends and it gets more difficult. And so as that happens, Jay and Conley have all of these people who just as joyfully as they're celebrating are also saying yes to a commitment of saying, I care about these people and so I am committed to partnering them, to walking alongside them, to providing them wisdom and to providing them guidance in their new lives together, bound together for life. I say yes to giving them accountability. I say yes to allowing them to ask questions and for me to check in. Jay, how's it going? Conley, how has everything been? Is there anything that's difficult or is there anything that's great? And all of those things. And you know that, right? I know that maybe we don't in the moment think about that, yeah, we're watching them make that vows. And so we're committing to helping them as loved ones uphold those vows. But we all know how excited we are to talk to a newly married couple, to ask them how things are going, to ask them about all the great things, but then you always have the, you know, a little bit more like, okay, so what are some of the hard things now? Yeah, I dealt with that too. This is kind of how I dealt with it. This is how you walk in that. This is how you walk through it. And so for those two reasons, to be able to joyfully celebrate these two people who are coming together, while also committing to say, I will partner with you as you walk in your entire life, as you walk in your life committed to this person, I have chosen and I will partner with you. I believe that those same reasons are the main reasons why we have big weddings where we invite our loved ones in to join. Because what we know so well, and as sad and heartbreaking as it is, we have people in our church this year who know all the well and all the more because of COVID that it's not what legally binds us, right? It's not legally required that you have a big group of friends and family and loved ones around you as you get married. It only requires you, the person you're marrying, and someone to witness it, right? So why do we do it? I think more than any other reasons, those two reasons, the ability to celebrate and the ability to have people there to partner with you are those two main reasons. And in the same way, I also believe that the reason that we do baptisms in front of the entire congregation are the same. That in public baptism, that public baptism invites the congregation to celebrate and to partner with the person that is being baptized. When someone has gone from death to life, it is something that deserves to be celebrated. And I would say, I would go beyond that. The Bible says not only that it deserves to be celebrated, but that it is literally being celebrated. In Luke 1.15, it says, In the same way I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. If you have given your hearts to Jesus, if you have repented of that sin, if you have said yes to Jesus, if you have given your heart over to God, then the angels in heaven have rejoiced and have celebrated over you because of that. When you came to faith, angels in heaven celebrated. And so baptism is an earthly representation of the rejoicing that is taking place in heaven as someone has given their heart and given their life over to God. It's your family. It's your friends. It's your loved ones. It's your church family. Here in particular, it's your grace family coming together to celebrate that you know Jesus, that you have gone from eternal death to eternal life, and you now get to experience this eternal relationship with God, your creator. And we get to celebrate alongside you, and you get to be celebrated for this incredible moment and for this incredible thing that has happened in your heart, the greatest thing that can ever and will ever happen inside of your heart. Similar to weddings, once again, I think that there's another reason that is at least equally as important, if not more so, that when you're getting in front of these people, you're vowing and you're making a commitment, a lifelong, eternal commitment to God, to Christ. I know a lot of you probably were able to see, and if you haven't, you can go to our social media and you can watch the video of when Jordan was baptized a few weeks ago. And as she was baptized, as exciting and as joyful as that was, before she was actually put into the water, before Nate actually baptized her, he said, Jordan, I've got two questions for you. Have you accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior? He said, yes. He said, are you committed to living the rest of your life for him. Yes. So Jordan, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Before Jordan was baptized, she made this commitment. She made this vow, vowing and committing her heart for eternity to God, not only so that she can go to heaven, but so that in her life and in this life, she is committing to living the rest of her days, the rest of her life, glorifying and seeking after Jesus. And as she does that, what is being asked of you, and you have a part to play in this, us as her grace family have a part to play in this, in saying, okay, Jordan, I heard you say that. And so I know that just like there's a honeymoon stage in marriage, there's also a honeymoon stage in faith, that we're riding high and we have this spiritual high where we great, and Satan can't touch us, and we're trying our hardest to kill all of our sin, and we're just loving reading scripture and going closer to God. But in the days and weeks, months, and years to come, it gets more difficult. Life gets hard sometimes, and it's hard to maintain that. Or in the opposite, sometimes life gets really good. Sometimes what life is offering seems way better and seems way more valuable or important at that time than your faith or than your heart and maintaining it with Christ. And so with that knowledge, as you are saying yes to these two questions in baptism, I have given my heart to Jesus, I accept him as my Lord and Savior, and I commit to living the rest of my days for him. Then what the congregation, therefore, is being asked to do is saying, you are now my sister, you are now my brother in Christ. And so for that, I commit to partnering with you. To walking with you. To checking in on you. To making sure that you are continuing to press on towards Jesus. Asking you questions. Giving you advice. Giving you guidance. Giving you accountability when you need accountability. And for those reasons, though we are signifying and though we're symbolizing and though what is being celebrated is certainly a very personal and very internal thing of you giving your heart over to Jesus, it is made public and it is public because it is something that a congregation, that your family of believers around you should celebrate. And it is something that you should stand up because I promise you and you will hear us forever in eternity here at Grace talk about the value of people walking alongside of you. That faith can't be done alone. It is incredibly difficult to walk in your faith, to grow in your love and in your understanding and in your walk and in your life with Jesus if you don't have people walking alongside of you. And so when you make that commitment, you do it up in front of your congregation, up in front of your grace, in front of your church family, saying, hey, I commit to this and I'm asking you to walk with me. And grace family, those of you who have already made this commitment, those of you who have given your hearts to Jesus, those of you who have been baptized, when you compare the two, when you compare marriage and when you compare baptism, how much more joyfully should we celebrate someone who is not only committing their heart to another, but is committing their heart forever to Jesus. How much more should we celebrate literally someone going from death to life? And how much more committed should we be to that person? Committed should we be to their life and making sure that they are continuing to press after God, press after their Lord and Savior that they committed to on that day for us to see, for us to witness, and for us to celebrate. And so my question is, will you come? If this is a commitment you haven't made, today, tomorrow, this week, this year, would you press after Jesus? Jesus, I'm tired. I'm tired. We're tired of trying so hard and falling short. Jesus, I realize that that's the point. The point is that I will always and forever fall short without you. Will you say, Jesus, I'm done falling under sin. I'm done walking without you. Jesus, I need you. Will you say yes to the grace that is freely offered to you from God through Jesus' death and resurrection? Because God is just sitting there waiting for you. And for those of you who are listening this morning that maybe haven't been baptized and you're like, well, I've, you know, maybe I've given my heart to Jesus already or maybe I was a little bit worried and I had a little stage fright. I didn't want to do it in front of people. Maybe you listen this morning and you're like, gosh, I get it. I get it. I understand the value. I understand the importance, and I understand why it is important to do it in front of these people that I love, and these people that love me, and I'm walking next to in life. Would you come and talk to one of us? We would love to talk more about baptism. We'd love to set you up to baptize you. It'd be the greatest joy and honor in our whole lives. And Grace family, those of you who've given your hearts to Jesus, will you continue to celebrate those of us who are doing it now? And will you say yes to partnering with the rest of your Grace family and saying, I know I haven't cared quite so much about this person's spiritual life as I should have. And will you commit today to saying, yes, I am committed to partnering with these people as they're currently giving their hearts to Jesus or as this is my best friend and they gave their heart to Jesus 20 years ago and I need to be more partnered with them than I am. So will you come? I pray that you will. Pray with me. God, thank you for your son, for sending him. God, that as sin, as our sin, tears us away from you where we deserve nothing but death. God, that you sent your perfect son to die to take over that sin. And God, I thank you for that. And I thank you that all that you ask of us in return is a simple faith and is simply coming to you and saying, yes, I believe. And yes, I want to give my heart over to you. Lord, I pray that when we think of baptism, we think of that. We think of new life. We think of going from death to life. And God, I pray that even as some of us have moved beyond the stages where we are coming to a saving knowledge in you, God, as we have already maybe been baptized, that God, we realize that we still have a hand in these other people's salvation around us. That in our grace family, we have a hand in these people's salvation, and we have a hand in walking with these people as they are giving their hearts over to Jesus now. Allow us to commit to these people. Allow us to commit to our family. And God, first and foremost, allow us to stay committed and loving you. We love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. It's good to be together in this way on Sunday morning again. A few years ago, it dawned on me that Staples was a double entendre. The name for the store, Staples, had a deeper meaning. I never had pieced it together. I just assumed that maybe Staples started out selling actual like metal staples and then things were going well for them. So they expanded into like paper and pens and other office supplies and then desks. And now here we go. We got a whole big box store. But it dawned on me, oh my gosh, driving around, I don't know how I figured it out or why, like it's some great mystery, that it means that they sell staples, like things that offices need. And I thought, man, isn't that clever? It was this really obvious thing that had been sitting under my nose for years. The other one that I noticed was the arrow in FedEx, where the E goes into the X, it makes an arrow. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. If you've never seen it before, you should look at it. It's pretty amazing. The other example of this that I could think of was Sarah Lee, the baked goods company. Growing up, they had a jingle, nobody does it like Sarah Lee. And I, for years, thought that the jingle was, nobody does it like Sarah Lee. But I learned that the actual sentence, and some of y'all know this, some of y'all are already grinning at home and elbowing your spouses and your children because you're proud and you know, and some of you are faking it. But the actual logo, the actual jingle is, nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee, which is absurd. Nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee is better, but it's really nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee. You can Google it. That's true. And so one of these things I love in life is those obvious things, those little truths that if you're observant, you'll pick up on that have just been sitting there for years under our nose that maybe we've never noticed. I'm sure you guys and your family, maybe after the sermon, you can think of a couple other examples of that. But I think that there's an example of that in Scripture. This morning we arrive at one of the most famous parables, one of the most poignant and meaningful parables to me, the parable of the prodigal son. And I think most of us know this parable. Most of us could tell it. Most of us know the main point of this parable. But I think tucked into this parable is another lesson, another thing that once we see it, we'll think of this parable in a completely different way. It's something that I encountered a few years ago from a pastor and an author named Tim Keller, the way that he viewed the story, and it changed the way that I viewed it as well. And hopefully we can do that for you this morning. I think what we'll see coming out of the parable of the prodigal son is two profound questions that hopefully we'll all wrestle with this week, maybe with ourselves or our friends or our family or hopefully in our small groups. I hope that you guys are doing Zoom calls with your small group. I hope that we're participating and staying connected the best we can, and I hope that you'll enjoy talking about this parable this week. But the parable of the prodigal son comes at the end of Luke chapter 15. At the beginning of Luke chapter 15, the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of eating and carousing and hanging out with sinners, with people that he shouldn't be spending his time with as a presumed holy man. And so Jesus tells three parables all about the father's love and concern for the lost, all about him going after the person or the thing that doesn't know him or isn't with him. And the parable of the prodigal son is kind of the capstone on this. And so he tells the story of a man who had great wealth and he had two sons. And the younger son goes to the father and asks for his inheritance early. He goes to the father in this story and he says, hey, listen, I know that I'm supposed to wait for you to die. I don't want to do that. I just want my stuff now. And essentially what he's saying here, the subtext of this is, I would rather just have your stuff right now than I would want to spend more time with you. I don't want to live out my years here on this home here in our property or in our complex or whatever it was at the time. I would much, much rather just have your stuff and be able to go do what I want. So the father responds with remarkable grace because the question that the son has asked is really genuinely disrespectful. He says, I'd rather you just be dead. I'd rather you just die. I don't even want to have to live out the next several years. Just give me my stuff so that I can go enjoy my life right now. And if I were the father, I would respond to that request by essentially saying, first of all, no. Second, you're not getting anything. Forget it. If I'm going to give you anything, it's going to be a significantly reduced portion. Your slice of the pizza just got real thin. It's the last slice that nobody wants. That's yours. But the father responds with this remarkable goodness and grace. And he says, okay. He says, fine, if that's what you want. If you want all my stuff now, you can have it. So he divides everything in half and he sells off some property and he gives the inheritance to his son. And his son does what we would expect him to do. This is what he does. You can find it in chapter 15, verse 13. I hope that you have your Bible there at home. I hope that you guys as maybe families or individuals are going through the text with me as I kind of summarize the story. But in verse 13, we learn what the son did with the money. It says, So he goes to the father and he says, I don't really want you. I want your stuff. Can you just give it to me right now? And the father, in remarkable goodness and grace, everything that he worked hard for, everything that he had accumulated that he wanted to leave a legacy for his son, he takes all of that and he goes off to a far country and he squanders it on reckless living. And that's a really nice biblical way to say that he partied. That's what he did. Later we find out that he spent some of that money on prostitutes. No doubt he spent it on alcohol and whatever kind of drugs he could get his hands on at the time. He just went out and he did whatever he wanted. And he got people around him that wanted him for his stuff and for not himself the same way he revered the Father. And he ran out of money. He didn't invest it. He didn't like go to the city and get a job and try to set up a 401k for himself. He ran out and he spent it on whatever he won. He was led by his appetites. And eventually, he ran out of money. And right at the time that he runs out of money, Jesus says in the parable that a great famine came across the land. So it was a hard time. It was a lot like now. Unemployment was high. People are wondering about where they're going to get their next paycheck, and they didn't have a government stimulus check that was going to be coming in, and their businesses couldn't apply for a 250% of payroll loan. Like, that wasn't going on. So he had to get things figured out, and this young boy, this young man ends up living on a pig farm. He convinces a farmer to hire him to watch after pigs. And apparently he lived out in the field, in the barn, with the pigs. That's where he was allowed to sleep. And it says that he was so hungry and so destitute and had so little that he was looking at the pods that were being fed to the pigs with jealousy. And I don't mean to belabor this point too much, but what would have to happen in your life to be with a group of pigs and watch the slop come down the trough and think, gosh, if I could just get my hands on that? Seriously. What kind of place of destitution would you need to be at to not just want it, to not be willing to eat it, but to be jealous of the fact that they had it? That's where he was. And then in verse 17, we see this really human insight into this young man. And I really, I love this sentence and I love this verse a lot. I think it's a turning came to his senses, when he had time to think, when he finally realized what was going on. His life had been a blur. He took his father. He probably thought for months or years about how he just wanted his father's money. He didn't like his miserable life on his father's property. Just give me your money so I can leave and go enjoy myself and spread my wings and flex my freedom muscles. And so that's what he did. He took the money and he went and did that. And he was focused on having a good time and enjoying himself and doing whatever it was that he wanted. And then from that, he ran out of money, and now he's scrambling, trying to figure out a way. How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to put a roof over my head? What am I going to do next? And his days are just consumed with that. But eventually, life slows down enough, and he looks at his surroundings, and he's like, I'm jealous of what the pigs are eating. At least my father's servants have bread. My dad pays his employees better than this guy pays me. And in that thought process, he came to himself. He realized what he was doing and what his life was becoming. He woke up. And you know, this isn't the point of this sermon, but I do want to stop here and make this simple point that one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot for the past couple of years, and I was just talking with staff the other day, I want to see if I can think through a way to do an entire series on this topic, but one of the sneakiest tricks of the enemy, I think, is to simply distract us. I think we are the most distracted group of people that have ever lived in human history. I think the option to pull out a phone and have the whole world and a screen in our hand means that we never have the blessing of boredom. We rarely have the blessing of idle thought. We get in the car, we turn on a podcast, or we turn on music, and we have a conversation. We sit at a light, we pull it out. We sit at home, we turn on the TV, we get in the shower, we turn on music. I think we are so distracted and distractible that sometimes we don't have the chance to come to ourselves because we don't have any quiet. We don't make any space in our life for the Lord to speak into because we no longer have the blessing of boredom. And it got me to thinking that maybe one of the hidden blessings of isolation will be the chance to come to ourselves. Maybe one of the hidden blessings of this time of isolation and quarantine when we don't have much to do. I was just talking to Steve before we filmed this, and he said, man, it was so weird for me to get up and leave this morning. I said, yeah, really? He goes, yeah, I mean, I leave once a week. We're all in our houses. And so maybe one of the hidden blessings of this time is just the opportunity to slow down, to reflect, to really think through. Is what's happening with my life what I want to happen? Is what's happening with my life honoring to God? Is this my goal? Is this what I want? Or do I need to come to myself? Do I need to wake up? Do I need to finally listen to God and say, maybe the reason I'm unhappy is because I'm not organizing my life according to his principles. I wonder if some of us need to have this moment where we come to ourselves like the prodigal son did, and maybe that moment can be one of the hidden blessings of this time of isolation. But in this moment, the son also does a very human thing, and I really do love this part. He develops a speech, right? He says he's going to go back to his dad, and he's going to say to him, listen, I've squandered away my opportunity to be your son. I don't deserve to be your son anymore. Will you just hire me? I'll work hard for you. You don't have to make me a manager. I'll be bottom rung. I just need bread and a roof. I don't even have that. I just need that. And so he's got his concession speech planned, which is a very human thing. This is what we do, right? You tick off your spouse. You do something that you know your husband or your wife is going to be mad about. What do you do? You rehearse the speech in your head. You figure out what are we going to say. This is what we did when we were little kids. When we got in trouble, something happened at school and we were going to have to go home and explain to mom and dad what we did. What did you do? You rehearsed your speech, right? You got it right. I don't deserve this. I'm really sorry that I did this. If you'll please just forgive me. That's a very human exercise. And so that's what the son does. He rehearses his speech. He gets ready to go home and apologize. And he hits the road to go back home and to grovel. And Scripture says that the father saw him coming while he was a far way off, and that the father ran to meet him. And that's an important detail because men in that day and age did not run. There was no joggers. People didn't get on all the gear and then go running through their neighborhood. You did not see distinguished older men running for the same reason that you won't see me dancing, okay? It's undignified. I'm not good at it. I don't want you to see me do it. It's embarrassing. That's the general sense that men would have when they would run once they were older and they no longer needed to go to battle or things like that. It was undignified to be in a hurry in that way. But the father didn't care. He saw his son and he wanted to go greet him. And he gets out to his son and the son starts into his speech. He starts into his prepared speech. And I would expect, I would expect the father to listen to the speech. I would expect the father to sit there arms folded. Yeah, you better have a good explanation. Yeah, you're right that you don't deserve to be my son anymore. I don't know. I'm going to have to consider whether or not I'll hire you as a servant. I'm going to have to consider whether or not, let me talk to my guys and see if any of them wants to be your boss. I got to think about this. Let me talk to your brother and see if he wants to welcome you back into the fold. That's what we would expect from the father. That's what he had every right to do. But that's not what he did. In the text, we see that the father stops the son. He's not interested in listening to his concession speech. He's not interested in, I'm sorry. He doesn't even make the son utter it. As soon as he sees him, he runs to him. He throws his arms around him and embraces him. He brings him back to the house and he gives the servants the orders, kill the fattened calf, the one that we've been saving for the big party and a big feast, go do it. The nice expensive bottle of wine that we got in Italy 20 years ago, go uncork it. This is the thing that we've been waiting on. And then he comes out and he tells his servants, give him my robe and give him some shoes. And those are symbols of being restored back into the family, being received back into the family. No, you're not going to be my servant. I'm not going to make you work for one of my guys. You are my son, and here is your robe. And then he takes his ring, and he puts it on the finger of the son, and that's a symbol of the authority of the family. So what we see in that reception, and the father running and flinging his arms around him, and clothing him, and putting his ring on his finger, and throwing him a party, what we see is something remarkable from the father, that the father doesn't just receive the son, he restores him. He doesn't just wait with open arms and receive him and hug him and say, yeah, you're right. You messed up, but I love you. You're my son. You're always going to be my son. Now, there's going to be a probationary period. You can't get an inheritance anymore. I'm not going to spend any more money on you. All that's your brother's. You don't deserve that. He doesn't do any of that. He not only receives him, he restores him to the full rights and privileges owed to his son. And the father's mind deserved by his son. And one of the themes through this story that blows me away every time I settle in and look at it is the remarkable grace and goodness of the father. His son asks him for his inheritance early. He spits in his face and says, I want your stuff more than I want you. And the father should have responded, get away from me, you don't get any inheritance. But instead he says, okay, if that's what you want. He wastes his money and the father knew that this would happen. And he comes back humble, hat in hand, broken, apologetic. And the father brushes that aside. He excused the apology. He embraces his son. He receives him and he restores him back to his full rights and privileges of being his son. Grace that he did not deserve. And I'm blown away by the remarkable goodness and grace of the father in this story. And I think maybe one of the most important things we could take out of it for ourselves is that our heavenly father offers us the same remarkable grace and goodness. Your father in heaven who created you and loves you offers you the same grace and goodness that he offers the prodigal son. He offers you the same reception and the same restoration that he offers the son that left him. He treats you with that same amount of grace. Let it sink in this morning how gently the Father loves and corrects you. Let it sink in this morning the kindness that he shows you when he doesn't need to. The concessions that he makes for us when he doesn't have to. The goodness that he offers us when we reject him. The same father that loves his son in this story loves you and offers you that same grace. And you know, often when we think of the prodigal son, the son that left and invested his life in wild living, those of us who grew up in church, we think of the people who maybe came up and didn't come up in church or maybe ran away from church and did whatever they wanted to. And they lived recklessly. They partied. They lived in ways that maybe church people wouldn't live. And then they come back and the Father restores them. And we think that this is great. And we think that that's who the prodigal son is, is people who literally go away and live recklessly and then at some point or another come back to the Father or come to the Father for the first time. And sometimes that is the prodigal son, and those stories are amazing. But you know, I am convinced that the longer you're a Christian, the more you can relate to the prodigal son. The longer you're a believer, the more seasons you have in your life where you may not wander away to a foreign country and live outwardly recklessly. It may not be noticeable that you've run away from God. It may not be apparent to everyone else that you're wandering from the Father. But you know that maybe in your mind or your heart or your spirit, you're thousands of miles away. Sure, we're coming to church every week. We're logging in. We're online. We're chatting. We're doing all the stuff. We're doing the Zoom calls, and we go to the small group, and we do our part. But even amidst all that, in our hearts and in our minds and in our spirits, we can have wandered thousands of miles away. And maybe this morning, we need to come to ourselves and rush back to the Father that's waiting on us with open arms and know that he offers us the same goodness and restorative grace now that he offered then. And that's the main point of the story. That's the main takeaway that we should get. But there's one more thing that we need to be aware of because the story doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop at the restoration of the leaving son. What follows is this incredible conversation that the father has with the staying son. The staying son is out in the field. He's working. He's being responsible. He's not living recklessly. He's not squandering the father's money. He's out in the field doing the right thing, doing what he's supposed to do. And then he gets word that there's a party. And he finds out that the party is because his derelict younger brother has come back and dad's gone nuts. And he's thrown a huge party. And so the older brother is ticked and he goes and he pouts on the stairs. He sits on his front porch and he pouts. And I gotta be honest with you, a lot of people I know, including myself, empathize with the staying son. Empathize and identify if you had to pick which one you identified most with in the story, the prodigal son who went out and lived recklessly or the staying son who stayed put and made responsible choices and did what was expected of him. A lot of us at Grace are the staying son. Our whole life we've tried to do the right thing. We've not gone out and squandered. We've not gone out and lived recklessly. We've always tried to make wise choices. And so when we see the staying son upset, we identify with him. I know I have one good friend who has flat told me she doesn't like this parable because she feels like the staying son and he gets in trouble too and it doesn't make sense to her. Or at least he didn't used to. And so the dad comes to the son. He leaves the party and he comes, he sits down with his older son who stayed. He says, son, why are you upset? And the son's response is, dad, why are you doing that for your derelict son? Why are you doing that for the one who betrayed you and left you and squandered your wealth? Why didn't you do that for me? I've been here all these years. I've made the right decisions. I've been with you all these years, and you've never thrown a party like this for me and my friends. It's not fair, Dad. And again, I empathize with that. I think he brings up some good points. But the father's response is remarkable, And it reveals something that I think is really profound. Look at what the father says. I'm in verse 31. And he said to him, actually, I'm going to start in verse 30. This is what the son is saying, but when this son of yours came who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. Dad, you threw him a party. That's not fair. And the father's response is, and he said to him, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. That response is incredibly revelatory. He says, son, son, son, son, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. The point isn't the parties that I could throw you. The point isn't the inheritance that you're going to get one day. The point isn't trying to get my stuff. The point is me. You've always had me. You've always been with me. You've always been in my presence. And the prize here, son, isn't the parties that I could throw you or the things that I could give you. The prize is being with me. And what we realize in that response is that the sins of the leaving son and the sins of the staying son are the same. The sins of the sons are the same. They wanted the father's stuff more than they wanted the father. Don't you see? They had different ways of going about it. The leaving son, at least I'll give him the credit of being more honest about it. He said, dad, I'm not really interested in you. I just kind of want your stuff. If you'll go ahead and give it to me, I can go spread my freedom wings. But what's revealed in the pouting of the staying son that was responsible and made good choices is that he wanted the same thing. He just chose a different path to the father's stuff and to the father's blessings. That's what he says. Dad, I want the party too. I want the things too. I want all the things that he's experienced, but I've gone about it in a better way. And the father says, son, that's not the point. The point is that you have me. And so ringing through the centuries as Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, and we read it generation after generation, is the father's desire for us to want to be with him, for us to want the father, for us to want to be with God more than we want his blessings. This is what true love is anyways. I mean, when I'm at home with Lily, on a Saturday when Jen maybe will leave and go do things that she deserves to do because she's been in the house all week, she'll leave and she'll be gone. And so I'll take an extended dad responsibility day on Saturday and just kind of watch Lily all day, which is not babysitting because she's my kid. So I get that day to spend with Lily. And then in the evening, maybe Jen walks back in and I'll say, I'm so happy to see you. I'm so glad that you're here. She will rightly ask me, are you happy to see me or are you happy to have help? Right? What does she want to know? Am I happy because now she's going to relieve me of my duties because of the things that she can do for me? Or am I happy because I've just missed my wife? Because what does my wife want from me? She wants me to miss her presence. She wants me to value time with her. This is how our relationships work. In every relationship we have, we want people to want to be with us for us, not for what we offer them. And God is no different. The ringing lesson from the story of the prodigal son is not just that God receives us and restores us when we wander off, but that his heart's desire is that he would be our heart's desire. So in this story, I think we are left with two profound questions. The first comes from earlier in the story, the experience of the leaving son. And it's a question that I asked earlier in the sermon I want to stop and highlight now. Is it time for you to come to yourself? As we reflect on the sermon and what we've learned and what we should think and take into the week with us, one of the big questions I want us to be asking ourselves is, is it time for me to come to my senses? In this time of isolation and quarantine and slowing down where I have now the blessing of boredom, should I put down the devices and sit in a quiet room and think for a minute? And ask, do I need to come to myself? Are there things that I need to realize? What is God trying to say to me? I wonder if we could do that. I wonder if we would be brave enough to ask ourselves this question this week. The second question, and this is a tough one, is do we want God or his stuff? If you identify with the staying son, the one who's kind of done the right things and made the right choices, if you identify with the prodigal son and you're just kind of looking at everything and you go, listen, I just want the blessings, I don't want the life. We should ask ourselves, have I made these choices because I'm interested in God and his presence and in his goodness or am I interested in what he can do for me? That's a tough question to answer. Ever since encountering this years ago, I ask myself that question throughout the year. Every time I pray virtually, this question rattles around in the back of my mind. Am I pursuing God because I want his blessings or because I want him? Am I excited to get to heaven because of all the stuff that he's going to give me when I get there or because I'll be in the very presence of my Savior? I don't know. I hope that more and more each year I'm less interested in the blessings that God offers me and more interested in the presence that he offers me. I hope that more and more each year I'm drawn closer to God because the Father's response in the story is, you've always, everything I have is yours. These are all your blessings anyways. Of course there are things that come along with being with me. It's everything that I can possibly offer you, but I am the prize. Sometimes I wonder in my life, am I making God the prize or his things and his blessings the prize? So I'd like to invite you into that thought process as well. And this week with our friends, maybe even with our families as this wraps up, hopefully in our small groups this week we'll talk about these questions. Do I need to come to myself? Am I more interested in God or am I more interested in what God can do for me? I hope that you'll wrestle with those questions and I hope that this parable of the prodigal son will serve to bring us all closer to God as is always our prayer at Grace. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this story. Thank you for all the truths that are nestled within it. God, I pray that you would help us to see it with fresh eyes. I pray that you would help us to suss out in our lives where we are pursuing the things that you do for us and not you. God, if we are prodigal this morning, if we are wandering away, maybe not physically, but if our minds or our hearts or our spirits have wandered away from you, would you help us come to ourselves? Would you give us the gift of quiet and of peace and of thought and help us come to ourselves and make that crucial, pivotal decision to come back to you? For those that need it this week, God, help us come to ourselves. Father, for others who need to assess this, help us, give us a heart for you. Let us pursue you, not the things that you do for us, but just your presence, God. Give us a pure heart and desire for you. It's in your son's name we ask for these things. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.