Luke

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. Happy New Year, and thank you for choosing to spend your first Sunday of the year in church here at Grace. I'm excited for this year, for all that it holds for our church and all the things that hopefully God has for us this year. I think 2020 is going to be a huge year in the life of Grace. As we launched the year, I wanted to start with a series that would be helpful for everybody. So if you're here this morning, wherever you are on the spiritual spectrum, if you're one who would say, you know what, I'm not even really sure that I'm a believer or that I want to be, but I want to try the church thing. I want to try to understand faith a little bit more. If you're here as a representative of a New Year's resolution to attend more regularly or whatever, or if you're somebody who has really highly prioritized your relationship with God for a long time, my goal for this series is that it would be practically useful for all of us, that you'd be able to take things home every week and really kind of assess, how do I implement these things in my life? I'm hopeful that this can be a very helpful series. That's why it's called I Want a Better Life. I don't think anybody, if we said like, how's your life right now? Is there anything that you want to be better? Very few of us would say like, I'm killing it. I mean, there's nothing else that I could find. Like, Kyle Tolbert's the only person I know who'd be like, nope, totally happy with everything in my life right now. This is fantastic. Kyle's our super energetic student pastor, for those who don't know. So we all want a better life, and so next week, we're going to look at, I want better kids. We're going to look at parenting. Then the week after that, I want a better marriage, which I know that there's only a couple of marriages in here that really want to be better. The rest of you are doing great. For those few, we're going to talk about wanting a better marriage. Then the last Sunday of the month, I'm really excited about, we're going to talk about, I want a better me. Mental health has come to the fore of our culture, and I think as a culture we have an increasing awareness of that. And so I want to take a week and look at mental health and what it means for a believer to be mentally healthy and how the church can accept and embrace and rally around the mental health of us individually and of the people in our lives. So I'm excited for that week. This morning, I wanted to start 2020 by talking about our schedules. So this morning is I want a better schedule. I wanted to talk about our schedules because I feel like as a culture, we are busier now than we've ever been. I feel like there are so many pulls and so many pressures and so many different things and obligations and senses of ought that pull us into things that we just give our days and our mornings and our evenings away to, that as a group of people, as a culture, a society, I think we are very likely busier than ever. I remember when I was a kid, which was in the 80s, which for me feels like a long time ago, I saw somebody tweet the other day, or I guess it was on January 1st, that we are now as far away from 2050 as we are from 1990, which is super depressing. But in the 80s, when I was growing up, man, Sundays, I just saw somebody over there doing the math like, they're very slow. I saw, in the 80s, you didn't schedule anything on Sundays. Sundays was a blackout day. There's no nothing on Sundays because Sundays was church day. I even remember growing up, you didn't have practice on Wednesday night. Nothing was scheduled on Wednesdays. That was a sacred day too. And now, man, like all gloves are off. Everything can be scheduled at any time. And people will obligate you to things so quickly. We took Lily to preschool to start that. And on orientation night, there's a large sign-up sheet that everybody just stares at you as you stare at it. And they're watching you. Where are you going to write your name? Surely you're not going to walk out of here without writing your name on something. And I thought, bad news for you guys. I'm not volunteering for anything. And I didn't. But my wife is sweet. Jen is so nice. So she signs up to be library mom, not knowing that it means like once a week she has to pick up books from the classroom and then take them to the library and then check out all the other books that the preschool now wants, which is funny because the amount of money we give the preschool every month seems like they can afford books, but what do I know? So that's what Jen does like every other day, but she loves it and she's continued to do it, but there are opportunities and things that get our time so frequently. I actually hold, I don't think that there is a busier season of life than that of parents of elementary and middle school kids. From a pastor's perspective, I get to see kind of all seasons of life and which groups of people can engage in which activities in the church. And the hardest ones to grab a hold to are parents who have kids in elementary and middle school. And it's not because they don't care about spiritual things. It's because they legit don't have time for anything. I had some of the moms in the church who have kids in that demographic. I emailed them and I said, hey, can I have your schedules? I just want to get a sense for how busy your lives are. Y'all, it was crazy. It was crazy. As I read through their schedules, literally stem to stern every day. The thing that stuck out to me most was one of the moms who has three kids put, I'm just reading her schedule every week. These are the consistent things every week. And it was all the time. And then she said, there's an asterisk, and the asterisk says, these are the activities that we can predict. There are unpredictable activities such as all these things, right? Swim meets and committee meetings and mom things and dance recitals and all the other stuff that fill up all the time. And she had a note on Friday afternoon. The schedule on Friday afternoon was from four to six o'clock, free time, nothing to do, smiley face emoji. For two hours on a Friday. That's it. That's the free time that the whole family has together. And I thought, my goodness, that's so busy. And some of us can relate to that. So listen, I'm not here this morning to demonize busyness. It's not inherently wrong to be busy. As a matter of fact, in defense of the moms that sent me their schedules, they made each of those decisions as a family. And sometimes you're just in a busy season or a season of hustle, and that's all right. So I don't want to demonize busy, but I do want us at the beginning of this year to think critically about how we assemble our schedules. How is it that we allow things to be put on our schedule? I also want to say up front that in our culture a little bit, we wear our busyness on our sleeve like a badge of honor, like being exhausted is a thing to be respected. That's stupid, right? That's all I have to say about that. That's a dumb thing. We shouldn't be proud of how busy we are. We should accept it if we choose to be busy, but it's not a thing to be admired that someone else is so busy that they can't wake up and look in the mirror and think, I feel rested. That's too busy maybe. But I think a bigger reason why we end up so busy with our time so obligated is that we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's builds a menu. Okay, we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's, the restaurant, builds a menu. Now, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know how much fast food is a part of your world. Fast food is a large part of my world. It always has been. It is near and dear to me. I'm in a weight loss bet with my dad and my sister right now, and so it is not a part of my world, but I think I'm going to lose the weight by about March, which means come April, back to Hardee's, baby. But if fast food is not a part of your world, then you don't know that in the early 2000s, Hardee's, as a restaurant, just completely forgot who they were. They did breakfast. They did biscuits. We know about biscuits. The rise and shine biscuits or whatever they are. Those are delicious. But then they said, let's get into burgers and let's do roast beef sandwiches and let's have curly fries and let's do chicken tenders and let's serve fried chicken. And how about soups? I'm pretty sure at one point there was an experimental deli counter at a Hardee's somewhere. I would have loved to have been in the boardroom just listening to these meetings where some intern says, you know, I think Arby's is making some real hay with that roast beef sandwich and curly fries. We need to get into that market share. And the rest of the really smart executives around the successful restaurant board went, yeah, sounds good. Let's do a roast beef sandwich. Let's figure it out. And they just started adding things to the menu. If you were paying attention, it was just this total hodgepodge. They did everything. I can't imagine what their inventory looked like. And then when that failed, they just went to, let's just do really ridiculous attention-grabbing commercials, and nothing worked. And the thing is with the Hardee's menu is none of the things were bad, right? Roast beef sandwich, that's good, but let's just let Arby's do it. Fried chicken, that's great. Let's leave that to Popeye's. They didn't do that. They just kept adding all the things. Anytime anybody suggested a good thing, boom, got put on the menu. And it led to disorganization, and it's not a very good restaurant. So I think that what we need to do is we need to build our schedules a little bit more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's. We need to build our schedules more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's because I think that we do what Hardee's does sometimes. Somebody suggests something that seems like a good idea, and we're like, yeah, I mean, I guess I should. We go to preschool, and there's a sign-up sheet, and everyone's staring at you, and my sense of awe is going to make me sign up for something. I can't leave here disappointing these strangers that I don't know again. Or we do the same thing with PTA, or it's time to coach ball, or it's time to be on the committee, or Nate called me and asked me to do this thing, and I really don't want to do it, but it's the pastor. I feel like I have to. So we just, when we get good ideas, we put that on the calendar, we figure it out, and we build it like Hardee's builds their menu, and maybe we need to build our schedule more like Chick-fil-A. Now, we know about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A does one thing, chicken. That's it, chicken sandwich. And then they grilled it. And then with an act of Congress, they made it spicy. That's it. That's all they do. And you know that there's been some pretty good ideas in the boardroom at Chick-fil-A over the history of the restaurant. You know people have suggested some really good stuff. Why don't we do rotisserie chicken? No. We do chicken sandwiches. This is all we do. And the other thing I love about Chick-fil-A, if they put something on the menu and it's not working, get it out of here, man. They're ruthless about it. They really streamline what they allow there. They don't have a chicken salad sandwich anymore because they got away from the old one that was mashed down and in the warm bag and was delicious and they tried to go fancy and that didn't sell. And so now they don't have one because if it's not doing what it's supposed to do, get it out of here. They really streamline their menu. And I think that we need to build our schedules like that. So the question becomes, how do we build our schedules like Chick-fil-A builds a menu? How do we streamline it according to what's important to us, so that we don't live our life by default, so that we don't look back on the last year and go, how in the world did I invest my time? How do we do that? Well, I think that there's a biblical principle to help us, and we can find it in Matthew chapter 6. If you have a Bible and you want to turn there, go ahead. The words will be up on the screen in a minute. Matthew chapter 6 is the Sermon on the Mount. It's in the middle of it. It's Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It's Jesus' first recorded public address. I love it so much that we did a whole series on the Sermon on the Mount one time. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is just dispensing wisdom and instruction for life. And in chapter 6, he says this. Verse 19, the words on the screen are going to start in verse 20 don't matter, that are temporary. And the purpose of this morning, don't invest your lives, don't invest your time, don't invest your effort and your energy and your talent and your resources in things that don't matter, but rather treasure up for yourselves, make priorities of the things that will matter for eternity, of the things that will matter after you're gone. Orchestrate your life around those things, treasure those things. And so, to me, the very obvious question in light of, in thinking about our schedules and in light of this passage and this principle is what are my treasures? What are my treasures? And normally when I do a note like this, I say, what are your treasures? It's me talking to you, but I really want you to internalize it this morning and think through what are my treasures? What are the things that are most important to me? What are my biggest priorities? And I was always told growing up, if you want to know what someone treasures, look at their bank account and look at their calendar. Look at how they invest their resources. How do we spend our time and how do we spend our money? And so if we think about time, if I were to go home with you or grab your phone and look through your calendar from 2019, what would your calendar say about what your treasures are? Because you can't fake that, right? We can say, oh, God's most important to me, my family's most important to me, or my friends, or whatever it is, my job's most important to me. We can say whatever we want is most important to us, but all we have to do is look through our appointments and the way that we spent our time, and we'll know what we really value. If we could follow each other around on the weekends, what would we learn about each other that we value? If we could see each other in the evenings during our discretionary time, that one family in the hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, what would we learn about what they value? If we were to look at our schedules and our calendars from 2019, what is it that we treasure? And so what I want us to do this morning is a little bit of homework. In your bulletin there, there's the question, what are my treasures? And there's five blanks, okay? I don't want you to fill those out here. What I'd love to invite you to do is take the bulletin home with you and prayerfully think through, God, what are the things in my life that you want to be most important to me? A better way to ask the question is, God, what are my God-ordained treasures? What would you have be important to me in 2020? How would you have me prioritize my life? I think it's a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of the year to take that home and sit down and prayerfully say, God, what do you want to be important to me? What have you placed on my heart that I need to value? And it's actually a helpful exercise. I did it this week. I just sat down and I thought, if I'm going to ask everybody to do this, I need to do this for myself. I haven't written down my priorities anywhere. I just kind of go. And a lot like Hardee's, my schedule by default just kind of happens. And so if I were to be intentional about building my schedule and listing my priorities, how would I list them? And so I'm going to share them with you this morning, not because they need to be yours and not because you need to copy my list, but just as an exercise of trying to figure out what should be important to us. And then how do we organize our life around those things? So these are my top five priorities in my life as I thought through them this week. You see, the very first thing up there is spiritual health, my relationship with God. The Bible has a lot to say about pursuing God. David writes in Psalms that as the deer pants for the water, so his soul longs after God, that that's how much we should long for God. I almost preached out of a passage where Jesus is interacting with Martha and Mary in Luke, I believe chapter 10. And in that story, Jesus is going to Martha and Mary's house. And Martha is doing what most of us would do and is scrambling around getting everything right, making sure the table's set correctly and that the napkins are folded and that the room that Jesus is never going to go in in a million years is vacuumed and that the curtains are just right. She's doing all the things that you're supposed to do. This is the Messiah, after all, and he's coming to my house. I'd like for it to look nice. And she gets upset because Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary's just sitting there soaking in Jesus's presence. And Martha thinks she's lazy and she gets on to her. Hey, you should help me. And Jesus actually defends Mary and says, Martha, Martha, you are concerned about all of these things, but only one thing matters, and Mary's figured it out. So I believe that if you're a believer, this is the one where I would say you should really write this down too as your top priority. But don't do it unless you mean it. Our spiritual health has got to be our most important thing to us. Because here's what I know about myself. I don't know what you've learned about yourself as you've pursued spiritual health over the years or as you've considered it, but for me, I'm a better everything when I'm walking with the Lord. I am more gracious with my time. I'm more magnanimous with other people. I'm more patient with inconveniences. I'm more considerate of Jen, my wife. I'm more present with Lily, my daughter. I behave better in elder meetings. I'm nicer to the staff and don't want to get out of meetings as quickly. I leave my door open a little bit more often so I can chit-chat, which is not really a thing that Nate loves to do. But when I'm walking with the Lord and he's filling me up, I become a more gracious and more kind version of myself. And I become a better husband and I become a better father and I become a better pastor and I'm walking in a sense of joy and contentment and completeness that I cannot experience away from the Father. So I would be a very strong advocate to putting as your number one priority your spiritual health. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're thinking things through, I would still submit to you that probably the most important thing in your life is being spiritually healthy. I think if you go down that path, it will lead you to serve the same God that I do. But I think for all of us, this is a pretty compelling top spot. Next for me is Jen. It's my wife. In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about marriage, and he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, who gave himself up for her. So if we look at Jesus, his first priority was to God and being obedient to him, and then his next priority was the church. And husbands, that's how we are to love our wives. We're going to talk about this in a couple weeks, so I'm not going to step on that too much. But my Bible tells me that I am to sacrifice my life for my wife. I'm going to lay myself down for her, and I will, listen, I'm up here preaching this to you. She's sitting right there. She knows I don't do this all the time, all right? So let's not act like you should be like me in your marriages. No, we should work on this together, right? No, we don't want any liars up here. We're doing our best. But I know that this is how I should prioritize that. And what does it look like to prioritize these things? If we're to say that spiritual health is my number one priority, then what does it look like as far as building our schedule to do that? Well, first we have to identify the things that make us healthy. I think it's time in God's Word and time in prayer. And so for a lot of us, that might mean adjusting our schedule and going to bed a little earlier so we can get up a little earlier. Cutting out that last episode of whatever it is. Being willing to not see the end of the game, which by the way, go Titans last night. So that we can get up earlier the next day and invest in spiritual health. Maybe it means next week signing up for a small group and prioritizing that in our schedule. Maybe it means not committing to the things that are going to require our time on Sunday morning or some other time where it can be spiritually helpful to us. Maybe it means paring down some of the things in our schedule so that we can have more time for God. And if we think about prioritizing our marriages, I think anybody who's in here who's married, their spouse would be in the top at least three, okay? If that's not it, come see me. But how do we practically schedule for that? I know for us, it's going to mean me being more intentional about finding babysitters and getting out to spend time together. It's intentional about getting home for meals, not stopping by in the middle of the day if it's a full day. We can't just say that these are our priorities. We have to think practically about, okay, if those are my priorities, then how does my schedule mirror that? After Jen is my daughter Lily. I think she has to be after Jen. And if parents, if we're not careful, we'll let the kids sneak up over our spouse, won't we? But I think one of the best things I can possibly do for Lily is to love her mom in such a way that she wants what we have when she grows up. What a thing to say about your parents that they might want that. I think one of the best things for Lily is to grow up in a house where her parents love each other. And listen, we don't have a perfect life or a perfect marriage. I'm just saying that this is what Lily is supposed to see. And it's what I want to give to her. I want to love Lily so well that when guys try to date her, she knows. You're not going to love me anywhere like my dad does. Forget it. I want to love her so well that she doesn't put up with dummies when she's in high school and college. I really do. And I have her listed above the church. And I'm just going to tell you guys this right now because I want her to know as she grows up and we lead this church together that she means more to me than you guys do. I want her to know that. I want her to never think, man, my dad loved those church people, and sometimes it felt like he didn't love me as much. I don't want her to feel that. I don't want her to feel like she's taking a back seat to my job. I do want her to feel like she takes a back seat to my wife because I want her to marry a guy that does that too. And we're going to talk about this next week, but Lily's got to be on there because God's called me to disciple her and to train her in spiritual health as well. After that, for me, are my family and friends. My immediate family and my friends, I lump those together because for me, friendships are super valuable. I believe what Solomon says in Proverbs when he says, the companion of the fools will suffer harm, but the companion of the wise will become wise. I believe in the adage, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future. We believe passionately that you need people in your life who love you and love Jesus and have permission to tell you the truth. And so for me, I prioritize friendships. And I prioritize them sometimes over my job because I believe that we all need safe spaces where we can be completely ourselves and completely vulnerable and still completely loved and accepted. That's a picture of godly biblical love. It keeps us sane. For me personally, I want to be your pastor for 30 years, not three years. And part of that and the help for me is having good friendships both inside and outside of the church that give me life where I can just be myself. So for me, I prioritize those. And then my job. You guys. I put it there because I think the tendency is, for any of us who have careers that we care about, is to allow that to leapfrog everything else in our life. Is to allow that to steal time from other things. And I hear often from people who are retired that one of their biggest regrets is working too much. And I don't want to say that. So on the front end, I try to constantly remind myself because it will eat me up. You guys know how it is with work. There's always more to do. There's always more to think about. There's always something else to be done. There's always the next hill to climb. There's always something urgent. There's always the phone call and always the email and always the thing to respond to. It's not going to go away just because you choose to respond to this one. The next wave is coming. So at one point or another, you have to draw a line and you have to say, these are my God-ordained treasures, and I'm not going to let this one overtake ones that it shouldn't. So we have to measure how highly we prioritize our jobs or whatever else may go there that tends to eat away at your time. So my hope is that you'll go home and you'll say, God, what are my treasures? What are my God-ordained treasures in my life? That you'll physically write them out and then ask this question, what would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? What would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? If I say these are the most important things to me in 2020, then what's it going to take to organize my life around those things? What am I going to have to give up? What am I going to have to reprioritize? Who am I going to have to willingly disappoint and say, I can't do this thing anymore because I'm going to prioritize these things? And if we ask that question, what's it going to look like if we radically reprioritize our life around these God-ordained treasures, I actually have an example of what that could look like. As I was thinking through this this week, there's a family in our church, Wynn and Elisa Dunn, and they've got two kids, one in elementary school, one in middle school. I think the daughter might be in middle school now too. I got to figure that out before they come in the second service and I offend her. But I noticed on their Facebook feed is a lot of pictures like this. I think, Lynn, we have a picture of their family. Yeah, that's them doing something involving harnesses. It seems very fun. They do stuff like this all the time, all the time. They are forever going on little family outings and vacations and retreats. As a matter of fact, listen, I don't check up on you when you don't come on Facebook, but often if I don't see them on Sunday, on Sunday afternoon or Monday, I'll see a picture of their family together somewhere. Family time is big for the Dunns. And so I called Wynn. I said, hey man, this might sound weird, but I'm doing a sermon on this. I kind of explained it to him. And I said, you guys seem to be hanging out as a family all the time. Your kids are in middle school, and they seem to still like you and want to be seen in public with you, which is a big win for Wynn. And so I asked him, like, what's your philosophy around family? Like, what led you to value it this way? And he goes, well, do you know my full story? I said, I guess I don't. And he told me that years ago, he had a really lucrative job. It was a very high-paying job, but it was a high-stress job. And it consumed him. This was in the days of Blackberries, and he was forever on it. It was ever-present. Dinners, weekends, vacations, it was always, when can you do this one more thing? When can you just take this call real quick? Can you just close this out? Can you just put out this fire? It was always a part of him. And he says it was causing a lot of stress in his marriage, particularly as they invited kids into this marriage. And now his wife is home caring for the baby and he's never present. And it was causing tension and it made things difficult. And the kids began to notice how committed he was to his phone and his job too. So much so that he told me that, I think it was about 10 years ago, they went to Busch Gardens as a family. And as he was getting out of the car, he said, you know what I'm going to do? And he took his BlackBerry out and he put it in the car and he shut the doors and he locked it. And he said, when he did that, everybody in his family started crying because we've got our dad. He's going to be present with us today. I'd love to be the ticket taker at Busch Gardens that day. What's the matter with you guys? Like no one made you come. You can go back home. But his family cried because now we get dad. And it didn't take too much longer after that until he looked at his life and he said, man, I'm prioritizing things that I just don't want to prioritize right now. And so he changed careers. He called an audible, left the very high paying job, changed careers and chose a career, chose an industry that would allow him to have more time with his family. Made an intentional choice to radically reprioritize his life around what he believed to be God-ordained treasures. He said that was nine years ago. I said, as you look back on that, do you have any regrets? Or was it just best decision you ever made? And he said, you know, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I think about the money and what would be possible if I had it. But no, there are no regrets. I love my kids. My kids love me. I have a good family, and it's so much more valuable to me than any resources that I could have. And so I'm praying that for some of us, this is just the nudge that you needed because there have been things going on in your life and you're too busy and you're too caught up and you see things slipping away from you that are important to you. And maybe the Holy Spirit's just working in your heart right now to say, hey, why don't you let some things go? Maybe this needs to be the year that you get okay with disappointing people. Where you realize, you know what? If the stranger's disappointed in me for not doing the thing that they want me to do, I'm going to be okay. Maybe we need to step away from things. I'll even say this. I want to be your pastor before I run the business of the church. If you need to step away from church things, sorry Aaron, for your own health, do it. Claim your schedule around your priorities. And in 2020, let's make some changes and reprioritize our lives around these God-ordained treasures so that when we get to the end of this year and look back on our schedule and we look back at how we invested our time, we go, yeah, I invested these things in treasures that matter for eternity so that we had a better year this year than we did last year. So I hope you'll do that. I hope you'll take the list home. I hope you'll pray through your priorities, and I hope that you'll have the courage to reprioritize your schedule around the things that you and God agree are super important to you in 2020. All right, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, I'm going to pray over the year, too, as we kick it off together, and then I'm going to dismiss and we'll go out into the world. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for you, for your presence, for your goodness, for how big and marvelous and miraculous you are, for how much you care about us, for how much you care about how we fill our time. Lord, I pray that we would be courageous in naming our priorities. I pray that we would be courageous in building our schedule around those. God, if we have to say no to some things, then give us the audacity to do that. If we need to say yes to some things, give us the discipline to do that. God, we know that decisions that we make and things that we resolve to do often falter and flutter. God, I pray that you would be with us and give us your strength to see these things through so that our lives might change in profound ways, God, if that's what you would have. Lord, I pray over this year, may all the events of this year conspire to draw every one of us closer to you. Will you overcome doubts? Will you overcome fears? Will you overcome hesitation? Will you overcome hurt? Will you speak to us in the triumphs so that we don't take credit for those? Will you speak to us in the tragedy, God, so that we don't get overly angry at those? Will you please conspire everything in our life to draw us more closely to you so that we might know what it is to walk with you? For many of us, God, make this the year where we finally break the chains of the old habits and walk in new habits. God, please bless this year and bless us as we walk in it. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

It's good to see all of you this Sunday. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. I appreciate you being here on this December Sunday as we continue to gear up for Christmas together. I'm really excited about what we have in store for you, not only for Jingle Jam, but also for our Christmas Eve service. This is our series called Joy. Kyle, our student pastor, opened up the series talking about the joy of the light, of knowing Jesus and of sharing that light with others. Last week, I talked with you about the joy of forgiveness, and I really hope, my sincere prayer is and was, that God used that to bring about maybe some reconciliation in your life and in some of your relationships. I hope that you found that to be a helpful way to think about forgiveness. This morning, I want to talk about the joy of gratitude, the joy that we get when we can be people who are thankful, who are grateful people. The Bible has a lot to say about gratitude in the same way that it has a lot to say about forgiveness as it encourages us to forgive over and over and over again. The Bible encourages us to be grateful many, many times in many ways in many different places. In the Old Testament, David tells us that we are to enter God's courts with thanksgiving in our hearts, that we enter his gates with praise. And so it's kind of gratitude is the posture through which we approach the Lord. In the New Testament, we're told over and over again to be thankful in all things, be thankful always, pray without ceasing, and be grateful for everything. Everyone tells us that. As Jesus tells us how to pray in the Lord's Prayer, He models for us a daily gratitude, thanking God for the blessings that we have in our life. We're even told by at least three different authors in the New Testament to be grateful when life is hard, to be grateful when we are in struggles, to consider it pure joy when we endure trials. So the Bible has a lot to say about gratitude. And I think it's because gratitude is one of the more underrated things or character traits that we could have. Fostering a spirit or a heart or a character of gratitude, I think, is something that we forget to do, but it's underrated in its power and efficacy in our life. And I hope today, as we leave, as you guys go back out into your week, that you have a new appreciation for what it means to be grateful and to have a grateful heart. To do that, I want to first talk about a picture of ingratitude, what the opposite of gratitude looks like. So last week I was doing my weekly Sunday tradition, particularly in the fall, which is to kind of go home and collapse. My whole week, the rhythms of a pastor kind of build up to the sermon. You're stressed about the sermon all day. I hope it doesn't suck and that people aren't disappointed who brought their friends and the whole deal. And I hope this honors God. And I hope that I'm not an apostate and the whole deal. And so you just kind of, you focus on the sermon all week and then I give it and I go home and I'm like, ugh. And I just kind of want to shut down for a while. And so in the fall, it's perfect because I get to watch TV. And so last week I'm watching football and the four o'clock game comes on. It's the Chiefs and the Patriots. And something incredibly interesting happened at halftime of this Patriots game. Now, for those who don't know, you may not know who the Patriots are. You may not be, that's football, by the way. You may not be into football, and that's all right. You don't have to know football to appreciate what I'm about to say. I'm going to kind of lay some groundwork for you, all right? So for those who don't know, the Patriots have had what I think is the best 20-year run of any sports team in the history of sports teams. I'm not talking about the best 20-year run in the last 20 years. I'm talking about besides maybe the 1920s Yankees have had the best 20-year run of any team in the history of teams. It's been amazing. It's been absolutely historic. I went back and counted. In the last 20 years, the Patriots have made it to the Super Bowl nine times. They've played in almost half of the Super Bowls. The other years, they came almost just one game short almost every year. To be a Patriots fan is to over and over and over again get to cheer for a winner. It's an incredible privilege to be a Patriots fan. I know this because I'm a Falcons fan. Okay? It is not a privilege to be a Falcons fan. I'm from Atlanta, and statistically speaking, if you combine all of the seasons without a championship, so you take in Atlanta at one point, that was four seasons in one year, hockey, baseball, basketball, and football going consecutively without a championship. Atlanta is the losingest city in the country. And that's statistics. That's not hyperbole. I have longed to be a Patriots fan. I wish that I could celebrate that sort of success. During those 20 years, they've been to nine Super Bowls. They've won six of them. There's only one other franchise that's won six Super Bowls, and they would even trade their last 20 years for the Patriots' last 20 years. They have the best coach to ever coach a sport. They have the best quarterback to ever play the game, and that pains me to say because Peyton Manning's my favorite football player of all time, but Tom Brady, man, you can't argue with rings. To be a Patriots fan has been an incredible privilege for the past 20 years. Yet, on Sunday, the Patriots are playing, playing the Chiefs, and the Patriots this year are having a good season, not a great season. There's some rumblings in their fan base that they may not be as good as they once were. It's looking like they may not win the Super Bowl this year. And at halftime, the Patriots are running into the locker room down two scores, 21 to seven. And as they're running into the locker room at Gillette Stadium, do you know what those Patriots fans did? Booed. They booed them. Can you believe this? After one bad half of football, and it wasn't even that bad, they booed them. They let them know loudly and clearly, you stink and we're dissatisfied and we deserve more from you. And I sat on my couch in shocked disbelief and I thought, and I'm sorry, you bunch of entitled jerks. Do you have any idea what I would do for the last 20 years that you've just gotten to enjoy as Patriots fan? If you're a 10-year-old Patriots fan, you just figure that they win the Super Bowl. That's just what happens. It's your birthright. Do you know what I would do to trade places with you? Try being a Falcons fan for like a season, you jerks. Like, it made me mad. They were so entitled. And as I thought about that, and listen, we have some Patriots fans at the church. They're lovely people. Steve, our worship pastor, he's kind of a Patriots fan. He's not really a sports guy, but if he were, he claims to be a Patriots. From everything I can tell, he seems to be a great guy. And so I'm not trying to run down all Patriots fans, but the ones in that stadium that day, my goodness, the entitlement on them. And I sat on my couch and I was kind of stewing and calling the names in my head and couldn't get over the audacity of it, texting my friends, did y'all see that? But of course, as I sat there, anytime you cast blame on somebody else, my mind begins to go, well, am I guilty of the same thing? And I realized we all are. We're all of us in that way, this pains me to say, we're all in that way Patriots fans. We all act like that because they were simply entitled. And to be entitled is to be forgetful of the past and desirous of the future. To be entitled is to forget everything that got us here, is to forget all the blessings and all the things I've enjoyed up to this moment, and then to not be aware or cognizant in this moment and just desire us of the future. And isn't that what they were? As they're in the stands and they're watching this one singular bad half of football, totally forgetting the last 20 years that they've had, that they've gotten to enjoy being a fan like nobody else on the face of the planet. In that moment that they booed and expressed their displeasure, aren't they simply forgetting all the things that they've enjoyed up to that point and only thinking about what they want in the future? Haven't they forgotten their past and become desirous of the future? And isn't this what we do? Haven't in our lives, all of us, at different points, been entitled jerks? If you don't think you have, look at your kids at Christmas. Come on, your kids expect stuff, right? They're not like hoping that maybe they get a present. They gave you a list in September. My three-year-old already has this figured out. Everything she saw over the course of the list, can you make sure and tell Santa that that's a thing that I want? Our kids grow up entitled. Entitlement says, I deserve this. It's my birthright. This is something that I've earned. You should give it to me. I don't have to be grateful for it because I deserve this anyways. That's what entitlement is. If our kids aren't enough to help us realize that this is a path that we are all on, how long does it take you and your life right now to get tired of the new shiny thing? How many weeks or months after that promotion, you finally get the job, you finally get the promotion, you finally get the thing, you get the position that you wanted, you've closed the sale that you've wanted, you're so happy about it, praise God, this is great. How many weeks does it take you to resent those coworkers too? How long does it take you to think, I wonder what's next? How long does it take you to forget what got you there and be desirous of what's ahead? How long does it take for the new car to become the one that you want to sell? How long does it take after we buy a new house to put the Zillow app back on our phone and just see what's out there? How about this? How long did it take you after you got married and all the happiness and all the pomp and circumstance around that day to have an evening where you looked across the living room and you thought to yourself, I could have done better than this. For Jen, it was about three days. How long does it take us to be dissatisfied with the blessings that we have, to forget our past, to be totally lost to the present and be desirous of the future and in our own way be booing our life because of a simple bad half? To be shaking our fist at God and saying, God, why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to go through this? Why can't I have that thing with no mind at all to everything that he's already given us? How long does it take us to become entitled? And the problem with entitlement is it's the antithesis of gratitude. If the Bible tells us to be grateful, to be thankful, to give thanks in all things and at all times and in all circumstances, if that's a characteristic that we're supposed to embody, then we should acknowledge that entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude. It's the exact opposite of gratitude. And we should also acknowledge that there is a natural drift towards it. You haven't all been entitled jerks because just in your soul you're a bunch of jerks and we're a bunch of brats. It's all us. We're all that way. Gratitude is something you have to choose on purpose. We don't naturally drift towards gratitude. We naturally drift towards, I deserve, I earn, this belongs to me. We naturally drift towards being forgetful of our past and desirous of what's in the future with no mind to what's going on in the present. That's a natural drift that we have. I don't think, and I'm not here this morning so that anybody feels badly about it. I'm just here so that we will acknowledge it and understand that entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude. Because entitlement says, I deserve this. And gratitude actually confesses something. I learned this in my research from an Irish monk, and I thought it was a good way to think about gratitude. Gratitude is a confession. To be grateful for something confesses that this is a gift that I do not deserve. Gratitude says, this thing that I have in my life, this person, this relationship, this material possession, this house, this opportunity, this skill set, this location in time and in space and in geography, all the things in my life, gratitude acknowledges this is a gift that I do not deserve. To go back to our original illustration, those Patriots fans have not done anything to win those Super Bowls. Nothing. They've not done anything that any other fan base hasn't done. They just have the luxury of being born in New England and getting to cheer for Patriots. And good for them. But it's a gift that they got that they did not deserve. Being a Falcons fan is a punishment that I've received that I do not deserve. God and I are still working that out. But to be truly grateful for something is to confess, this is a gift that I've received that I do not deserve. If you feel like you deserve it, if you feel like you've earned it, then you can't be grateful for the thing. If you're a salesperson and you go out and you slay the dragon and you get the big commission check that comes from slaying the dragon, you don't walk into your boss's office and go, thank you so much for this check. This is such a sweet thing for you to do. No, it was negotiated. You earned that. You deserve that. The gratitude comes in when we reflect on the skills and abilities that got that deal done, and we thank God for blessing us with those. But gratitude has to confess that the thing that I'm grateful for is a gift that I do not deserve. The other thing that gratitude does that I think is so very powerful is it anchors us in the present as we remember the past. Gratitude anchors us in the present as we remember the past. We're not fast-forwarding ahead. We're not looking to the next thing. We're not anxious or desirous about the future. We haven't forgotten the past. We're reflective on the past, the moments that conspired to bring us here. We're anchored in the present, and we remember the past. The best example of this I've seen that I think of often is, I call him my Uncle Edwin. He's really Jen's Uncle Edwin. Jen's dad, John, has a twin sister named Mary. She married a guy named Edwin, and they live in Dothan, Alabama. If you didn't follow that, Jen's aunt and uncle live in Alabama. And every Thanksgiving, we go down to Dothan, Alabama, and we have Thanksgiving with the Morrises. Jen's family, the Vincennes, go down with the Morrises, and we get together and we have Thanksgiving. And Edwin and Mary have three daughters that are about our age, and they have kids now too, and it's just a really great, sweet time. It's one of the great gifts in my life to have been grafted into that family. I'm very grateful for that. And when we go to Thanksgiving, we have the meal. It's a big, good meal. It's one of the best ones I have of the year. There's still an adult table and a kid's table. The parents sit at one table, and the average age of the kid's table now is like 36, but it's still the kid's table. And we have way more fun at the kid's table. There's always much more laughter going on as we swap stories and catch up and reflect on old ones and things like that. And at one point or another, I've caught Edwin doing this several times. He comes into, he leaves the adult table to have his cup of coffee or a camera or dessert or something, and he'll stand off in the corner. He's not trying to be noticed. He's not trying to speak. He's not trying to get anyone's attention. And he'll look at what's happening in his kitchen, And he'll just grin from ear to ear. And sometimes I'll watch him kind of wipe away a tear. And I've never spoken with him about those moments. But I know that Edwin is a man that loves God very much. And I'm certain that in those moments, he's standing there and he's just soaking in what he considers to be one of the great blessings in his life, of the family that he has. He's anchored in the present and he's thankful for the past. And in that moment, he's grateful, acknowledging this family is a gift that I did not earn. And it's tempting to jump ahead. It's tempting to be desirous of the future. It's tempting to be anxious about what could happen. And there's different times and different seasons of life with the Morrises that he could have jumped ahead. During one of those Thanksgivings, he had a daughter that was going to vet school who dropped out to go to art school, which no parent wants to hear. Now, fast forward that, and it worked out really well for her. Another time, he had a daughter who was dating a guy that he was actively praying against every day. Not in a funny way, even though it is funny, but in a very serious, concerned dad kind of way. And God answered those prayers too. But in that moment, when he's standing there, grinning from ear to ear, grateful for what's going on in front of him, he's not anxious about the future. He hasn't forgotten the moments that have got him there. He's anchored in the present, and he's grateful for God's gifts. But more than those things, more than humbling us so that we acknowledge that things in our life are gifts, more than simply anchoring us in the present and helping us reflect on and be grateful for the past, I think there's something far more powerful that gratitude does. And I think we see that in a story tucked away in one of the gospels, in Luke chapter 17. If you have a Bible, turn to Luke chapter 17. I'm going to start in verse 11, and verses 16 through 19 will be up here on the screen. I want to read it for you. On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 leopards, talking about Jesus, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Okay. So I want to say something very, very clear right here. He's going through Samaria. There's racial tension going on. The racial tension going on there. There's a whole separate set of issues that we could talk about. But there's 10 lepers. And in the ancient world, leprosy was the death knell. It was the death knell. It was the worst possible disease that you could get. It was the worst possible diagnosis that you can receive. If you received leprosy, it was contagious, so you were ostracized. You had to go live in a colony with a bunch of other depressed people who were losing their skin and their limbs and their digits all at once and just marching towards death together. It was a really, really difficult diagnosis. And so there's 10 lepers, and they cry out to Jesus. And look what they cry. They say, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. So what do all 10 of them already know? That's Jesus. He's the Son of God and he has the power to heal us, right? They already are acknowledging that that's Jesus and we believe he's the Son of God. They've admitted that. Then Jesus answered, were not 10 cleansed? Where's everybody else? Didn't I heal 10 of you? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Look at this, this is so powerful. And he said to him, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. Let's not miss what's happening in this story as we reflect on gratitude together. These 10 lepers looked at him and they said, Jesus, Master, we believe in you. We believe that you are who you say you are. We believe that you have the power to heal. Will you please heal us? He says, yeah, go and show yourself to the priest and you'll be healed. And so they run off to go to the priest and on their way, they are healed. And as they are healed, we can only assume. Now, we don't know. There's not a lot of details. This is conjecture. But something happened in the minds of nine of them that they didn't think it was important to go back and thank Jesus for what he did. I like to think that their minds immediately became desirous of the future. They became desirous about who they were going to tell and what they were going to do and who they were going to see and all the next things that they wanted to do in light of this healing. Maybe in their head, they went, gosh, that Jesus is a great guy. And they went on and they did their thing. But what they didn't do is express gratitude. What they acted like was that they were entitled, was that they somehow deserved that healing. Jesus is the Savior of the world. He's the Son of God. He has the power to heal. He sees us. He should heal me. He owes this to me. That's what God does. God heals, so heal me. Thanks, great, and then they move on. Only one of them was so moved by his experience with Jesus that he went back to him and he said, thank you. Thank you for healing me. And in that moment, we see gratitude. We see an acknowledgement. This gift of healing is a gift that you gave me that I did not deserve. Thank you. And Jesus' response is fascinating to me. After he notes what the others did, he said, your sins are forgiven. Your faith has made you well. That dude just got saved. You understand that? We call it getting saved when someone is returned to harmony with God. Our souls were created to be in harmony with our creator God. They were designed to be in union with him. Our sin breaks that union. It is forever broken. There is no way to restore us into that union. So God sent his son to die on a cross so that we wouldn't have to, so that by placing our faith in him, we can be restored into union with our creator God. Your soul longs and clamors and claws for harmony with your creator God. That's what it does. If you're here this morning and there is an unease in your soul, if you're not a believer yet, but there is something that you just can't seem to wrap your mind around, if you've clawed for happiness in your life and then gotten there and found that it was empty, it's because your soul was designed to claw for harmony with our Creator God. And Jesus restored the soul of that leper. Gave him what his soul really longs for. And why did he do it? Because the leper was grateful. Don't you see? It wasn't enough to just go, hey, you're Jesus and you can heal me if you want to. Thanks, see you later. No, the leper came back and was grateful. Thank you for what you've done. And Jesus says, your faith, he doesn't say gratitude. He says faith because the faith is implicit in the gratitude. To be truly grateful, you have to admit, you've done something that I couldn't do for myself. Thank you, Jesus. Your faith has made you well. I'm worried as I read this story that we don't understand that gratitude is a gateway to harmony with God. Gratitude is the gateway to harmony with God. Don't you see that these nine lepers did what so many of us do, particularly in the South, just give mental assent, acknowledge, you're Jesus, you're the Son of God, and if you want to, you can do these things for me, but it never goes beyond that. They had the beginnings of faith, but they weren't truly grateful for who Jesus was and what he did. And because of that, they never received the actual blessing that Jesus came to give them. He didn't go through Samaria that day to heal people of leprosy. If he did, we would have seen him healing a lot more people. He walked through Samaria that day to bring some souls back into harmony with God. He walked into Samaria that day to save people. And the only one that got saved was the one that expressed gratitude for what he did. And I worry about how many of us can sometimes be like the lepers. And once we receive the blessing from God, once we receive the taste of Jesus, once we receive a little bit of the blessing, we go, thanks, that's good. And we don't stick around for the true blessing that God has for us because we're entitled. I don't want us to miss the power of gratitude. This guy didn't have to pray the sinner's prayer. He didn't have to have everything figured out. He didn't have to understand the ins and outs of the New Testament. He was from the priest that Jesus sent him to go see wasn't even a Jewish priest. It was a hybrid religion. He didn't even understand what it meant to have faith or to be a believer. He was simply grateful to Jesus for what he did. And to Jesus, that was enough. Your faith has made you well. We cannot miss the power of gratitude. It's a gateway to harmony with God. And I really think that what happens when we're grateful is that all paths lead to God. I think gratitude always leads to God, which in turn always leads to joy. I think gratitude is a gateway to harmony with God, is a guaranteed pathway to joy. That if we can begin to express gratitude in our lives for anything at all, that what that will ultimately bring us to is gratitude. It doesn't take me very long to do that in my life. If I look at the things I'm grateful for in my life, I look at Jen and I look at Lily. It doesn't take me very long to end up thanking God for those things and to find joy and harmony with God. If you look at the things in your life, it doesn't take you very long to think of the things that you're grateful for and find a path that leads us back to God. I think it actually kind of works like this. As I was thinking about it this week, I thought of this map that I remember seeing online. If we can put it up there. This is a map of all of the streams and rivers in the United States and how they all lead to the ocean. Every last one of them. You can pick any tendril that you want to and at one point or another, it's going to end up in the ocean. A brook is going to lead to a stream, is going to lead to a creek, is going to lead to a river, is going to lead to a bigger river, is going to lead to a basin, is going to lead to an ocean. And I think that gratitude works the same way. Even if you think about the things in your life that you think you've done, the accomplishments that you think you've made, the businesses that you think you've built, the children that you think you've raised, who gave you the gifts and abilities to do those things? Who decided in his sovereignty that you were going to be born in the United States in a first world and even have the opportunity to exercise those gifts? Who decided that you weren't going to be born in the slums of Delhi and instead were going to be born here? God did. Our very gifts, our very location, our friends, all of our blessings are a result of God's goodness in our life. That's why I think that all gratitude is simply a path that leads us back to God, that leads us to joy. That's why I think that the Bible tells us over and over again to be grateful in all things, even in the hard things. I think that even if Christmas is difficult, because for some of us, Christmas is a reminder of loss. If we want to find a path to gratitude, even in the midst of a Christmas that reminds us of loss in our life, that loss hurts so much because there were times that were so sweet. And we become grateful for those times. And we see God working in them. And it serves as a pathway that ultimately leads us back to God where our souls will find harmony with Him and we will find joy. Gratitude is incredibly powerful because it is a gateway to harmony with our creator. All paths of gratitude lead to him. And I am convinced that once we are in harmony with our God, once we are grateful to him, all those pathways lead to joy. So let's go and let's be grateful together. Let's be anchored in the present, remembering the past, and be grateful to our God for the things that He has done in our lives. Let's pray. Father, we love You. We truly are grateful to You. We're grateful for the memories that we have. We're grateful for the scars that we bear and the lessons that we learned as a result of those instances. God, we're thankful for all the different blessings that you've placed in our life, for the relationships, for the possessions that bring us joy, for the places that make us feel safe or cozy or happy. God, we're so grateful for all of those. We're thankful for the means to earn those things, to make the sale, to close the deal, to figure out the account. We're grateful for the discipline to go to work and to learn more and to sharpen our sword. We're grateful that you built us all with our gifts that allow us to go out and serve you and enjoy the blessings that you've given us. God, may we actively fight against entitlement. May we be people who acknowledge every day that the things in our life are gifts from you that we have not earned and acknowledge that in your goodness, you've given them to us anyways. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

Good morning, everybody. If somebody back there could get the lights, that would be great. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thanks for being here this Sunday morning. If you're like me, this is a big Sunday. This is Master's Sunday. If you're watching online, I'm not supposed to wear this because the design does something weird to the camera and it makes it difficult to watch. But I'm not sorry because it's Master's Sunday. So this is what we get. This is also the seventh part of our series in Lent, where we've been looking at different character traits or ideas that we kind of pull out of the Lenten season and the story of the gospel. It's going to culminate next week with Easter, when we're going to observe some baptisms, baptizing people on Easter is literally one of the oldest, if not the oldest church tradition in all of church. The very early church would only baptize on Easter because it is in and of itself a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So next week, we have four baptisms right now that we're planning to do, which I'm thrilled about. If any of you feel like you want to be a part of that service as well, if you want to take the step to be baptized and you've never done that before, and the Lord may be tugging on your heart a little bit, get in touch with me this week. It's not too late. We would love for you to be a part of that celebration next week as we celebrate Easter together. This week, we're focused on the topic of generosity. And whenever, in church circles, many of you know this, whenever you mention generosity or the topic this week is going to be generosity, that's code for this is the money sermon, right? This is the giving sermon. Don't bring your friends. I'm going to ask you guys for money, so bring them next week when we talk about other stuff. Don't bring them this week because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. But this week is a sermon about generosity, but it is not about that. It's not about strictly financial generosity. And as a matter of fact, I've been saying all along that it's been really great to be able to read the devotionals of others as we kind of approach these topics each week, except for this week. This week was terrible because last week after I finished my sermon, it's just kind of how it goes. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. I write a sermon every week. So I'm driving home from church going, okay, what's next week's topic? How do I want to approach it? That kind of thing. And I'm thinking about generosity and I get this idea. Yeah, that's how we should approach it. That's how we should talk about it. I'm going to explain it in this way and think about it in this way. And I'm feeling good about myself for being very clever, for thinking about generosity in a new, more expanded way. And then I sit down Monday and I open up the devotionals and Doug Bergeson, who was a jerk, he wrote this. Actually, speaking of generosity, no kidding around, Doug and Debbie are in the, I call it the COVID baby room. There's the youngest baby room where my son is. And then there's, and then you graduate into the COVID baby room. These children were born in the midst of the pandemic and have never seen a human face besides their parents. And when you drop them off in that room, they're terrified. They have no idea what's going on. They just have to be gradually weaned through crying and tears. And Doug and Debbie are locked into a mortal combat right now with four of these kids, right? So just talk about generosity. They don't have to do that. They're just doing it because they love the young families that they serve. They love the church and whatever. So it's very generous. Doug is the opposite of a jerk sometimes. Anyways, I opened up the devotional on Monday, authored by Doug. And lo and behold, it's the exact idea that I think I'm so clever for coming up with, which clearly if Doug can also come up with it, not that clever. And so I opened it up to read it and I'm like, golly, this is exactly kind of the same idea that I wanted to communicate. So if you would like like a three minute version of this sermon with fewer jokes, then just read the devotional on Monday and tune me out right now. You'll be fine. But I wanted to approach it this way, and I was happy with the way that Doug approached it, because I think we're often so overly reductive of generosity, that when we think of generosity, particularly in church terms, particularly when the Bible espouses it or encourages it, I think that we think of it in terms of financial giving, of material generosity. And because we do that, what I want to propose to you today is actually the possibility that generosity is the most underrated character trait in the Bible. I think that I would argue with you that generosity, being a person who's generous, is maybe the most underrated character trait in the Bible. Now, the Bible encourages a lot of character traits. We are to be humble, and we are to be kind, and we are to be loving, and we are to be gentle, and we are to try to be lowly, and we are to be forgiving, and we are to be just. And there's a lot of things that the Bible would have us seek to be or that the Spirit would seek to shape us into, and amongst those is generosity. So I'm not saying that generosity is the most important character trait in the Bible, but I am saying that I think it might be the most underrated character trait in the Bible. And in that way, generosity is very similar to Waffle House. Now here's the thing, and it's something that I've noticed over the years about our North Raleigh crowd, and I've wanted to say something. I wasn't sure when it was appropriate, but I'm going to put it to you today. You guys don't eat at Waffle House enough, right? This church has a Waffle House deficiency, and it's high time that we address it. What are you, too good? Waffle House is delicious. And when we think of Waffle House, we think of waffles, which of course we do. They named their home after that particular dish. We think of the waffles, and the waffles are great. I like to get mine crispy, which means leave it in there a little bit longer. A Cajun waffle, blacken it up a little bit. You can get it with chocolate chips, which are miniature and delicious. And if you go during the right season, you can get them with peanut butter chips. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. What you cannot do is get them with fresh fruit, all right? They don't do fresh fruit at Waffle House. You go to First Watch for that stuff, all right? Fancy pants? We're not doing it. We might have some apple butter somewhere. That's it in terms of fresh fruit. But it's more than just waffles. You don't want waffles? They got a sausage melt that's amazing. Wheat toast, melted American cheese, sausage patty, grilled onions, unbelievable. My wife likes the BLT there. It's not as good as the one you're going to get at Merritt's over in Chapel Hill, but it's cheaper, and the person who serves it to you is more friendly, and it's great. Unless the person serving it to you is on the back end of an overnight shift, if you get somebody at about 7.35 in the a.m., just don't talk to that person. They've had a harder night than you, all right? Otherwise, the service is amazing. The lunch is good. You can even get dinner there. They have T-bone steaks at Waffle House. I've never had one. I respect steak too much to order one from Waffle House, but you can get one there if you want one. And I think that Waffle House is often overly reduced to just waffles when they have so much more to offer. It's delicious. In the same way, we become so overly reductive of generosity, relegating it to financial giving, that we don't think of all the other ways in which we are called to be generous that I would contend are often more difficult than simple financial generosity. And as we've gone through these different topics in this series, I've said, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about this particular topic. But for generosity, I wanted to kind of give us an overview of what does the Bible have to say about this. So I'm going to go through four different passages that will be up on the screen for you to read along with me. But we're kind of just going to rapid fire through these. So in Psalm, Psalm 112, the psalmist writes, good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. In Proverbs, it's written, one person gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. And then in the New Testament, Luke writes, And finally, I would remind you of the verse that finished up what Kelsey read for us at the beginning of the sermon today. The last verse to God. There's a lot there about generosity. And as we started in Psalms, it zeroes in on financial generosity, the kind that we go to first when we think of someone who is a generous person. It says you should lend freely and you will receive freely. But it very quickly begins to expand it beyond that. It says conduct your affairs with justice. So that's not necessarily money. Now we're talking about offer justice generally to those around you. And then we get into Proverbs and it says a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed. So now we're starting to expand our understanding of generosity beyond simply the materials that we give one another, but in ways that we can refresh others. God says he will refresh us. And then it's interesting to me in Luke that this verse that's famous, that's often misused, often by other Christians trying to demean other Christians, or even by people outside the church trying to demean people within the church, judge not lest ye be judged, or judge not or you will also be judged. But it's followed with other character traits that don't condemn or you will be condemned, don't forgive or you won't be forgiven. It's other character traits, and it ends with be fair in your measurements, be generous in how you assess other people and other things. And it basically says, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So as generous as you are towards other people in your judgment, God will be generous to you. As generous as you are with your forgiveness, God will be forgiving to you. As generous as you are with your condemnation, God will be generous with his condemnation towards you. And so we're expanding the view of generosity. And then finally, in Corinthians, there's this kind of wonderful, almost formula there. And I hesitate to use that word because I really don't like it when we reduce scripture to this formulaic approach so that if I do these things, God will give me these things. But in this instance, there does seem to be a cause and effect flow through the passage where he writes, Paul writes, that you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through your generosity, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving. It's this idea that God says, I have blessed you in every way so that because of that blessing, you will be generous to others in every way. And because you are generous to others in every way, they will turn in thanks to me. They will be grateful to me. It will point them towards me. It's how God's generosity cyclically works to point other people back towards him, which we'll see more clearly in just a second. But what I want to contend with you this morning is we can only live out the truths of these scriptures if we expand our view of generosity. We can only live out the truth of the scriptures of what is said in these four passages and really throughout scripture and in particular in Corinthians where other people will glorify God because of us if we expand our view of what generosity could possibly be. Because there's so many more ways to be generous than simply financially. We can be generous in our judgment of others, in how we assess others. Some of us are very quick to judge. We see somebody driving a particular kind of car or wearing a particular type of clothes, or we learn the way that someone might have voted in the last election, and we are very quick to judge them and make all sorts of assessments about who they are. We can be more generous in our judgment of others. We can be more generous in our forgiveness that we offer towards others. We can be more generous in the grace that we offer towards people. We can be more generous in the way that we determine who we're going to spend our time with. We can be generous with our time. We can be generous with our attention. We can be generous in conversation. There are so many ways beyond financially to be generous people. And the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on the opportunities that we have for generosity and the generosity of some others that I've experienced in my life, the more I thought that, you know, generosity might be the greatest apologetic. Somebody being generous might be the greatest apologetic. Now, if any pastor has ever couched a note that he's made, it's me, because I just put might there in the middle of it. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm just saying it could possibly be the greatest apologetic. And in this sense, an apologetic is a defense of the faith. It's an argument for the faith. And I tend to think that acts of generosity and all the different forms that they take can serve long-term to be far more winsome than any theological argument, than any scientific argument that we have crafted, that simply being generous to someone over time, letting other people see you be generous to everyone in your orbit and everyone in your sphere, can over time be more winsome towards Christ, can point people towards Jesus more than any argument that you could ever craft, could point people to Jesus more than even inviting them to church, could point people to Jesus more than challenging them. Hey, if you were to die today, do you know how you would spend eternity? And it's not that I don't want us to be having those conversations. Those conversations are good and we need to be sharing Christ with our neighbors. As a matter of fact, one of the goals of grace moving forward is that we would see God bring more people to faith through the people of grace so that we might celebrate that conversion. We want very much for more people to come to faith as a result of the ministries of this church. And the reason I'm saying that is because I think generosity can be such a big part of that. I think generosity can point us to Jesus in ways that almost nothing else can. Think of the instances in your life when someone has been generous to you. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they're on the fringe. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they are always kind of getting an unfair shake from other people. That with you, people tend to judge a book by its cover. And maybe people have treated you unfairly in your life. Maybe people have made assumptions about you because of where you come from or what you drive or what your story is or what your job is. Or just the way that you like to present yourself that may not be indicative of the whole person. It may just be a thing that you enjoy doing. And if you're one of those people that often gets misjudged by others, then you probably also have in your life someone who has just loved you and accepted you for who you are and has refused to judge you like other people do. Who has just heard you out. Who has given you the space to be yourself. Who has met you where you are and loved you there. And isn't that person's love and acceptance of you a far greater argument for Christ than anything else that could happen in your life? I think that generosity is a remarkable apologetic because we remember acts of generosity. When I was about 14 years old, I was coming out of eighth grade, going into ninth grade. I'm not sure how old you are when that happens. I went to Costa Rica on my very first mission trip. And we were building a, I think we were building a house for a university president of a Christian college down there, which you can imagine how useful eighth grade Nate was on a Costa Rican construction site. I'm certain that the workers were very glad that I was there. I know in Mexico, when we go and build walls, they usually have to, not usually, all the time, have to come back and correct all the mistakes that I've made to the point where I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to mix stuff. I'm going to hand it to Jeffy. Jeff's going to do the blocks. I'm just going to stand here like a dum-dum because I have nothing to contribute to what's happening here. So I can't imagine the detriment that eighth grade Nate was to actually getting anything done in Costa Rica. But my parents paid the thousand dollars. I went down there like everybody else, and I was on a mission trip, and it was a really formative trip. And on the last night that we were there, we did like a little dinner or banquet or whatever it was, and there was one guy. He was, to me, an older man at the time. He was probably mid-40s, so like really close to my current age. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this on a mission trip, but when you go and there's a language barrier, which for me, I knew no Spanish at all at that time. So there was a huge language barrier between me and him. And you can't really communicate, but if you've been on a mission trip and you're kind of wired like me, then you understand that there is the universal language of joking around. There's a universal language of throwing stuff at each other, of stealing each other's tools and messing with each other all week long. And he was right there with us. He was jumping in and he and I had kind of bonded over that. And we seemed to have a similar spirit and enjoy one another. And so on the last night that we were there, he commented on my t-shirt. It was a United States soccer t-shirt. And he commented on it that he liked it. It was new. It was made by Nike in eighth grade. This is a big deal. But he said that he liked it and I wanted to be generous. So I went back to the room. I changed into another t-shirt and I walked out and I handed him this t-shirt. And I just wanted him to take it as a gift. And that man took off his shirt in the middle of the party, put on my T-shirt, folded up his shirt and gave it to me. Now his shirt was this knit pink long-sleeved polo shirt. It had some country club emblem right here that was not Costa Rican. Somehow or another, he had acquired this shirt. But if you've traveled overseas to third world countries, you know a lot of the folks that you interact with, they don't have a lot. By our standards, they have almost nothing. He was wearing one of what I am sure was one of the very few collared shirts that he had to that party that night because everybody was dressed nice. And some snot-nosed kid that was useless on the job site all week gave him a shirt. And so he wanted to return that generosity with his generosity and he gave me a shirt that mattered to him a lot more than some dumb U.S. soccer shirt could have ever mattered to me. And 30 years later, I remember that. And I remember seeing the love of Jesus in his eyes as he did it. Which is why I'm certain that generosity makes an impression. And it's why I think that it might be the single greatest apologetic, and it might make the single biggest difference in times when we're not sure how else to reach people. I said that we could also be generous with our time. This last week, I got an email from one of our families. I'm going to brag on our student pastor, Kyle, a little bit. I got an email from one of the families and the whole email was to tell us, was to tell me that the subject of it was, Kyle's a good dude. Yeah. Yeah. You got no disagreements with me there. They said that he came to our middle school daughter's softball double header. That's a boring sentence to say. I'm not trying to crud on middle school girls or boys, but middle school sports stink, all right? So if you are there and you're not a parent or a grandparent, holy smokes, you're a special human. And listen, they said he stayed for both of them, the whole first game and the second game. And he stayed afterwards for cake. Are you kidding me? I was a student pastor for years. You know what I'd do? I'd get there at the end of the first game. Hey, good job. I saw that bat you had. I was really sorry you didn't get a hit. But, oh, man, you were close. And then as soon as the next game started, I'd be like, okay, well, you know, it's... I put in my time. Kyle stayed for the whole doubleheader and then he stayed for cake. And it made such an impression on the family that they emailed me to say, hey, we got a heck of a guy here. And we do. And she's going to remember that. That she has a student pastor that cares about her that much, that he's going to stay for all those things. And you can remember acts of generosity in your life too. Maybe we know somebody that has access to something that's kind of fun that not everybody has access to, a beach house or a lake house or a box at some sort of sporting event or venue. And you watch them give that out to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or use it or have access to that over the years. And you're awed by that. I remember watching my father-in-law use his lake house like that weekend after weekend after weekend for the college kids that lived in the area and would come in and want to be pulled by the boat. We've seen people be generous in those ways. And it makes an impression on us, whether it's generosity in conversation or in time or in assessment of one another or in actual material wealth or in opportunity, they make an impression on us. And that impression is important because God's generosity points us to others and then in turn points them back to God. God's generosity points us to others. Christians are generous because God has been generous to us. One of my favorite passages is in the book of John. It says, We know that while we were still sinners that Christ died for us, and that's what love is. We know that while we were very far from God that he pursued us. We know that we have never done anything that will make him love us any less. We know that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And because he lavishes that generous love on us, the more we focus on it, the more aware of it we are, the more we reflect on how generous our father has been with us, the more we are inspired to go and be generous to other people. And if I'm really being honest with you, the most generous people I know, some of whom are in this room, are always people who love God a lot. The most generous people that I know are almost always people who have this very deep walk with God and seem to understand things about God that I don't fully understand. And I'll tell you this too, growing up in an environment, in a church environment in the 80s and 90s where I was told the godliest people are the ones who know the most theology, the godliest people are the ones who can quote the most verses to you, the godliest people are the ones who can win every argument? No. The godliest people are the most generous people. I know jerks who can win lots of arguments. I don't know anybody who's generous with everything they have who doesn't have a faith that I want to seek to emulate. And so when someone is generous to us and we say, why are you doing that? Why are you giving me that? Why are you spending that on me? Why are you investing that in me? Their answer inevitably is because God gave it to me. And then that points us back to God, which is how we bring about the reality of that Corinthians passage. God says, I've blessed you. I've enriched you in every way that you might enrich others in every way so that they might give thanksgiving to me for who I am. Do you see how that works? Someone is generous to you individually. You say, why are you doing this? This is too much. And they go, because I love God and God loves you and I want to do this for you. And then they turn and they praise God for placing you in their life and seek to desire to be generous like they have just been the recipient of. This works corporately as well. When we give to church or we sacrifice for an institution, we do something together and the outside world goes, wow, how'd you guys do that? Why'd you do that? Well, because God loves us, so we do this. And they go, well, that's pretty great. I want to find out more about your God too. I just, I don't want us to reduce generosity to simple financial giving anymore. And as a matter of fact, I would say that financial generosity might just be the easiest kind, especially for those of us with resources. I want to be gentle and careful here, but I also know my audience and I know the neighborhoods that we live in. Sometimes financial generosity is the easiest kind. And I know this because I've bought someone's groceries before because I didn't want to wait for them to go to their car and get their debit card. They said their debit card was in their car. They were fumbling around. And I said, I'm happy to get it. They said, oh, thank you so much. And I wanted to tell them, like, it's just because you're slow. It's not. I'm impatient. It's $20. I'll pay $20 to be in my car right now. I'm tired of watching you fumble with your wallet. Sometimes it's very easy when we have plenty to appear generous and cut a check. Now sometimes that's a real challenge, and that is genuine generosity. But sometimes that's the gateway to actual generosity. These people that we have on the corners, many of us are going to pass them on the way home. It's easy to hang a 20 out the window. It's incredibly generous to stop our plans in our day and get out of our car and talk to them and go have a meal with them. That's generosity. It's easy to donate to a cause. It's harder to go sit with the people to whom that cause ministers. It's easier to give out of plenty and hold back the stuff that we don't have as much of, but I would argue with you, and listen, this is not a sermon trying to denigrate giving. We ought to do that. But sometimes that's the simplest form of it. And what I want to encourage us to be is a people who are generous in spirit, who are generous across the board, who give of all of the resources that we have, who don't relegate it to the easiest ones. Whatever the easiest thing is for us to give, let's not just start there and be done, but let's be generous people. Because I bet, as I've been talking about generosity and the different forms that it takes, that you've thought of people in your life who have been generous to you. People who have been kind to you in their assessment of you or in their time or of their resources. And you're grateful that they are in your life. If you, like me, if you think of people in your life who you consider generous, you are grateful that they are in your life. You're grateful to God that he has placed them in your life. And because of that, you're pointed back to God. So here's the encouragement to us, Grace. Let's go be the kind of person that other people are grateful for. And when we do that, you'll be the kind of person that points people to Jesus. Go from here and be generous in spirit. Go be the kind of person that people are grateful to have in their life. And if you do that over time, you will leave a wake of people who have been pointed to Jesus because you entered into their life. I've mentioned many times that challenging teaching from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that as we move into and out of the lives of other people, that they will be focused more on the Father, more on Jesus because of our simple presence in their life. And as I've reflected this week, that's always seemed like such a challenge to me. But maybe the key to obedience there is being someone who is generous in spirit. So that as we sow those seeds of generosity in the lives of others, we will become the kind of person that they are grateful that God has placed in their life. And in turn, they will be pointed to Jesus. So go from here and be the kind of people that other people are grateful for. And what you'll find is you've just become the kind of person who constantly points people towards the Father. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for being generous to us, for giving us your son whom we did not deserve, for continuing to offer your forgiveness that often, God, we trample on. Lord, I pray that you would remind us, even this morning, of all the ways that you were generous to us, that you would remind us even today of all the people you have placed in our life to model that generosity for us. And God, I pray that we would be people who are acutely aware of the blessings that we have so that we might in turn offer those to others. Lord, make us conduits of your generosity so that we are the kind of people that point people back towards you. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. If somebody back there could get the lights, that would be great. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thanks for being here this Sunday morning. If you're like me, this is a big Sunday. This is Master's Sunday. If you're watching online, I'm not supposed to wear this because the design does something weird to the camera and it makes it difficult to watch. But I'm not sorry because it's Master's Sunday. So this is what we get. This is also the seventh part of our series in Lent, where we've been looking at different character traits or ideas that we kind of pull out of the Lenten season and the story of the gospel. It's going to culminate next week with Easter, when we're going to observe some baptisms, baptizing people on Easter is literally one of the oldest, if not the oldest church tradition in all of church. The very early church would only baptize on Easter because it is in and of itself a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So next week, we have four baptisms right now that we're planning to do, which I'm thrilled about. If any of you feel like you want to be a part of that service as well, if you want to take the step to be baptized and you've never done that before, and the Lord may be tugging on your heart a little bit, get in touch with me this week. It's not too late. We would love for you to be a part of that celebration next week as we celebrate Easter together. This week, we're focused on the topic of generosity. And whenever, in church circles, many of you know this, whenever you mention generosity or the topic this week is going to be generosity, that's code for this is the money sermon, right? This is the giving sermon. Don't bring your friends. I'm going to ask you guys for money, so bring them next week when we talk about other stuff. Don't bring them this week because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. But this week is a sermon about generosity, but it is not about that. It's not about strictly financial generosity. And as a matter of fact, I've been saying all along that it's been really great to be able to read the devotionals of others as we kind of approach these topics each week, except for this week. This week was terrible because last week after I finished my sermon, it's just kind of how it goes. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. I write a sermon every week. So I'm driving home from church going, okay, what's next week's topic? How do I want to approach it? That kind of thing. And I'm thinking about generosity and I get this idea. Yeah, that's how we should approach it. That's how we should talk about it. I'm going to explain it in this way and think about it in this way. And I'm feeling good about myself for being very clever, for thinking about generosity in a new, more expanded way. And then I sit down Monday and I open up the devotionals and Doug Bergeson, who was a jerk, he wrote this. Actually, speaking of generosity, no kidding around, Doug and Debbie are in the, I call it the COVID baby room. There's the youngest baby room where my son is. And then there's, and then you graduate into the COVID baby room. These children were born in the midst of the pandemic and have never seen a human face besides their parents. And when you drop them off in that room, they're terrified. They have no idea what's going on. They just have to be gradually weaned through crying and tears. And Doug and Debbie are locked into a mortal combat right now with four of these kids, right? So just talk about generosity. They don't have to do that. They're just doing it because they love the young families that they serve. They love the church and whatever. So it's very generous. Doug is the opposite of a jerk sometimes. Anyways, I opened up the devotional on Monday, authored by Doug. And lo and behold, it's the exact idea that I think I'm so clever for coming up with, which clearly if Doug can also come up with it, not that clever. And so I opened it up to read it and I'm like, golly, this is exactly kind of the same idea that I wanted to communicate. So if you would like like a three minute version of this sermon with fewer jokes, then just read the devotional on Monday and tune me out right now. You'll be fine. But I wanted to approach it this way, and I was happy with the way that Doug approached it, because I think we're often so overly reductive of generosity, that when we think of generosity, particularly in church terms, particularly when the Bible espouses it or encourages it, I think that we think of it in terms of financial giving, of material generosity. And because we do that, what I want to propose to you today is actually the possibility that generosity is the most underrated character trait in the Bible. I think that I would argue with you that generosity, being a person who's generous, is maybe the most underrated character trait in the Bible. Now, the Bible encourages a lot of character traits. We are to be humble, and we are to be kind, and we are to be loving, and we are to be gentle, and we are to try to be lowly, and we are to be forgiving, and we are to be just. And there's a lot of things that the Bible would have us seek to be or that the Spirit would seek to shape us into, and amongst those is generosity. So I'm not saying that generosity is the most important character trait in the Bible, but I am saying that I think it might be the most underrated character trait in the Bible. And in that way, generosity is very similar to Waffle House. Now here's the thing, and it's something that I've noticed over the years about our North Raleigh crowd, and I've wanted to say something. I wasn't sure when it was appropriate, but I'm going to put it to you today. You guys don't eat at Waffle House enough, right? This church has a Waffle House deficiency, and it's high time that we address it. What are you, too good? Waffle House is delicious. And when we think of Waffle House, we think of waffles, which of course we do. They named their home after that particular dish. We think of the waffles, and the waffles are great. I like to get mine crispy, which means leave it in there a little bit longer. A Cajun waffle, blacken it up a little bit. You can get it with chocolate chips, which are miniature and delicious. And if you go during the right season, you can get them with peanut butter chips. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. What you cannot do is get them with fresh fruit, all right? They don't do fresh fruit at Waffle House. You go to First Watch for that stuff, all right? Fancy pants? We're not doing it. We might have some apple butter somewhere. That's it in terms of fresh fruit. But it's more than just waffles. You don't want waffles? They got a sausage melt that's amazing. Wheat toast, melted American cheese, sausage patty, grilled onions, unbelievable. My wife likes the BLT there. It's not as good as the one you're going to get at Merritt's over in Chapel Hill, but it's cheaper, and the person who serves it to you is more friendly, and it's great. Unless the person serving it to you is on the back end of an overnight shift, if you get somebody at about 7.35 in the a.m., just don't talk to that person. They've had a harder night than you, all right? Otherwise, the service is amazing. The lunch is good. You can even get dinner there. They have T-bone steaks at Waffle House. I've never had one. I respect steak too much to order one from Waffle House, but you can get one there if you want one. And I think that Waffle House is often overly reduced to just waffles when they have so much more to offer. It's delicious. In the same way, we become so overly reductive of generosity, relegating it to financial giving, that we don't think of all the other ways in which we are called to be generous that I would contend are often more difficult than simple financial generosity. And as we've gone through these different topics in this series, I've said, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about this particular topic. But for generosity, I wanted to kind of give us an overview of what does the Bible have to say about this. So I'm going to go through four different passages that will be up on the screen for you to read along with me. But we're kind of just going to rapid fire through these. So in Psalm, Psalm 112, the psalmist writes, good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. In Proverbs, it's written, one person gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. And then in the New Testament, Luke writes, And finally, I would remind you of the verse that finished up what Kelsey read for us at the beginning of the sermon today. The last verse to God. There's a lot there about generosity. And as we started in Psalms, it zeroes in on financial generosity, the kind that we go to first when we think of someone who is a generous person. It says you should lend freely and you will receive freely. But it very quickly begins to expand it beyond that. It says conduct your affairs with justice. So that's not necessarily money. Now we're talking about offer justice generally to those around you. And then we get into Proverbs and it says a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed. So now we're starting to expand our understanding of generosity beyond simply the materials that we give one another, but in ways that we can refresh others. God says he will refresh us. And then it's interesting to me in Luke that this verse that's famous, that's often misused, often by other Christians trying to demean other Christians, or even by people outside the church trying to demean people within the church, judge not lest ye be judged, or judge not or you will also be judged. But it's followed with other character traits that don't condemn or you will be condemned, don't forgive or you won't be forgiven. It's other character traits, and it ends with be fair in your measurements, be generous in how you assess other people and other things. And it basically says, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So as generous as you are towards other people in your judgment, God will be generous to you. As generous as you are with your forgiveness, God will be forgiving to you. As generous as you are with your condemnation, God will be generous with his condemnation towards you. And so we're expanding the view of generosity. And then finally, in Corinthians, there's this kind of wonderful, almost formula there. And I hesitate to use that word because I really don't like it when we reduce scripture to this formulaic approach so that if I do these things, God will give me these things. But in this instance, there does seem to be a cause and effect flow through the passage where he writes, Paul writes, that you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through your generosity, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving. It's this idea that God says, I have blessed you in every way so that because of that blessing, you will be generous to others in every way. And because you are generous to others in every way, they will turn in thanks to me. They will be grateful to me. It will point them towards me. It's how God's generosity cyclically works to point other people back towards him, which we'll see more clearly in just a second. But what I want to contend with you this morning is we can only live out the truths of these scriptures if we expand our view of generosity. We can only live out the truth of the scriptures of what is said in these four passages and really throughout scripture and in particular in Corinthians where other people will glorify God because of us if we expand our view of what generosity could possibly be. Because there's so many more ways to be generous than simply financially. We can be generous in our judgment of others, in how we assess others. Some of us are very quick to judge. We see somebody driving a particular kind of car or wearing a particular type of clothes, or we learn the way that someone might have voted in the last election, and we are very quick to judge them and make all sorts of assessments about who they are. We can be more generous in our judgment of others. We can be more generous in our forgiveness that we offer towards others. We can be more generous in the grace that we offer towards people. We can be more generous in the way that we determine who we're going to spend our time with. We can be generous with our time. We can be generous with our attention. We can be generous in conversation. There are so many ways beyond financially to be generous people. And the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on the opportunities that we have for generosity and the generosity of some others that I've experienced in my life, the more I thought that, you know, generosity might be the greatest apologetic. Somebody being generous might be the greatest apologetic. Now, if any pastor has ever couched a note that he's made, it's me, because I just put might there in the middle of it. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm just saying it could possibly be the greatest apologetic. And in this sense, an apologetic is a defense of the faith. It's an argument for the faith. And I tend to think that acts of generosity and all the different forms that they take can serve long-term to be far more winsome than any theological argument, than any scientific argument that we have crafted, that simply being generous to someone over time, letting other people see you be generous to everyone in your orbit and everyone in your sphere, can over time be more winsome towards Christ, can point people towards Jesus more than any argument that you could ever craft, could point people to Jesus more than even inviting them to church, could point people to Jesus more than challenging them. Hey, if you were to die today, do you know how you would spend eternity? And it's not that I don't want us to be having those conversations. Those conversations are good and we need to be sharing Christ with our neighbors. As a matter of fact, one of the goals of grace moving forward is that we would see God bring more people to faith through the people of grace so that we might celebrate that conversion. We want very much for more people to come to faith as a result of the ministries of this church. And the reason I'm saying that is because I think generosity can be such a big part of that. I think generosity can point us to Jesus in ways that almost nothing else can. Think of the instances in your life when someone has been generous to you. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they're on the fringe. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they are always kind of getting an unfair shake from other people. That with you, people tend to judge a book by its cover. And maybe people have treated you unfairly in your life. Maybe people have made assumptions about you because of where you come from or what you drive or what your story is or what your job is. Or just the way that you like to present yourself that may not be indicative of the whole person. It may just be a thing that you enjoy doing. And if you're one of those people that often gets misjudged by others, then you probably also have in your life someone who has just loved you and accepted you for who you are and has refused to judge you like other people do. Who has just heard you out. Who has given you the space to be yourself. Who has met you where you are and loved you there. And isn't that person's love and acceptance of you a far greater argument for Christ than anything else that could happen in your life? I think that generosity is a remarkable apologetic because we remember acts of generosity. When I was about 14 years old, I was coming out of eighth grade, going into ninth grade. I'm not sure how old you are when that happens. I went to Costa Rica on my very first mission trip. And we were building a, I think we were building a house for a university president of a Christian college down there, which you can imagine how useful eighth grade Nate was on a Costa Rican construction site. I'm certain that the workers were very glad that I was there. I know in Mexico, when we go and build walls, they usually have to, not usually, all the time, have to come back and correct all the mistakes that I've made to the point where I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to mix stuff. I'm going to hand it to Jeffy. Jeff's going to do the blocks. I'm just going to stand here like a dum-dum because I have nothing to contribute to what's happening here. So I can't imagine the detriment that eighth grade Nate was to actually getting anything done in Costa Rica. But my parents paid the thousand dollars. I went down there like everybody else, and I was on a mission trip, and it was a really formative trip. And on the last night that we were there, we did like a little dinner or banquet or whatever it was, and there was one guy. He was, to me, an older man at the time. He was probably mid-40s, so like really close to my current age. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this on a mission trip, but when you go and there's a language barrier, which for me, I knew no Spanish at all at that time. So there was a huge language barrier between me and him. And you can't really communicate, but if you've been on a mission trip and you're kind of wired like me, then you understand that there is the universal language of joking around. There's a universal language of throwing stuff at each other, of stealing each other's tools and messing with each other all week long. And he was right there with us. He was jumping in and he and I had kind of bonded over that. And we seemed to have a similar spirit and enjoy one another. And so on the last night that we were there, he commented on my t-shirt. It was a United States soccer t-shirt. And he commented on it that he liked it. It was new. It was made by Nike in eighth grade. This is a big deal. But he said that he liked it and I wanted to be generous. So I went back to the room. I changed into another t-shirt and I walked out and I handed him this t-shirt. And I just wanted him to take it as a gift. And that man took off his shirt in the middle of the party, put on my T-shirt, folded up his shirt and gave it to me. Now his shirt was this knit pink long-sleeved polo shirt. It had some country club emblem right here that was not Costa Rican. Somehow or another, he had acquired this shirt. But if you've traveled overseas to third world countries, you know a lot of the folks that you interact with, they don't have a lot. By our standards, they have almost nothing. He was wearing one of what I am sure was one of the very few collared shirts that he had to that party that night because everybody was dressed nice. And some snot-nosed kid that was useless on the job site all week gave him a shirt. And so he wanted to return that generosity with his generosity and he gave me a shirt that mattered to him a lot more than some dumb U.S. soccer shirt could have ever mattered to me. And 30 years later, I remember that. And I remember seeing the love of Jesus in his eyes as he did it. Which is why I'm certain that generosity makes an impression. And it's why I think that it might be the single greatest apologetic, and it might make the single biggest difference in times when we're not sure how else to reach people. I said that we could also be generous with our time. This last week, I got an email from one of our families. I'm going to brag on our student pastor, Kyle, a little bit. I got an email from one of the families and the whole email was to tell us, was to tell me that the subject of it was, Kyle's a good dude. Yeah. Yeah. You got no disagreements with me there. They said that he came to our middle school daughter's softball double header. That's a boring sentence to say. I'm not trying to crud on middle school girls or boys, but middle school sports stink, all right? So if you are there and you're not a parent or a grandparent, holy smokes, you're a special human. And listen, they said he stayed for both of them, the whole first game and the second game. And he stayed afterwards for cake. Are you kidding me? I was a student pastor for years. You know what I'd do? I'd get there at the end of the first game. Hey, good job. I saw that bat you had. I was really sorry you didn't get a hit. But, oh, man, you were close. And then as soon as the next game started, I'd be like, okay, well, you know, it's... I put in my time. Kyle stayed for the whole doubleheader and then he stayed for cake. And it made such an impression on the family that they emailed me to say, hey, we got a heck of a guy here. And we do. And she's going to remember that. That she has a student pastor that cares about her that much, that he's going to stay for all those things. And you can remember acts of generosity in your life too. Maybe we know somebody that has access to something that's kind of fun that not everybody has access to, a beach house or a lake house or a box at some sort of sporting event or venue. And you watch them give that out to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or use it or have access to that over the years. And you're awed by that. I remember watching my father-in-law use his lake house like that weekend after weekend after weekend for the college kids that lived in the area and would come in and want to be pulled by the boat. We've seen people be generous in those ways. And it makes an impression on us, whether it's generosity in conversation or in time or in assessment of one another or in actual material wealth or in opportunity, they make an impression on us. And that impression is important because God's generosity points us to others and then in turn points them back to God. God's generosity points us to others. Christians are generous because God has been generous to us. One of my favorite passages is in the book of John. It says, We know that while we were still sinners that Christ died for us, and that's what love is. We know that while we were very far from God that he pursued us. We know that we have never done anything that will make him love us any less. We know that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And because he lavishes that generous love on us, the more we focus on it, the more aware of it we are, the more we reflect on how generous our father has been with us, the more we are inspired to go and be generous to other people. And if I'm really being honest with you, the most generous people I know, some of whom are in this room, are always people who love God a lot. The most generous people that I know are almost always people who have this very deep walk with God and seem to understand things about God that I don't fully understand. And I'll tell you this too, growing up in an environment, in a church environment in the 80s and 90s where I was told the godliest people are the ones who know the most theology, the godliest people are the ones who can quote the most verses to you, the godliest people are the ones who can win every argument? No. The godliest people are the most generous people. I know jerks who can win lots of arguments. I don't know anybody who's generous with everything they have who doesn't have a faith that I want to seek to emulate. And so when someone is generous to us and we say, why are you doing that? Why are you giving me that? Why are you spending that on me? Why are you investing that in me? Their answer inevitably is because God gave it to me. And then that points us back to God, which is how we bring about the reality of that Corinthians passage. God says, I've blessed you. I've enriched you in every way that you might enrich others in every way so that they might give thanksgiving to me for who I am. Do you see how that works? Someone is generous to you individually. You say, why are you doing this? This is too much. And they go, because I love God and God loves you and I want to do this for you. And then they turn and they praise God for placing you in their life and seek to desire to be generous like they have just been the recipient of. This works corporately as well. When we give to church or we sacrifice for an institution, we do something together and the outside world goes, wow, how'd you guys do that? Why'd you do that? Well, because God loves us, so we do this. And they go, well, that's pretty great. I want to find out more about your God too. I just, I don't want us to reduce generosity to simple financial giving anymore. And as a matter of fact, I would say that financial generosity might just be the easiest kind, especially for those of us with resources. I want to be gentle and careful here, but I also know my audience and I know the neighborhoods that we live in. Sometimes financial generosity is the easiest kind. And I know this because I've bought someone's groceries before because I didn't want to wait for them to go to their car and get their debit card. They said their debit card was in their car. They were fumbling around. And I said, I'm happy to get it. They said, oh, thank you so much. And I wanted to tell them, like, it's just because you're slow. It's not. I'm impatient. It's $20. I'll pay $20 to be in my car right now. I'm tired of watching you fumble with your wallet. Sometimes it's very easy when we have plenty to appear generous and cut a check. Now sometimes that's a real challenge, and that is genuine generosity. But sometimes that's the gateway to actual generosity. These people that we have on the corners, many of us are going to pass them on the way home. It's easy to hang a 20 out the window. It's incredibly generous to stop our plans in our day and get out of our car and talk to them and go have a meal with them. That's generosity. It's easy to donate to a cause. It's harder to go sit with the people to whom that cause ministers. It's easier to give out of plenty and hold back the stuff that we don't have as much of, but I would argue with you, and listen, this is not a sermon trying to denigrate giving. We ought to do that. But sometimes that's the simplest form of it. And what I want to encourage us to be is a people who are generous in spirit, who are generous across the board, who give of all of the resources that we have, who don't relegate it to the easiest ones. Whatever the easiest thing is for us to give, let's not just start there and be done, but let's be generous people. Because I bet, as I've been talking about generosity and the different forms that it takes, that you've thought of people in your life who have been generous to you. People who have been kind to you in their assessment of you or in their time or of their resources. And you're grateful that they are in your life. If you, like me, if you think of people in your life who you consider generous, you are grateful that they are in your life. You're grateful to God that he has placed them in your life. And because of that, you're pointed back to God. So here's the encouragement to us, Grace. Let's go be the kind of person that other people are grateful for. And when we do that, you'll be the kind of person that points people to Jesus. Go from here and be generous in spirit. Go be the kind of person that people are grateful to have in their life. And if you do that over time, you will leave a wake of people who have been pointed to Jesus because you entered into their life. I've mentioned many times that challenging teaching from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that as we move into and out of the lives of other people, that they will be focused more on the Father, more on Jesus because of our simple presence in their life. And as I've reflected this week, that's always seemed like such a challenge to me. But maybe the key to obedience there is being someone who is generous in spirit. So that as we sow those seeds of generosity in the lives of others, we will become the kind of person that they are grateful that God has placed in their life. And in turn, they will be pointed to Jesus. So go from here and be the kind of people that other people are grateful for. And what you'll find is you've just become the kind of person who constantly points people towards the Father. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for being generous to us, for giving us your son whom we did not deserve, for continuing to offer your forgiveness that often, God, we trample on. Lord, I pray that you would remind us, even this morning, of all the ways that you were generous to us, that you would remind us even today of all the people you have placed in our life to model that generosity for us. And God, I pray that we would be people who are acutely aware of the blessings that we have so that we might in turn offer those to others. Lord, make us conduits of your generosity so that we are the kind of people that point people back towards you. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. If somebody back there could get the lights, that would be great. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thanks for being here this Sunday morning. If you're like me, this is a big Sunday. This is Master's Sunday. If you're watching online, I'm not supposed to wear this because the design does something weird to the camera and it makes it difficult to watch. But I'm not sorry because it's Master's Sunday. So this is what we get. This is also the seventh part of our series in Lent, where we've been looking at different character traits or ideas that we kind of pull out of the Lenten season and the story of the gospel. It's going to culminate next week with Easter, when we're going to observe some baptisms, baptizing people on Easter is literally one of the oldest, if not the oldest church tradition in all of church. The very early church would only baptize on Easter because it is in and of itself a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So next week, we have four baptisms right now that we're planning to do, which I'm thrilled about. If any of you feel like you want to be a part of that service as well, if you want to take the step to be baptized and you've never done that before, and the Lord may be tugging on your heart a little bit, get in touch with me this week. It's not too late. We would love for you to be a part of that celebration next week as we celebrate Easter together. This week, we're focused on the topic of generosity. And whenever, in church circles, many of you know this, whenever you mention generosity or the topic this week is going to be generosity, that's code for this is the money sermon, right? This is the giving sermon. Don't bring your friends. I'm going to ask you guys for money, so bring them next week when we talk about other stuff. Don't bring them this week because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. But this week is a sermon about generosity, but it is not about that. It's not about strictly financial generosity. And as a matter of fact, I've been saying all along that it's been really great to be able to read the devotionals of others as we kind of approach these topics each week, except for this week. This week was terrible because last week after I finished my sermon, it's just kind of how it goes. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. I write a sermon every week. So I'm driving home from church going, okay, what's next week's topic? How do I want to approach it? That kind of thing. And I'm thinking about generosity and I get this idea. Yeah, that's how we should approach it. That's how we should talk about it. I'm going to explain it in this way and think about it in this way. And I'm feeling good about myself for being very clever, for thinking about generosity in a new, more expanded way. And then I sit down Monday and I open up the devotionals and Doug Bergeson, who was a jerk, he wrote this. Actually, speaking of generosity, no kidding around, Doug and Debbie are in the, I call it the COVID baby room. There's the youngest baby room where my son is. And then there's, and then you graduate into the COVID baby room. These children were born in the midst of the pandemic and have never seen a human face besides their parents. And when you drop them off in that room, they're terrified. They have no idea what's going on. They just have to be gradually weaned through crying and tears. And Doug and Debbie are locked into a mortal combat right now with four of these kids, right? So just talk about generosity. They don't have to do that. They're just doing it because they love the young families that they serve. They love the church and whatever. So it's very generous. Doug is the opposite of a jerk sometimes. Anyways, I opened up the devotional on Monday, authored by Doug. And lo and behold, it's the exact idea that I think I'm so clever for coming up with, which clearly if Doug can also come up with it, not that clever. And so I opened it up to read it and I'm like, golly, this is exactly kind of the same idea that I wanted to communicate. So if you would like like a three minute version of this sermon with fewer jokes, then just read the devotional on Monday and tune me out right now. You'll be fine. But I wanted to approach it this way, and I was happy with the way that Doug approached it, because I think we're often so overly reductive of generosity, that when we think of generosity, particularly in church terms, particularly when the Bible espouses it or encourages it, I think that we think of it in terms of financial giving, of material generosity. And because we do that, what I want to propose to you today is actually the possibility that generosity is the most underrated character trait in the Bible. I think that I would argue with you that generosity, being a person who's generous, is maybe the most underrated character trait in the Bible. Now, the Bible encourages a lot of character traits. We are to be humble, and we are to be kind, and we are to be loving, and we are to be gentle, and we are to try to be lowly, and we are to be forgiving, and we are to be just. And there's a lot of things that the Bible would have us seek to be or that the Spirit would seek to shape us into, and amongst those is generosity. So I'm not saying that generosity is the most important character trait in the Bible, but I am saying that I think it might be the most underrated character trait in the Bible. And in that way, generosity is very similar to Waffle House. Now here's the thing, and it's something that I've noticed over the years about our North Raleigh crowd, and I've wanted to say something. I wasn't sure when it was appropriate, but I'm going to put it to you today. You guys don't eat at Waffle House enough, right? This church has a Waffle House deficiency, and it's high time that we address it. What are you, too good? Waffle House is delicious. And when we think of Waffle House, we think of waffles, which of course we do. They named their home after that particular dish. We think of the waffles, and the waffles are great. I like to get mine crispy, which means leave it in there a little bit longer. A Cajun waffle, blacken it up a little bit. You can get it with chocolate chips, which are miniature and delicious. And if you go during the right season, you can get them with peanut butter chips. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. What you cannot do is get them with fresh fruit, all right? They don't do fresh fruit at Waffle House. You go to First Watch for that stuff, all right? Fancy pants? We're not doing it. We might have some apple butter somewhere. That's it in terms of fresh fruit. But it's more than just waffles. You don't want waffles? They got a sausage melt that's amazing. Wheat toast, melted American cheese, sausage patty, grilled onions, unbelievable. My wife likes the BLT there. It's not as good as the one you're going to get at Merritt's over in Chapel Hill, but it's cheaper, and the person who serves it to you is more friendly, and it's great. Unless the person serving it to you is on the back end of an overnight shift, if you get somebody at about 7.35 in the a.m., just don't talk to that person. They've had a harder night than you, all right? Otherwise, the service is amazing. The lunch is good. You can even get dinner there. They have T-bone steaks at Waffle House. I've never had one. I respect steak too much to order one from Waffle House, but you can get one there if you want one. And I think that Waffle House is often overly reduced to just waffles when they have so much more to offer. It's delicious. In the same way, we become so overly reductive of generosity, relegating it to financial giving, that we don't think of all the other ways in which we are called to be generous that I would contend are often more difficult than simple financial generosity. And as we've gone through these different topics in this series, I've said, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about this particular topic. But for generosity, I wanted to kind of give us an overview of what does the Bible have to say about this. So I'm going to go through four different passages that will be up on the screen for you to read along with me. But we're kind of just going to rapid fire through these. So in Psalm, Psalm 112, the psalmist writes, good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. In Proverbs, it's written, one person gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. And then in the New Testament, Luke writes, And finally, I would remind you of the verse that finished up what Kelsey read for us at the beginning of the sermon today. The last verse to God. There's a lot there about generosity. And as we started in Psalms, it zeroes in on financial generosity, the kind that we go to first when we think of someone who is a generous person. It says you should lend freely and you will receive freely. But it very quickly begins to expand it beyond that. It says conduct your affairs with justice. So that's not necessarily money. Now we're talking about offer justice generally to those around you. And then we get into Proverbs and it says a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed. So now we're starting to expand our understanding of generosity beyond simply the materials that we give one another, but in ways that we can refresh others. God says he will refresh us. And then it's interesting to me in Luke that this verse that's famous, that's often misused, often by other Christians trying to demean other Christians, or even by people outside the church trying to demean people within the church, judge not lest ye be judged, or judge not or you will also be judged. But it's followed with other character traits that don't condemn or you will be condemned, don't forgive or you won't be forgiven. It's other character traits, and it ends with be fair in your measurements, be generous in how you assess other people and other things. And it basically says, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So as generous as you are towards other people in your judgment, God will be generous to you. As generous as you are with your forgiveness, God will be forgiving to you. As generous as you are with your condemnation, God will be generous with his condemnation towards you. And so we're expanding the view of generosity. And then finally, in Corinthians, there's this kind of wonderful, almost formula there. And I hesitate to use that word because I really don't like it when we reduce scripture to this formulaic approach so that if I do these things, God will give me these things. But in this instance, there does seem to be a cause and effect flow through the passage where he writes, Paul writes, that you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through your generosity, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving. It's this idea that God says, I have blessed you in every way so that because of that blessing, you will be generous to others in every way. And because you are generous to others in every way, they will turn in thanks to me. They will be grateful to me. It will point them towards me. It's how God's generosity cyclically works to point other people back towards him, which we'll see more clearly in just a second. But what I want to contend with you this morning is we can only live out the truths of these scriptures if we expand our view of generosity. We can only live out the truth of the scriptures of what is said in these four passages and really throughout scripture and in particular in Corinthians where other people will glorify God because of us if we expand our view of what generosity could possibly be. Because there's so many more ways to be generous than simply financially. We can be generous in our judgment of others, in how we assess others. Some of us are very quick to judge. We see somebody driving a particular kind of car or wearing a particular type of clothes, or we learn the way that someone might have voted in the last election, and we are very quick to judge them and make all sorts of assessments about who they are. We can be more generous in our judgment of others. We can be more generous in our forgiveness that we offer towards others. We can be more generous in the grace that we offer towards people. We can be more generous in the way that we determine who we're going to spend our time with. We can be generous with our time. We can be generous with our attention. We can be generous in conversation. There are so many ways beyond financially to be generous people. And the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on the opportunities that we have for generosity and the generosity of some others that I've experienced in my life, the more I thought that, you know, generosity might be the greatest apologetic. Somebody being generous might be the greatest apologetic. Now, if any pastor has ever couched a note that he's made, it's me, because I just put might there in the middle of it. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm just saying it could possibly be the greatest apologetic. And in this sense, an apologetic is a defense of the faith. It's an argument for the faith. And I tend to think that acts of generosity and all the different forms that they take can serve long-term to be far more winsome than any theological argument, than any scientific argument that we have crafted, that simply being generous to someone over time, letting other people see you be generous to everyone in your orbit and everyone in your sphere, can over time be more winsome towards Christ, can point people towards Jesus more than any argument that you could ever craft, could point people to Jesus more than even inviting them to church, could point people to Jesus more than challenging them. Hey, if you were to die today, do you know how you would spend eternity? And it's not that I don't want us to be having those conversations. Those conversations are good and we need to be sharing Christ with our neighbors. As a matter of fact, one of the goals of grace moving forward is that we would see God bring more people to faith through the people of grace so that we might celebrate that conversion. We want very much for more people to come to faith as a result of the ministries of this church. And the reason I'm saying that is because I think generosity can be such a big part of that. I think generosity can point us to Jesus in ways that almost nothing else can. Think of the instances in your life when someone has been generous to you. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they're on the fringe. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they are always kind of getting an unfair shake from other people. That with you, people tend to judge a book by its cover. And maybe people have treated you unfairly in your life. Maybe people have made assumptions about you because of where you come from or what you drive or what your story is or what your job is. Or just the way that you like to present yourself that may not be indicative of the whole person. It may just be a thing that you enjoy doing. And if you're one of those people that often gets misjudged by others, then you probably also have in your life someone who has just loved you and accepted you for who you are and has refused to judge you like other people do. Who has just heard you out. Who has given you the space to be yourself. Who has met you where you are and loved you there. And isn't that person's love and acceptance of you a far greater argument for Christ than anything else that could happen in your life? I think that generosity is a remarkable apologetic because we remember acts of generosity. When I was about 14 years old, I was coming out of eighth grade, going into ninth grade. I'm not sure how old you are when that happens. I went to Costa Rica on my very first mission trip. And we were building a, I think we were building a house for a university president of a Christian college down there, which you can imagine how useful eighth grade Nate was on a Costa Rican construction site. I'm certain that the workers were very glad that I was there. I know in Mexico, when we go and build walls, they usually have to, not usually, all the time, have to come back and correct all the mistakes that I've made to the point where I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to mix stuff. I'm going to hand it to Jeffy. Jeff's going to do the blocks. I'm just going to stand here like a dum-dum because I have nothing to contribute to what's happening here. So I can't imagine the detriment that eighth grade Nate was to actually getting anything done in Costa Rica. But my parents paid the thousand dollars. I went down there like everybody else, and I was on a mission trip, and it was a really formative trip. And on the last night that we were there, we did like a little dinner or banquet or whatever it was, and there was one guy. He was, to me, an older man at the time. He was probably mid-40s, so like really close to my current age. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this on a mission trip, but when you go and there's a language barrier, which for me, I knew no Spanish at all at that time. So there was a huge language barrier between me and him. And you can't really communicate, but if you've been on a mission trip and you're kind of wired like me, then you understand that there is the universal language of joking around. There's a universal language of throwing stuff at each other, of stealing each other's tools and messing with each other all week long. And he was right there with us. He was jumping in and he and I had kind of bonded over that. And we seemed to have a similar spirit and enjoy one another. And so on the last night that we were there, he commented on my t-shirt. It was a United States soccer t-shirt. And he commented on it that he liked it. It was new. It was made by Nike in eighth grade. This is a big deal. But he said that he liked it and I wanted to be generous. So I went back to the room. I changed into another t-shirt and I walked out and I handed him this t-shirt. And I just wanted him to take it as a gift. And that man took off his shirt in the middle of the party, put on my T-shirt, folded up his shirt and gave it to me. Now his shirt was this knit pink long-sleeved polo shirt. It had some country club emblem right here that was not Costa Rican. Somehow or another, he had acquired this shirt. But if you've traveled overseas to third world countries, you know a lot of the folks that you interact with, they don't have a lot. By our standards, they have almost nothing. He was wearing one of what I am sure was one of the very few collared shirts that he had to that party that night because everybody was dressed nice. And some snot-nosed kid that was useless on the job site all week gave him a shirt. And so he wanted to return that generosity with his generosity and he gave me a shirt that mattered to him a lot more than some dumb U.S. soccer shirt could have ever mattered to me. And 30 years later, I remember that. And I remember seeing the love of Jesus in his eyes as he did it. Which is why I'm certain that generosity makes an impression. And it's why I think that it might be the single greatest apologetic, and it might make the single biggest difference in times when we're not sure how else to reach people. I said that we could also be generous with our time. This last week, I got an email from one of our families. I'm going to brag on our student pastor, Kyle, a little bit. I got an email from one of the families and the whole email was to tell us, was to tell me that the subject of it was, Kyle's a good dude. Yeah. Yeah. You got no disagreements with me there. They said that he came to our middle school daughter's softball double header. That's a boring sentence to say. I'm not trying to crud on middle school girls or boys, but middle school sports stink, all right? So if you are there and you're not a parent or a grandparent, holy smokes, you're a special human. And listen, they said he stayed for both of them, the whole first game and the second game. And he stayed afterwards for cake. Are you kidding me? I was a student pastor for years. You know what I'd do? I'd get there at the end of the first game. Hey, good job. I saw that bat you had. I was really sorry you didn't get a hit. But, oh, man, you were close. And then as soon as the next game started, I'd be like, okay, well, you know, it's... I put in my time. Kyle stayed for the whole doubleheader and then he stayed for cake. And it made such an impression on the family that they emailed me to say, hey, we got a heck of a guy here. And we do. And she's going to remember that. That she has a student pastor that cares about her that much, that he's going to stay for all those things. And you can remember acts of generosity in your life too. Maybe we know somebody that has access to something that's kind of fun that not everybody has access to, a beach house or a lake house or a box at some sort of sporting event or venue. And you watch them give that out to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or use it or have access to that over the years. And you're awed by that. I remember watching my father-in-law use his lake house like that weekend after weekend after weekend for the college kids that lived in the area and would come in and want to be pulled by the boat. We've seen people be generous in those ways. And it makes an impression on us, whether it's generosity in conversation or in time or in assessment of one another or in actual material wealth or in opportunity, they make an impression on us. And that impression is important because God's generosity points us to others and then in turn points them back to God. God's generosity points us to others. Christians are generous because God has been generous to us. One of my favorite passages is in the book of John. It says, We know that while we were still sinners that Christ died for us, and that's what love is. We know that while we were very far from God that he pursued us. We know that we have never done anything that will make him love us any less. We know that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And because he lavishes that generous love on us, the more we focus on it, the more aware of it we are, the more we reflect on how generous our father has been with us, the more we are inspired to go and be generous to other people. And if I'm really being honest with you, the most generous people I know, some of whom are in this room, are always people who love God a lot. The most generous people that I know are almost always people who have this very deep walk with God and seem to understand things about God that I don't fully understand. And I'll tell you this too, growing up in an environment, in a church environment in the 80s and 90s where I was told the godliest people are the ones who know the most theology, the godliest people are the ones who can quote the most verses to you, the godliest people are the ones who can win every argument? No. The godliest people are the most generous people. I know jerks who can win lots of arguments. I don't know anybody who's generous with everything they have who doesn't have a faith that I want to seek to emulate. And so when someone is generous to us and we say, why are you doing that? Why are you giving me that? Why are you spending that on me? Why are you investing that in me? Their answer inevitably is because God gave it to me. And then that points us back to God, which is how we bring about the reality of that Corinthians passage. God says, I've blessed you. I've enriched you in every way that you might enrich others in every way so that they might give thanksgiving to me for who I am. Do you see how that works? Someone is generous to you individually. You say, why are you doing this? This is too much. And they go, because I love God and God loves you and I want to do this for you. And then they turn and they praise God for placing you in their life and seek to desire to be generous like they have just been the recipient of. This works corporately as well. When we give to church or we sacrifice for an institution, we do something together and the outside world goes, wow, how'd you guys do that? Why'd you do that? Well, because God loves us, so we do this. And they go, well, that's pretty great. I want to find out more about your God too. I just, I don't want us to reduce generosity to simple financial giving anymore. And as a matter of fact, I would say that financial generosity might just be the easiest kind, especially for those of us with resources. I want to be gentle and careful here, but I also know my audience and I know the neighborhoods that we live in. Sometimes financial generosity is the easiest kind. And I know this because I've bought someone's groceries before because I didn't want to wait for them to go to their car and get their debit card. They said their debit card was in their car. They were fumbling around. And I said, I'm happy to get it. They said, oh, thank you so much. And I wanted to tell them, like, it's just because you're slow. It's not. I'm impatient. It's $20. I'll pay $20 to be in my car right now. I'm tired of watching you fumble with your wallet. Sometimes it's very easy when we have plenty to appear generous and cut a check. Now sometimes that's a real challenge, and that is genuine generosity. But sometimes that's the gateway to actual generosity. These people that we have on the corners, many of us are going to pass them on the way home. It's easy to hang a 20 out the window. It's incredibly generous to stop our plans in our day and get out of our car and talk to them and go have a meal with them. That's generosity. It's easy to donate to a cause. It's harder to go sit with the people to whom that cause ministers. It's easier to give out of plenty and hold back the stuff that we don't have as much of, but I would argue with you, and listen, this is not a sermon trying to denigrate giving. We ought to do that. But sometimes that's the simplest form of it. And what I want to encourage us to be is a people who are generous in spirit, who are generous across the board, who give of all of the resources that we have, who don't relegate it to the easiest ones. Whatever the easiest thing is for us to give, let's not just start there and be done, but let's be generous people. Because I bet, as I've been talking about generosity and the different forms that it takes, that you've thought of people in your life who have been generous to you. People who have been kind to you in their assessment of you or in their time or of their resources. And you're grateful that they are in your life. If you, like me, if you think of people in your life who you consider generous, you are grateful that they are in your life. You're grateful to God that he has placed them in your life. And because of that, you're pointed back to God. So here's the encouragement to us, Grace. Let's go be the kind of person that other people are grateful for. And when we do that, you'll be the kind of person that points people to Jesus. Go from here and be generous in spirit. Go be the kind of person that people are grateful to have in their life. And if you do that over time, you will leave a wake of people who have been pointed to Jesus because you entered into their life. I've mentioned many times that challenging teaching from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that as we move into and out of the lives of other people, that they will be focused more on the Father, more on Jesus because of our simple presence in their life. And as I've reflected this week, that's always seemed like such a challenge to me. But maybe the key to obedience there is being someone who is generous in spirit. So that as we sow those seeds of generosity in the lives of others, we will become the kind of person that they are grateful that God has placed in their life. And in turn, they will be pointed to Jesus. So go from here and be the kind of people that other people are grateful for. And what you'll find is you've just become the kind of person who constantly points people towards the Father. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for being generous to us, for giving us your son whom we did not deserve, for continuing to offer your forgiveness that often, God, we trample on. Lord, I pray that you would remind us, even this morning, of all the ways that you were generous to us, that you would remind us even today of all the people you have placed in our life to model that generosity for us. And God, I pray that we would be people who are acutely aware of the blessings that we have so that we might in turn offer those to others. Lord, make us conduits of your generosity so that we are the kind of people that point people back towards you. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. If somebody back there could get the lights, that would be great. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thanks for being here this Sunday morning. If you're like me, this is a big Sunday. This is Master's Sunday. If you're watching online, I'm not supposed to wear this because the design does something weird to the camera and it makes it difficult to watch. But I'm not sorry because it's Master's Sunday. So this is what we get. This is also the seventh part of our series in Lent, where we've been looking at different character traits or ideas that we kind of pull out of the Lenten season and the story of the gospel. It's going to culminate next week with Easter, when we're going to observe some baptisms, baptizing people on Easter is literally one of the oldest, if not the oldest church tradition in all of church. The very early church would only baptize on Easter because it is in and of itself a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So next week, we have four baptisms right now that we're planning to do, which I'm thrilled about. If any of you feel like you want to be a part of that service as well, if you want to take the step to be baptized and you've never done that before, and the Lord may be tugging on your heart a little bit, get in touch with me this week. It's not too late. We would love for you to be a part of that celebration next week as we celebrate Easter together. This week, we're focused on the topic of generosity. And whenever, in church circles, many of you know this, whenever you mention generosity or the topic this week is going to be generosity, that's code for this is the money sermon, right? This is the giving sermon. Don't bring your friends. I'm going to ask you guys for money, so bring them next week when we talk about other stuff. Don't bring them this week because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. But this week is a sermon about generosity, but it is not about that. It's not about strictly financial generosity. And as a matter of fact, I've been saying all along that it's been really great to be able to read the devotionals of others as we kind of approach these topics each week, except for this week. This week was terrible because last week after I finished my sermon, it's just kind of how it goes. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. I write a sermon every week. So I'm driving home from church going, okay, what's next week's topic? How do I want to approach it? That kind of thing. And I'm thinking about generosity and I get this idea. Yeah, that's how we should approach it. That's how we should talk about it. I'm going to explain it in this way and think about it in this way. And I'm feeling good about myself for being very clever, for thinking about generosity in a new, more expanded way. And then I sit down Monday and I open up the devotionals and Doug Bergeson, who was a jerk, he wrote this. Actually, speaking of generosity, no kidding around, Doug and Debbie are in the, I call it the COVID baby room. There's the youngest baby room where my son is. And then there's, and then you graduate into the COVID baby room. These children were born in the midst of the pandemic and have never seen a human face besides their parents. And when you drop them off in that room, they're terrified. They have no idea what's going on. They just have to be gradually weaned through crying and tears. And Doug and Debbie are locked into a mortal combat right now with four of these kids, right? So just talk about generosity. They don't have to do that. They're just doing it because they love the young families that they serve. They love the church and whatever. So it's very generous. Doug is the opposite of a jerk sometimes. Anyways, I opened up the devotional on Monday, authored by Doug. And lo and behold, it's the exact idea that I think I'm so clever for coming up with, which clearly if Doug can also come up with it, not that clever. And so I opened it up to read it and I'm like, golly, this is exactly kind of the same idea that I wanted to communicate. So if you would like like a three minute version of this sermon with fewer jokes, then just read the devotional on Monday and tune me out right now. You'll be fine. But I wanted to approach it this way, and I was happy with the way that Doug approached it, because I think we're often so overly reductive of generosity, that when we think of generosity, particularly in church terms, particularly when the Bible espouses it or encourages it, I think that we think of it in terms of financial giving, of material generosity. And because we do that, what I want to propose to you today is actually the possibility that generosity is the most underrated character trait in the Bible. I think that I would argue with you that generosity, being a person who's generous, is maybe the most underrated character trait in the Bible. Now, the Bible encourages a lot of character traits. We are to be humble, and we are to be kind, and we are to be loving, and we are to be gentle, and we are to try to be lowly, and we are to be forgiving, and we are to be just. And there's a lot of things that the Bible would have us seek to be or that the Spirit would seek to shape us into, and amongst those is generosity. So I'm not saying that generosity is the most important character trait in the Bible, but I am saying that I think it might be the most underrated character trait in the Bible. And in that way, generosity is very similar to Waffle House. Now here's the thing, and it's something that I've noticed over the years about our North Raleigh crowd, and I've wanted to say something. I wasn't sure when it was appropriate, but I'm going to put it to you today. You guys don't eat at Waffle House enough, right? This church has a Waffle House deficiency, and it's high time that we address it. What are you, too good? Waffle House is delicious. And when we think of Waffle House, we think of waffles, which of course we do. They named their home after that particular dish. We think of the waffles, and the waffles are great. I like to get mine crispy, which means leave it in there a little bit longer. A Cajun waffle, blacken it up a little bit. You can get it with chocolate chips, which are miniature and delicious. And if you go during the right season, you can get them with peanut butter chips. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. What you cannot do is get them with fresh fruit, all right? They don't do fresh fruit at Waffle House. You go to First Watch for that stuff, all right? Fancy pants? We're not doing it. We might have some apple butter somewhere. That's it in terms of fresh fruit. But it's more than just waffles. You don't want waffles? They got a sausage melt that's amazing. Wheat toast, melted American cheese, sausage patty, grilled onions, unbelievable. My wife likes the BLT there. It's not as good as the one you're going to get at Merritt's over in Chapel Hill, but it's cheaper, and the person who serves it to you is more friendly, and it's great. Unless the person serving it to you is on the back end of an overnight shift, if you get somebody at about 7.35 in the a.m., just don't talk to that person. They've had a harder night than you, all right? Otherwise, the service is amazing. The lunch is good. You can even get dinner there. They have T-bone steaks at Waffle House. I've never had one. I respect steak too much to order one from Waffle House, but you can get one there if you want one. And I think that Waffle House is often overly reduced to just waffles when they have so much more to offer. It's delicious. In the same way, we become so overly reductive of generosity, relegating it to financial giving, that we don't think of all the other ways in which we are called to be generous that I would contend are often more difficult than simple financial generosity. And as we've gone through these different topics in this series, I've said, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about this particular topic. But for generosity, I wanted to kind of give us an overview of what does the Bible have to say about this. So I'm going to go through four different passages that will be up on the screen for you to read along with me. But we're kind of just going to rapid fire through these. So in Psalm, Psalm 112, the psalmist writes, good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. In Proverbs, it's written, one person gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. And then in the New Testament, Luke writes, And finally, I would remind you of the verse that finished up what Kelsey read for us at the beginning of the sermon today. The last verse to God. There's a lot there about generosity. And as we started in Psalms, it zeroes in on financial generosity, the kind that we go to first when we think of someone who is a generous person. It says you should lend freely and you will receive freely. But it very quickly begins to expand it beyond that. It says conduct your affairs with justice. So that's not necessarily money. Now we're talking about offer justice generally to those around you. And then we get into Proverbs and it says a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed. So now we're starting to expand our understanding of generosity beyond simply the materials that we give one another, but in ways that we can refresh others. God says he will refresh us. And then it's interesting to me in Luke that this verse that's famous, that's often misused, often by other Christians trying to demean other Christians, or even by people outside the church trying to demean people within the church, judge not lest ye be judged, or judge not or you will also be judged. But it's followed with other character traits that don't condemn or you will be condemned, don't forgive or you won't be forgiven. It's other character traits, and it ends with be fair in your measurements, be generous in how you assess other people and other things. And it basically says, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So as generous as you are towards other people in your judgment, God will be generous to you. As generous as you are with your forgiveness, God will be forgiving to you. As generous as you are with your condemnation, God will be generous with his condemnation towards you. And so we're expanding the view of generosity. And then finally, in Corinthians, there's this kind of wonderful, almost formula there. And I hesitate to use that word because I really don't like it when we reduce scripture to this formulaic approach so that if I do these things, God will give me these things. But in this instance, there does seem to be a cause and effect flow through the passage where he writes, Paul writes, that you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through your generosity, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving. It's this idea that God says, I have blessed you in every way so that because of that blessing, you will be generous to others in every way. And because you are generous to others in every way, they will turn in thanks to me. They will be grateful to me. It will point them towards me. It's how God's generosity cyclically works to point other people back towards him, which we'll see more clearly in just a second. But what I want to contend with you this morning is we can only live out the truths of these scriptures if we expand our view of generosity. We can only live out the truth of the scriptures of what is said in these four passages and really throughout scripture and in particular in Corinthians where other people will glorify God because of us if we expand our view of what generosity could possibly be. Because there's so many more ways to be generous than simply financially. We can be generous in our judgment of others, in how we assess others. Some of us are very quick to judge. We see somebody driving a particular kind of car or wearing a particular type of clothes, or we learn the way that someone might have voted in the last election, and we are very quick to judge them and make all sorts of assessments about who they are. We can be more generous in our judgment of others. We can be more generous in our forgiveness that we offer towards others. We can be more generous in the grace that we offer towards people. We can be more generous in the way that we determine who we're going to spend our time with. We can be generous with our time. We can be generous with our attention. We can be generous in conversation. There are so many ways beyond financially to be generous people. And the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on the opportunities that we have for generosity and the generosity of some others that I've experienced in my life, the more I thought that, you know, generosity might be the greatest apologetic. Somebody being generous might be the greatest apologetic. Now, if any pastor has ever couched a note that he's made, it's me, because I just put might there in the middle of it. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm just saying it could possibly be the greatest apologetic. And in this sense, an apologetic is a defense of the faith. It's an argument for the faith. And I tend to think that acts of generosity and all the different forms that they take can serve long-term to be far more winsome than any theological argument, than any scientific argument that we have crafted, that simply being generous to someone over time, letting other people see you be generous to everyone in your orbit and everyone in your sphere, can over time be more winsome towards Christ, can point people towards Jesus more than any argument that you could ever craft, could point people to Jesus more than even inviting them to church, could point people to Jesus more than challenging them. Hey, if you were to die today, do you know how you would spend eternity? And it's not that I don't want us to be having those conversations. Those conversations are good and we need to be sharing Christ with our neighbors. As a matter of fact, one of the goals of grace moving forward is that we would see God bring more people to faith through the people of grace so that we might celebrate that conversion. We want very much for more people to come to faith as a result of the ministries of this church. And the reason I'm saying that is because I think generosity can be such a big part of that. I think generosity can point us to Jesus in ways that almost nothing else can. Think of the instances in your life when someone has been generous to you. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they're on the fringe. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they are always kind of getting an unfair shake from other people. That with you, people tend to judge a book by its cover. And maybe people have treated you unfairly in your life. Maybe people have made assumptions about you because of where you come from or what you drive or what your story is or what your job is. Or just the way that you like to present yourself that may not be indicative of the whole person. It may just be a thing that you enjoy doing. And if you're one of those people that often gets misjudged by others, then you probably also have in your life someone who has just loved you and accepted you for who you are and has refused to judge you like other people do. Who has just heard you out. Who has given you the space to be yourself. Who has met you where you are and loved you there. And isn't that person's love and acceptance of you a far greater argument for Christ than anything else that could happen in your life? I think that generosity is a remarkable apologetic because we remember acts of generosity. When I was about 14 years old, I was coming out of eighth grade, going into ninth grade. I'm not sure how old you are when that happens. I went to Costa Rica on my very first mission trip. And we were building a, I think we were building a house for a university president of a Christian college down there, which you can imagine how useful eighth grade Nate was on a Costa Rican construction site. I'm certain that the workers were very glad that I was there. I know in Mexico, when we go and build walls, they usually have to, not usually, all the time, have to come back and correct all the mistakes that I've made to the point where I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to mix stuff. I'm going to hand it to Jeffy. Jeff's going to do the blocks. I'm just going to stand here like a dum-dum because I have nothing to contribute to what's happening here. So I can't imagine the detriment that eighth grade Nate was to actually getting anything done in Costa Rica. But my parents paid the thousand dollars. I went down there like everybody else, and I was on a mission trip, and it was a really formative trip. And on the last night that we were there, we did like a little dinner or banquet or whatever it was, and there was one guy. He was, to me, an older man at the time. He was probably mid-40s, so like really close to my current age. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this on a mission trip, but when you go and there's a language barrier, which for me, I knew no Spanish at all at that time. So there was a huge language barrier between me and him. And you can't really communicate, but if you've been on a mission trip and you're kind of wired like me, then you understand that there is the universal language of joking around. There's a universal language of throwing stuff at each other, of stealing each other's tools and messing with each other all week long. And he was right there with us. He was jumping in and he and I had kind of bonded over that. And we seemed to have a similar spirit and enjoy one another. And so on the last night that we were there, he commented on my t-shirt. It was a United States soccer t-shirt. And he commented on it that he liked it. It was new. It was made by Nike in eighth grade. This is a big deal. But he said that he liked it and I wanted to be generous. So I went back to the room. I changed into another t-shirt and I walked out and I handed him this t-shirt. And I just wanted him to take it as a gift. And that man took off his shirt in the middle of the party, put on my T-shirt, folded up his shirt and gave it to me. Now his shirt was this knit pink long-sleeved polo shirt. It had some country club emblem right here that was not Costa Rican. Somehow or another, he had acquired this shirt. But if you've traveled overseas to third world countries, you know a lot of the folks that you interact with, they don't have a lot. By our standards, they have almost nothing. He was wearing one of what I am sure was one of the very few collared shirts that he had to that party that night because everybody was dressed nice. And some snot-nosed kid that was useless on the job site all week gave him a shirt. And so he wanted to return that generosity with his generosity and he gave me a shirt that mattered to him a lot more than some dumb U.S. soccer shirt could have ever mattered to me. And 30 years later, I remember that. And I remember seeing the love of Jesus in his eyes as he did it. Which is why I'm certain that generosity makes an impression. And it's why I think that it might be the single greatest apologetic, and it might make the single biggest difference in times when we're not sure how else to reach people. I said that we could also be generous with our time. This last week, I got an email from one of our families. I'm going to brag on our student pastor, Kyle, a little bit. I got an email from one of the families and the whole email was to tell us, was to tell me that the subject of it was, Kyle's a good dude. Yeah. Yeah. You got no disagreements with me there. They said that he came to our middle school daughter's softball double header. That's a boring sentence to say. I'm not trying to crud on middle school girls or boys, but middle school sports stink, all right? So if you are there and you're not a parent or a grandparent, holy smokes, you're a special human. And listen, they said he stayed for both of them, the whole first game and the second game. And he stayed afterwards for cake. Are you kidding me? I was a student pastor for years. You know what I'd do? I'd get there at the end of the first game. Hey, good job. I saw that bat you had. I was really sorry you didn't get a hit. But, oh, man, you were close. And then as soon as the next game started, I'd be like, okay, well, you know, it's... I put in my time. Kyle stayed for the whole doubleheader and then he stayed for cake. And it made such an impression on the family that they emailed me to say, hey, we got a heck of a guy here. And we do. And she's going to remember that. That she has a student pastor that cares about her that much, that he's going to stay for all those things. And you can remember acts of generosity in your life too. Maybe we know somebody that has access to something that's kind of fun that not everybody has access to, a beach house or a lake house or a box at some sort of sporting event or venue. And you watch them give that out to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or use it or have access to that over the years. And you're awed by that. I remember watching my father-in-law use his lake house like that weekend after weekend after weekend for the college kids that lived in the area and would come in and want to be pulled by the boat. We've seen people be generous in those ways. And it makes an impression on us, whether it's generosity in conversation or in time or in assessment of one another or in actual material wealth or in opportunity, they make an impression on us. And that impression is important because God's generosity points us to others and then in turn points them back to God. God's generosity points us to others. Christians are generous because God has been generous to us. One of my favorite passages is in the book of John. It says, We know that while we were still sinners that Christ died for us, and that's what love is. We know that while we were very far from God that he pursued us. We know that we have never done anything that will make him love us any less. We know that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And because he lavishes that generous love on us, the more we focus on it, the more aware of it we are, the more we reflect on how generous our father has been with us, the more we are inspired to go and be generous to other people. And if I'm really being honest with you, the most generous people I know, some of whom are in this room, are always people who love God a lot. The most generous people that I know are almost always people who have this very deep walk with God and seem to understand things about God that I don't fully understand. And I'll tell you this too, growing up in an environment, in a church environment in the 80s and 90s where I was told the godliest people are the ones who know the most theology, the godliest people are the ones who can quote the most verses to you, the godliest people are the ones who can win every argument? No. The godliest people are the most generous people. I know jerks who can win lots of arguments. I don't know anybody who's generous with everything they have who doesn't have a faith that I want to seek to emulate. And so when someone is generous to us and we say, why are you doing that? Why are you giving me that? Why are you spending that on me? Why are you investing that in me? Their answer inevitably is because God gave it to me. And then that points us back to God, which is how we bring about the reality of that Corinthians passage. God says, I've blessed you. I've enriched you in every way that you might enrich others in every way so that they might give thanksgiving to me for who I am. Do you see how that works? Someone is generous to you individually. You say, why are you doing this? This is too much. And they go, because I love God and God loves you and I want to do this for you. And then they turn and they praise God for placing you in their life and seek to desire to be generous like they have just been the recipient of. This works corporately as well. When we give to church or we sacrifice for an institution, we do something together and the outside world goes, wow, how'd you guys do that? Why'd you do that? Well, because God loves us, so we do this. And they go, well, that's pretty great. I want to find out more about your God too. I just, I don't want us to reduce generosity to simple financial giving anymore. And as a matter of fact, I would say that financial generosity might just be the easiest kind, especially for those of us with resources. I want to be gentle and careful here, but I also know my audience and I know the neighborhoods that we live in. Sometimes financial generosity is the easiest kind. And I know this because I've bought someone's groceries before because I didn't want to wait for them to go to their car and get their debit card. They said their debit card was in their car. They were fumbling around. And I said, I'm happy to get it. They said, oh, thank you so much. And I wanted to tell them, like, it's just because you're slow. It's not. I'm impatient. It's $20. I'll pay $20 to be in my car right now. I'm tired of watching you fumble with your wallet. Sometimes it's very easy when we have plenty to appear generous and cut a check. Now sometimes that's a real challenge, and that is genuine generosity. But sometimes that's the gateway to actual generosity. These people that we have on the corners, many of us are going to pass them on the way home. It's easy to hang a 20 out the window. It's incredibly generous to stop our plans in our day and get out of our car and talk to them and go have a meal with them. That's generosity. It's easy to donate to a cause. It's harder to go sit with the people to whom that cause ministers. It's easier to give out of plenty and hold back the stuff that we don't have as much of, but I would argue with you, and listen, this is not a sermon trying to denigrate giving. We ought to do that. But sometimes that's the simplest form of it. And what I want to encourage us to be is a people who are generous in spirit, who are generous across the board, who give of all of the resources that we have, who don't relegate it to the easiest ones. Whatever the easiest thing is for us to give, let's not just start there and be done, but let's be generous people. Because I bet, as I've been talking about generosity and the different forms that it takes, that you've thought of people in your life who have been generous to you. People who have been kind to you in their assessment of you or in their time or of their resources. And you're grateful that they are in your life. If you, like me, if you think of people in your life who you consider generous, you are grateful that they are in your life. You're grateful to God that he has placed them in your life. And because of that, you're pointed back to God. So here's the encouragement to us, Grace. Let's go be the kind of person that other people are grateful for. And when we do that, you'll be the kind of person that points people to Jesus. Go from here and be generous in spirit. Go be the kind of person that people are grateful to have in their life. And if you do that over time, you will leave a wake of people who have been pointed to Jesus because you entered into their life. I've mentioned many times that challenging teaching from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that as we move into and out of the lives of other people, that they will be focused more on the Father, more on Jesus because of our simple presence in their life. And as I've reflected this week, that's always seemed like such a challenge to me. But maybe the key to obedience there is being someone who is generous in spirit. So that as we sow those seeds of generosity in the lives of others, we will become the kind of person that they are grateful that God has placed in their life. And in turn, they will be pointed to Jesus. So go from here and be the kind of people that other people are grateful for. And what you'll find is you've just become the kind of person who constantly points people towards the Father. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for being generous to us, for giving us your son whom we did not deserve, for continuing to offer your forgiveness that often, God, we trample on. Lord, I pray that you would remind us, even this morning, of all the ways that you were generous to us, that you would remind us even today of all the people you have placed in our life to model that generosity for us. And God, I pray that we would be people who are acutely aware of the blessings that we have so that we might in turn offer those to others. Lord, make us conduits of your generosity so that we are the kind of people that point people back towards you. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen.

Thank you. Good morning, Grace. My name is Kay, and I've been a partner with Grace. Our reading today is Matthew 2, verses 1 through 6. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose. Verse 1. the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. you're like, what in the world is going on? Why are all these people in their pajamas? Do they do this every week? Yeah, we do. We like it. We're the pajama church. And this is just how we do church every week. But for real, I had a change of clothes next door to put on so I could look like my normal classy self when I got up here to preach. But as I was thinking about it this morning, I thought, how many pastors do I know who get to claim and say that they preached a whole sermon in their pajamas and their slippies? So none that I know of. So I wanted to, when I'm 70, I want to be able to say that I did it. So off we go together as we do our Christmas series called Renewed Wonder, where in the series we are making an effort to see Christmas through the eyes of children again. That's why we're having a big fun festive Sunday today, and we've had a theme kind of every week. And then within the sermons, we have been looking at the story of Christmas through the eyes of different people involved in the Christmas story. In the first week, we looked at Christmas through the eyes of the shepherds, and then last week, we saw Christmas through the eyes of Mary. This week, I want to look at Christmas through the eyes of Herod and the eyes of the wise men and see what we can learn from those perspectives. Now, the background that Kay just gave us with the reading, which best reading so far, Kay, very well done, thank you. The background that she gave us with that was the wise men are out east. We don't know where from. It could be, a lot of guesses are modern day, Iran, Iraq, but it could be as far over as like Kazakhstan or Mongolia or China or wherever. But they were from the east. They had been traveling for as many as two years following the star over Bethlehem, right? And it's worth pointing out, this is just an aside, but when we go through scripture and we study God's word, we see that God's focus often is on Israel. And if we're not paying attention, it can seem as if that's his only focus, that God's only speaking to Israel and he's only speaking to Hebrew people throughout the story of the Bible until Jesus comes on the scene and then they go out into all the world. But the reality is that the Magi, the wise men who were from out east, who had no association whatsoever with Israel or Jewish customs, that somehow God spoke to them. Somehow they acknowledged that voice as the voice of God. And somehow they were able to walk in obedience to God and come and adequately celebrate the Savior as an infant or perhaps as a toddler. Somehow God was able to communicate with them, which I think is missed. We're just like, oh yeah, the wise men knew. But it's important for us to understand that God's redemptive focus and God's focus on people is always bigger than just Israel, than just his church. It's always focused on the whole world. And it's worth pointing out when people ask that question, what about someone who grows up in a cultural context where they never, ever, ever hear about Jesus or have any exposure to Christian religion at all, what happens to them in eternity? Well, I know that God is a good and just and fair God, and I know that it would be wise to look at the story of the magi, of the wise men, and trust that if God can communicate then and they can respond then, then that kind of communication and that kind of response can still happen today and has happened throughout all of time. That's an aside, but I think it's an important thing to acknowledge about the wise men. We often think that there were three wise men. There were not necessarily three. That's just cultural or traditional because there was three gifts, but there could have been two, there could have been 20, and they probably had a large caravan that was with them. And they most likely, I know this is gonna crush some of your souls, were not at the nativity scene. Most of your nativity scenes are probably wrong. Now they could have been, they could have started two years in advance and gotten there right then, or it could have been two years later, but they journeyed for a long time to come see Jesus. When they get there, they're looking for Jesus. They're following the star of Bethlehem. They're following that, and they're kind of coming across Asia there, and they get into Israel, and they start looking for Jesus. And, you know, the star is just in the sky. So now there's a lot of houses here, and where exactly is he? They don't know. But as they're going, they think, we're going to go see Herod. We're going to go see Herod the king, and he's going to tell us where this Jesus person is. Surely, if anybody knows, it'll be Herod, and it'll be his court. So let's go figure this out. So they go to Herod, and they're like, hey, the Messiah was born. This is a loose translation of the Gospels. Hey, the Messiah was born. He's here. He's going to be king of kings and Lord of lords. His name is going to be Jesus. Where is he? Surely you know. And Herod is like, oh, shoot. This guy, this Jesus guy wants to be the king. So what do we do? So he talks with his advisors and he comes back out to the wise men and he's like, you know what? I feel the exact same way. I'm looking for him too. I would love to fall on my feet and worship this new baby Messiah, Jesus. That sounds great. I've actually been trying to do that for a while. So when you guys find him, if you could, if you could share your location and just tell us exactly where you are, the minute you see him, we're going to rush over there and we're going to worship him too. But he was being duplicitous. We see the angel communicate with Joseph, the father of Jesus, subsequent to this meeting. And in what the angel says, we see the true intention of Herod and his true response to Christ and the Christmas story. We find it in Luke chapter 2, verses 13 through 15. This is what the angel says to Joseph. So in this story, we see the true intention of Herod. He did not have any interest in worshiping Jesus. He had every interest in killing Jesus. And because of the news of the birth of this Messiah, Herod issued the most evil of edicts, that every two-year-old boy in the kingdom of Israel or Judea was to be put to death by the sword, and he sent his soldiers out to do that. I have a son who's seven months old, and I cannot imagine the evil involved in actually following through with Herod's orders. Now, in our case, our son is enormous. So if we told the soldiers he's three, they'd be like, yeah, that checks out. So we'd be good. But for the rest of the toddlers, it's devastating. This is his plan. This is what he wants to do. And so the angels warn Joseph and say, take Mary and take your son Jesus and get out of here. You got to get out of here, man. You got to go down to Egypt, which last week we learned, and I think it's helpful to pause on these kinds of things. Last week we saw that Jesus very likely lost his earthly father because Joseph disappears from the narrative. So it's very likely that Jesus, as an adolescent boy, knew what it was to lose a parent. And then at some point, Jesus gets a stepdad and has stepbrothers and sisters and lives in a blended home. And I think that's good for those of us who have that experience to know that Jesus had that experience too. And this week, what we see is that Jesus was also an immigrant seeking asylum for persecution from his home country. He lived as an immigrant for two years and was accepted in Egypt, and I think that that's important for us to at least acknowledge about our Savior. So they flee and they go down there because Herod is trying to kill baby Jesus. Now, why does he do this? Well, we see it in Herod's response. I would summarize Herod's response to the news of Christmas that Jesus is coming like this. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. That was his response. Oh no, Jesus is coming and he wants to take my things. It's said about this guy that he is gonna sit on the throne of David. I sit on the throne of David. It's said that he is gonna be the king of kings. I'm the king, I don't want another king. Really, what Herod is butting up against is the fact that if Jesus is going to be who he wants to be, then Herod can't be who he thinks he wants to be. You understand? If Jesus is going to do what he says he's going to do, then Herod cannot do what he thinks he wants to do. And so Herod's response to Jesus is, oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. He's going to make it so that I can't be the king. He's going to make it so I can't have those feasts with the pigs and the apples in their mouth. That's my favorite part of being the king. We all know that's part of the deal, right? Like I can't do that stuff anymore. I'm not going to be in charge anymore. I'm not going to have all the trappings of life. When Jesus shows up, I'm going to have to give up my life and give up who I want to be so that he can be who he needs to be. And I don't want to do that. So I'm going to keep Jesus from taking my stuff. And I think it's important for us during the Christmas season to acknowledge this perspective of Herod. Because I think so many of us have that perspective as well. Maybe not all the way, maybe in seasons, maybe just in categories, but I think that we've probably all responded to the news of Jesus or to the plans of Jesus, similarly to Herod. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's gonna to take my stuff. For Jesus to be in my life, who he wants to be, I can't be what I want to be. And so we respond to the news of Christ as Herod did. I've seen this firsthand, over and over again, not in my life, but in the life of others as I've ministered. I've seen this firsthand. I'm just kidding. I do it all the time too. But in teenagers, I used to be a student pastor and I would talk with kids who believed. You ask them, is Jesus the son of God? Yes. Did he die on the cross for your sins? Yes. Is he your ticket? Did he buy your ticket into heaven? Did he pay for that ticket with his life? Yes, he did. And he covers over my sin and I get it and I believe. All right, so let's, do you want to pray to receive Christ? Do you want to claim Christianity now? No, not yet. Why not, man? Well, I'm in high school. I'm still young. I've got some fun to be had. I've got some things I like to do. I'll get serious about Jesus later. Oh, okay. So like in college? That would be ridiculous. I've got to live life in college, right? I've got things that I want to do in college. I've got a person I want to be in college. So I'll take Jesus seriously when I graduate. And then you graduate. You ready to take Jesus seriously now? Is this the threshold in your life where you want to prioritize spiritual things? Well, I mean, I'm making a couple dollars. I'm in my 20s. I need to experience life a little bit. Not quite ready to settle down. Let me just kind of search these things out. And then maybe when I get married, settle down, have kids, then I'll embrace Christ. Then I'll embrace church. Then I'll embrace spiritual help. And so you do that and you put them off and you keep them at arm's reach because if I invite Jesus into my life now, I'm going to have to give up things that I don't want to give up. I'm going to have to stop doing stuff that I like to do. And I'm going to have to start doing stuff that I don't want to do. So let's just chill out. And down the road, when that looks a little easier, then I'll invite Jesus in to take my stuff and to reprioritize my life. But not yet, because I got a good thing going and I don't really want him to mess with it. So then you have kids and this is when we're going to be serious about our spiritual health. Except when you have kids, what you realize is that before that day, you thought you understood what tired was and now you understand what tired really is. So when Sunday morning rolls around, you don't really want to get everybody ready and come to church. You kind of just want to lay there. When small group comes around, do I really want to deal with childcare and all that stuff? No. And so then we don't prioritize like we said we would. And then we kick the can down the road a little bit further. And then it's like, well, when I retire, I've got a good thing going. I'm making a lot of money. I'm putting my money where I want it to be. I don't want Jesus to come into my life and rearrange my finances and annoy me with the tithing thing and say that I have to start giving money here and there. And I'm going to finish up these last five, 10 years of my career. I don't need Jesus coming into my life telling me to move to Zimbabwe and give everything away. I'm not gonna do that. So let's just retire and then, and then you retire and you wanna experience a little bit and then, and then, and then. And in big ways and in little ways, we respond to Christ like Herod. Oh no, he's coming. He wants to take my stuff. He wants to change who I am. For him to be who he needs to be, I have to let go of who I want to be, and I'm not ready to do that. Herod was not ready to do that yet, and so we keep him at arm's length. I saw someone this week write, and I don't know who, I'm very slowly going through multiple books and listening to different things, and stuff gets sent to me, so sorry to whichever smart Christian author said this that I cannot attribute it to, but I read this week that a lot of us like to invite Jesus into our life as Savior, but not as Lord. You can save me. I'm interested in heaven. That sounds great, but I've got a good thing going. So you can be my Savior, but you can't yet be my Lord, because for you to really come into my life and be who you want to be, I have to change everything about who I am or allow you to do that, and I'm not good with it. So Herod's response is to keep Jesus at arm's length because he's not yet ready to give up his stuff. And I think we can relate to this response, which makes the response of the wise men all the more poignant and all the more encouraging and maybe convicting because they're told somehow, and the Bible doesn't record it. It's lost in the fog of history. They're told somehow, hey guys, you should follow this star because when you get there, this promised Messiah is going to be there and you're going to have the chance to worship him in person. And so they do, and they pack up all their stuff. And based on the timeline, based on Herod's desire to kill all the children, all the males under the age of two, wherever they came from was as much as a two-year journey away from Israel. And again, we don't know how many there were, but we do know that those men and whatever women were with them, those people who came, they came at great cost to themselves. If it's two years to get there, maybe they figured out a better way to get back, but it's at least a year back, right? They're gone for three or four years before they can get back to their businesses, before they can get back to their communities, before they can get back to their people, their children and their grandchildren if they didn't come with them. They left at great cost when they heard about Jesus. They let go of everything and they took their stuff and they went to worship Jesus. That was their response. And at the end of this journey, they get there, they see the star and they know they're in the right spot. And this is their response when they finally see Jesus in Matthew chapter two, verses 10 and 11. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Their response when they heard that Jesus was coming was to say, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. I don't want it anymore. I don't need it. Oh, Jesus is coming. Let me radically reprioritize what I thought I was going to do for the next three years of my life. Let me take these things, this gold, this frankincense, and myrrh, the stuff that I have for special occasions, and let me take it to him. The stuff that I could likely leave to my children as an inheritance instead of that legacy, let me go lay it down at the foot of Jesus. Let me disrupt my whole life. Let me let go of who I thought I was going to be for this next period of time and let Jesus define what I'm going to be because I'm seeking him. I'm not a businessman or a magi or whatever I am. I'm a pilgrim going to see Jesus. Their response was, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. You can have it. I want you. And they fall on their feet. They fall on their knees and they worship him. And they praise him. And they give him gifts. And we don't really need to know the significance of gold, frankincense, and myrrh beyond the fact that they were very expensive. They offered their best to Christ. And to me, those two responses stand in stark opposition of one another. For Herod to hear that Jesus was there and immediately think about what he might have to give up. And for the wise men to hear that Jesus was coming and to immediately give up everything. So, I think it's important to point out that we should be like the wise men, not like Herod. That is the incredibly sophisticated point that I have been driving to in this sermon. That's why you guys pay me all the money you do, so that you can write down sentences like that on Sunday. And that really is the point. That as we consider those two responses, I think we would do well to identify and admit where we're like Herod. Maybe you're here and you're not yet a Christian. And it's because of that. It's because you're not yet sure you want Jesus to radically reorganize your priorities. You're not quite sure you want to start doing some things and stop doing other things. Or maybe you are a believer, but you've led him into your life as Savior, but in pockets as Lord. And we can all learn from the wise men that when Jesus shows up, we should just give him everything. But the more I thought about this and dug into these characters, I actually stumbled into a thought that I really liked and wanted to share with you. I'm nerdy about history. I like it. I listen to podcasts about history, like six-hour episodes about the Persian Empire. I'm all in, you know? I love this stuff. And so I was thinking about Herod from a geopolitical perspective of who he actually was on the world stage. And the answer is he wasn't a very big deal at all. Okay. And when he sat on the throne of Judea, it was a far flung province of the Roman empire. Herod wasn't really in charge there. Pilate was. Pilate was the Roman governor. He had been installed by the Roman emperor as the governor of this far-flung province, and it wasn't even a glamorous post. It would be the modern day equivalent to finding out that you got to be a diplomat for the United States of America and then learning that your assignment was Trinidad and Tobago. It's like, well, the weather's nice, but I don't think I'm a big player on the political scene. We're not making big world, we're not getting invited to the G8 summit over here. So you just take it for what it's worth. And then under Pilate sits Herod on the throne of Judea. And he has no real authority. He can't declare war. He can't do that. Pilate has to do that. He can't even kill anybody in his own territory. What a bummer as a king. You'd think the one thing you're allowed to do as a king is kill who you want. And Pilate's like, nope, you can't execute who you want. I have to approve that too. He's got a rubber stamp there. And then within his own culture, his voice isn't even the weightiest. Within his own Jewish culture, it's the Sanhedrin that carry far more weight than he do. Kind of the Jewish Senate, the Jewish ruling body compiled of religious leaders from different, what we would think of as denominations or parties. They carried far more weight in Israel than Herod did. And I'm convinced, I mean, think about it for real. Say you're in heaven, somehow or another in the pages that are lost, Herod has a change of heart and Herod accepts Christ as his savior and he's in heaven too. And you just run into this guy, you know, you're doing, you're golfing. You're doing whatever you do in heaven, which golf will be there. And you get paired up with him. You're like, okay, great. And you're like, well, what did you do in your past life? And he's like, well, I was the king. You're like, oh, that's cool. Where are you the king of? You're like, Judea. Oh, when they were independent before like the Babylonians and the Syrians and the Romans got in there. No, no, no. Rome was our daddy, essentially. You'd be like, oh, well, cool. I was an accountant, so let's just maybe focus on golf. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about Herod's little fiefdom. It doesn't matter. The reality is, Herod was a symbolic king who sat on an empty throne. Herod was a symbolic king sitting on an empty, meaningless throne. It didn't even matter. The life that he was trying to protect was dumb. Who cares? You're the king of Judea. You're not even a king. You're not even in control. Your own people don't even look to you. They look to the Sanhedrin. You are a symbolic figurehead king sitting on an empty throne, hollow of any import or authority at all. And I don't want to press this part too hard because I'm not here to denigrate anybody this morning. But is it possible that as we keep Jesus at arm's length, because I've got a good thing going here, Jesus, I don't want you to take my stuff. And for Jesus, for you to be who you want to be in my life, I can't be who I want to be. Is it possible that as we keep him at arm's length, that all we're really doing is being impotent, empty kings and queens sitting on meaningless thrones, just like Herod. What are we protecting that's so important? What plans do we have that are so good? What secret things do we enjoy that are so worth holding Jesus and all of his goodness at arm's length? If you could look at Herod through the lens of history and show him everything that Jesus actually did and what he actually came for, wouldn't you want to just hit him upside the head and go, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? I wonder if we'll get to eternity and feel that same way. If we could come to ourselves in December of 2021 and look at the ways at which we hold Jesus at arm's length and try to protect our kingdom. I wonder, and maybe we wouldn't, but I wonder, would you want to slap yourself upside the head and go, what are you doing? What are you holding on to that's so important? What are you not willing to give up that's so valuable? Like I said, I won't belabor it, but I wonder if we are kings and queens sitting on empty thrones, protecting nothing. And then I thought, well, what does Jesus want to take from Herod? What is he protecting? And the answer is nothing. He doesn't want his kingdom. Jesus didn't come to sit on the throne of Judea and that's it. Jesus came to be the king of kings and Lord of lords. He came to sit on the throne of the universe. He's not after Herod's kingdom. Small potatoes is a disservice to the term small potatoes. It doesn't matter to him at all. And so I thought, what did Jesus come for? Because he doesn't want your stuff either. That's not why he came. Jesus doesn't want your stuff. He wants you. He didn't come for your things. He didn't come for your 401k. He didn't come for your priorities. He came for you. He showed up at Christmas. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death. He defeated death. We get to celebrate that at Easter. And he did every bit of that for you. He came to get you. He didn't come to get your stuff. And if he wants to take your stuff, he's going to replace it with something so much better than what you lost. So as we think about Christmas, let us remember Jesus came. Yeah, he's here. And sometimes we want to hold him at arm's length like Herod did because we're afraid that he might rearrange our life in ways that make us uncomfortable. But let's be clear, he didn't come for your stuff. He came to get you. That's the whole reason that he's here is to come and get you and take you into heaven for all of eternity with his father. It's the whole reason that you were created. And the only reason that you're still here is to take as many people with you on the way as you go. And when we think about this, the reality of who Herod was and that he sat on an empty throne and the fact that Jesus really didn't come for his stuff, he came for him. He didn't come for your stuff, he came for you. And then we again compare that to the response of the wise men. To me, it becomes so much more pointed and poignant when we realize that surrendering our stuff symbolizes our submission to the Savior. Why did the wise men offer him gifts? Why is there a scriptural teaching to live our life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, to pour ourselves out like a drink offering, to give him everything? Why did Jesus say to the rich man, you have to sell all your things and then you can follow me? Why do we have a Christian practice of tithing and giving and being generous people? Why do we do those things? Why is that kind of generosity and that kind of sacrifice laced throughout the teachings of scripture, both with Christ and with his followers. Why is that? It's not because Jesus needs all that stuff. It's because when we surrender our things, it symbolizes submission to the Savior. Yes, I accept you as Savior, but when I surrender everything in my life and say that it's yours, I now accept you as Lord. The response of the wise men wasn't to simply offer gifts. It wasn't to simply journey. It was to say, we are yours. We're here. We're surrendered and we're submitted. And as we, as a people, reflect on God's gift to us and the Jesus that shows up in our lives and often, as we talked about last week, simply happens to us, let us respond like the wise men. Let us surrender our life, who we want to be, our plans that we have, the priorities that we hold, the things that we want to do or not want to do. Let us surrender our stuff as a symbol of our submission to our Savior who has come to get us. This is my predominant thought as I go through this series. And it has been my prayer for you this week as I've prayed for the sermon and prayed for grace that we would be more like the wise men than we are here. That we would quit holding Jesus at arm's length and that we would choose instead to surrender our things as a knowing and willing symbol that we are submitted to Christ. Not just as our Savior, but as our Lord. Let's pray. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Thank you for your son. God, I pray that we, I pray that we would trust that you've just got a better plan, God. Whatever it is that we want, whatever it is that we're holding on to, whatever it is that we're protecting, whatever it is we think we're going for, whatever it is we're reaching for that we think is going to make us happy or bring us joy or bring us fulfillment, whatever that is, if it's not you, would you simply give us the faith to trust that it's something better if we would simply reach for you instead? If we walked in this morning responding to you as Herod does and did, keeping you at arm's length because we're afraid of what you might ask of us, we're afraid of what you might change in us or about us. God, would you give us the faith of the wise men to say, here, take it all, I'm yours. And have the courage to let you reprioritize and rearrange who we are and what we're about. God, thank you for Christmas. Thank you for this place. Thank you for the chance to worship together. God, I pray that you would hear our praise as we continue to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. Good morning, Grace. My name is Kay, and I've been a partner with Grace. Our reading today is Matthew 2, verses 1 through 6. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose. Verse 1. the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. you're like, what in the world is going on? Why are all these people in their pajamas? Do they do this every week? Yeah, we do. We like it. We're the pajama church. And this is just how we do church every week. But for real, I had a change of clothes next door to put on so I could look like my normal classy self when I got up here to preach. But as I was thinking about it this morning, I thought, how many pastors do I know who get to claim and say that they preached a whole sermon in their pajamas and their slippies? So none that I know of. So I wanted to, when I'm 70, I want to be able to say that I did it. So off we go together as we do our Christmas series called Renewed Wonder, where in the series we are making an effort to see Christmas through the eyes of children again. That's why we're having a big fun festive Sunday today, and we've had a theme kind of every week. And then within the sermons, we have been looking at the story of Christmas through the eyes of different people involved in the Christmas story. In the first week, we looked at Christmas through the eyes of the shepherds, and then last week, we saw Christmas through the eyes of Mary. This week, I want to look at Christmas through the eyes of Herod and the eyes of the wise men and see what we can learn from those perspectives. Now, the background that Kay just gave us with the reading, which best reading so far, Kay, very well done, thank you. The background that she gave us with that was the wise men are out east. We don't know where from. It could be, a lot of guesses are modern day, Iran, Iraq, but it could be as far over as like Kazakhstan or Mongolia or China or wherever. But they were from the east. They had been traveling for as many as two years following the star over Bethlehem, right? And it's worth pointing out, this is just an aside, but when we go through scripture and we study God's word, we see that God's focus often is on Israel. And if we're not paying attention, it can seem as if that's his only focus, that God's only speaking to Israel and he's only speaking to Hebrew people throughout the story of the Bible until Jesus comes on the scene and then they go out into all the world. But the reality is that the Magi, the wise men who were from out east, who had no association whatsoever with Israel or Jewish customs, that somehow God spoke to them. Somehow they acknowledged that voice as the voice of God. And somehow they were able to walk in obedience to God and come and adequately celebrate the Savior as an infant or perhaps as a toddler. Somehow God was able to communicate with them, which I think is missed. We're just like, oh yeah, the wise men knew. But it's important for us to understand that God's redemptive focus and God's focus on people is always bigger than just Israel, than just his church. It's always focused on the whole world. And it's worth pointing out when people ask that question, what about someone who grows up in a cultural context where they never, ever, ever hear about Jesus or have any exposure to Christian religion at all, what happens to them in eternity? Well, I know that God is a good and just and fair God, and I know that it would be wise to look at the story of the magi, of the wise men, and trust that if God can communicate then and they can respond then, then that kind of communication and that kind of response can still happen today and has happened throughout all of time. That's an aside, but I think it's an important thing to acknowledge about the wise men. We often think that there were three wise men. There were not necessarily three. That's just cultural or traditional because there was three gifts, but there could have been two, there could have been 20, and they probably had a large caravan that was with them. And they most likely, I know this is gonna crush some of your souls, were not at the nativity scene. Most of your nativity scenes are probably wrong. Now they could have been, they could have started two years in advance and gotten there right then, or it could have been two years later, but they journeyed for a long time to come see Jesus. When they get there, they're looking for Jesus. They're following the star of Bethlehem. They're following that, and they're kind of coming across Asia there, and they get into Israel, and they start looking for Jesus. And, you know, the star is just in the sky. So now there's a lot of houses here, and where exactly is he? They don't know. But as they're going, they think, we're going to go see Herod. We're going to go see Herod the king, and he's going to tell us where this Jesus person is. Surely, if anybody knows, it'll be Herod, and it'll be his court. So let's go figure this out. So they go to Herod, and they're like, hey, the Messiah was born. This is a loose translation of the Gospels. Hey, the Messiah was born. He's here. He's going to be king of kings and Lord of lords. His name is going to be Jesus. Where is he? Surely you know. And Herod is like, oh, shoot. This guy, this Jesus guy wants to be the king. So what do we do? So he talks with his advisors and he comes back out to the wise men and he's like, you know what? I feel the exact same way. I'm looking for him too. I would love to fall on my feet and worship this new baby Messiah, Jesus. That sounds great. I've actually been trying to do that for a while. So when you guys find him, if you could, if you could share your location and just tell us exactly where you are, the minute you see him, we're going to rush over there and we're going to worship him too. But he was being duplicitous. We see the angel communicate with Joseph, the father of Jesus, subsequent to this meeting. And in what the angel says, we see the true intention of Herod and his true response to Christ and the Christmas story. We find it in Luke chapter 2, verses 13 through 15. This is what the angel says to Joseph. So in this story, we see the true intention of Herod. He did not have any interest in worshiping Jesus. He had every interest in killing Jesus. And because of the news of the birth of this Messiah, Herod issued the most evil of edicts, that every two-year-old boy in the kingdom of Israel or Judea was to be put to death by the sword, and he sent his soldiers out to do that. I have a son who's seven months old, and I cannot imagine the evil involved in actually following through with Herod's orders. Now, in our case, our son is enormous. So if we told the soldiers he's three, they'd be like, yeah, that checks out. So we'd be good. But for the rest of the toddlers, it's devastating. This is his plan. This is what he wants to do. And so the angels warn Joseph and say, take Mary and take your son Jesus and get out of here. You got to get out of here, man. You got to go down to Egypt, which last week we learned, and I think it's helpful to pause on these kinds of things. Last week we saw that Jesus very likely lost his earthly father because Joseph disappears from the narrative. So it's very likely that Jesus, as an adolescent boy, knew what it was to lose a parent. And then at some point, Jesus gets a stepdad and has stepbrothers and sisters and lives in a blended home. And I think that's good for those of us who have that experience to know that Jesus had that experience too. And this week, what we see is that Jesus was also an immigrant seeking asylum for persecution from his home country. He lived as an immigrant for two years and was accepted in Egypt, and I think that that's important for us to at least acknowledge about our Savior. So they flee and they go down there because Herod is trying to kill baby Jesus. Now, why does he do this? Well, we see it in Herod's response. I would summarize Herod's response to the news of Christmas that Jesus is coming like this. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. That was his response. Oh no, Jesus is coming and he wants to take my things. It's said about this guy that he is gonna sit on the throne of David. I sit on the throne of David. It's said that he is gonna be the king of kings. I'm the king, I don't want another king. Really, what Herod is butting up against is the fact that if Jesus is going to be who he wants to be, then Herod can't be who he thinks he wants to be. You understand? If Jesus is going to do what he says he's going to do, then Herod cannot do what he thinks he wants to do. And so Herod's response to Jesus is, oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. He's going to make it so that I can't be the king. He's going to make it so I can't have those feasts with the pigs and the apples in their mouth. That's my favorite part of being the king. We all know that's part of the deal, right? Like I can't do that stuff anymore. I'm not going to be in charge anymore. I'm not going to have all the trappings of life. When Jesus shows up, I'm going to have to give up my life and give up who I want to be so that he can be who he needs to be. And I don't want to do that. So I'm going to keep Jesus from taking my stuff. And I think it's important for us during the Christmas season to acknowledge this perspective of Herod. Because I think so many of us have that perspective as well. Maybe not all the way, maybe in seasons, maybe just in categories, but I think that we've probably all responded to the news of Jesus or to the plans of Jesus, similarly to Herod. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's gonna to take my stuff. For Jesus to be in my life, who he wants to be, I can't be what I want to be. And so we respond to the news of Christ as Herod did. I've seen this firsthand, over and over again, not in my life, but in the life of others as I've ministered. I've seen this firsthand. I'm just kidding. I do it all the time too. But in teenagers, I used to be a student pastor and I would talk with kids who believed. You ask them, is Jesus the son of God? Yes. Did he die on the cross for your sins? Yes. Is he your ticket? Did he buy your ticket into heaven? Did he pay for that ticket with his life? Yes, he did. And he covers over my sin and I get it and I believe. All right, so let's, do you want to pray to receive Christ? Do you want to claim Christianity now? No, not yet. Why not, man? Well, I'm in high school. I'm still young. I've got some fun to be had. I've got some things I like to do. I'll get serious about Jesus later. Oh, okay. So like in college? That would be ridiculous. I've got to live life in college, right? I've got things that I want to do in college. I've got a person I want to be in college. So I'll take Jesus seriously when I graduate. And then you graduate. You ready to take Jesus seriously now? Is this the threshold in your life where you want to prioritize spiritual things? Well, I mean, I'm making a couple dollars. I'm in my 20s. I need to experience life a little bit. Not quite ready to settle down. Let me just kind of search these things out. And then maybe when I get married, settle down, have kids, then I'll embrace Christ. Then I'll embrace church. Then I'll embrace spiritual help. And so you do that and you put them off and you keep them at arm's reach because if I invite Jesus into my life now, I'm going to have to give up things that I don't want to give up. I'm going to have to stop doing stuff that I like to do. And I'm going to have to start doing stuff that I don't want to do. So let's just chill out. And down the road, when that looks a little easier, then I'll invite Jesus in to take my stuff and to reprioritize my life. But not yet, because I got a good thing going and I don't really want him to mess with it. So then you have kids and this is when we're going to be serious about our spiritual health. Except when you have kids, what you realize is that before that day, you thought you understood what tired was and now you understand what tired really is. So when Sunday morning rolls around, you don't really want to get everybody ready and come to church. You kind of just want to lay there. When small group comes around, do I really want to deal with childcare and all that stuff? No. And so then we don't prioritize like we said we would. And then we kick the can down the road a little bit further. And then it's like, well, when I retire, I've got a good thing going. I'm making a lot of money. I'm putting my money where I want it to be. I don't want Jesus to come into my life and rearrange my finances and annoy me with the tithing thing and say that I have to start giving money here and there. And I'm going to finish up these last five, 10 years of my career. I don't need Jesus coming into my life telling me to move to Zimbabwe and give everything away. I'm not gonna do that. So let's just retire and then, and then you retire and you wanna experience a little bit and then, and then, and then. And in big ways and in little ways, we respond to Christ like Herod. Oh no, he's coming. He wants to take my stuff. He wants to change who I am. For him to be who he needs to be, I have to let go of who I want to be, and I'm not ready to do that. Herod was not ready to do that yet, and so we keep him at arm's length. I saw someone this week write, and I don't know who, I'm very slowly going through multiple books and listening to different things, and stuff gets sent to me, so sorry to whichever smart Christian author said this that I cannot attribute it to, but I read this week that a lot of us like to invite Jesus into our life as Savior, but not as Lord. You can save me. I'm interested in heaven. That sounds great, but I've got a good thing going. So you can be my Savior, but you can't yet be my Lord, because for you to really come into my life and be who you want to be, I have to change everything about who I am or allow you to do that, and I'm not good with it. So Herod's response is to keep Jesus at arm's length because he's not yet ready to give up his stuff. And I think we can relate to this response, which makes the response of the wise men all the more poignant and all the more encouraging and maybe convicting because they're told somehow, and the Bible doesn't record it. It's lost in the fog of history. They're told somehow, hey guys, you should follow this star because when you get there, this promised Messiah is going to be there and you're going to have the chance to worship him in person. And so they do, and they pack up all their stuff. And based on the timeline, based on Herod's desire to kill all the children, all the males under the age of two, wherever they came from was as much as a two-year journey away from Israel. And again, we don't know how many there were, but we do know that those men and whatever women were with them, those people who came, they came at great cost to themselves. If it's two years to get there, maybe they figured out a better way to get back, but it's at least a year back, right? They're gone for three or four years before they can get back to their businesses, before they can get back to their communities, before they can get back to their people, their children and their grandchildren if they didn't come with them. They left at great cost when they heard about Jesus. They let go of everything and they took their stuff and they went to worship Jesus. That was their response. And at the end of this journey, they get there, they see the star and they know they're in the right spot. And this is their response when they finally see Jesus in Matthew chapter two, verses 10 and 11. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Their response when they heard that Jesus was coming was to say, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. I don't want it anymore. I don't need it. Oh, Jesus is coming. Let me radically reprioritize what I thought I was going to do for the next three years of my life. Let me take these things, this gold, this frankincense, and myrrh, the stuff that I have for special occasions, and let me take it to him. The stuff that I could likely leave to my children as an inheritance instead of that legacy, let me go lay it down at the foot of Jesus. Let me disrupt my whole life. Let me let go of who I thought I was going to be for this next period of time and let Jesus define what I'm going to be because I'm seeking him. I'm not a businessman or a magi or whatever I am. I'm a pilgrim going to see Jesus. Their response was, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. You can have it. I want you. And they fall on their feet. They fall on their knees and they worship him. And they praise him. And they give him gifts. And we don't really need to know the significance of gold, frankincense, and myrrh beyond the fact that they were very expensive. They offered their best to Christ. And to me, those two responses stand in stark opposition of one another. For Herod to hear that Jesus was there and immediately think about what he might have to give up. And for the wise men to hear that Jesus was coming and to immediately give up everything. So, I think it's important to point out that we should be like the wise men, not like Herod. That is the incredibly sophisticated point that I have been driving to in this sermon. That's why you guys pay me all the money you do, so that you can write down sentences like that on Sunday. And that really is the point. That as we consider those two responses, I think we would do well to identify and admit where we're like Herod. Maybe you're here and you're not yet a Christian. And it's because of that. It's because you're not yet sure you want Jesus to radically reorganize your priorities. You're not quite sure you want to start doing some things and stop doing other things. Or maybe you are a believer, but you've led him into your life as Savior, but in pockets as Lord. And we can all learn from the wise men that when Jesus shows up, we should just give him everything. But the more I thought about this and dug into these characters, I actually stumbled into a thought that I really liked and wanted to share with you. I'm nerdy about history. I like it. I listen to podcasts about history, like six-hour episodes about the Persian Empire. I'm all in, you know? I love this stuff. And so I was thinking about Herod from a geopolitical perspective of who he actually was on the world stage. And the answer is he wasn't a very big deal at all. Okay. And when he sat on the throne of Judea, it was a far flung province of the Roman empire. Herod wasn't really in charge there. Pilate was. Pilate was the Roman governor. He had been installed by the Roman emperor as the governor of this far-flung province, and it wasn't even a glamorous post. It would be the modern day equivalent to finding out that you got to be a diplomat for the United States of America and then learning that your assignment was Trinidad and Tobago. It's like, well, the weather's nice, but I don't think I'm a big player on the political scene. We're not making big world, we're not getting invited to the G8 summit over here. So you just take it for what it's worth. And then under Pilate sits Herod on the throne of Judea. And he has no real authority. He can't declare war. He can't do that. Pilate has to do that. He can't even kill anybody in his own territory. What a bummer as a king. You'd think the one thing you're allowed to do as a king is kill who you want. And Pilate's like, nope, you can't execute who you want. I have to approve that too. He's got a rubber stamp there. And then within his own culture, his voice isn't even the weightiest. Within his own Jewish culture, it's the Sanhedrin that carry far more weight than he do. Kind of the Jewish Senate, the Jewish ruling body compiled of religious leaders from different, what we would think of as denominations or parties. They carried far more weight in Israel than Herod did. And I'm convinced, I mean, think about it for real. Say you're in heaven, somehow or another in the pages that are lost, Herod has a change of heart and Herod accepts Christ as his savior and he's in heaven too. And you just run into this guy, you know, you're doing, you're golfing. You're doing whatever you do in heaven, which golf will be there. And you get paired up with him. You're like, okay, great. And you're like, well, what did you do in your past life? And he's like, well, I was the king. You're like, oh, that's cool. Where are you the king of? You're like, Judea. Oh, when they were independent before like the Babylonians and the Syrians and the Romans got in there. No, no, no. Rome was our daddy, essentially. You'd be like, oh, well, cool. I was an accountant, so let's just maybe focus on golf. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about Herod's little fiefdom. It doesn't matter. The reality is, Herod was a symbolic king who sat on an empty throne. Herod was a symbolic king sitting on an empty, meaningless throne. It didn't even matter. The life that he was trying to protect was dumb. Who cares? You're the king of Judea. You're not even a king. You're not even in control. Your own people don't even look to you. They look to the Sanhedrin. You are a symbolic figurehead king sitting on an empty throne, hollow of any import or authority at all. And I don't want to press this part too hard because I'm not here to denigrate anybody this morning. But is it possible that as we keep Jesus at arm's length, because I've got a good thing going here, Jesus, I don't want you to take my stuff. And for Jesus, for you to be who you want to be in my life, I can't be who I want to be. Is it possible that as we keep him at arm's length, that all we're really doing is being impotent, empty kings and queens sitting on meaningless thrones, just like Herod. What are we protecting that's so important? What plans do we have that are so good? What secret things do we enjoy that are so worth holding Jesus and all of his goodness at arm's length? If you could look at Herod through the lens of history and show him everything that Jesus actually did and what he actually came for, wouldn't you want to just hit him upside the head and go, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? I wonder if we'll get to eternity and feel that same way. If we could come to ourselves in December of 2021 and look at the ways at which we hold Jesus at arm's length and try to protect our kingdom. I wonder, and maybe we wouldn't, but I wonder, would you want to slap yourself upside the head and go, what are you doing? What are you holding on to that's so important? What are you not willing to give up that's so valuable? Like I said, I won't belabor it, but I wonder if we are kings and queens sitting on empty thrones, protecting nothing. And then I thought, well, what does Jesus want to take from Herod? What is he protecting? And the answer is nothing. He doesn't want his kingdom. Jesus didn't come to sit on the throne of Judea and that's it. Jesus came to be the king of kings and Lord of lords. He came to sit on the throne of the universe. He's not after Herod's kingdom. Small potatoes is a disservice to the term small potatoes. It doesn't matter to him at all. And so I thought, what did Jesus come for? Because he doesn't want your stuff either. That's not why he came. Jesus doesn't want your stuff. He wants you. He didn't come for your things. He didn't come for your 401k. He didn't come for your priorities. He came for you. He showed up at Christmas. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death. He defeated death. We get to celebrate that at Easter. And he did every bit of that for you. He came to get you. He didn't come to get your stuff. And if he wants to take your stuff, he's going to replace it with something so much better than what you lost. So as we think about Christmas, let us remember Jesus came. Yeah, he's here. And sometimes we want to hold him at arm's length like Herod did because we're afraid that he might rearrange our life in ways that make us uncomfortable. But let's be clear, he didn't come for your stuff. He came to get you. That's the whole reason that he's here is to come and get you and take you into heaven for all of eternity with his father. It's the whole reason that you were created. And the only reason that you're still here is to take as many people with you on the way as you go. And when we think about this, the reality of who Herod was and that he sat on an empty throne and the fact that Jesus really didn't come for his stuff, he came for him. He didn't come for your stuff, he came for you. And then we again compare that to the response of the wise men. To me, it becomes so much more pointed and poignant when we realize that surrendering our stuff symbolizes our submission to the Savior. Why did the wise men offer him gifts? Why is there a scriptural teaching to live our life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, to pour ourselves out like a drink offering, to give him everything? Why did Jesus say to the rich man, you have to sell all your things and then you can follow me? Why do we have a Christian practice of tithing and giving and being generous people? Why do we do those things? Why is that kind of generosity and that kind of sacrifice laced throughout the teachings of scripture, both with Christ and with his followers. Why is that? It's not because Jesus needs all that stuff. It's because when we surrender our things, it symbolizes submission to the Savior. Yes, I accept you as Savior, but when I surrender everything in my life and say that it's yours, I now accept you as Lord. The response of the wise men wasn't to simply offer gifts. It wasn't to simply journey. It was to say, we are yours. We're here. We're surrendered and we're submitted. And as we, as a people, reflect on God's gift to us and the Jesus that shows up in our lives and often, as we talked about last week, simply happens to us, let us respond like the wise men. Let us surrender our life, who we want to be, our plans that we have, the priorities that we hold, the things that we want to do or not want to do. Let us surrender our stuff as a symbol of our submission to our Savior who has come to get us. This is my predominant thought as I go through this series. And it has been my prayer for you this week as I've prayed for the sermon and prayed for grace that we would be more like the wise men than we are here. That we would quit holding Jesus at arm's length and that we would choose instead to surrender our things as a knowing and willing symbol that we are submitted to Christ. Not just as our Savior, but as our Lord. Let's pray. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Thank you for your son. God, I pray that we, I pray that we would trust that you've just got a better plan, God. Whatever it is that we want, whatever it is that we're holding on to, whatever it is that we're protecting, whatever it is we think we're going for, whatever it is we're reaching for that we think is going to make us happy or bring us joy or bring us fulfillment, whatever that is, if it's not you, would you simply give us the faith to trust that it's something better if we would simply reach for you instead? If we walked in this morning responding to you as Herod does and did, keeping you at arm's length because we're afraid of what you might ask of us, we're afraid of what you might change in us or about us. God, would you give us the faith of the wise men to say, here, take it all, I'm yours. And have the courage to let you reprioritize and rearrange who we are and what we're about. God, thank you for Christmas. Thank you for this place. Thank you for the chance to worship together. God, I pray that you would hear our praise as we continue to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. Good morning, Grace. My name is Kay, and I've been a partner with Grace. Our reading today is Matthew 2, verses 1 through 6. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose. Verse 1. the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. you're like, what in the world is going on? Why are all these people in their pajamas? Do they do this every week? Yeah, we do. We like it. We're the pajama church. And this is just how we do church every week. But for real, I had a change of clothes next door to put on so I could look like my normal classy self when I got up here to preach. But as I was thinking about it this morning, I thought, how many pastors do I know who get to claim and say that they preached a whole sermon in their pajamas and their slippies? So none that I know of. So I wanted to, when I'm 70, I want to be able to say that I did it. So off we go together as we do our Christmas series called Renewed Wonder, where in the series we are making an effort to see Christmas through the eyes of children again. That's why we're having a big fun festive Sunday today, and we've had a theme kind of every week. And then within the sermons, we have been looking at the story of Christmas through the eyes of different people involved in the Christmas story. In the first week, we looked at Christmas through the eyes of the shepherds, and then last week, we saw Christmas through the eyes of Mary. This week, I want to look at Christmas through the eyes of Herod and the eyes of the wise men and see what we can learn from those perspectives. Now, the background that Kay just gave us with the reading, which best reading so far, Kay, very well done, thank you. The background that she gave us with that was the wise men are out east. We don't know where from. It could be, a lot of guesses are modern day, Iran, Iraq, but it could be as far over as like Kazakhstan or Mongolia or China or wherever. But they were from the east. They had been traveling for as many as two years following the star over Bethlehem, right? And it's worth pointing out, this is just an aside, but when we go through scripture and we study God's word, we see that God's focus often is on Israel. And if we're not paying attention, it can seem as if that's his only focus, that God's only speaking to Israel and he's only speaking to Hebrew people throughout the story of the Bible until Jesus comes on the scene and then they go out into all the world. But the reality is that the Magi, the wise men who were from out east, who had no association whatsoever with Israel or Jewish customs, that somehow God spoke to them. Somehow they acknowledged that voice as the voice of God. And somehow they were able to walk in obedience to God and come and adequately celebrate the Savior as an infant or perhaps as a toddler. Somehow God was able to communicate with them, which I think is missed. We're just like, oh yeah, the wise men knew. But it's important for us to understand that God's redemptive focus and God's focus on people is always bigger than just Israel, than just his church. It's always focused on the whole world. And it's worth pointing out when people ask that question, what about someone who grows up in a cultural context where they never, ever, ever hear about Jesus or have any exposure to Christian religion at all, what happens to them in eternity? Well, I know that God is a good and just and fair God, and I know that it would be wise to look at the story of the magi, of the wise men, and trust that if God can communicate then and they can respond then, then that kind of communication and that kind of response can still happen today and has happened throughout all of time. That's an aside, but I think it's an important thing to acknowledge about the wise men. We often think that there were three wise men. There were not necessarily three. That's just cultural or traditional because there was three gifts, but there could have been two, there could have been 20, and they probably had a large caravan that was with them. And they most likely, I know this is gonna crush some of your souls, were not at the nativity scene. Most of your nativity scenes are probably wrong. Now they could have been, they could have started two years in advance and gotten there right then, or it could have been two years later, but they journeyed for a long time to come see Jesus. When they get there, they're looking for Jesus. They're following the star of Bethlehem. They're following that, and they're kind of coming across Asia there, and they get into Israel, and they start looking for Jesus. And, you know, the star is just in the sky. So now there's a lot of houses here, and where exactly is he? They don't know. But as they're going, they think, we're going to go see Herod. We're going to go see Herod the king, and he's going to tell us where this Jesus person is. Surely, if anybody knows, it'll be Herod, and it'll be his court. So let's go figure this out. So they go to Herod, and they're like, hey, the Messiah was born. This is a loose translation of the Gospels. Hey, the Messiah was born. He's here. He's going to be king of kings and Lord of lords. His name is going to be Jesus. Where is he? Surely you know. And Herod is like, oh, shoot. This guy, this Jesus guy wants to be the king. So what do we do? So he talks with his advisors and he comes back out to the wise men and he's like, you know what? I feel the exact same way. I'm looking for him too. I would love to fall on my feet and worship this new baby Messiah, Jesus. That sounds great. I've actually been trying to do that for a while. So when you guys find him, if you could, if you could share your location and just tell us exactly where you are, the minute you see him, we're going to rush over there and we're going to worship him too. But he was being duplicitous. We see the angel communicate with Joseph, the father of Jesus, subsequent to this meeting. And in what the angel says, we see the true intention of Herod and his true response to Christ and the Christmas story. We find it in Luke chapter 2, verses 13 through 15. This is what the angel says to Joseph. So in this story, we see the true intention of Herod. He did not have any interest in worshiping Jesus. He had every interest in killing Jesus. And because of the news of the birth of this Messiah, Herod issued the most evil of edicts, that every two-year-old boy in the kingdom of Israel or Judea was to be put to death by the sword, and he sent his soldiers out to do that. I have a son who's seven months old, and I cannot imagine the evil involved in actually following through with Herod's orders. Now, in our case, our son is enormous. So if we told the soldiers he's three, they'd be like, yeah, that checks out. So we'd be good. But for the rest of the toddlers, it's devastating. This is his plan. This is what he wants to do. And so the angels warn Joseph and say, take Mary and take your son Jesus and get out of here. You got to get out of here, man. You got to go down to Egypt, which last week we learned, and I think it's helpful to pause on these kinds of things. Last week we saw that Jesus very likely lost his earthly father because Joseph disappears from the narrative. So it's very likely that Jesus, as an adolescent boy, knew what it was to lose a parent. And then at some point, Jesus gets a stepdad and has stepbrothers and sisters and lives in a blended home. And I think that's good for those of us who have that experience to know that Jesus had that experience too. And this week, what we see is that Jesus was also an immigrant seeking asylum for persecution from his home country. He lived as an immigrant for two years and was accepted in Egypt, and I think that that's important for us to at least acknowledge about our Savior. So they flee and they go down there because Herod is trying to kill baby Jesus. Now, why does he do this? Well, we see it in Herod's response. I would summarize Herod's response to the news of Christmas that Jesus is coming like this. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. That was his response. Oh no, Jesus is coming and he wants to take my things. It's said about this guy that he is gonna sit on the throne of David. I sit on the throne of David. It's said that he is gonna be the king of kings. I'm the king, I don't want another king. Really, what Herod is butting up against is the fact that if Jesus is going to be who he wants to be, then Herod can't be who he thinks he wants to be. You understand? If Jesus is going to do what he says he's going to do, then Herod cannot do what he thinks he wants to do. And so Herod's response to Jesus is, oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. He's going to make it so that I can't be the king. He's going to make it so I can't have those feasts with the pigs and the apples in their mouth. That's my favorite part of being the king. We all know that's part of the deal, right? Like I can't do that stuff anymore. I'm not going to be in charge anymore. I'm not going to have all the trappings of life. When Jesus shows up, I'm going to have to give up my life and give up who I want to be so that he can be who he needs to be. And I don't want to do that. So I'm going to keep Jesus from taking my stuff. And I think it's important for us during the Christmas season to acknowledge this perspective of Herod. Because I think so many of us have that perspective as well. Maybe not all the way, maybe in seasons, maybe just in categories, but I think that we've probably all responded to the news of Jesus or to the plans of Jesus, similarly to Herod. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's gonna to take my stuff. For Jesus to be in my life, who he wants to be, I can't be what I want to be. And so we respond to the news of Christ as Herod did. I've seen this firsthand, over and over again, not in my life, but in the life of others as I've ministered. I've seen this firsthand. I'm just kidding. I do it all the time too. But in teenagers, I used to be a student pastor and I would talk with kids who believed. You ask them, is Jesus the son of God? Yes. Did he die on the cross for your sins? Yes. Is he your ticket? Did he buy your ticket into heaven? Did he pay for that ticket with his life? Yes, he did. And he covers over my sin and I get it and I believe. All right, so let's, do you want to pray to receive Christ? Do you want to claim Christianity now? No, not yet. Why not, man? Well, I'm in high school. I'm still young. I've got some fun to be had. I've got some things I like to do. I'll get serious about Jesus later. Oh, okay. So like in college? That would be ridiculous. I've got to live life in college, right? I've got things that I want to do in college. I've got a person I want to be in college. So I'll take Jesus seriously when I graduate. And then you graduate. You ready to take Jesus seriously now? Is this the threshold in your life where you want to prioritize spiritual things? Well, I mean, I'm making a couple dollars. I'm in my 20s. I need to experience life a little bit. Not quite ready to settle down. Let me just kind of search these things out. And then maybe when I get married, settle down, have kids, then I'll embrace Christ. Then I'll embrace church. Then I'll embrace spiritual help. And so you do that and you put them off and you keep them at arm's reach because if I invite Jesus into my life now, I'm going to have to give up things that I don't want to give up. I'm going to have to stop doing stuff that I like to do. And I'm going to have to start doing stuff that I don't want to do. So let's just chill out. And down the road, when that looks a little easier, then I'll invite Jesus in to take my stuff and to reprioritize my life. But not yet, because I got a good thing going and I don't really want him to mess with it. So then you have kids and this is when we're going to be serious about our spiritual health. Except when you have kids, what you realize is that before that day, you thought you understood what tired was and now you understand what tired really is. So when Sunday morning rolls around, you don't really want to get everybody ready and come to church. You kind of just want to lay there. When small group comes around, do I really want to deal with childcare and all that stuff? No. And so then we don't prioritize like we said we would. And then we kick the can down the road a little bit further. And then it's like, well, when I retire, I've got a good thing going. I'm making a lot of money. I'm putting my money where I want it to be. I don't want Jesus to come into my life and rearrange my finances and annoy me with the tithing thing and say that I have to start giving money here and there. And I'm going to finish up these last five, 10 years of my career. I don't need Jesus coming into my life telling me to move to Zimbabwe and give everything away. I'm not gonna do that. So let's just retire and then, and then you retire and you wanna experience a little bit and then, and then, and then. And in big ways and in little ways, we respond to Christ like Herod. Oh no, he's coming. He wants to take my stuff. He wants to change who I am. For him to be who he needs to be, I have to let go of who I want to be, and I'm not ready to do that. Herod was not ready to do that yet, and so we keep him at arm's length. I saw someone this week write, and I don't know who, I'm very slowly going through multiple books and listening to different things, and stuff gets sent to me, so sorry to whichever smart Christian author said this that I cannot attribute it to, but I read this week that a lot of us like to invite Jesus into our life as Savior, but not as Lord. You can save me. I'm interested in heaven. That sounds great, but I've got a good thing going. So you can be my Savior, but you can't yet be my Lord, because for you to really come into my life and be who you want to be, I have to change everything about who I am or allow you to do that, and I'm not good with it. So Herod's response is to keep Jesus at arm's length because he's not yet ready to give up his stuff. And I think we can relate to this response, which makes the response of the wise men all the more poignant and all the more encouraging and maybe convicting because they're told somehow, and the Bible doesn't record it. It's lost in the fog of history. They're told somehow, hey guys, you should follow this star because when you get there, this promised Messiah is going to be there and you're going to have the chance to worship him in person. And so they do, and they pack up all their stuff. And based on the timeline, based on Herod's desire to kill all the children, all the males under the age of two, wherever they came from was as much as a two-year journey away from Israel. And again, we don't know how many there were, but we do know that those men and whatever women were with them, those people who came, they came at great cost to themselves. If it's two years to get there, maybe they figured out a better way to get back, but it's at least a year back, right? They're gone for three or four years before they can get back to their businesses, before they can get back to their communities, before they can get back to their people, their children and their grandchildren if they didn't come with them. They left at great cost when they heard about Jesus. They let go of everything and they took their stuff and they went to worship Jesus. That was their response. And at the end of this journey, they get there, they see the star and they know they're in the right spot. And this is their response when they finally see Jesus in Matthew chapter two, verses 10 and 11. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Their response when they heard that Jesus was coming was to say, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. I don't want it anymore. I don't need it. Oh, Jesus is coming. Let me radically reprioritize what I thought I was going to do for the next three years of my life. Let me take these things, this gold, this frankincense, and myrrh, the stuff that I have for special occasions, and let me take it to him. The stuff that I could likely leave to my children as an inheritance instead of that legacy, let me go lay it down at the foot of Jesus. Let me disrupt my whole life. Let me let go of who I thought I was going to be for this next period of time and let Jesus define what I'm going to be because I'm seeking him. I'm not a businessman or a magi or whatever I am. I'm a pilgrim going to see Jesus. Their response was, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. You can have it. I want you. And they fall on their feet. They fall on their knees and they worship him. And they praise him. And they give him gifts. And we don't really need to know the significance of gold, frankincense, and myrrh beyond the fact that they were very expensive. They offered their best to Christ. And to me, those two responses stand in stark opposition of one another. For Herod to hear that Jesus was there and immediately think about what he might have to give up. And for the wise men to hear that Jesus was coming and to immediately give up everything. So, I think it's important to point out that we should be like the wise men, not like Herod. That is the incredibly sophisticated point that I have been driving to in this sermon. That's why you guys pay me all the money you do, so that you can write down sentences like that on Sunday. And that really is the point. That as we consider those two responses, I think we would do well to identify and admit where we're like Herod. Maybe you're here and you're not yet a Christian. And it's because of that. It's because you're not yet sure you want Jesus to radically reorganize your priorities. You're not quite sure you want to start doing some things and stop doing other things. Or maybe you are a believer, but you've led him into your life as Savior, but in pockets as Lord. And we can all learn from the wise men that when Jesus shows up, we should just give him everything. But the more I thought about this and dug into these characters, I actually stumbled into a thought that I really liked and wanted to share with you. I'm nerdy about history. I like it. I listen to podcasts about history, like six-hour episodes about the Persian Empire. I'm all in, you know? I love this stuff. And so I was thinking about Herod from a geopolitical perspective of who he actually was on the world stage. And the answer is he wasn't a very big deal at all. Okay. And when he sat on the throne of Judea, it was a far flung province of the Roman empire. Herod wasn't really in charge there. Pilate was. Pilate was the Roman governor. He had been installed by the Roman emperor as the governor of this far-flung province, and it wasn't even a glamorous post. It would be the modern day equivalent to finding out that you got to be a diplomat for the United States of America and then learning that your assignment was Trinidad and Tobago. It's like, well, the weather's nice, but I don't think I'm a big player on the political scene. We're not making big world, we're not getting invited to the G8 summit over here. So you just take it for what it's worth. And then under Pilate sits Herod on the throne of Judea. And he has no real authority. He can't declare war. He can't do that. Pilate has to do that. He can't even kill anybody in his own territory. What a bummer as a king. You'd think the one thing you're allowed to do as a king is kill who you want. And Pilate's like, nope, you can't execute who you want. I have to approve that too. He's got a rubber stamp there. And then within his own culture, his voice isn't even the weightiest. Within his own Jewish culture, it's the Sanhedrin that carry far more weight than he do. Kind of the Jewish Senate, the Jewish ruling body compiled of religious leaders from different, what we would think of as denominations or parties. They carried far more weight in Israel than Herod did. And I'm convinced, I mean, think about it for real. Say you're in heaven, somehow or another in the pages that are lost, Herod has a change of heart and Herod accepts Christ as his savior and he's in heaven too. And you just run into this guy, you know, you're doing, you're golfing. You're doing whatever you do in heaven, which golf will be there. And you get paired up with him. You're like, okay, great. And you're like, well, what did you do in your past life? And he's like, well, I was the king. You're like, oh, that's cool. Where are you the king of? You're like, Judea. Oh, when they were independent before like the Babylonians and the Syrians and the Romans got in there. No, no, no. Rome was our daddy, essentially. You'd be like, oh, well, cool. I was an accountant, so let's just maybe focus on golf. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about Herod's little fiefdom. It doesn't matter. The reality is, Herod was a symbolic king who sat on an empty throne. Herod was a symbolic king sitting on an empty, meaningless throne. It didn't even matter. The life that he was trying to protect was dumb. Who cares? You're the king of Judea. You're not even a king. You're not even in control. Your own people don't even look to you. They look to the Sanhedrin. You are a symbolic figurehead king sitting on an empty throne, hollow of any import or authority at all. And I don't want to press this part too hard because I'm not here to denigrate anybody this morning. But is it possible that as we keep Jesus at arm's length, because I've got a good thing going here, Jesus, I don't want you to take my stuff. And for Jesus, for you to be who you want to be in my life, I can't be who I want to be. Is it possible that as we keep him at arm's length, that all we're really doing is being impotent, empty kings and queens sitting on meaningless thrones, just like Herod. What are we protecting that's so important? What plans do we have that are so good? What secret things do we enjoy that are so worth holding Jesus and all of his goodness at arm's length? If you could look at Herod through the lens of history and show him everything that Jesus actually did and what he actually came for, wouldn't you want to just hit him upside the head and go, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? I wonder if we'll get to eternity and feel that same way. If we could come to ourselves in December of 2021 and look at the ways at which we hold Jesus at arm's length and try to protect our kingdom. I wonder, and maybe we wouldn't, but I wonder, would you want to slap yourself upside the head and go, what are you doing? What are you holding on to that's so important? What are you not willing to give up that's so valuable? Like I said, I won't belabor it, but I wonder if we are kings and queens sitting on empty thrones, protecting nothing. And then I thought, well, what does Jesus want to take from Herod? What is he protecting? And the answer is nothing. He doesn't want his kingdom. Jesus didn't come to sit on the throne of Judea and that's it. Jesus came to be the king of kings and Lord of lords. He came to sit on the throne of the universe. He's not after Herod's kingdom. Small potatoes is a disservice to the term small potatoes. It doesn't matter to him at all. And so I thought, what did Jesus come for? Because he doesn't want your stuff either. That's not why he came. Jesus doesn't want your stuff. He wants you. He didn't come for your things. He didn't come for your 401k. He didn't come for your priorities. He came for you. He showed up at Christmas. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death. He defeated death. We get to celebrate that at Easter. And he did every bit of that for you. He came to get you. He didn't come to get your stuff. And if he wants to take your stuff, he's going to replace it with something so much better than what you lost. So as we think about Christmas, let us remember Jesus came. Yeah, he's here. And sometimes we want to hold him at arm's length like Herod did because we're afraid that he might rearrange our life in ways that make us uncomfortable. But let's be clear, he didn't come for your stuff. He came to get you. That's the whole reason that he's here is to come and get you and take you into heaven for all of eternity with his father. It's the whole reason that you were created. And the only reason that you're still here is to take as many people with you on the way as you go. And when we think about this, the reality of who Herod was and that he sat on an empty throne and the fact that Jesus really didn't come for his stuff, he came for him. He didn't come for your stuff, he came for you. And then we again compare that to the response of the wise men. To me, it becomes so much more pointed and poignant when we realize that surrendering our stuff symbolizes our submission to the Savior. Why did the wise men offer him gifts? Why is there a scriptural teaching to live our life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, to pour ourselves out like a drink offering, to give him everything? Why did Jesus say to the rich man, you have to sell all your things and then you can follow me? Why do we have a Christian practice of tithing and giving and being generous people? Why do we do those things? Why is that kind of generosity and that kind of sacrifice laced throughout the teachings of scripture, both with Christ and with his followers. Why is that? It's not because Jesus needs all that stuff. It's because when we surrender our things, it symbolizes submission to the Savior. Yes, I accept you as Savior, but when I surrender everything in my life and say that it's yours, I now accept you as Lord. The response of the wise men wasn't to simply offer gifts. It wasn't to simply journey. It was to say, we are yours. We're here. We're surrendered and we're submitted. And as we, as a people, reflect on God's gift to us and the Jesus that shows up in our lives and often, as we talked about last week, simply happens to us, let us respond like the wise men. Let us surrender our life, who we want to be, our plans that we have, the priorities that we hold, the things that we want to do or not want to do. Let us surrender our stuff as a symbol of our submission to our Savior who has come to get us. This is my predominant thought as I go through this series. And it has been my prayer for you this week as I've prayed for the sermon and prayed for grace that we would be more like the wise men than we are here. That we would quit holding Jesus at arm's length and that we would choose instead to surrender our things as a knowing and willing symbol that we are submitted to Christ. Not just as our Savior, but as our Lord. Let's pray. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Thank you for your son. God, I pray that we, I pray that we would trust that you've just got a better plan, God. Whatever it is that we want, whatever it is that we're holding on to, whatever it is that we're protecting, whatever it is we think we're going for, whatever it is we're reaching for that we think is going to make us happy or bring us joy or bring us fulfillment, whatever that is, if it's not you, would you simply give us the faith to trust that it's something better if we would simply reach for you instead? If we walked in this morning responding to you as Herod does and did, keeping you at arm's length because we're afraid of what you might ask of us, we're afraid of what you might change in us or about us. God, would you give us the faith of the wise men to say, here, take it all, I'm yours. And have the courage to let you reprioritize and rearrange who we are and what we're about. God, thank you for Christmas. Thank you for this place. Thank you for the chance to worship together. God, I pray that you would hear our praise as we continue to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. Good morning, Grace. My name is Taylor LaCivita, and today I'll be doing a reading from Luke 2, verses 8 to 15. The angel said to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let's go to Bethlehem and see the things that have happened, which the Lord has told us about. Thank you so much, Taylor. You guys are going to get to see how strong I am as I move this table forth. All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace, and I'm so excited this morning to be able to preach as we are kicking off our Christmas series, our Christmas sermons, our Christmas series called Renewed Wonder, where we step back and we take a look at some different perspectives within the Christmas story. And as you guys might have been able to guess, based on the fact that we sang the banger, Go Tell It on the Mountain earlier, mixed with the passage that Taylor just read for us, that this morning I get to go through the story from the shepherd's perspective. Now, for me, and I bet a lot of you guys are in this same boat, because I know a lot of you grew up in church and grew up especially in church around Christmas time, that that story that he just read is one that we know very well. Honestly, it's one that probably a lot of you could get up here, and you could probably recite it almost word for word just because you've heard it so many times. And honestly, that's where I was as well. And so the fun thing about Christmas as you go through it is to be like, okay, so what's different or what's new? Well, let me tell you that as I was tasked to take a specific look at the shepherd's experience in this story, this story kind of took on some new meaning for me. I was kind of slapped in the face with how incredible, how unbelievable, and honestly, how straight up nuts this story is. Because when you look at this story from the shepherd's perspective, what you see is this. You see that these dudes are out in their field at night. They're shepherding, they're sheep herding, if you will. They're moving their cattle to the left and to the right and forwards and backwards. You know, they're doing the shepherd things. And as they're shepherding, comes this angel down to them in their field in pitch black night. And not only does this angel come, but as this angel comes and appears, so does the glory of God shine upon them to the point that they are terrified. Which obviously, as we just went through Revelation, and as we see throughout the Bible, as the glory of God is brought down and is shown to people, that they kind of just cower in fear because that is how big and powerful just simply being in the presence of God is. But I would contend that even if the glory of God wasn't anywhere around, that probably they still would have been straight up terrified because this is just a random angel that came down from heaven in the middle of the night. These aren't like, and because the thing that I think about that feels a little bit different for me in this way is that these aren't like prophets or preachers or, you know, I don't even know how many of them would be like Jewish believers in this God. They're just these random dudes out in a field. And so this like had to be the most shocking and like awe-inspiring thing because not only do these people come down and they're in the glory of God, but as they are resting, as they are trembling in the glory of God, this angel goes, yo, you need to stop being afraid. And here's why. The reason is because I have the best news in the history of news to tell you that today a savior has been born to you. This news of this savior being born is literally going to bring joy to the entire world. That is how big and that is how important this news is. And here are these dudes just being like, sick, nice, all right, cool. But like, it's just so completely random. And then not only that, but as they get done with telling them, hey, so here's all of this news, then they're like, you know what, honestly, if you'd like to go meet them, if you'd like to be among the very first people to actually get to witness this person in person, then I'll just tell you exactly where they are. But before you go, what I would love to do is I'd love to invite down a bunch of my friends. And so we're going to have this holy host of angels literally singing an angelic song to you just to send you on your way to see the Savior that we just told you about. And so they just stand and they get to witness as this cloud of angels sings glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests. Like I said, that story is straight up nuts. Like, and I love it. I love it so much. And I also love it because something that I really love, the term that I use is to be surprised by wonder. Not like in the sense of, you know, like you guys all came to church this morning, so you were probably anticipating somebody coming up here and running their mouth to you. That's not a surprise. But we all have those times where out of nowhere, simply timing we're in the right place at the right time, we get to experience something that just leaves us absolutely awestruck. One of my favorite stories of my whole life, one of my favorite experiences I've ever had is one of these moments where I was completely and utterly surprised by wonder. So we fast forward back to my UGA days, which go dogs, hashtag we're number two, baby. But back in my UGA days, myself and one of my buddies were heading to campus. So to give you an image of what we're dealing with, we go and we park in this parking deck. It's the one that I always parked in, so I knew it pretty well. And when you come out of the deck, there's a big building. So, you know, think building. There's a building that you can either walk through to go to the bus stop, or you can walk around to take a longer path to the bus stop. Well, sometimes I took the path around because it was pretty, it was nice, it allowed me to walk more. This day was kind of urgent. We were trying our best to be as quick as we could to get to the bus stop. Not because we had finals, not because we needed to find a place to study, but because we needed to as quickly as possible hop onto a bus to allow it to drive us around campus so that we could play Pokemon Go. That's true. We literally, so Pokemon Go, for those who don't know, is just a phone game where you just go around and it's connected to your maps. And as you're moving and as you're walking around, you can catch different Pokemon. So that game was really hot back then. And so we had to get to the bus so we could sit inside of that bus, we can ride around, and we could catch as many Pokemon as possible without actually having to walk around or use any physical labor to do so. So that's what we were doing. That's why we chose to walk through this building. Now, I had walked through the building a lot. This building, we were definitely allowed to walk through it. But I would say that overall, as far as just like whether or not we were welcome in the building, I wouldn't say it was a 10 out of 10 that was just okay that we were in there because it's an athlete's building. It's where most of the teams went to practice or to weightlift. There was a huge weightlifting facility on the left, so you would walk by and you'd see some tennis players working out. On the right was an entire gymnastics thing. I don't know what you call those, so we're going to say gymnastics thing. And you got to see that. What I knew is that there was an upstairs because I'd walked through before. So I'm with my buddy Blake, who's never walked through this building, and I'm like, I'm going to take him upstairs because what's really cool is that UGA's basketball, practice basketball courts are up there. And sometimes you'll get to see him practicing. So we go up. I'm like, dude, I got a surprise for you. So let's go on up. And so we're walking. How it's set up, there's this huge window right here. And then there's a wall and then a huge window on the other side. There's a ton of people in the hallway at this point. And like I said, we're not 10 out of 10 supposed to be there. We're not not supposed to be there, but also like lingering is probably frowned upon. So as we walk up, there's a huge group of people in the hallway. And I'm like, oh, snap. So I'm like, all right, we got to play this cool. I don't even look in the window because I'm like, I've seen this a thousand times. This is what I do as I live in this building. So I'm walking, you know, just kind of doing my thing. I don't look, Blake's going nuts next to me. And I'm like, I'm getting furious with him because I'm like, Blake, dude, you've got to chill out. We're not supposed to be here. We're going to get in trouble if you keep acting like we're not, we're literally not supposed to be here. He's like, oh my gosh. So once we got to the second windows, I recognized in full exactly why he was freaking out. Because as I turn and look, I look up and standing about five feet from me through this window is Kent Bazemore. So for everyone online, I gave a good pause because everyone in here definitely, I mean, there were just the look of shock and awe on the faces. I mean, gasps o' plenty were had in here, but I'm just kidding. I know that very few of you know who Kent Bazemore is. I would be surprised if three people in this building knew who Kent Bazemore was, but for Kyle, who is a giant Atlanta Hawks fan, what I know is that is our starting shooting guard that we heavily overpaid, but we still loved him because he was on our team. And so there I am looking, staring in the face of Kent Bazemore. And as I look beyond him is the entire Hawks roster working out and practicing in this UGA practice facility. And I'm going nuts. I mean, not physically, because still trying to act like I'm supposed to be there, but in my mind, I'm going absolutely nuts. I look off in the distance, and one of their commentators is there. Not Bob Rathbun, but Dominique Wilkins, the greatest hawk in the history of the franchise, one of the greatest players of all time. And here I am just standing here a few feet from Dominique Wilkins watching the Hawks play, and I'm going absolutely insane. And there I was, just completely and utterly awestruck and surprised by wonder. No anticipation of this. I had literally no idea that something like this would ever happen. And it just absolutely blew me away. And I know you guys have those stories as well. And they're so special, not simply because we got to experience getting to see those people or getting to do these things or whatever your stories might be, but because we had no idea going into those that they were going to happen. I didn't go to a Hawks game and then go absolutely bonkers when I saw the Hawks. I was just walking through a practice facility at a college. And then I think about that we can add every one of our stories up and it still completely pales in comparison to this story that the shepherds got to experience and to the glory that the shepherds got to experience by experiencing this angel of the Lord, by experiencing the full and utter presence of the Lord that left them trembling, getting to experience this holy host of angels singing to them, all just simply to be able to tell them this unbelievable thing that happened and then tell them exactly where they can go and experience it for themselves. Because the thing is, Taylor only read the first half. When we jump into the second half, we see that they went. Let's just go ahead and go here. In verse, we're going to, it's going to be Luke 2, what the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. That's the reaction we're looking for. That's the reaction that I had where I'm just, I can't not like, I'm just going nuts. I'm telling everybody, I'm taking tons of pictures. I'm sending them out to everyone. I'm trying to FaceTime people. I'm like, just all of it. And that's literally what they do when they step out and when they actually go and they actually get to see, witness, and experience that this Jesus that they said is real. And when they actually knew, oh my gosh, it was real, then they just go absolutely nuts. They have to tell everyone. They have to literally, it says the whole way returning back, they're glorifying and they're praising God because they have no other thing that they can do. And that is an unbelievably awesome story. And to me, what makes it, I think, even more significant and even more awesome is the fact that the shepherds were some of the least deserving people to witness such a holy occasion. Background behind shepherds of this time, I would say we kind of know what shepherds are. They're these people who are out in the fields. They spend most of their time with animals. They're kind of out away from everyone else in the town. That's a pretty good symbol of kind of their social status during that time. They were rough. They were mangy. They were sinful dudes, not great guys, probably didn't have the best mouths, didn't say the nicest words. They didn't have really any status. They didn't have any position. People like kind of hated them. Like it was like, it was a job that no one really wanted. And it was a job that if you had, people just kind of didn't like you. They were kind of the student pastors of their day. But these, these are the people that the Lord shows up to, to bring this news. I love the way that David Jeremiah puts it in his book, Why the Nativity. I was going to say, Why the Jerusalem, which is not it. Why the nativity? He says, They had as little status, position, right to being able to witness such an incredible host of things or really to witness literally even one part of it. They had no right. They had as much right to that as some Pokemon nerd had to getting to witness an NBA practice. And that's literally zero. No right at all. But then my story begins to diverge from their story in this. That while I stumbled upon wonder, the shepherds were invited into it. If we reread verses 8 and 9, it says, and there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel of the Lord, the Lord came down. The rest of the angels, they came down seeking out these angels, excuse me, seeking out these shepherds on purpose. To bring them this news. To invite them into this glory. And to me, that's one of the most incredible and one of the most shocking parts of this is not only did they not deserve it, but also, man, their blessings just keep on coming. It's so easy to stop and to get caught up in, oh my gosh, how unbelievable is it that this angel showed up and brought this great news to these people who didn't deserve it. But ultimately, the angel coming down and the glory of God coming down was simply used as a device to invite them into the true glory of getting to experience Jesus. And honestly, that's why I believe that the shepherd's joy was made complete only in experiencing Jesus, the promised Savior. I mean, an absolutely glorious invitation and message that they were able to receive. But man, did that just pale in comparison to the glory of actually getting to look Jesus in the face, this baby, and experience this glory of the Lord and know without a shadow of a doubt that that is the baby. I know it. I know it with every part of me. That is the baby that I was promised and that is the baby that has come to save this world. That is going to be the joy of this world. That is going to be the Savior that literally, word for word, the angel said, the Savior has been born to you. That's him. And that is ultimately where their joy rested and where their joy came from. Only after they got to experience that did they go and did they tell. Only after they experienced Jesus for themselves did they completely just turn to worship and glorifying God. I take a look back at the story and I put it into simpler words and I see this group of lowly, dirty sinners invited to experience Jesus with nothing to bring, nothing to give but themselves. They had nothing but themselves. They had no status or significance that would qualify them or give them the right to be there and to get to witness Jesus, except that the Lord had invited them to. He had invited them into the glory of his son, Jesus. And to me, when I hear that, I just hear the gospel. When I hear that, what I see is while God is literally writing the gospel, he's creating the gospel in this story. He's creating this gospel of here is this Jesus that I'm sending and I'm sending for all of the world. The point is this Jesus, but just because I'm the best, just because I'm the best, I'm going to write these side characters in. I'm going to bring in these shepherds, these lowest of the low people. And I'm going to say, you get to be the people who get to experience Jesus, even though you have nothing but a willingness to. This Jesus that's going to grow up, he's going to live a perfect life. And then he's going to be killed on a cross. And he's going to be killed on a cross to save those people, to save all of these people in this world, to save all people for all time, simply that would just have a willing heart to be able to come to him and experience him. Taking on our sin and killing it on the cross and then being raised back to life, signifying that death will not be the end and will not have the last say for him or for anyone who would come to him. All of that to ensure that you, that you, that I, a group of lowly sinners, are invited in to experience Jesus. Though we have nothing to bring but ourselves, we have no status or significance that would give us the right to experience Jesus or his glory or the glory of God, except that he invited us to through his son Jesus. And ultimately, that's why I think and I believe as I've gone through this story that the most significant part of this story and the most significant truth within this story is that the shepherd's invitation into the glory of Jesus' birth is a foreshadowing of our invitation into eternal glory with God through Jesus' death and resurrection. To close, I just want to read this. It's another quote just as they had kept watch over their sheep by night, someone far greater was keeping watch over them. That someone was Jesus. And the joy and the security that they found in that Jesus, their Savior, is the exact same joy and the exact same security that we have in our lives because of Jesus. That's the gospel, and that is the true joy and the true wonder of Christmas. Will you bow with me as we pray? Lord, I thank you so much for all that you are. I thank you for your son, for sending your son. I thank you for what that means in my life and the lives of literally all who would turn to you. Lord, through this Christmas season, would you remind us why we are celebrating this Christmas season. Lord, today, this week, let us just take time to love you more. Let us take more time to just rest in your love because there's just nothing more wonderful than it. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.