Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you had a hard time parking, get here sooner. I don't know. I don't have anything else I can tell you. All right, we've got so many spots. That's it. And then you're at Big Lots or whatever that's about to be. Thanks for continuing with us in our series in Mark. As we approach this week's sermon and text found in Mark chapter 7, you can go ahead and turn your Bible there if you like. Many of you know, if you've been coming since the beginning of the year, that I started going to the YMCA this year. I started going to the YMCA in January to exercise. Brad Gwynn sees me there. He's my accountability partner. I'm told that there has been about six people who have checked in with him to say, is Nate really going? Is that really a thing that's happening? Yeah, I'm going. And I like it there. I like going to the gym at the Y. There's a lot of things about the Y that I like. I like when you walk in, there's a sweet lady named Miss Ellen that says hey to you and learns your name. And when you leave, she tells you to have a fantastic Monday or have the best Wednesday. And then she hits a little secret button under the desk and it opens both the doors for me. So I don't have to touch them. That's fantastic. There's the soft, there's a soft, chewy ice that you can get as soon as you walk in that normally you have to overpay for at Chick-fil-A, and now it's just there, free. It's great. And you go, and then you work out. It's so fun. But my favorite part, my favorite thing about the YMCA over there on Six Forks, or off Six Forks in Bailiwick, is, and this is why it's probably my favorite gym that I've ever been to, is there is not a single person in that gym that's good looking. Not a single one. Every single one of us are just middle-aged, average people trying to stay on top of things, right? Just trying to get the blood pressure down. That's all we're doing. There's nobody in there preening and praning and taking pictures of themselves. There's no cute outfits or chiseled bodies. We're all just moms and dads trying to get ahead of it. That's all we're doing, and I love it. And it's different than the other gym I used to go to. I used to go to another gym down the street. It's a little bit more expensive than the YMCA. That's a fancy gym. And I was easily, without question, the ugliest person in that room every time I exercised. Except sometimes I'd run into Alan Morgan and then I had some company, you know? But for the most part, it was just me and all these millennials that were chiseled as all get out. And I'm just like, they, to me, those people, those people work out to get better at working out. You know, at some point or another, like you got to exercise to be healthy. You have to, you don't have a choice. Somebody told me that when you turn 40, you get on a downward escalator and the, unless you exercise, you can't even stay at the same level of health that you were. So you've got to exercise to be healthy to some degree. And everybody at the Y is there to be healthy. People at this other place, they're there to look better than everybody else. You know, they've got their phone set down and they're taking pictures and they're looking at themselves in the mirror and they're doing all of this stuff. And the stuff I would never be caught dead doing in my whole life because I have dignity. And also no muscles to speak of because that would be a waste of time. But I look at those people and it's like, gosh, you're working out to get better at working out. You're exercising to get better at exercising. Like at some point or another, there's a diminishing return on the health value of this. and now you're just making your whole self about it just so you can get better at exercising. And then sometimes, and not all those people, I know some people who exercise to exercise, they're in tremendous shape, and they're wonderfully generous, kind, great people. But then there's others who really highly prioritize it, and then that kind of becomes their value system. They start to judge other people based on how good they are at exercising and what you're allowing into your body and what you're doing. And I'm doing this thing and I'm eating, I'm eating nothing. But what are those things that Aaron has in the refrigerator next door? Protein balls. I'm eating nothing but protein balls. This is a thing now. I thought it was leftover cookie dough from something and I threw it away. I got in trouble because I downed her lunch. But that becomes like a whole subculture where they exercise seemingly just to get better at exercising and then to let other people see how much better they are than them at exercising. And it's not the kind of exercise that I want to do. And I bring that up because in Mark chapter 7, I believe that what we've got here is an instance of the Pharisees acting like some folks who exercise just to exercise. My thought here is the Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. The Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. They based their spiritual worth, their holiness, their spiritual maturity, their spiritual health, and the spiritual health of others on how well they exercised, on how well they followed the rules, on how well they performed their faith. And I'm going to show you what I mean. In a minute, I'm going to read verses 14 and 15. But the preamble, excuse me, I'm going to do that a little bit, getting over a cold this week. The preamble begins in verse 1 of chapter 7. And you can look there if you want. Jesus is sitting down with the disciples. This is somewhere around the Sea of Galilee. So some folks from Jerusalem had come up to talk to Jesus. And they sit down and they're eating a meal together. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that the disciples didn't wash their hands before this meal. And so they go up to Jesus and they go, why is it that your disciples don't honor the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before they eat. They are unclean and should not be eating that food. Not to mention the laws from our elders about ritualistically washing pots and kettles and cups and plates. They are violating all sorts of rules right now, and you don't even seem to care, Jesus. What's the deal with that? And Jesus says, essentially, yeah, the rules you're talking about were made up by men. They were made up by your forefathers and our ancestors and our elders. And now you apply them as if they're gospel truth, but those are not the rules of God. Those are the rules of man. And you've gotten so good at following the rules of man that you are willing to set aside the laws of God and not follow them so that you can follow the laws of man. You have it exactly backwards. What's going on in this Pharisaical culture and the culture of the Pharisees is that they based spiritual health on how well they exercised. It was a competition to see who could follow the rules better. In ancient Israel, there was 630-ish laws. You have to say ish because rabbis don't agree on how many they are, which is, you know, that sounds about right with the rabbinic culture. So the Pharisees knew every single one of these by heart. They knew what they were. They knew how to follow it. They knew what it meant. They knew how to stay in line with it. And they followed every one. And they were meticulous in their rule following. Down to the types of garments they would wear during the day. Some of them considered it work. If you had a nail in your sandal, that was metal and you can't lift that on the Sabbath. So you can't wear those sandals on the Sabbath. They were that strict about it. When the Pharisees, when the super religious would tithe, they wouldn't just tithe from their money. They would go into their pantry and tithe off their spices, their thyme and their cumin and their paprika. They would go in there and they would literally tithe 10% of everything that they had to the temple. And they took great pride in how well they followed the rules. And they took great pride in following the dietary restrictions and only eating what they're supposed to eat and only eating after they've ritualistically cleansed and only eating off plates that are approved by God and by their elders. They were incredible at following the rules. And the problem with this is they got so high-minded about it that they just followed the rules to get better to follow the rules so that they could remain in power and oppress the people they were supposed to be serving. So they're supposed to serve the children of God and spur the children of God on towards God and encourage them and model for them what it is to walk with God in a mature and godly way. And instead, they lorded the rules over people and criticized them for not being as good at it as they were. And they discouraged the populace. Can you imagine growing up in that kind of environment, what your response would be as an independent thinking kid, you wouldn't want any part with your parents' religion. I can't imagine that this would turn generations on to the idea of following God. It pushed them away, and it made God more untouchable, and it was just a way for them to establish their power and their superiority and keep their thumb on the people of God. That's what they did. And so Jesus says, God didn't make up those rules that you're worried about. People did. And then he says this. This is the statement of the day. Mark 7, 14 and 15. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me. Everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. So Jesus gets everybody together. He's been questioned by the Pharisees in front of a crowd of people. And so now they went public with it. He's going public with it. He says, hey, hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Listen to me. Nothing that goes into the body from the outside can defile it. What defiles somebody is what comes out of their body. And so the Pharisees are saying, no, no, no, we're righteous and we're holy because we refuse to eat these things and we wash these things and we follow these practices and nothing comes into our body that's not ritualistically clean. And Jesus says, yeah, that means bupkis. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is what comes out of your body. Think about it this way. God is far more interested in our productivity than our receptivity. God is far more interested in what we produce from our bodies than what we receive in our bodies. He's far more interested in producing within us the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He's far more interested in watching you increase in those fruits in measure over the course of your life and your walk with him. And God is far more interested in the fruit that you produce than what you choose to drink at the end of the day. He's far more interested in what you say and what you do and what you produce than what you intake. He's far more interested in how you treat other people than what your threshold is for what you will and will not watch on Netflix. He's far more interested, our God is, in what you produce with your body than he is in what you receive with your body. And when I say what you produce with your body, I think back to what we talked about last week and this idea that I harp on as much as I can and I will continue to do it. My biggest prayer for anyone that ever calls grace home is that you would increasingly understand yourself as a kingdom builder. We have the simple concept that everybody spends their life building a kingdom. Everyone does. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you going to build? Are you going to build your own temporary kingdom that will fade away and ultimately not matter? Or will you invest your life building, being part of building an eternal kingdom that will never fade away? My goal and prayer for each of you for as long as you call grace home is that you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you were created as a builder of the kingdom of God. And so when we say productivity, God is interested in what we produce and in what we do. What we mean is we want to produce godly character, fruits of the Spirit. We want to be sanctified, grow closer to Him. But He also wants us to produce for His kingdom. And last week we talked about this. It's a good segue from last week into this week. It's funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. That to produce in God's kingdom, to build God's kingdom, to be productive in it, is to grow His kingdom in breadth and depth. To grow it in breadth by reaching people and inviting them to Christ and inviting them to church and having spiritual conversations with them. And in today's day and age, simply showing them that it can be normal to be a Christian and you don't have to be an unreasonable nut job. We can kind of hold it together. And to grow the church in depth. To grow us in our spiritual depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, breadth, discipleship, depth. So it is our job to be productive in that way. And last week, I challenged you. Think back to the wake of your life. Are there people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus now because I met that person. I'm closer to Jesus now because God moved them through my life. That's the kind of productivity that God wants to see in his kingdom. And he's far more concerned with how well you love other people and push people towards Jesus than he is with how well you follow the rules and how buttoned up you are. And this is hard because as believers, we tend towards legalism. We always do this. We want to know what the rules are. We want to know how well we're supposed to follow them so that I can be either good or bad. When I was growing up, there was a phrase, and if you did this, you were a good kid, that I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. And if you did that, you're a good kid. Now, I'm so glad that I changed my standards on that because Jen smokes like a freight train and I love her to death. The joy of my life. I think she tried a cigar one time. Did you try a cigar one time? Yes, you did so. You lie. I'm in trouble. That's all right. Well, we always like to set up these standards about personal holiness and the rules that we should follow because it kind of gets easier. And then we start following the rules to get better at following the rules. And we forget that it's far more about what we produce than what we receive or how buttoned up we live. God cares about us loving our neighbor towards him. He cares about us being people of grace and kindness and authenticity. He cares far more that you are a person of generosity than he cares about how much you chose to spend on your car. You understand? He cares far more about how you treat other people than the specific language you use when you're treating them in a certain way. He cares far more about what comes out of you, about what we produce, the love that we produce in others, than he cares about the standards that we would hold for ourselves. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Because the Pharisees are the far end of rule following equals spiritually good. And what Jesus is showing them is you're hypocrites and your hypocrisy is actually destroying your faith and the faith of those around you. This is why Jesus says that he wants people who worship in spirit and in truth. And when I think of productivity, what I want to produce in my life, there's these two verses that haunt me because they make the bar so very high and I am so very far from hitting it. But I've always said I'd rather look at the standard and be honest about not meeting it than lower the standard so I can feel better about myself. And I've always invited you to do that with me. But there's a passage in Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that others might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that we should live our lives in such a way that people who come into contact with us, even if they don't speak to us, even if they don't ask us about our God, even if we don't get to talk to them about church and about faith and about what we do and why we do it and what we believe, even if we never get to do that, all they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the co-worker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the coworker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is watch us, but that we should let our good work shine before men so that by simply watching us interact in the world, they would see our good works and so glorify our father who is in heaven. What God wants for his children is for your walk to be so radical and your love to be so noticeable and your generosity to be so mind-blowing and your kindness to be so unusual that as people watch you, they go, that person is different and I want what they have. That's the productivity that Jesus is talking about. He's far more interested that people would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven than we would follow the right rules at the right time. The other standard I think of, and I love this one, is in Colossians 3. It says that Jesus leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You know when you walk past somebody that smells good? You weren't thinking about it. It just kind of wafted over to you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's nice. That's how it should be when people interact with us in the world, That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That simply by interacting with us, by moving past us, they would go, huh, that's different. That's nice. It's this standard that's so high and so seemingly impossible to reach, but that's who Paul tells us we are in Colossians, and that's what I want us to be. What if, what if, Grace, we were like this so much. What if we held ourselves to that standard that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This unaggressive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive just scent that wafts off of us that these are people who know and love God. What if that was so pervasive that somebody brings a friend to big night out and they go, these people are different, this community is different, and I think I want to be a part of it. What if that fragrance were so pervasive in us that by someone just coming to our worship or by someone just sitting in with us or by someone just watching us interact before and after a regular Sunday service, when none of us did anything intentional, they got an impression that these people know and love God. What if we were that productive in our faith? That's what God is concerned with, not the rules and how well we follow them. Now, this so far is a particularly grace message because grace people are not rules not rules people. I don't know how long you've been here, but those of us who have been here for a while, we don't care for the rules. We don't follow them. They're there to be broken. We're pretty irreverent about the rules. And so, so far, all the grace people are like, yeah, this is great. God cares way more about productivity. And if we were the kind of church that said amen sometimes, we would have said it by now. Because this is what we believe in. Yes, absolutely. I need Bill Gentile here this week. Bill Gentile, some of you know him, about four times a year, he says, man, I was so close to amen this morning. I needed him here this morning. Bill, darn you. We like that message. God doesn't care about the rules. He cares about love. And so the implication is, so go do whatever you want. I mean, go behave however you want. Go consume whatever you want. Go put whatever you want in your body. Go watch whatever you want. Go do whatever it is you want. Just make sure that what comes out is love. Here's the problem with that. The right results demand the right input. The right results demand the right input. If what my real goal in my life is, is that through me would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God, how is that possible if I am not daily consuming his word? If I am not daily pursuing him in prayer? If I am not daily tracking down older, wiser, more experienced people in my life who've known God longer than me and asking them questions about how they know God and how they follow God, how can the fragrance of the knowledge of God permeate out of me and into the people around me if I'm not spending my days pursuing that knowledge? How can someone see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven if you're too busy to do those good works? If you're not focused on pursuing God yourself. How can someone see the way you interact with a cashier, the way that you handle things in traffic, the way that you interact with a coworker, the way that you de-escalate something tense at work? How can people see you do that if you're not pursuing God and you're not growing in those areas? How can people see the fruit of the Spirit in your life if you're not walking in the Spirit? So I'm not here to tell you what Netflix shows you should and should not watch, but here's what I know. There comes a point at which too much of that one thing, too dark of that one topic, too much of that kind of input is going to begin to affect the output. It's going to begin to affect how we love and what comes out. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I'm not here to tell you what language to use and not. I'm not here to tell you what you should consume and what you should not. But what I am here to tell you this morning is what you consume through your eyes and through your mouth and with your body, the receptivity, the things that you receive from the world into you, what you consume absolutely makes a difference in what you produce. We know this to be true. So this is not a sermon begging you to come up with standards. It is one that is telling you that they matter. And when we read passages like this and Jesus says, listen, the rules don't matter. It's about what you produce. Yeah. That's why he reduced all the laws down to one thing. Go love others if I have loved you, which is the most impossible law to follow in the world unless you're following the essence of the other 630. We have to be people who love God and love others. And that has to dictate to us what we allow to come into our bodies and the kinds of things that we are receptive to because how can we ever possibly be the Christians, the kingdom builders that Jesus calls us to be if we're not consuming him and the things of him always. It reminds me of that verse that I love, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatever things are good, right, noble, trustworthy, of good report, think on these things. If that's not our standard for what we're consuming and what we hold ourselves to, then how can we possibly expect to produce what God wants us to produce? How can we possibly expect to hold up our end of the bargain? See, what we like? We love the no rules thing. We love the standards don't matter thing. That's fun. But if that's really what we think, how can we ever become the people that God has created us to be? How will the fragrance of the knowledge of God ever waft out of us if we never, ever, ever care about the standards that we set for ourselves and what we pursue? And I know this is true because Jesus says this in Mark slander, evil, malice, lust, adultery, lewdness, folly, all those things, they come from inside of me. They come from a value that I've espoused in my own heart. They come from the people that I allow to be around me. And all that stuff gets in there from what I consume, from what I watch and from what I joke about and from what I read and from what I talk about and for the kinds of friendships that I have and for the standards that I hold. All that stuff gets poured in. And if I hang out with people who love money more than anything and love success more than anything, then I am going to adopt their value system. And in my heart, I will allow that seed of greed to grow, that seed of arrogance to grow. And I will begin to make decisions about money and about success and about power and about career that are not in line with producing the righteous life that God desires. Out of me will come that selfishness. Out of me will come that influence from other people. But here's what I think has to be true. If these verses are true, 20 through 23, then the converse must be true as well. If malice and slander and greed and arrogance pour out of my heart because of what I've poured in, then the opposite has to be true, right? That when love and kindness and generosity and mercy and grace flow out of my heart, flow out of my mouth. It is because of what God has placed in my heart. It is because of an earnest pursuit of God. It is because of a healthy sanctification and desire for him. It is because of intentional choices. See, we don't get to produce that fruit by default, okay? You don't just become a Christian and then go about your day as normal, not changing a thing, and then all of a sudden just pouring out of you is love and generosity and kindness. No, there's intentional, difficult decisions that you have to make about how you want to prioritize your time and your talent and your treasure so that God can get a hold of you and move you forward. Last week, I talked about how one of the greatest tools of the enemy is that we're so distracted. We're never quiet anymore ever. We've lost the power to think and to ponder and to wonder. How can we produce what God wants us to produce if we won't stop and take in from him? So when we hear this story in the future, because this is a famous one, when Jesus says what goes into a person doesn't defile them, what comes out does. Often we use that to decry the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of their life, and the rules don't matter, it's all about love, and that's great, and that's true, and it is. But what I think grace needs to hear more than that because if we're going to, listen, church, if we're going to miss the mark on this, we're going to miss it in favor of love and do what you want. Okay? That's our culture. So what grace needs to hear is, yeah, love, but that pours out of what we pour in. That comes out of what we let in. So I have two things for you guys to think about as we wrap up today. First one, and I asked you this in another form last week, but I want you to think about it again. Am I producing, as honestly as you can, am I producing what God wants me to produce? When I look back the last one year, three years, five years, do I see an increase in the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Do I see myself growing in generosity and kindness and patience? Do I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on me and that I've subjected myself to him? Am I producing in the kingdom? Am I pointing people towards Jesus? So it's well and good to not care about the rules. It's well and good to understand this and be like, yeah, I don't have to judge my spirituality and my spiritual health by how well I follow the rules. That's fine. But how well are you producing? And then the second thing I would leave you with this morning is this question. Are the things that I'm consuming helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? Are the things that I'm consuming in my life on the screen, the radio, the phone, the scroll, through the conversations, what I expose myself to willingly and habitually, are the things that I'm consuming in my life helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? I'd love for you to think about those two things as I pray for you, and then we sing to finish up. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the way that you work in our lives. Thank you for being a God that, yes, doesn don't know if I'm producing what I'd like to be producing. I don't know that I'm being used like I'd like to be used. God, would you create in them a fire to make some intentional decisions to put their hand to the plow in your kingdom? Would you show them and show us what we can do and how you'd like to use us? And would that begin by just a simple pursuit and step towards you. And God, as we consider the different things that we consume, I know as I've thought through it, convict us where it's needed. Let it move us to better choices. And God, with the conviction, with that seed of conviction from your word, land on good soil that takes root, that isn't a flash in the pan, that isn't emotional, that doesn't get swept away. But God, as we consider those things in our lives, help us be people that stick to it. We thank you for your son. We thank you for your sacrifice. And we thank you for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you had a hard time parking, get here sooner. I don't know. I don't have anything else I can tell you. All right, we've got so many spots. That's it. And then you're at Big Lots or whatever that's about to be. Thanks for continuing with us in our series in Mark. As we approach this week's sermon and text found in Mark chapter 7, you can go ahead and turn your Bible there if you like. Many of you know, if you've been coming since the beginning of the year, that I started going to the YMCA this year. I started going to the YMCA in January to exercise. Brad Gwynn sees me there. He's my accountability partner. I'm told that there has been about six people who have checked in with him to say, is Nate really going? Is that really a thing that's happening? Yeah, I'm going. And I like it there. I like going to the gym at the Y. There's a lot of things about the Y that I like. I like when you walk in, there's a sweet lady named Miss Ellen that says hey to you and learns your name. And when you leave, she tells you to have a fantastic Monday or have the best Wednesday. And then she hits a little secret button under the desk and it opens both the doors for me. So I don't have to touch them. That's fantastic. There's the soft, there's a soft, chewy ice that you can get as soon as you walk in that normally you have to overpay for at Chick-fil-A, and now it's just there, free. It's great. And you go, and then you work out. It's so fun. But my favorite part, my favorite thing about the YMCA over there on Six Forks, or off Six Forks in Bailiwick, is, and this is why it's probably my favorite gym that I've ever been to, is there is not a single person in that gym that's good looking. Not a single one. Every single one of us are just middle-aged, average people trying to stay on top of things, right? Just trying to get the blood pressure down. That's all we're doing. There's nobody in there preening and praning and taking pictures of themselves. There's no cute outfits or chiseled bodies. We're all just moms and dads trying to get ahead of it. That's all we're doing, and I love it. And it's different than the other gym I used to go to. I used to go to another gym down the street. It's a little bit more expensive than the YMCA. That's a fancy gym. And I was easily, without question, the ugliest person in that room every time I exercised. Except sometimes I'd run into Alan Morgan and then I had some company, you know? But for the most part, it was just me and all these millennials that were chiseled as all get out. And I'm just like, they, to me, those people, those people work out to get better at working out. You know, at some point or another, like you got to exercise to be healthy. You have to, you don't have a choice. Somebody told me that when you turn 40, you get on a downward escalator and the, unless you exercise, you can't even stay at the same level of health that you were. So you've got to exercise to be healthy to some degree. And everybody at the Y is there to be healthy. People at this other place, they're there to look better than everybody else. You know, they've got their phone set down and they're taking pictures and they're looking at themselves in the mirror and they're doing all of this stuff. And the stuff I would never be caught dead doing in my whole life because I have dignity. And also no muscles to speak of because that would be a waste of time. But I look at those people and it's like, gosh, you're working out to get better at working out. You're exercising to get better at exercising. Like at some point or another, there's a diminishing return on the health value of this. and now you're just making your whole self about it just so you can get better at exercising. And then sometimes, and not all those people, I know some people who exercise to exercise, they're in tremendous shape, and they're wonderfully generous, kind, great people. But then there's others who really highly prioritize it, and then that kind of becomes their value system. They start to judge other people based on how good they are at exercising and what you're allowing into your body and what you're doing. And I'm doing this thing and I'm eating, I'm eating nothing. But what are those things that Aaron has in the refrigerator next door? Protein balls. I'm eating nothing but protein balls. This is a thing now. I thought it was leftover cookie dough from something and I threw it away. I got in trouble because I downed her lunch. But that becomes like a whole subculture where they exercise seemingly just to get better at exercising and then to let other people see how much better they are than them at exercising. And it's not the kind of exercise that I want to do. And I bring that up because in Mark chapter 7, I believe that what we've got here is an instance of the Pharisees acting like some folks who exercise just to exercise. My thought here is the Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. The Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. They based their spiritual worth, their holiness, their spiritual maturity, their spiritual health, and the spiritual health of others on how well they exercised, on how well they followed the rules, on how well they performed their faith. And I'm going to show you what I mean. In a minute, I'm going to read verses 14 and 15. But the preamble, excuse me, I'm going to do that a little bit, getting over a cold this week. The preamble begins in verse 1 of chapter 7. And you can look there if you want. Jesus is sitting down with the disciples. This is somewhere around the Sea of Galilee. So some folks from Jerusalem had come up to talk to Jesus. And they sit down and they're eating a meal together. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that the disciples didn't wash their hands before this meal. And so they go up to Jesus and they go, why is it that your disciples don't honor the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before they eat. They are unclean and should not be eating that food. Not to mention the laws from our elders about ritualistically washing pots and kettles and cups and plates. They are violating all sorts of rules right now, and you don't even seem to care, Jesus. What's the deal with that? And Jesus says, essentially, yeah, the rules you're talking about were made up by men. They were made up by your forefathers and our ancestors and our elders. And now you apply them as if they're gospel truth, but those are not the rules of God. Those are the rules of man. And you've gotten so good at following the rules of man that you are willing to set aside the laws of God and not follow them so that you can follow the laws of man. You have it exactly backwards. What's going on in this Pharisaical culture and the culture of the Pharisees is that they based spiritual health on how well they exercised. It was a competition to see who could follow the rules better. In ancient Israel, there was 630-ish laws. You have to say ish because rabbis don't agree on how many they are, which is, you know, that sounds about right with the rabbinic culture. So the Pharisees knew every single one of these by heart. They knew what they were. They knew how to follow it. They knew what it meant. They knew how to stay in line with it. And they followed every one. And they were meticulous in their rule following. Down to the types of garments they would wear during the day. Some of them considered it work. If you had a nail in your sandal, that was metal and you can't lift that on the Sabbath. So you can't wear those sandals on the Sabbath. They were that strict about it. When the Pharisees, when the super religious would tithe, they wouldn't just tithe from their money. They would go into their pantry and tithe off their spices, their thyme and their cumin and their paprika. They would go in there and they would literally tithe 10% of everything that they had to the temple. And they took great pride in how well they followed the rules. And they took great pride in following the dietary restrictions and only eating what they're supposed to eat and only eating after they've ritualistically cleansed and only eating off plates that are approved by God and by their elders. They were incredible at following the rules. And the problem with this is they got so high-minded about it that they just followed the rules to get better to follow the rules so that they could remain in power and oppress the people they were supposed to be serving. So they're supposed to serve the children of God and spur the children of God on towards God and encourage them and model for them what it is to walk with God in a mature and godly way. And instead, they lorded the rules over people and criticized them for not being as good at it as they were. And they discouraged the populace. Can you imagine growing up in that kind of environment, what your response would be as an independent thinking kid, you wouldn't want any part with your parents' religion. I can't imagine that this would turn generations on to the idea of following God. It pushed them away, and it made God more untouchable, and it was just a way for them to establish their power and their superiority and keep their thumb on the people of God. That's what they did. And so Jesus says, God didn't make up those rules that you're worried about. People did. And then he says this. This is the statement of the day. Mark 7, 14 and 15. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me. Everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. So Jesus gets everybody together. He's been questioned by the Pharisees in front of a crowd of people. And so now they went public with it. He's going public with it. He says, hey, hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Listen to me. Nothing that goes into the body from the outside can defile it. What defiles somebody is what comes out of their body. And so the Pharisees are saying, no, no, no, we're righteous and we're holy because we refuse to eat these things and we wash these things and we follow these practices and nothing comes into our body that's not ritualistically clean. And Jesus says, yeah, that means bupkis. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is what comes out of your body. Think about it this way. God is far more interested in our productivity than our receptivity. God is far more interested in what we produce from our bodies than what we receive in our bodies. He's far more interested in producing within us the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He's far more interested in watching you increase in those fruits in measure over the course of your life and your walk with him. And God is far more interested in the fruit that you produce than what you choose to drink at the end of the day. He's far more interested in what you say and what you do and what you produce than what you intake. He's far more interested in how you treat other people than what your threshold is for what you will and will not watch on Netflix. He's far more interested, our God is, in what you produce with your body than he is in what you receive with your body. And when I say what you produce with your body, I think back to what we talked about last week and this idea that I harp on as much as I can and I will continue to do it. My biggest prayer for anyone that ever calls grace home is that you would increasingly understand yourself as a kingdom builder. We have the simple concept that everybody spends their life building a kingdom. Everyone does. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you going to build? Are you going to build your own temporary kingdom that will fade away and ultimately not matter? Or will you invest your life building, being part of building an eternal kingdom that will never fade away? My goal and prayer for each of you for as long as you call grace home is that you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you were created as a builder of the kingdom of God. And so when we say productivity, God is interested in what we produce and in what we do. What we mean is we want to produce godly character, fruits of the Spirit. We want to be sanctified, grow closer to Him. But He also wants us to produce for His kingdom. And last week we talked about this. It's a good segue from last week into this week. It's funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. That to produce in God's kingdom, to build God's kingdom, to be productive in it, is to grow His kingdom in breadth and depth. To grow it in breadth by reaching people and inviting them to Christ and inviting them to church and having spiritual conversations with them. And in today's day and age, simply showing them that it can be normal to be a Christian and you don't have to be an unreasonable nut job. We can kind of hold it together. And to grow the church in depth. To grow us in our spiritual depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, breadth, discipleship, depth. So it is our job to be productive in that way. And last week, I challenged you. Think back to the wake of your life. Are there people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus now because I met that person. I'm closer to Jesus now because God moved them through my life. That's the kind of productivity that God wants to see in his kingdom. And he's far more concerned with how well you love other people and push people towards Jesus than he is with how well you follow the rules and how buttoned up you are. And this is hard because as believers, we tend towards legalism. We always do this. We want to know what the rules are. We want to know how well we're supposed to follow them so that I can be either good or bad. When I was growing up, there was a phrase, and if you did this, you were a good kid, that I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. And if you did that, you're a good kid. Now, I'm so glad that I changed my standards on that because Jen smokes like a freight train and I love her to death. The joy of my life. I think she tried a cigar one time. Did you try a cigar one time? Yes, you did so. You lie. I'm in trouble. That's all right. Well, we always like to set up these standards about personal holiness and the rules that we should follow because it kind of gets easier. And then we start following the rules to get better at following the rules. And we forget that it's far more about what we produce than what we receive or how buttoned up we live. God cares about us loving our neighbor towards him. He cares about us being people of grace and kindness and authenticity. He cares far more that you are a person of generosity than he cares about how much you chose to spend on your car. You understand? He cares far more about how you treat other people than the specific language you use when you're treating them in a certain way. He cares far more about what comes out of you, about what we produce, the love that we produce in others, than he cares about the standards that we would hold for ourselves. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Because the Pharisees are the far end of rule following equals spiritually good. And what Jesus is showing them is you're hypocrites and your hypocrisy is actually destroying your faith and the faith of those around you. This is why Jesus says that he wants people who worship in spirit and in truth. And when I think of productivity, what I want to produce in my life, there's these two verses that haunt me because they make the bar so very high and I am so very far from hitting it. But I've always said I'd rather look at the standard and be honest about not meeting it than lower the standard so I can feel better about myself. And I've always invited you to do that with me. But there's a passage in Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that others might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that we should live our lives in such a way that people who come into contact with us, even if they don't speak to us, even if they don't ask us about our God, even if we don't get to talk to them about church and about faith and about what we do and why we do it and what we believe, even if we never get to do that, all they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the co-worker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the coworker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is watch us, but that we should let our good work shine before men so that by simply watching us interact in the world, they would see our good works and so glorify our father who is in heaven. What God wants for his children is for your walk to be so radical and your love to be so noticeable and your generosity to be so mind-blowing and your kindness to be so unusual that as people watch you, they go, that person is different and I want what they have. That's the productivity that Jesus is talking about. He's far more interested that people would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven than we would follow the right rules at the right time. The other standard I think of, and I love this one, is in Colossians 3. It says that Jesus leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You know when you walk past somebody that smells good? You weren't thinking about it. It just kind of wafted over to you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's nice. That's how it should be when people interact with us in the world, That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That simply by interacting with us, by moving past us, they would go, huh, that's different. That's nice. It's this standard that's so high and so seemingly impossible to reach, but that's who Paul tells us we are in Colossians, and that's what I want us to be. What if, what if, Grace, we were like this so much. What if we held ourselves to that standard that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This unaggressive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive just scent that wafts off of us that these are people who know and love God. What if that was so pervasive that somebody brings a friend to big night out and they go, these people are different, this community is different, and I think I want to be a part of it. What if that fragrance were so pervasive in us that by someone just coming to our worship or by someone just sitting in with us or by someone just watching us interact before and after a regular Sunday service, when none of us did anything intentional, they got an impression that these people know and love God. What if we were that productive in our faith? That's what God is concerned with, not the rules and how well we follow them. Now, this so far is a particularly grace message because grace people are not rules not rules people. I don't know how long you've been here, but those of us who have been here for a while, we don't care for the rules. We don't follow them. They're there to be broken. We're pretty irreverent about the rules. And so, so far, all the grace people are like, yeah, this is great. God cares way more about productivity. And if we were the kind of church that said amen sometimes, we would have said it by now. Because this is what we believe in. Yes, absolutely. I need Bill Gentile here this week. Bill Gentile, some of you know him, about four times a year, he says, man, I was so close to amen this morning. I needed him here this morning. Bill, darn you. We like that message. God doesn't care about the rules. He cares about love. And so the implication is, so go do whatever you want. I mean, go behave however you want. Go consume whatever you want. Go put whatever you want in your body. Go watch whatever you want. Go do whatever it is you want. Just make sure that what comes out is love. Here's the problem with that. The right results demand the right input. The right results demand the right input. If what my real goal in my life is, is that through me would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God, how is that possible if I am not daily consuming his word? If I am not daily pursuing him in prayer? If I am not daily tracking down older, wiser, more experienced people in my life who've known God longer than me and asking them questions about how they know God and how they follow God, how can the fragrance of the knowledge of God permeate out of me and into the people around me if I'm not spending my days pursuing that knowledge? How can someone see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven if you're too busy to do those good works? If you're not focused on pursuing God yourself. How can someone see the way you interact with a cashier, the way that you handle things in traffic, the way that you interact with a coworker, the way that you de-escalate something tense at work? How can people see you do that if you're not pursuing God and you're not growing in those areas? How can people see the fruit of the Spirit in your life if you're not walking in the Spirit? So I'm not here to tell you what Netflix shows you should and should not watch, but here's what I know. There comes a point at which too much of that one thing, too dark of that one topic, too much of that kind of input is going to begin to affect the output. It's going to begin to affect how we love and what comes out. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I'm not here to tell you what language to use and not. I'm not here to tell you what you should consume and what you should not. But what I am here to tell you this morning is what you consume through your eyes and through your mouth and with your body, the receptivity, the things that you receive from the world into you, what you consume absolutely makes a difference in what you produce. We know this to be true. So this is not a sermon begging you to come up with standards. It is one that is telling you that they matter. And when we read passages like this and Jesus says, listen, the rules don't matter. It's about what you produce. Yeah. That's why he reduced all the laws down to one thing. Go love others if I have loved you, which is the most impossible law to follow in the world unless you're following the essence of the other 630. We have to be people who love God and love others. And that has to dictate to us what we allow to come into our bodies and the kinds of things that we are receptive to because how can we ever possibly be the Christians, the kingdom builders that Jesus calls us to be if we're not consuming him and the things of him always. It reminds me of that verse that I love, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatever things are good, right, noble, trustworthy, of good report, think on these things. If that's not our standard for what we're consuming and what we hold ourselves to, then how can we possibly expect to produce what God wants us to produce? How can we possibly expect to hold up our end of the bargain? See, what we like? We love the no rules thing. We love the standards don't matter thing. That's fun. But if that's really what we think, how can we ever become the people that God has created us to be? How will the fragrance of the knowledge of God ever waft out of us if we never, ever, ever care about the standards that we set for ourselves and what we pursue? And I know this is true because Jesus says this in Mark slander, evil, malice, lust, adultery, lewdness, folly, all those things, they come from inside of me. They come from a value that I've espoused in my own heart. They come from the people that I allow to be around me. And all that stuff gets in there from what I consume, from what I watch and from what I joke about and from what I read and from what I talk about and for the kinds of friendships that I have and for the standards that I hold. All that stuff gets poured in. And if I hang out with people who love money more than anything and love success more than anything, then I am going to adopt their value system. And in my heart, I will allow that seed of greed to grow, that seed of arrogance to grow. And I will begin to make decisions about money and about success and about power and about career that are not in line with producing the righteous life that God desires. Out of me will come that selfishness. Out of me will come that influence from other people. But here's what I think has to be true. If these verses are true, 20 through 23, then the converse must be true as well. If malice and slander and greed and arrogance pour out of my heart because of what I've poured in, then the opposite has to be true, right? That when love and kindness and generosity and mercy and grace flow out of my heart, flow out of my mouth. It is because of what God has placed in my heart. It is because of an earnest pursuit of God. It is because of a healthy sanctification and desire for him. It is because of intentional choices. See, we don't get to produce that fruit by default, okay? You don't just become a Christian and then go about your day as normal, not changing a thing, and then all of a sudden just pouring out of you is love and generosity and kindness. No, there's intentional, difficult decisions that you have to make about how you want to prioritize your time and your talent and your treasure so that God can get a hold of you and move you forward. Last week, I talked about how one of the greatest tools of the enemy is that we're so distracted. We're never quiet anymore ever. We've lost the power to think and to ponder and to wonder. How can we produce what God wants us to produce if we won't stop and take in from him? So when we hear this story in the future, because this is a famous one, when Jesus says what goes into a person doesn't defile them, what comes out does. Often we use that to decry the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of their life, and the rules don't matter, it's all about love, and that's great, and that's true, and it is. But what I think grace needs to hear more than that because if we're going to, listen, church, if we're going to miss the mark on this, we're going to miss it in favor of love and do what you want. Okay? That's our culture. So what grace needs to hear is, yeah, love, but that pours out of what we pour in. That comes out of what we let in. So I have two things for you guys to think about as we wrap up today. First one, and I asked you this in another form last week, but I want you to think about it again. Am I producing, as honestly as you can, am I producing what God wants me to produce? When I look back the last one year, three years, five years, do I see an increase in the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Do I see myself growing in generosity and kindness and patience? Do I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on me and that I've subjected myself to him? Am I producing in the kingdom? Am I pointing people towards Jesus? So it's well and good to not care about the rules. It's well and good to understand this and be like, yeah, I don't have to judge my spirituality and my spiritual health by how well I follow the rules. That's fine. But how well are you producing? And then the second thing I would leave you with this morning is this question. Are the things that I'm consuming helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? Are the things that I'm consuming in my life on the screen, the radio, the phone, the scroll, through the conversations, what I expose myself to willingly and habitually, are the things that I'm consuming in my life helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? I'd love for you to think about those two things as I pray for you, and then we sing to finish up. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the way that you work in our lives. Thank you for being a God that, yes, doesn don't know if I'm producing what I'd like to be producing. I don't know that I'm being used like I'd like to be used. God, would you create in them a fire to make some intentional decisions to put their hand to the plow in your kingdom? Would you show them and show us what we can do and how you'd like to use us? And would that begin by just a simple pursuit and step towards you. And God, as we consider the different things that we consume, I know as I've thought through it, convict us where it's needed. Let it move us to better choices. And God, with the conviction, with that seed of conviction from your word, land on good soil that takes root, that isn't a flash in the pan, that isn't emotional, that doesn't get swept away. But God, as we consider those things in our lives, help us be people that stick to it. We thank you for your son. We thank you for your sacrifice. And we thank you for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you had a hard time parking, get here sooner. I don't know. I don't have anything else I can tell you. All right, we've got so many spots. That's it. And then you're at Big Lots or whatever that's about to be. Thanks for continuing with us in our series in Mark. As we approach this week's sermon and text found in Mark chapter 7, you can go ahead and turn your Bible there if you like. Many of you know, if you've been coming since the beginning of the year, that I started going to the YMCA this year. I started going to the YMCA in January to exercise. Brad Gwynn sees me there. He's my accountability partner. I'm told that there has been about six people who have checked in with him to say, is Nate really going? Is that really a thing that's happening? Yeah, I'm going. And I like it there. I like going to the gym at the Y. There's a lot of things about the Y that I like. I like when you walk in, there's a sweet lady named Miss Ellen that says hey to you and learns your name. And when you leave, she tells you to have a fantastic Monday or have the best Wednesday. And then she hits a little secret button under the desk and it opens both the doors for me. So I don't have to touch them. That's fantastic. There's the soft, there's a soft, chewy ice that you can get as soon as you walk in that normally you have to overpay for at Chick-fil-A, and now it's just there, free. It's great. And you go, and then you work out. It's so fun. But my favorite part, my favorite thing about the YMCA over there on Six Forks, or off Six Forks in Bailiwick, is, and this is why it's probably my favorite gym that I've ever been to, is there is not a single person in that gym that's good looking. Not a single one. Every single one of us are just middle-aged, average people trying to stay on top of things, right? Just trying to get the blood pressure down. That's all we're doing. There's nobody in there preening and praning and taking pictures of themselves. There's no cute outfits or chiseled bodies. We're all just moms and dads trying to get ahead of it. That's all we're doing, and I love it. And it's different than the other gym I used to go to. I used to go to another gym down the street. It's a little bit more expensive than the YMCA. That's a fancy gym. And I was easily, without question, the ugliest person in that room every time I exercised. Except sometimes I'd run into Alan Morgan and then I had some company, you know? But for the most part, it was just me and all these millennials that were chiseled as all get out. And I'm just like, they, to me, those people, those people work out to get better at working out. You know, at some point or another, like you got to exercise to be healthy. You have to, you don't have a choice. Somebody told me that when you turn 40, you get on a downward escalator and the, unless you exercise, you can't even stay at the same level of health that you were. So you've got to exercise to be healthy to some degree. And everybody at the Y is there to be healthy. People at this other place, they're there to look better than everybody else. You know, they've got their phone set down and they're taking pictures and they're looking at themselves in the mirror and they're doing all of this stuff. And the stuff I would never be caught dead doing in my whole life because I have dignity. And also no muscles to speak of because that would be a waste of time. But I look at those people and it's like, gosh, you're working out to get better at working out. You're exercising to get better at exercising. Like at some point or another, there's a diminishing return on the health value of this. and now you're just making your whole self about it just so you can get better at exercising. And then sometimes, and not all those people, I know some people who exercise to exercise, they're in tremendous shape, and they're wonderfully generous, kind, great people. But then there's others who really highly prioritize it, and then that kind of becomes their value system. They start to judge other people based on how good they are at exercising and what you're allowing into your body and what you're doing. And I'm doing this thing and I'm eating, I'm eating nothing. But what are those things that Aaron has in the refrigerator next door? Protein balls. I'm eating nothing but protein balls. This is a thing now. I thought it was leftover cookie dough from something and I threw it away. I got in trouble because I downed her lunch. But that becomes like a whole subculture where they exercise seemingly just to get better at exercising and then to let other people see how much better they are than them at exercising. And it's not the kind of exercise that I want to do. And I bring that up because in Mark chapter 7, I believe that what we've got here is an instance of the Pharisees acting like some folks who exercise just to exercise. My thought here is the Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. The Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. They based their spiritual worth, their holiness, their spiritual maturity, their spiritual health, and the spiritual health of others on how well they exercised, on how well they followed the rules, on how well they performed their faith. And I'm going to show you what I mean. In a minute, I'm going to read verses 14 and 15. But the preamble, excuse me, I'm going to do that a little bit, getting over a cold this week. The preamble begins in verse 1 of chapter 7. And you can look there if you want. Jesus is sitting down with the disciples. This is somewhere around the Sea of Galilee. So some folks from Jerusalem had come up to talk to Jesus. And they sit down and they're eating a meal together. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that the disciples didn't wash their hands before this meal. And so they go up to Jesus and they go, why is it that your disciples don't honor the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before they eat. They are unclean and should not be eating that food. Not to mention the laws from our elders about ritualistically washing pots and kettles and cups and plates. They are violating all sorts of rules right now, and you don't even seem to care, Jesus. What's the deal with that? And Jesus says, essentially, yeah, the rules you're talking about were made up by men. They were made up by your forefathers and our ancestors and our elders. And now you apply them as if they're gospel truth, but those are not the rules of God. Those are the rules of man. And you've gotten so good at following the rules of man that you are willing to set aside the laws of God and not follow them so that you can follow the laws of man. You have it exactly backwards. What's going on in this Pharisaical culture and the culture of the Pharisees is that they based spiritual health on how well they exercised. It was a competition to see who could follow the rules better. In ancient Israel, there was 630-ish laws. You have to say ish because rabbis don't agree on how many they are, which is, you know, that sounds about right with the rabbinic culture. So the Pharisees knew every single one of these by heart. They knew what they were. They knew how to follow it. They knew what it meant. They knew how to stay in line with it. And they followed every one. And they were meticulous in their rule following. Down to the types of garments they would wear during the day. Some of them considered it work. If you had a nail in your sandal, that was metal and you can't lift that on the Sabbath. So you can't wear those sandals on the Sabbath. They were that strict about it. When the Pharisees, when the super religious would tithe, they wouldn't just tithe from their money. They would go into their pantry and tithe off their spices, their thyme and their cumin and their paprika. They would go in there and they would literally tithe 10% of everything that they had to the temple. And they took great pride in how well they followed the rules. And they took great pride in following the dietary restrictions and only eating what they're supposed to eat and only eating after they've ritualistically cleansed and only eating off plates that are approved by God and by their elders. They were incredible at following the rules. And the problem with this is they got so high-minded about it that they just followed the rules to get better to follow the rules so that they could remain in power and oppress the people they were supposed to be serving. So they're supposed to serve the children of God and spur the children of God on towards God and encourage them and model for them what it is to walk with God in a mature and godly way. And instead, they lorded the rules over people and criticized them for not being as good at it as they were. And they discouraged the populace. Can you imagine growing up in that kind of environment, what your response would be as an independent thinking kid, you wouldn't want any part with your parents' religion. I can't imagine that this would turn generations on to the idea of following God. It pushed them away, and it made God more untouchable, and it was just a way for them to establish their power and their superiority and keep their thumb on the people of God. That's what they did. And so Jesus says, God didn't make up those rules that you're worried about. People did. And then he says this. This is the statement of the day. Mark 7, 14 and 15. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me. Everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. So Jesus gets everybody together. He's been questioned by the Pharisees in front of a crowd of people. And so now they went public with it. He's going public with it. He says, hey, hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Listen to me. Nothing that goes into the body from the outside can defile it. What defiles somebody is what comes out of their body. And so the Pharisees are saying, no, no, no, we're righteous and we're holy because we refuse to eat these things and we wash these things and we follow these practices and nothing comes into our body that's not ritualistically clean. And Jesus says, yeah, that means bupkis. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is what comes out of your body. Think about it this way. God is far more interested in our productivity than our receptivity. God is far more interested in what we produce from our bodies than what we receive in our bodies. He's far more interested in producing within us the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He's far more interested in watching you increase in those fruits in measure over the course of your life and your walk with him. And God is far more interested in the fruit that you produce than what you choose to drink at the end of the day. He's far more interested in what you say and what you do and what you produce than what you intake. He's far more interested in how you treat other people than what your threshold is for what you will and will not watch on Netflix. He's far more interested, our God is, in what you produce with your body than he is in what you receive with your body. And when I say what you produce with your body, I think back to what we talked about last week and this idea that I harp on as much as I can and I will continue to do it. My biggest prayer for anyone that ever calls grace home is that you would increasingly understand yourself as a kingdom builder. We have the simple concept that everybody spends their life building a kingdom. Everyone does. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you going to build? Are you going to build your own temporary kingdom that will fade away and ultimately not matter? Or will you invest your life building, being part of building an eternal kingdom that will never fade away? My goal and prayer for each of you for as long as you call grace home is that you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you were created as a builder of the kingdom of God. And so when we say productivity, God is interested in what we produce and in what we do. What we mean is we want to produce godly character, fruits of the Spirit. We want to be sanctified, grow closer to Him. But He also wants us to produce for His kingdom. And last week we talked about this. It's a good segue from last week into this week. It's funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. That to produce in God's kingdom, to build God's kingdom, to be productive in it, is to grow His kingdom in breadth and depth. To grow it in breadth by reaching people and inviting them to Christ and inviting them to church and having spiritual conversations with them. And in today's day and age, simply showing them that it can be normal to be a Christian and you don't have to be an unreasonable nut job. We can kind of hold it together. And to grow the church in depth. To grow us in our spiritual depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, breadth, discipleship, depth. So it is our job to be productive in that way. And last week, I challenged you. Think back to the wake of your life. Are there people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus now because I met that person. I'm closer to Jesus now because God moved them through my life. That's the kind of productivity that God wants to see in his kingdom. And he's far more concerned with how well you love other people and push people towards Jesus than he is with how well you follow the rules and how buttoned up you are. And this is hard because as believers, we tend towards legalism. We always do this. We want to know what the rules are. We want to know how well we're supposed to follow them so that I can be either good or bad. When I was growing up, there was a phrase, and if you did this, you were a good kid, that I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. And if you did that, you're a good kid. Now, I'm so glad that I changed my standards on that because Jen smokes like a freight train and I love her to death. The joy of my life. I think she tried a cigar one time. Did you try a cigar one time? Yes, you did so. You lie. I'm in trouble. That's all right. Well, we always like to set up these standards about personal holiness and the rules that we should follow because it kind of gets easier. And then we start following the rules to get better at following the rules. And we forget that it's far more about what we produce than what we receive or how buttoned up we live. God cares about us loving our neighbor towards him. He cares about us being people of grace and kindness and authenticity. He cares far more that you are a person of generosity than he cares about how much you chose to spend on your car. You understand? He cares far more about how you treat other people than the specific language you use when you're treating them in a certain way. He cares far more about what comes out of you, about what we produce, the love that we produce in others, than he cares about the standards that we would hold for ourselves. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Because the Pharisees are the far end of rule following equals spiritually good. And what Jesus is showing them is you're hypocrites and your hypocrisy is actually destroying your faith and the faith of those around you. This is why Jesus says that he wants people who worship in spirit and in truth. And when I think of productivity, what I want to produce in my life, there's these two verses that haunt me because they make the bar so very high and I am so very far from hitting it. But I've always said I'd rather look at the standard and be honest about not meeting it than lower the standard so I can feel better about myself. And I've always invited you to do that with me. But there's a passage in Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that others might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that we should live our lives in such a way that people who come into contact with us, even if they don't speak to us, even if they don't ask us about our God, even if we don't get to talk to them about church and about faith and about what we do and why we do it and what we believe, even if we never get to do that, all they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the co-worker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the coworker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is watch us, but that we should let our good work shine before men so that by simply watching us interact in the world, they would see our good works and so glorify our father who is in heaven. What God wants for his children is for your walk to be so radical and your love to be so noticeable and your generosity to be so mind-blowing and your kindness to be so unusual that as people watch you, they go, that person is different and I want what they have. That's the productivity that Jesus is talking about. He's far more interested that people would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven than we would follow the right rules at the right time. The other standard I think of, and I love this one, is in Colossians 3. It says that Jesus leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You know when you walk past somebody that smells good? You weren't thinking about it. It just kind of wafted over to you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's nice. That's how it should be when people interact with us in the world, That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That simply by interacting with us, by moving past us, they would go, huh, that's different. That's nice. It's this standard that's so high and so seemingly impossible to reach, but that's who Paul tells us we are in Colossians, and that's what I want us to be. What if, what if, Grace, we were like this so much. What if we held ourselves to that standard that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This unaggressive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive just scent that wafts off of us that these are people who know and love God. What if that was so pervasive that somebody brings a friend to big night out and they go, these people are different, this community is different, and I think I want to be a part of it. What if that fragrance were so pervasive in us that by someone just coming to our worship or by someone just sitting in with us or by someone just watching us interact before and after a regular Sunday service, when none of us did anything intentional, they got an impression that these people know and love God. What if we were that productive in our faith? That's what God is concerned with, not the rules and how well we follow them. Now, this so far is a particularly grace message because grace people are not rules not rules people. I don't know how long you've been here, but those of us who have been here for a while, we don't care for the rules. We don't follow them. They're there to be broken. We're pretty irreverent about the rules. And so, so far, all the grace people are like, yeah, this is great. God cares way more about productivity. And if we were the kind of church that said amen sometimes, we would have said it by now. Because this is what we believe in. Yes, absolutely. I need Bill Gentile here this week. Bill Gentile, some of you know him, about four times a year, he says, man, I was so close to amen this morning. I needed him here this morning. Bill, darn you. We like that message. God doesn't care about the rules. He cares about love. And so the implication is, so go do whatever you want. I mean, go behave however you want. Go consume whatever you want. Go put whatever you want in your body. Go watch whatever you want. Go do whatever it is you want. Just make sure that what comes out is love. Here's the problem with that. The right results demand the right input. The right results demand the right input. If what my real goal in my life is, is that through me would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God, how is that possible if I am not daily consuming his word? If I am not daily pursuing him in prayer? If I am not daily tracking down older, wiser, more experienced people in my life who've known God longer than me and asking them questions about how they know God and how they follow God, how can the fragrance of the knowledge of God permeate out of me and into the people around me if I'm not spending my days pursuing that knowledge? How can someone see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven if you're too busy to do those good works? If you're not focused on pursuing God yourself. How can someone see the way you interact with a cashier, the way that you handle things in traffic, the way that you interact with a coworker, the way that you de-escalate something tense at work? How can people see you do that if you're not pursuing God and you're not growing in those areas? How can people see the fruit of the Spirit in your life if you're not walking in the Spirit? So I'm not here to tell you what Netflix shows you should and should not watch, but here's what I know. There comes a point at which too much of that one thing, too dark of that one topic, too much of that kind of input is going to begin to affect the output. It's going to begin to affect how we love and what comes out. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I'm not here to tell you what language to use and not. I'm not here to tell you what you should consume and what you should not. But what I am here to tell you this morning is what you consume through your eyes and through your mouth and with your body, the receptivity, the things that you receive from the world into you, what you consume absolutely makes a difference in what you produce. We know this to be true. So this is not a sermon begging you to come up with standards. It is one that is telling you that they matter. And when we read passages like this and Jesus says, listen, the rules don't matter. It's about what you produce. Yeah. That's why he reduced all the laws down to one thing. Go love others if I have loved you, which is the most impossible law to follow in the world unless you're following the essence of the other 630. We have to be people who love God and love others. And that has to dictate to us what we allow to come into our bodies and the kinds of things that we are receptive to because how can we ever possibly be the Christians, the kingdom builders that Jesus calls us to be if we're not consuming him and the things of him always. It reminds me of that verse that I love, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatever things are good, right, noble, trustworthy, of good report, think on these things. If that's not our standard for what we're consuming and what we hold ourselves to, then how can we possibly expect to produce what God wants us to produce? How can we possibly expect to hold up our end of the bargain? See, what we like? We love the no rules thing. We love the standards don't matter thing. That's fun. But if that's really what we think, how can we ever become the people that God has created us to be? How will the fragrance of the knowledge of God ever waft out of us if we never, ever, ever care about the standards that we set for ourselves and what we pursue? And I know this is true because Jesus says this in Mark slander, evil, malice, lust, adultery, lewdness, folly, all those things, they come from inside of me. They come from a value that I've espoused in my own heart. They come from the people that I allow to be around me. And all that stuff gets in there from what I consume, from what I watch and from what I joke about and from what I read and from what I talk about and for the kinds of friendships that I have and for the standards that I hold. All that stuff gets poured in. And if I hang out with people who love money more than anything and love success more than anything, then I am going to adopt their value system. And in my heart, I will allow that seed of greed to grow, that seed of arrogance to grow. And I will begin to make decisions about money and about success and about power and about career that are not in line with producing the righteous life that God desires. Out of me will come that selfishness. Out of me will come that influence from other people. But here's what I think has to be true. If these verses are true, 20 through 23, then the converse must be true as well. If malice and slander and greed and arrogance pour out of my heart because of what I've poured in, then the opposite has to be true, right? That when love and kindness and generosity and mercy and grace flow out of my heart, flow out of my mouth. It is because of what God has placed in my heart. It is because of an earnest pursuit of God. It is because of a healthy sanctification and desire for him. It is because of intentional choices. See, we don't get to produce that fruit by default, okay? You don't just become a Christian and then go about your day as normal, not changing a thing, and then all of a sudden just pouring out of you is love and generosity and kindness. No, there's intentional, difficult decisions that you have to make about how you want to prioritize your time and your talent and your treasure so that God can get a hold of you and move you forward. Last week, I talked about how one of the greatest tools of the enemy is that we're so distracted. We're never quiet anymore ever. We've lost the power to think and to ponder and to wonder. How can we produce what God wants us to produce if we won't stop and take in from him? So when we hear this story in the future, because this is a famous one, when Jesus says what goes into a person doesn't defile them, what comes out does. Often we use that to decry the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of their life, and the rules don't matter, it's all about love, and that's great, and that's true, and it is. But what I think grace needs to hear more than that because if we're going to, listen, church, if we're going to miss the mark on this, we're going to miss it in favor of love and do what you want. Okay? That's our culture. So what grace needs to hear is, yeah, love, but that pours out of what we pour in. That comes out of what we let in. So I have two things for you guys to think about as we wrap up today. First one, and I asked you this in another form last week, but I want you to think about it again. Am I producing, as honestly as you can, am I producing what God wants me to produce? When I look back the last one year, three years, five years, do I see an increase in the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Do I see myself growing in generosity and kindness and patience? Do I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on me and that I've subjected myself to him? Am I producing in the kingdom? Am I pointing people towards Jesus? So it's well and good to not care about the rules. It's well and good to understand this and be like, yeah, I don't have to judge my spirituality and my spiritual health by how well I follow the rules. That's fine. But how well are you producing? And then the second thing I would leave you with this morning is this question. Are the things that I'm consuming helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? Are the things that I'm consuming in my life on the screen, the radio, the phone, the scroll, through the conversations, what I expose myself to willingly and habitually, are the things that I'm consuming in my life helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? I'd love for you to think about those two things as I pray for you, and then we sing to finish up. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the way that you work in our lives. Thank you for being a God that, yes, doesn don't know if I'm producing what I'd like to be producing. I don't know that I'm being used like I'd like to be used. God, would you create in them a fire to make some intentional decisions to put their hand to the plow in your kingdom? Would you show them and show us what we can do and how you'd like to use us? And would that begin by just a simple pursuit and step towards you. And God, as we consider the different things that we consume, I know as I've thought through it, convict us where it's needed. Let it move us to better choices. And God, with the conviction, with that seed of conviction from your word, land on good soil that takes root, that isn't a flash in the pan, that isn't emotional, that doesn't get swept away. But God, as we consider those things in our lives, help us be people that stick to it. We thank you for your son. We thank you for your sacrifice. And we thank you for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you had a hard time parking, get here sooner. I don't know. I don't have anything else I can tell you. All right, we've got so many spots. That's it. And then you're at Big Lots or whatever that's about to be. Thanks for continuing with us in our series in Mark. As we approach this week's sermon and text found in Mark chapter 7, you can go ahead and turn your Bible there if you like. Many of you know, if you've been coming since the beginning of the year, that I started going to the YMCA this year. I started going to the YMCA in January to exercise. Brad Gwynn sees me there. He's my accountability partner. I'm told that there has been about six people who have checked in with him to say, is Nate really going? Is that really a thing that's happening? Yeah, I'm going. And I like it there. I like going to the gym at the Y. There's a lot of things about the Y that I like. I like when you walk in, there's a sweet lady named Miss Ellen that says hey to you and learns your name. And when you leave, she tells you to have a fantastic Monday or have the best Wednesday. And then she hits a little secret button under the desk and it opens both the doors for me. So I don't have to touch them. That's fantastic. There's the soft, there's a soft, chewy ice that you can get as soon as you walk in that normally you have to overpay for at Chick-fil-A, and now it's just there, free. It's great. And you go, and then you work out. It's so fun. But my favorite part, my favorite thing about the YMCA over there on Six Forks, or off Six Forks in Bailiwick, is, and this is why it's probably my favorite gym that I've ever been to, is there is not a single person in that gym that's good looking. Not a single one. Every single one of us are just middle-aged, average people trying to stay on top of things, right? Just trying to get the blood pressure down. That's all we're doing. There's nobody in there preening and praning and taking pictures of themselves. There's no cute outfits or chiseled bodies. We're all just moms and dads trying to get ahead of it. That's all we're doing, and I love it. And it's different than the other gym I used to go to. I used to go to another gym down the street. It's a little bit more expensive than the YMCA. That's a fancy gym. And I was easily, without question, the ugliest person in that room every time I exercised. Except sometimes I'd run into Alan Morgan and then I had some company, you know? But for the most part, it was just me and all these millennials that were chiseled as all get out. And I'm just like, they, to me, those people, those people work out to get better at working out. You know, at some point or another, like you got to exercise to be healthy. You have to, you don't have a choice. Somebody told me that when you turn 40, you get on a downward escalator and the, unless you exercise, you can't even stay at the same level of health that you were. So you've got to exercise to be healthy to some degree. And everybody at the Y is there to be healthy. People at this other place, they're there to look better than everybody else. You know, they've got their phone set down and they're taking pictures and they're looking at themselves in the mirror and they're doing all of this stuff. And the stuff I would never be caught dead doing in my whole life because I have dignity. And also no muscles to speak of because that would be a waste of time. But I look at those people and it's like, gosh, you're working out to get better at working out. You're exercising to get better at exercising. Like at some point or another, there's a diminishing return on the health value of this. and now you're just making your whole self about it just so you can get better at exercising. And then sometimes, and not all those people, I know some people who exercise to exercise, they're in tremendous shape, and they're wonderfully generous, kind, great people. But then there's others who really highly prioritize it, and then that kind of becomes their value system. They start to judge other people based on how good they are at exercising and what you're allowing into your body and what you're doing. And I'm doing this thing and I'm eating, I'm eating nothing. But what are those things that Aaron has in the refrigerator next door? Protein balls. I'm eating nothing but protein balls. This is a thing now. I thought it was leftover cookie dough from something and I threw it away. I got in trouble because I downed her lunch. But that becomes like a whole subculture where they exercise seemingly just to get better at exercising and then to let other people see how much better they are than them at exercising. And it's not the kind of exercise that I want to do. And I bring that up because in Mark chapter 7, I believe that what we've got here is an instance of the Pharisees acting like some folks who exercise just to exercise. My thought here is the Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. The Pharisees based their spiritual worth on how well they exercised. They based their spiritual worth, their holiness, their spiritual maturity, their spiritual health, and the spiritual health of others on how well they exercised, on how well they followed the rules, on how well they performed their faith. And I'm going to show you what I mean. In a minute, I'm going to read verses 14 and 15. But the preamble, excuse me, I'm going to do that a little bit, getting over a cold this week. The preamble begins in verse 1 of chapter 7. And you can look there if you want. Jesus is sitting down with the disciples. This is somewhere around the Sea of Galilee. So some folks from Jerusalem had come up to talk to Jesus. And they sit down and they're eating a meal together. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that the disciples didn't wash their hands before this meal. And so they go up to Jesus and they go, why is it that your disciples don't honor the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before they eat. They are unclean and should not be eating that food. Not to mention the laws from our elders about ritualistically washing pots and kettles and cups and plates. They are violating all sorts of rules right now, and you don't even seem to care, Jesus. What's the deal with that? And Jesus says, essentially, yeah, the rules you're talking about were made up by men. They were made up by your forefathers and our ancestors and our elders. And now you apply them as if they're gospel truth, but those are not the rules of God. Those are the rules of man. And you've gotten so good at following the rules of man that you are willing to set aside the laws of God and not follow them so that you can follow the laws of man. You have it exactly backwards. What's going on in this Pharisaical culture and the culture of the Pharisees is that they based spiritual health on how well they exercised. It was a competition to see who could follow the rules better. In ancient Israel, there was 630-ish laws. You have to say ish because rabbis don't agree on how many they are, which is, you know, that sounds about right with the rabbinic culture. So the Pharisees knew every single one of these by heart. They knew what they were. They knew how to follow it. They knew what it meant. They knew how to stay in line with it. And they followed every one. And they were meticulous in their rule following. Down to the types of garments they would wear during the day. Some of them considered it work. If you had a nail in your sandal, that was metal and you can't lift that on the Sabbath. So you can't wear those sandals on the Sabbath. They were that strict about it. When the Pharisees, when the super religious would tithe, they wouldn't just tithe from their money. They would go into their pantry and tithe off their spices, their thyme and their cumin and their paprika. They would go in there and they would literally tithe 10% of everything that they had to the temple. And they took great pride in how well they followed the rules. And they took great pride in following the dietary restrictions and only eating what they're supposed to eat and only eating after they've ritualistically cleansed and only eating off plates that are approved by God and by their elders. They were incredible at following the rules. And the problem with this is they got so high-minded about it that they just followed the rules to get better to follow the rules so that they could remain in power and oppress the people they were supposed to be serving. So they're supposed to serve the children of God and spur the children of God on towards God and encourage them and model for them what it is to walk with God in a mature and godly way. And instead, they lorded the rules over people and criticized them for not being as good at it as they were. And they discouraged the populace. Can you imagine growing up in that kind of environment, what your response would be as an independent thinking kid, you wouldn't want any part with your parents' religion. I can't imagine that this would turn generations on to the idea of following God. It pushed them away, and it made God more untouchable, and it was just a way for them to establish their power and their superiority and keep their thumb on the people of God. That's what they did. And so Jesus says, God didn't make up those rules that you're worried about. People did. And then he says this. This is the statement of the day. Mark 7, 14 and 15. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me. Everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. So Jesus gets everybody together. He's been questioned by the Pharisees in front of a crowd of people. And so now they went public with it. He's going public with it. He says, hey, hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Listen to me. Nothing that goes into the body from the outside can defile it. What defiles somebody is what comes out of their body. And so the Pharisees are saying, no, no, no, we're righteous and we're holy because we refuse to eat these things and we wash these things and we follow these practices and nothing comes into our body that's not ritualistically clean. And Jesus says, yeah, that means bupkis. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is what comes out of your body. Think about it this way. God is far more interested in our productivity than our receptivity. God is far more interested in what we produce from our bodies than what we receive in our bodies. He's far more interested in producing within us the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He's far more interested in watching you increase in those fruits in measure over the course of your life and your walk with him. And God is far more interested in the fruit that you produce than what you choose to drink at the end of the day. He's far more interested in what you say and what you do and what you produce than what you intake. He's far more interested in how you treat other people than what your threshold is for what you will and will not watch on Netflix. He's far more interested, our God is, in what you produce with your body than he is in what you receive with your body. And when I say what you produce with your body, I think back to what we talked about last week and this idea that I harp on as much as I can and I will continue to do it. My biggest prayer for anyone that ever calls grace home is that you would increasingly understand yourself as a kingdom builder. We have the simple concept that everybody spends their life building a kingdom. Everyone does. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you going to build? Are you going to build your own temporary kingdom that will fade away and ultimately not matter? Or will you invest your life building, being part of building an eternal kingdom that will never fade away? My goal and prayer for each of you for as long as you call grace home is that you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you were created as a builder of the kingdom of God. And so when we say productivity, God is interested in what we produce and in what we do. What we mean is we want to produce godly character, fruits of the Spirit. We want to be sanctified, grow closer to Him. But He also wants us to produce for His kingdom. And last week we talked about this. It's a good segue from last week into this week. It's funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. That to produce in God's kingdom, to build God's kingdom, to be productive in it, is to grow His kingdom in breadth and depth. To grow it in breadth by reaching people and inviting them to Christ and inviting them to church and having spiritual conversations with them. And in today's day and age, simply showing them that it can be normal to be a Christian and you don't have to be an unreasonable nut job. We can kind of hold it together. And to grow the church in depth. To grow us in our spiritual depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, breadth, discipleship, depth. So it is our job to be productive in that way. And last week, I challenged you. Think back to the wake of your life. Are there people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus now because I met that person. I'm closer to Jesus now because God moved them through my life. That's the kind of productivity that God wants to see in his kingdom. And he's far more concerned with how well you love other people and push people towards Jesus than he is with how well you follow the rules and how buttoned up you are. And this is hard because as believers, we tend towards legalism. We always do this. We want to know what the rules are. We want to know how well we're supposed to follow them so that I can be either good or bad. When I was growing up, there was a phrase, and if you did this, you were a good kid, that I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. And if you did that, you're a good kid. Now, I'm so glad that I changed my standards on that because Jen smokes like a freight train and I love her to death. The joy of my life. I think she tried a cigar one time. Did you try a cigar one time? Yes, you did so. You lie. I'm in trouble. That's all right. Well, we always like to set up these standards about personal holiness and the rules that we should follow because it kind of gets easier. And then we start following the rules to get better at following the rules. And we forget that it's far more about what we produce than what we receive or how buttoned up we live. God cares about us loving our neighbor towards him. He cares about us being people of grace and kindness and authenticity. He cares far more that you are a person of generosity than he cares about how much you chose to spend on your car. You understand? He cares far more about how you treat other people than the specific language you use when you're treating them in a certain way. He cares far more about what comes out of you, about what we produce, the love that we produce in others, than he cares about the standards that we would hold for ourselves. And that's the point that Jesus is making. Because the Pharisees are the far end of rule following equals spiritually good. And what Jesus is showing them is you're hypocrites and your hypocrisy is actually destroying your faith and the faith of those around you. This is why Jesus says that he wants people who worship in spirit and in truth. And when I think of productivity, what I want to produce in my life, there's these two verses that haunt me because they make the bar so very high and I am so very far from hitting it. But I've always said I'd rather look at the standard and be honest about not meeting it than lower the standard so I can feel better about myself. And I've always invited you to do that with me. But there's a passage in Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that others might see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that we should live our lives in such a way that people who come into contact with us, even if they don't speak to us, even if they don't ask us about our God, even if we don't get to talk to them about church and about faith and about what we do and why we do it and what we believe, even if we never get to do that, all they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the co-worker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is see us. All they do is watch us interact with the cashier or interact with the coworker or move through a crowd or be in a space. All they do is watch us, but that we should let our good work shine before men so that by simply watching us interact in the world, they would see our good works and so glorify our father who is in heaven. What God wants for his children is for your walk to be so radical and your love to be so noticeable and your generosity to be so mind-blowing and your kindness to be so unusual that as people watch you, they go, that person is different and I want what they have. That's the productivity that Jesus is talking about. He's far more interested that people would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven than we would follow the right rules at the right time. The other standard I think of, and I love this one, is in Colossians 3. It says that Jesus leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You know when you walk past somebody that smells good? You weren't thinking about it. It just kind of wafted over to you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's nice. That's how it should be when people interact with us in the world, That through us would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That simply by interacting with us, by moving past us, they would go, huh, that's different. That's nice. It's this standard that's so high and so seemingly impossible to reach, but that's who Paul tells us we are in Colossians, and that's what I want us to be. What if, what if, Grace, we were like this so much. What if we held ourselves to that standard that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. This unaggressive, unobtrusive, unobtrusive just scent that wafts off of us that these are people who know and love God. What if that was so pervasive that somebody brings a friend to big night out and they go, these people are different, this community is different, and I think I want to be a part of it. What if that fragrance were so pervasive in us that by someone just coming to our worship or by someone just sitting in with us or by someone just watching us interact before and after a regular Sunday service, when none of us did anything intentional, they got an impression that these people know and love God. What if we were that productive in our faith? That's what God is concerned with, not the rules and how well we follow them. Now, this so far is a particularly grace message because grace people are not rules not rules people. I don't know how long you've been here, but those of us who have been here for a while, we don't care for the rules. We don't follow them. They're there to be broken. We're pretty irreverent about the rules. And so, so far, all the grace people are like, yeah, this is great. God cares way more about productivity. And if we were the kind of church that said amen sometimes, we would have said it by now. Because this is what we believe in. Yes, absolutely. I need Bill Gentile here this week. Bill Gentile, some of you know him, about four times a year, he says, man, I was so close to amen this morning. I needed him here this morning. Bill, darn you. We like that message. God doesn't care about the rules. He cares about love. And so the implication is, so go do whatever you want. I mean, go behave however you want. Go consume whatever you want. Go put whatever you want in your body. Go watch whatever you want. Go do whatever it is you want. Just make sure that what comes out is love. Here's the problem with that. The right results demand the right input. The right results demand the right input. If what my real goal in my life is, is that through me would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God, how is that possible if I am not daily consuming his word? If I am not daily pursuing him in prayer? If I am not daily tracking down older, wiser, more experienced people in my life who've known God longer than me and asking them questions about how they know God and how they follow God, how can the fragrance of the knowledge of God permeate out of me and into the people around me if I'm not spending my days pursuing that knowledge? How can someone see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven if you're too busy to do those good works? If you're not focused on pursuing God yourself. How can someone see the way you interact with a cashier, the way that you handle things in traffic, the way that you interact with a coworker, the way that you de-escalate something tense at work? How can people see you do that if you're not pursuing God and you're not growing in those areas? How can people see the fruit of the Spirit in your life if you're not walking in the Spirit? So I'm not here to tell you what Netflix shows you should and should not watch, but here's what I know. There comes a point at which too much of that one thing, too dark of that one topic, too much of that kind of input is going to begin to affect the output. It's going to begin to affect how we love and what comes out. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I'm not here to tell you what language to use and not. I'm not here to tell you what you should consume and what you should not. But what I am here to tell you this morning is what you consume through your eyes and through your mouth and with your body, the receptivity, the things that you receive from the world into you, what you consume absolutely makes a difference in what you produce. We know this to be true. So this is not a sermon begging you to come up with standards. It is one that is telling you that they matter. And when we read passages like this and Jesus says, listen, the rules don't matter. It's about what you produce. Yeah. That's why he reduced all the laws down to one thing. Go love others if I have loved you, which is the most impossible law to follow in the world unless you're following the essence of the other 630. We have to be people who love God and love others. And that has to dictate to us what we allow to come into our bodies and the kinds of things that we are receptive to because how can we ever possibly be the Christians, the kingdom builders that Jesus calls us to be if we're not consuming him and the things of him always. It reminds me of that verse that I love, Philippians 4, 8, finally brothers, whatever things are good, right, noble, trustworthy, of good report, think on these things. If that's not our standard for what we're consuming and what we hold ourselves to, then how can we possibly expect to produce what God wants us to produce? How can we possibly expect to hold up our end of the bargain? See, what we like? We love the no rules thing. We love the standards don't matter thing. That's fun. But if that's really what we think, how can we ever become the people that God has created us to be? How will the fragrance of the knowledge of God ever waft out of us if we never, ever, ever care about the standards that we set for ourselves and what we pursue? And I know this is true because Jesus says this in Mark slander, evil, malice, lust, adultery, lewdness, folly, all those things, they come from inside of me. They come from a value that I've espoused in my own heart. They come from the people that I allow to be around me. And all that stuff gets in there from what I consume, from what I watch and from what I joke about and from what I read and from what I talk about and for the kinds of friendships that I have and for the standards that I hold. All that stuff gets poured in. And if I hang out with people who love money more than anything and love success more than anything, then I am going to adopt their value system. And in my heart, I will allow that seed of greed to grow, that seed of arrogance to grow. And I will begin to make decisions about money and about success and about power and about career that are not in line with producing the righteous life that God desires. Out of me will come that selfishness. Out of me will come that influence from other people. But here's what I think has to be true. If these verses are true, 20 through 23, then the converse must be true as well. If malice and slander and greed and arrogance pour out of my heart because of what I've poured in, then the opposite has to be true, right? That when love and kindness and generosity and mercy and grace flow out of my heart, flow out of my mouth. It is because of what God has placed in my heart. It is because of an earnest pursuit of God. It is because of a healthy sanctification and desire for him. It is because of intentional choices. See, we don't get to produce that fruit by default, okay? You don't just become a Christian and then go about your day as normal, not changing a thing, and then all of a sudden just pouring out of you is love and generosity and kindness. No, there's intentional, difficult decisions that you have to make about how you want to prioritize your time and your talent and your treasure so that God can get a hold of you and move you forward. Last week, I talked about how one of the greatest tools of the enemy is that we're so distracted. We're never quiet anymore ever. We've lost the power to think and to ponder and to wonder. How can we produce what God wants us to produce if we won't stop and take in from him? So when we hear this story in the future, because this is a famous one, when Jesus says what goes into a person doesn't defile them, what comes out does. Often we use that to decry the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of their life, and the rules don't matter, it's all about love, and that's great, and that's true, and it is. But what I think grace needs to hear more than that because if we're going to, listen, church, if we're going to miss the mark on this, we're going to miss it in favor of love and do what you want. Okay? That's our culture. So what grace needs to hear is, yeah, love, but that pours out of what we pour in. That comes out of what we let in. So I have two things for you guys to think about as we wrap up today. First one, and I asked you this in another form last week, but I want you to think about it again. Am I producing, as honestly as you can, am I producing what God wants me to produce? When I look back the last one year, three years, five years, do I see an increase in the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and all the rest? Do I see myself growing in generosity and kindness and patience? Do I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on me and that I've subjected myself to him? Am I producing in the kingdom? Am I pointing people towards Jesus? So it's well and good to not care about the rules. It's well and good to understand this and be like, yeah, I don't have to judge my spirituality and my spiritual health by how well I follow the rules. That's fine. But how well are you producing? And then the second thing I would leave you with this morning is this question. Are the things that I'm consuming helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? Are the things that I'm consuming in my life on the screen, the radio, the phone, the scroll, through the conversations, what I expose myself to willingly and habitually, are the things that I'm consuming in my life helping or hurting my productivity in God's kingdom? I'd love for you to think about those two things as I pray for you, and then we sing to finish up. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the way that you work in our lives. Thank you for being a God that, yes, doesn don't know if I'm producing what I'd like to be producing. I don't know that I'm being used like I'd like to be used. God, would you create in them a fire to make some intentional decisions to put their hand to the plow in your kingdom? Would you show them and show us what we can do and how you'd like to use us? And would that begin by just a simple pursuit and step towards you. And God, as we consider the different things that we consume, I know as I've thought through it, convict us where it's needed. Let it move us to better choices. And God, with the conviction, with that seed of conviction from your word, land on good soil that takes root, that isn't a flash in the pan, that isn't emotional, that doesn't get swept away. But God, as we consider those things in our lives, help us be people that stick to it. We thank you for your son. We thank you for your sacrifice. And we thank you for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, guys. We want to invite you to stand as we just worship together this morning. Let's sing this together. There's a God. There's a God who is real and strong. He's alive and fights for his own. Let me hear you sing it out. Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Our eternity stepped into time The water turned into wine Come on, let's sing it. Come on. Ruler over earth and sky Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Let's sing this out together. Clap your hands. Sing it out. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing again when you are done. Endless praise to the Holy One. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Church, can we put our hands together this morning? Let's just celebrate. Come on. You guys can go ahead and have a seat. All right. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been going to Grace for a long time, this may be the first time in your life you've ever seen my face. I shaved down to a mustache so I could be Mario for Halloween. And now I'm actively trying to grow the beard back so that I don't scare you next week when I preach. So let's just get that out of the way because I'm getting a lot of weird looks in the lobby. All right, with that out of the way, I want to read to you this morning the first four verses from Psalm 122 as we continue in our series called Ascent, where we're looking at the different psalms of Ascent in Psalm 120 to 134. So here's the first four verses of Psalm 122. Listen to this. Every year in the fall, now for the past several years, we pause and we do a morning of worship where the whole service is an opportunity for us as a body to worship God together. We set aside the sermon for that morning, and we let ourselves be ministered to through song as we approach God's throne together. And it made a lot of sense to put this service here in the middle of the series ascent because of this psalm. Because in the middle of these psalms of ascent, in the middle of praising, they stop to acknowledge, they stop before they enter Jerusalem. We're standing at the gates of Jerusalem. So they're not going in yet. They're going in to worship. But before they go to worship, what do they do? They pause and they worship. And last year we did a series called The Songs We Sing. And we focused intentionally on worship for a large portion of the fall. And one of the things that I said over and over and over again is that corporate worship, raising our voices together, singing to God together, proclaiming his praises together is probably the most important thing we can do as a body of believers on a Sunday morning. I tell people all the time, you can download all the best sermons on Wednesday. The best speakers in the world, the most dynamic sermons, you can download those on a Tuesday while you drive to work. You can listen to those anytime you want to. What you can't download is community and corporate worship. What you can't fabricate on your own and experience during the week is what we're going to experience this morning. Coming together, unified as one voice, praising our God together. And as we were coming to church this morning, my wife Jen pointed out to me, this is really an important time this morning because we are in such a consumeristic culture and even time in that culture. We're inundated with news, especially now in this season. We're sitting and we're listening and we're taking in information and the TV is on and a podcast is going or the phone is on or noise is being made and we're just being bombarded with information all the time as we go throughout our days. So it's right and good to pause and not be told things, not have to sit and listen for much longer, but to participate and to praise and allow it to just be your thoughts and your God as we worship together. And I believe that if we do that, that God will speak to each of us in uniquely encouraging ways today as we lift our voices. So let's sing loud, let's give ourselves over to it, and let's allow God to move as we pause to praise him. Please stand and we'll continue to worship. We worship the God who was. We worship the God who is. We worship the God who evermore will be. He opened the prison doors. He parted the raging sea. My God, He holds the victory. Yeah. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out right back. We sing to the God who always makes a way. Because he hung up on that cross. Then he rose up from that grave. My God still rolling stones all way. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. We were the beggars, now we're royalty. We were the prisoners, now we're running free. We are forgiven, accepted, deemed by His grace. Let the house of the lord sing praise we were the beggars now we're royalty we were the prisoners now we're running free we are forgiven accepted redeemed by his grace let the house of the lord sing praise All right, Grace, come on, sing it out. Here we go. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy your praise. We shout out your praise. We shout out your praise. Church, can we put our hands together and let's just celebrate this morning. God is great. Thank you. I've seen a glimpse of your heart a billion years. Still I'll be singing. How can I praise you enough? How can I praise you enough? You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in glory. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Creation calls all to the Savior. We are alive for your praise. In earth and sky, no one is higher. Our God of wonders, you reign. Our God of wonders, you reign. You are the Lord all mine. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Not to us, but to your name, we lift up all praise. Not to us, but to your name name we lift up all praise not to us but to your name we lift up all you are the lord almighty outshining all the stars in glory Great. Lift your voice. Yes. I'm sorry. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you. All of my days I want to praise the tower of refuge and strength. Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you Shout to the Lord All the earth let us sing Power and majesty Praise to the King Mountains bow down I see joy I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Psalm 98, 1 through 9 says, His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Burst into jubilant song with music. Make music to the Lord with the harp and the sound of singing. With trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Let the rivers, to lift our voice, to sing. It doesn't matter if you play an instrument or not. It doesn't matter if you can sing well or not. We are commanded and called to shout to the Lord, to give him glory and to worship his name. So we're going to continue singing this song and we're going to worship the God of all creation. Sing my Jesus. I give all of my days. I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love. My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength. Let's sing it. Shout. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise, all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name I sing for joy at the work of your hands Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Sing this with me. Silence the boast of sin and shame Heavens are rolling The praise of your glory For you are raised to life again You had no rival You had no equal Come on, sing it out. Come on. what a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Let's sing it again. Yes. How great Thou art. We serve a great God. A God whose love is unconditional. A God whose love is never failing and never ending. And whatever, whatever moment you may be wrestling with and whatever moment life may have you in, can we just, can we just declare that truth? Can we just lift up our voices, sing this out, then sings my soul. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Lord, we just ask you to hear our heart. Hear our cry this morning, Lord, that we believe that you are great. Your greatness isn't dependent upon our season. Your greatness isn't dependent upon what's happening to us. We're around us, Lord. You are great and you are worthy of our praise. And so this morning we offer it. We just put you in your proper place, which is above all. We just seek to give glory and honor to your name, Father. Church, can I just ask you this morning, what reason might you have to be grateful? What reason might you have to just give God praise and thanks? With that in mind, can we just do that? We get to this portion of the chorus that says, so I throw up my hands and I praise you again and again and I sing hallelujah. Hallelujah simply means this, I give praise to Jehovah. I give praise to the King of kings in this symbolic gesture of lifting my hands. Father, I surrender all to you. I give you all and I trust all. It's just offering our thanks and our gratitudes. All my words for sure I've got nothing new How could I express All my gratitude I could sing these, as I often do. Every song was dear to you and me. Come on, let's sing. So I throw up my head and praise you again and again. All that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah. I know it's not much. I'm nothing else fit for a king. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I've got just Come on. so i throw up my hands and praise you hold back. Let's just offer a praise inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. Come on, church. Lift it up. Come on, my soul. Don't you get shy of me. Lift up your soul. You've got a lion inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. All right, give it all you've got. Let's shout it out. All right, one more time, shout it Lord. Shout it. So open my hands. Praise you, Jesus. Because all that I have is a hallelujah Come on, shout it out. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. All that I have is a hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. And I know it's not much. I have nothing. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I sing it again so I throw up my hands. So I throw up my hands. And I praise you again and much, but nothing else fit for a king except for a heart singing. We sing hallelujah. We say hallelujah. Hallelujah. are called to worship you. We are called to shout out your name, God. We are grateful, Lord. I pray for everyone in this room. I pray that you are stirring in our hearts, God. We feel you moving in this place, Lord. Thank you. Amen. You can have a seat. We hope you guys are having a good morning so far. I wanted to share with you something that really stood out to me as we read through Psalm 122. As Nate said a little earlier, we're in this sermon series called Ascent. And really what we're doing is we're looking at this collection or a portion of the collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. And it's just songs that the Israelites would sing while they were in route to Jerusalem, while they were on their journey. They would just sing these songs. And then you get to Psalm 122, and I thought it was really interesting that on their way to worship, they begin to sing the song about worship, right? And if you read it, Psalm 122 really reads more like a prayer than it does anything else. And so you may have heard me say this before, that when we come together, when we sing in this moment right now, like we're coming in, we're lifting our voice. Our song is simply a prayer to a melody. That's all it is. In these moments where you sing corporately, while you sing songs of worship in your car, all of these times, you're offering a prayer in the form of a melody. So when you come and you're singing these songs about hope, we have these fear, we have these moments that we aren't sure what's going to happen, and we just start singing about this. I place my trust in you. What you are saying in this moment, God, I need you for my hope. God, I need you for what's coming. I don't know how to deal with what I'm doing right now. When you sit in these moments and we say, God, you are worthy, you are above it all, we trust you, we praise you, and you offer this glory and thanks. What you are doing is from your mouth to God's ears, you are offering this prayer, expressing gratitude, showing thanks, declaring his glory. And that's one of the things that makes corporate worship so beautiful. There's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me because I say wise stuff all the time. But it's not necessary. But no, there's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me, because I say wise stuff all the time. It's not necessary. But no, there's a quote that says, the beautiful thing about corporate worship is not the songs that we sing, but the fact that we sing them together. And so when we come together with that idea that our songs are a prayer to a melody, how beautiful is it that you come together as one body, lifting one voice, serving one God, offering one prayer in unison. It's a gorgeous thing. How awesome and how incredible is that? Does it have to be to God's ears? That's what Nate was saying a little earlier. The thing that you can't have watching online, sorry if you are, but it's true. The thing that you can't have is this unison of prayer, this unison of voice. And so at the end of Psalm 122, it shifts, the prayer shifts just a little bit. What the Israelites begin to do is pray for their family and for their friends. I want to read it for you. Maybe this is going to be more complicated than I thought. Okay, here we go. Psalm 122, verse 6 says this. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. Listen to this. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity. En route. En route to the temple to worship. They are worshiping. They are singing a song about worship. They are offering a prayer about the beauty of worshiping together. And then in this prayer, towards the end, they begin praying for their family and versions. It says, for the sake of the house of the Lord, I will seek your good. In this prayer, where they are praying for their family and friends, they also include a line that says, help me to pursue your good. God, for the sake of my community, it is good that I pursue what you say is good. For the sake of my community, for the sake of the people around me, it is good that I pursue the life you have created me to live. It is good for them, for me to be who you've created me to be. It is good for them. It reminds me of this, Nate said we're not going to talk. He lied. I don't know if he knew I was going to talk like this. I love Mark 7 because that's what this really kind of points to for me. There's this portion in Mark. Jesus is maybe at the height of popularity in his ministry right now. Like everyone has heard about this guy. They've heard of the miracles that he's done. They've heard of his teachings or they have seen the miracles that he's done. And they've heard his teachings himself or they've seen just all of these different things. And so you have this one little section in Mark 7. I think it's in verse 30. But it says that there was a guy who was deaf and could hardly talk. And there was some people in his life, some people in his community that brought him to Jesus. And then it says they begged Jesus to touch him. They brought this guy to Jesus and they begged Jesus to do Jesus things in this guy's life. And it's not isolated to this. There's multiple areas throughout the Bible. You can read just a little bit later in eight. Those are the first two that I'm aware of. But time and time again, you see people bringing to Jesus and then begging Jesus. And I love this. I think it's what we see in Psalm 122, this combination of action and prayer. This combination of doing everything that I can to point people to Christ, to take people to Christ, to move people to Christ, to live a life that reflects the love of Christ and saturating that action with a plea for Jesus to do Jesus things. That's what happened in Mark 7. Hey, I've seen, I've heard you can do this, Jesus. I saw you do this before. I need you to do this for my family. And it's not just a passing prayer. It's a plea. It's a beg, begging Jesus. I think that that's what James would call a works that shows your faith you move towards Christ and you beg to do Jesus things and when I first saw this when I first recognized it I wrote in my Bible I have friends like that right and I underlined it. And then we all kind of want that, right? I have a group of guys that I meet with. One of the guys, he calls it an intimacy group, and I don't like that. So we're not going to call it that because it just feels weird. Put your hand down, Jacob. We're not talking about that right now. But this group of guys, and what I love about it is that we can be open, we can be honest, we can just tell the struggles, and I know. Then we walk away from there. I have a group of people who are pleading with Jesus to do Jesus things in my world. We all want that. That's right and good. I wrote it down in my Bible while I was sitting there. I was like, oh, that's good, right? I felt kind of like this little poke, right? It said, hey, buddy. It felt like Jesus was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could. You could find friends like that. You have. You could also be. Be that friend. You could also be that husband. You can be the husband that lives a life that reflects the life of Jesus. Be the husband that lives a life that reflects the love that you've experienced. Be the husband who reflects a life and lives a life that believes and trusts in the life of Christ while at the same time interceding with prayer. Not just a passing prayer, but a plea, a beg, like such a hurt and such a longing for the people in the world around me, such a hurt and a longing for the people in my community that I'm not just gonna say, hey, Jesus, just help them with that. But it's like, no, you do Jesus things. Jesus, do Jesus things in their life. Like I love them too much to just let this go. And I beg and I beg and I plead. Like be that type of husband. Be that type of pastor. Be that type of leader. Be that type of friend. And then after it hit me, I was so convicted, I just sat back and I wept. It's like, man, how much more faith can you express than living the life that Jesus has called you to live? All at the same time saturating everything that you can do. Believing, living this life, everything within your power, saturating that action, that life with a prayer. It struck me hard. And what I want us to do this morning as we wrap up is I want to give you an opportunity to do that same thing. My prayer is that while I'm talking through that and I say just, hey, begging Jesus for people, interceding in prayer, just lifting, having such a hurt for them. Maybe you have a child who's entering into a new season of life, some new things coming up. Why don't we take some time and just begin to beg Jesus to prepare the path that's ahead of them, to begin to beg Jesus to just move and stir in their life that they experience Him in a way that they never have before. Maybe you have a child or a friend who's dealing with depression and anxiety and they just can't seem to shake it. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in their life, just to begin to put them in the right places, to begin to put the people around them that needs to be there and just help relieve some of the torment that they're feeling. Maybe it's a spouse. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in the area. Maybe it's in your relationship. Maybe there's a fractured relationship. Maybe it's your relationship at home. But I just want to give us a little bit of time to model what we see in Mark 7 and model what we see in Psalm 122. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to shut up, right? Then I'm going to give you some time to just pray. And to close out our morning, we're going to do exactly what we read in Psalm 122. We pray blessings upon the people that we love. We pray for the sake of our family and friends. We will stand together and we will sing and offer a blessing, but also include in that prayer, it says, Jesus, help me to live the life you've created and called me to live. Help me to live a life that is a reflection of you. Help me to live and build my life on your love. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes and then we're going to start singing the song. If you know it, you're more than welcome to stand and sing as well or just stay and remain praying in your own words. But towards the end of that song, I'll invite us to stand and we'll close that off seriously. So take a few minutes and just begin praying for the people that God has laid on your heart. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Amen. Thank you. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every and all of anxiety. To every storm held captive by depression, I speak Jesus. Oh, I just want to speak the name of Jesus over fear and all anxiety To every soul held captive by depression I speak Jesus Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Church, would you stand and sing it out. Jesus for my family Come on. I speak the holy name, Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows Burn like a fire Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is life I just want to speak the name of Jesus over every heart and every mind. Because I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Oh, I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Church, we're just going to make this our prayer. I will build my life on your love, Lord. Let's just sing this out together. Father, we give you our heart, we give you our life, and we give you our hope. Our faith is expressed in the life that we live and the prayers that we offer for our family and friends. Come on, church, time. Sing it out. Let's pray this blessing. generations He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. Come on, sing it out. Amen. Amen. Amen. May His favor be upon you and a thousand generations and your family and your children and your children and your children. and behind is is Just our voice, let's sing it out. One more time. We sing. Amen. Amen. Amen. God, we thank you so much and we praise you, Lord. Grace, we're so glad that you decided to join us today. We hope that it was a good morning for you. Make sure you come back next week. Don't forget Thursday night, the fall fling at Ignite Up. You guys have a great week. We'll see you.
